FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 6, 1998
Contact: Jeff Nelligan, OIG Communications Director
Telephone: (202) 366-6312
FAA: Alison Duquette, (202) 267-8521
OIG 5-98
FAA MAKES PROGRESS ON 90-DAY SAFETY
REVIEW RECOMMENDATIONS
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have issued a joint management advisory on the status of recommendations made by FAA’s 90-day safety review task force. The advisory indicates that the agency has made progress but many efforts to implement the most significant recommendations are still ongoing.
The recommendations reviewed by the joint OIG/FAA team were developed after the ValuJet accident in 1996. The carrier’s rapid growth and the tragic accident caused the FAA to take a hard look at the way it conducted safety inspections, especially with respect to new carriers.
The 90-day safety review task force, comprised of FAA employees with day-to-day oversight responsibility, examined federal regulations and FAA’s oversight of commercial airlines engaged in substantial contracting out of maintenance and training functions. A joint OIG-FAA review of task force recommendations was then conducted.
"Our review shows that both the FAA and the department are making progress toward implementing the extensive list of task force recommendations," said Inspector General Kenneth M. Mead. "Because the task force made recommendations that resulted in FAA re-engineering its air carrier certification and surveillance program, there’s still a tremendous amount of work to be done. Nevertheless, I’m confident that Administrator Jane Garvey’s continued focus on this matter will result in FAA, within a reasonable time, finishing the job the task force began."
"The FAA is making a major shift in the way we conduct aviation safety inspections. We believe this shift will bring significant safety benefits to the American public," Garvey said.
To date, the FAA and the Office of the Secretary of Transportation have initiated action on all 31 task force recommendations and have implemented nine. Twenty-four require action by FAA, five require action by both the FAA and the Office of the Secretary, and two require Office of the Secretary-only action. Those implemented are:
- FAA increased the number of aviation safety inspectors by 146 and support personnel by 74 in fiscal 1997;
- FAA required each air carrier to list in its operating specifications all contractors performing substantial aircraft maintenance and to conduct onsite audits of each contractor;
- FAA created an analytic unit of specialists to evaluate air carrier safety risks, provide support to FAA inspectors, identify emerging aviation safety issues, and disseminate safety information to FAA inspectors and other organizations, such as Congress;
- FAA developed a strategy to evaluate and improve the quality of inspection and safety-related data;
- FAA established policy requiring new air carriers to adhere to the manufacturer’s maintenance program, time intervals, and maintenance processes;
- FAA issued an airworthiness handbook bulletin to inspectors to guide them in evaluating contractual relationships between air carriers and maintenance providers;
- FAA and the Office of the Secretary limited assistance provided to unprepared or unqualified air carrier applicants;
- FAA clarified policy requiring the agency to follow its certification process, called the "Gate Concept"; and
- The Office of the Secretary enforced requirements for filing a complete air carrier application by dismissing applications if complete information was not provided within 30 days.
Moreover, the FAA and the Inspector General noted that corrective actions to address the most significant recommendations identified by the 90-day safety review task force are in-process. They are:
- Create a national certification team of specialists to assist FAA offices with new air carrier certifications. At the time of the review, formation of the team was in progress. However, the team is now in place and will participate in the next certification process;
- Ensure FAA surveillance of air carriers is targeted to deal with identified risks, such as develop a surveillance plan tailored to each air carrier’s operations;
- Develop air carrier partnership programs to generate improved safety information that may not otherwise be accessible to FAA;
- Heighten the level of FAA surveillance for at least the first five years of an air carrier’s operation. The FAA will complete National Aviation Safety Inspection Program (NASIP) inspections on all new entrant carriers by the end of 1998;
- Devise new staffing standards for assigning FAA flight standards personnel; and,
- Design a new FAA flight standard pay system.
To address recommendations to make air carrier surveillance more targeted and systematic, the FAA teamed with Sandia National Laboratories to analyze FAA’s certification and surveillance processes. This re-engineering took eight months and led to FAA’s decision to develop a new system called Air Transportation Oversight System (ATOS), now under development.
The FAA estimates that for the 22 open recommendations, 14 are scheduled for completion by the end of 1998 and 8 for the end of 1999.
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