Although somewhat alarming on the face of it, it's hard for the untrained observer to say whether this merits deep systemic concern or whether it's largely more scaremongering about things being done in foreign places.<p>1. The article cites numerous examples of problems in recent years that have been attributed somehow to improper maintenance in developing world facilities, but doesn't discuss the statistical or historical incidence of maintenance errors for domestic aircraft maintenance and overhauls.<p>Could it be that these problems, however sensational they sound when juxtaposed with China or El Salvador, have always been with us? At roughly the same rate?<p>2. Despite the fact that this trend has been seemingly ongoing for more than a decade now, recent statistics suggest that the last decade has been unprecedentedly safe in the history of aviation:<p><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/27/globalpost-flying-safe/70534422/" rel="nofollow">http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/27/globalpo...</a><p><a href="http://qz.com/318534/despite-a-spike-in-deaths-2014-has-seen-the-fewest-plane-crashes-in-the-modern-aviation-era/" rel="nofollow">http://qz.com/318534/despite-a-spike-in-deaths-2014-has-seen...</a><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/business/2012-was-the-safest-year-for-airlines-globally-since-1945.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/business/2012-was-the-safe...</a><p>Of course, it's possible we are the beneficiaries of uncannily favourable coincidences, but the point is, there's an explanatory burden in why, if offshore maintenance were truly the problem the article insinuates it is, it doesn't make a more pronounced actuarial mark.<p>3. Despite the sensation that discussions of flight safety evoke (due perhaps to our sense of its innate precariousness, at some instinctual level), it may well be that airplanes are by far not the most quantitatively-statistically significant thing built or maintained in the developing world to which we entrust our safety.<p>Except for those with a preternatural knack for somehow avoiding travel by automobile, we have, do, and will again entrust our lives on a daily basis to assembly code written by Japanese, Korean, and probably Chinese programmers. A great deal of manufactured products, industrial materials, and other artifacts of modernity are manufactured in the developing world. If this alone were truly a life-and-limb disaster in the making, as the article implies, one would think it would be reflected in widespread mortality of all sorts, everywhere.