WHITE HOUSE COMMSSION ON AVIATION SAFETY AND SECURITY
THE DOT STATUS REPORT

1. Improving Aviation Safety

1.1--Government and industry should establish a national goal to reduce the aviation fatal accident rate by a factor of five within ten years and conduct safety research to support that goal.

• Both the DOT and NASA have adopted this recommendation as a Strategic Plan goal. The Federal Aviation Administration has set out a strategic goal of reducing the aviation fatal accident rate 80 percent by 2007. NASA has set an additional goal of reducing the fatal accident rate by a factor of 10 in 20 years. During this first year the FAA has focused on preventing equipment malfunctions, reducing human-caused mishaps, ensuring separation between aircraft and other air or ground hazards, preventing accidents induced by aircraft icing, and is developing a plan to reduce fatal general aviation accidents through a partnership with industry.

• NASA reprogrammed $500 million to invest in aviation safety research over the next five years. NASA has identified a lead research center for safety research and has a program management staff in place across NASA Centers.

• The FAA, in a cooperative arrangement, assisted NASA in developing a research plan, "Toward a Safer 21st Century - Aviation Safety Research Baseline and Future Challenges." As a result of this plan, the FAA has developed its own internal plan focusing on specific safety issues.

• FAA has not had any equipment-related outages that resulted in aircraft accidents. (Equipment outages result in less than 4 percent of total aviation delays as well). FAA is committed, nonetheless, to constantly working towards reducing the number of equipment outages and also improving operations by infusion of new and improved technology and more efficient processes. In addition, FAA has established a method of sharing lessons learned when equipment outages occur to try to ensure that there is no recurrence.

1.2--The FAA should develop standards for continuous safety improvement, and should target its regulatory resources based on performance against those standards.

• The FAA has published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning Part 145, Repair Stations worldwide. This rulemaking will ensure continuous improvements in repair station safety performance.

• More aviation safety inspectors have been hired and they are now being assigned using a new oversight approach and a new partnership model. The FAA has revised its practice of assigning its most experienced inspectors to the largest, most complex air carriers. A new organization, capable of performing complex risk analyses, has been created to implement a unique approach to evaluating experienced and new, start-up, carriers for various trends and risk factors. In addition, an inspector-hiring plan was developed by month, specialty, and location. New inspectors and support staff were hired and assigned.

• The FAA has actively encouraged commercial operators to implement systems that ensure continued compliance and promote continuous improvements in safety and security. Guidance is given to industry through Advisory Circular 120-66, Partnership for Safety Program, which establishes the air transportation Aviation Safety Action Programs (ASAP). These programs, which are entered into by the FAA and entities of the air transportation industry, are intended to generate safety information that may not otherwise be obtainable.

1.3--The DOT and the FAA should be more vigorous in the application of high standards for certification of aviation businesses.

• FAA continues to explore new initiatives that will result in better accountability of aircraft parts that are subject to counterfeiting. Advisory Circular 00-56, Voluntary Industry Distributor Accreditation Program, published on September 5, 1996 describes a system for the voluntary accreditation of civil aircraft parts distributors on the basis of voluntary industry oversight. The FAA believes such programs will improve traceability of aircraft parts. The FAA is working actively in partnership with the interested parties to develop third party accreditation criteria applicable to non-flight critical parts.

• A Certification, Standardization, Evaluation Team (CSET) was created to provide experts to assist local field officers in the certification and continued oversight of new entrant carriers. Beginning in March 1998 each new applicant will have a team assigned to it.

• The FAA has developed a completely new automated system for generating and inter-actively accessing air carrier Operations Specifications, which are the legal documents by which the FAA authorizes air carriers to operate. The automated system will ensure that inspectors at over 90 field offices are using consistent criteria and language when authorizing operators.

• In aircraft certification, the Department is working to apply the lessons learned from the Boeing 777 certification to the way the FAA certificates aircraft in the future, including the development of analytic tools and processes to spur the use of new technology and use of "best practices."

• The Department is implementing actions to enhance oversight of air carrier operators. The economic review of new entrants by the Office of the Secretary has been strengthened and the FAA safety inspection system has been changed to target resources better.

1.4--The Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) should be simplified and, as appropriate, rewritten as plain English, performance-based regulations.

• The FAA reviewed its rulemaking programs and made a determination as to which rules in progress could be written in plain English or as a performance-based regulation. The FAA also reviewed those regulations published within the last two years to see if those documents met the plain English, performance-based criteria. It was determined that, of the 19 projects under development at the time the survey was conducted, most (16) met the plain English standards, and almost half (8) met the performance-based standards. The three regulations that did not meet the plain English standards are, of necessity, being drafted in language that is technically precise. The regulations that did not meet the performance-based standards require prescriptive language in order to harmonize with the European regulations or for reasons of technical accuracy. These findings will be presented in a final report. The agency is currently reviewing the existing Code of Federal regulations to determine what percentage of them are already performance-based, which are prescriptive for justifiable reasons, and which of those would be candidates for change. These findings will also be presented in the final report.

1.5--Cost alone should not become dispositive in deciding aviation safety and security rulemaking issues.

• The Department of Transportation recognizes that in conducting benefit-cost analysis in aviation safety and security rulemakings, quite often there are both tangible and intangible benefits of a rule. It is also necessary to assess risks and examine potential mitigating measures. A key is not to wait for accidents to happen but to identify high-risk potential causes and act to address them before an accident occurs. The Department recognizes the importance of sound economic analysis when it comes to rulemakings, and that such an analysis includes taking into account both tangible and intangible benefits. Accordingly, the Department has instituted into its rulemaking practices a policy to ensure that costs alone are not dispositive in the rulemaking process. For example, this policy was followed in both issuances of the final rules on smoke detection and fire suppression (1.14) and on enhanced international passenger manifests (Recommendation 3.26).

1.6--Government and industry aviation safety research should emphasize human factors and training.

• FAA met with the Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to identify the focus of programs designed to assist in the development of a human factors investment strategy. A human performance research plan was prepared (based on NASA's "Toward a Safer 21^st Century - Aviation Safety Research Baseline and future Challenges," see Recommendation 1.1). An implementation strategy for the Human Factors Flight Deck Plan with NASA was also developed. A Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) and a situational awareness training aid as well as a distribution plan were also completed.

1.7--Enhanced ground proximity warning systems (EGPWS) should be installed in all commercial and military passenger aircraft.

• A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to require EGPWS on turbine powered airplanes with 6 or more passenger seats is in executive level coordination and is expected to be issued soon. Meanwhile, the Air Transport Association of America (ATA) and the Federal Aviation Administration announced in December a major new partnership to eliminate controlled flight into terrain - a major cause of air accidents worldwide. ATA member airlines will voluntarily equip 4,300 of their aircraft with advanced terrain awareness warning systems, such as EGPWS by 2003. The General Aviation Integrated Product Leadership Team has incorporated EGPWS into the plan considering options for low-cost general aviation avionics. This equipment is incorporated into the Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments, which is a new generation of airplane being built specifically for general aviation. The FAA’s Flight 2000 operational evaluation program, which uses advanced technology for more efficient routes, will provide valuable data on EGPWS on general aviation aircraft in actual operations.

1.8--The FAA should work with the aviation community to develop and protect the integrity of standard safety databases that can be shared in accident prevention programs.

• The FAA is drafting a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding information submitted to the FAA on a voluntary basis. This proposal would implement a new statutory provision. It is intended to encourage people to provide information that will assist the FAA in carrying out its safety and security duties by assuring that the information will be treated confidentially.

• The FAA is participating with the aviation community to improve the integrity and standardization of aviation safety databases in its worldwide Global Analysis and Information Network (GAIN) program. The FAA continues to promote GAIN, which proposes a privately owned, and operated worldwide infrastructure to collect, analyze, and disseminate aviation information.

• The FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation has initiated efforts to improve and standardize safety data for commercial space transportation.

• An internal FAA task force on aviation safety data standardization was established on April 24, 1997. This task force completed an inventory and documentation of aviation safety data standardization efforts within the FAA, in other agencies, and in the aviation community on December 31, 1997.

1.9--In cooperation with airlines and manufacturers, the FAA's Aging Aircraft program should be expanded to cover non-structural systems.

• The FAA is developing the data to determine the need for full and complete teardowns of aging aircraft. Such teardowns would provide more information to the FAA to target properly the areas of concern for aging aircraft research and rulemaking.

• FAA, NASA and DoD are coordinating aging aircraft research activities and are planing for the inclusion of aging aircraft systems.

1.10--The FAA should develop better quantitative models and analytic techniques to inform management decision-making.

• A FAA cross-organizational team developed, and FAA accepted, a formal plan that provides an integrated framework for identifying and developing analytical models to facilitate FAA decisionmaking across all lines of business. For example, it would include FAA’s mission need analysis process, which apply quantitative models and analytical techniques for use in executive management decisionmaking. The integrated model plan contains both short and long-term goals. Implementation of the short-term goals has begun.

• FAA initiated a program to develop a credible cost accounting system as mandated in the Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of 1996.

• FAA has developed general functional requirements, finalized the detailed system design, and evaluated, acquired, and installed Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) cost accounting software, and began to identify detailed functional requirements for all lines of business. This effort will be completed in February 1998.

• FAA implemented a baseline cost accounting system that provided prototype cost accounting data to selected organizations as an initial capability.

• The FAA's Office of Commercial Space has developed quantitative models and analytic techniques to forecast commercial space launches. The forecasts are used to anticipate license application workloads, to analyze production and launch capacity in relation to demand, and to inform the U.S. delegations regarding commercial space launch trade agreements with economies-in-transition.

1.11--The DOT should work with the Department of Justice to ensure that airline crewmembers performing their duties are protected from passenger misconduct.

• The Departments of Transportation and Justice are working together to ensure that passengers who interfere with airline crewmembers performing their duties are prosecuted for this unlawful conduct. The FAA with local and federal law officials are putting a process in place in the FAA's Western Pacific Region (including Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix) which can be used nationwide to ensure that passengers who engage in unruly behavior are punished. Since the issuance of the initial report of the Commission, over 64 cases have been opened in the Western region, of which an Assistant United States Attorney accepted 13 for prosecution. In other cases, the FAA has issued civil penalties to the passengers.

1.12--Legislation should be enacted to protect aviation industry employees who report safety or security violations.

• Legislation was introduced in the last Congress, supported by DOT to provide protection to individuals within the aviation industry who report violations to the FAA. It is expected that legislation will be reintroduced this year. DOT continues to support such legislation.

1.13--The FAA should eliminate the exemptions in the Federal Aviation Regulations that allow passengers under the age of two to travel without the benefit of FAA-approved restraints.

• The Department has urged air carriers to accommodate families traveling with small children, and several air carriers are now providing discount tickets for families. The FAA completed an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking which explains the ongoing research by the FAA on improved restraints for children under 2 and solicits comment on the best way to accomplish this rulemaking. The Office of the Secretary will also issue a survey to obtain data on the possibility of diversion of families with small children to other modes of transportation. Both efforts will be used to develop the final rulemaking.

1.14--The Commission commends the joint government-industry initiative to equip the cargo holds of all passenger aircraft with smoke detectors, and urges expeditious implementation of the rules and other steps necessary to achieve the goal of both detection and suppression in all cargo holds.

• The Federal Aviation Administration issued a final rule on February 12, 1998, requiring aircraft cargo compartments to contain fire detection and suppression systems. The rule affects nearly 3,700 passenger aircraft and all newly manufactured aircraft. The airline industry, through the Air Transport association (ATA), announced in December 1996 that the industry would voluntarily speed the installation of these systems in commercial aircraft. Some airlines already have FAA approval to retrofit their fleet. Air carriers may begin retrofitting their aircraft immediately, and the FAA continues to work in partnership with the airline industry to ensure that all affected aircraft are retrofitted within the next three years. Airlines will be required to report their progress quarterly to the FAA. Currently, most wide-body passenger aircraft have fire detection and suppression systems in inaccessible compartments. This rule requires that the remainder of the passenger fleet be equipped with the dame systems. Approximately 300 all-cargo aircraft will also be required to have detection systems and a means to shut off airflow to the compartment.

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Table of Contents || Section 2: Making Air Traffic Control Safer and More Efficient