IG Report: FAA Falling Down On The Job

Report Says Airlines' Financial Woes Could Lead To Safety Problems

A new report by the Department of Transportation Inspector General says the FAA is falling behind in trying to

 keep up with airline maintenance -- especially as carriers hurting for cash are more and more prone to cut corners.

Especially worrisome to the IG was the increasing trend of outsourcing airline maintenance. Given FAA budget cuts, the report criticized the FAA for only inspecting three of the five most financially-struggling airlines.

The IG report also took the FAA to task for failing to properly monitor low-cost carriers.

The FAA reacted angrily to the report. Spokesman Greg Martin said the IG "vastly underestimates the enormous effort by FAA and industry to achieve the historic safety record that we have." Martin was quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

Martin said the air travel system is as safe as it's ever been -- pointing out there hasn't been a fatal mishap involving a major carrier in the past three-and-a-half years.

Martin also said the FAA is certainly aware of the outsourcing trend.
Between 2002 and 2004, the amount of airline maintenance sent to outside contractors rose from 47-percent to 53-percent -- and it's still rising.

But the FAA is factoring outsourced maintenance into its monitoring program, making sure outside shops do as good a job as the airlines' own mechanics.

Still, up to 90-percent of outsourced maintenance work is performed at night and, according to the audit, FAA inspectors spend only three-percent of their total time conducting after-hours inspections. The FAA said that figure is more like ten-percent.

"Whatever issues may or may not be impacting the FAA's safety oversight, FAA inspections are secondary to the robust quality-assurance programs the airlines adhere to in overseeing all maintenance work," ATA spokesman Jack Evans told the Journal.

But the financial pressures are indeed changing the safety culture at airlines, according to the IG report.

"We found instances in which air carriers operating with short gate-turnaround time did not adhere to required operating procedures," the report said.

As an example, the Journal reported, three aircraft at one LCC were found to have a total of 16 maintenance discrepancies that weren't on the logbooks.
The report said the LCC was waiting until the last flight of the day to address the issues so that there would be no flight delays.

The report found that, after another carrier shut down a major maintenance facility and outsourced the work to a company with known safety issues, the FAA failed to step up its inspection regime or reassess the risks. See also this link

Report faults FAA's ability to make air-safety checks

WASHINGTON - The Federal Aviation Administration is failing to effectively oversee new safety risks posed by sharp cost-cutting in the airline industry and rapid growth of budget carriers, a government report concludes.

U.S. airlines are looking for new ways to cut costs by outsourcing maintenance and reducing the time that planes are parked at gates. At the same time, new low-fare carriers are expanding to dozens of cities.

Both trends have created safety concerns that the FAA has not adequately addressed in its inspection program, according to a Transportation Department inspector general report issued Wednesday. advertisement

"Pilots and flight crews are flying more hours, and aircraft are being utilized for more hours a day," the report says.

The FAA defended the work of its inspectors, whose job is to ensure that airlines meet safety standards, but it agreed that it has been constrained by budget cuts that will result in 300 fewer inspectors this year.

The report found that up to 90 percent of airline maintenance is conducted overnight, yet FAA inspectors spent only 1 to 7 percent of their work time conducting night inspections. The FAA disagreed with that finding, saying its inspectors spend 10 percent of their time at maintenance facilities at night.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0609faa09.html
 

Another Synopsis
Safety Oversight of Airlines Deemed Inadequate - DOT/IG Report

            From this report on FAA oversight of financially troubled and/or low cost carriers: operators are on their own ensuring safety, because the feds haven’t got enough people or effective systems in place to do the job.

           Especially worrisome to the DOT/IG was the increasing trend toward outsourced airline maintenance, which has not prompted a commensurate shift in FAA oversight. The NTSB has expressed its similar concerns about FAA oversight of outsourced maintenance.

            “While the FAA has made progress toward a more risk-based approach to safety oversight, FAA inspectors were not able to effectively use the oversight systems to monitor the rapidly occurring changes” in the airline industry, said David Dobbs, assistant inspector general for aviation and special program audits.

            The FAA reacted angrily to the report, an official pointing out that there hasn’t been a fatal accident at a major carrier in the past three and a half years. That would be the crash of an Air Midwest 1900D twin turboprop on Jan. 8, 2003, from inadequate operator oversight of outsourced maintenance and an inadequate weight and balance program.

            “We recognize that the United States has the safest aviation system in the world and Flight Operational Quality Assurance [programs are available] to improve the safety of flight operations,” the DOT/IG report said. The DOT/IG also noted that “while the FAA did not agree with all of our report conclusions, it generally agreed to implement our recommendations.”

            The DOT/IG did not point out that Flight Operational Quality Assurance programs or Safety Management Systems (SMS) are not required by the FAA. Rather, these programs are voluntarily implemented at a number of carriers, but not all.

            The 40-page DOT/IG report speaks to the FAA’s problem in great detail; These are some of its concerns:

  •  The FAA has about 3,400 aviation inspectors on hand, but is losing about 300 of them in Fiscal 2006 and is budgeting to replace only 97 of them. (Not addressed in the DOT/IG report was the adequacy of the travel budget to support inspector visits.) The staffing shortage was reiterated by the Professional Airways System Specialists (PASS), the union of FAA safety inspectors. “The report points out what PASS has been raising with the FAA for years,” said Linda Goodrich, the PASS regional vice president representing FAA inspectors. “There are simply not enough inspectors to oversee the industry properly. We cannot continue to be expected to do more with less,” she said.

  • The FAA’s Air Transportation Oversight System (ATOS) has been implemented at just 15 air carriers, and the Surveillance and Evaluation Program (SEP) suffices at the other 112 carriers for which the FAA provides oversight. ATOS was designed to look at processes, thereby helping carriers to audit themselves. However, the ATOS program shortcomings were not addressed. For example, ATOS would not have identified the jackscrew lubrication deficiencies at Alaska Airlines that led to the Jan. 2000 crash of an MD-83. In fact, Alaska was not part of the FAA’s audit.

  • The FAA has not established target dates beyond fiscal 2005 for transitioning the remaining air carriers to ATOS.

  • One air carrier increased its fleet size by 56 percent while reducing the number of mechanics 14 percent. The FAA did not identify the increase in flights and reduction in mechanics as risks.

  • Many inspectors expressed reluctance to identify risks because to do so would result in more inspections than could be completed in a year.

  • Inspectors planning only seven inspections were responsible for overseeing a carrier that outsourced over 50 percent of its maintenance.

  • Carriers are shortening their turnaround times at the gate, and the FAA has not shifted inspectors to assure that this trend is safe, according to the DOT/IG report. It should be noted that Southwest Airlines has one of the shortest turnaround times in the business and, at the same time, one of the safest records in the industry.

  • The FAA has not focused on nighttime inspections, even though as much as 90 percent of maintenance is performed at night. Inspectors spend from a low of 1 percent to a high of 7 percent conducting nighttime inspections, according to the DOT/IG. The FAA claims the figure is more like 10 percent. During the Air Midwest crash hearings by the NTSB, the carrier was asked why, if most of the contract maintenance was being performed at night, the carrier’s representative wasn’t working at night, too. The same question applies to FAA inspectors.

(The June 3 DOT/IG report, No. AV-2005-062, “Safety Oversight of an Air Carrier Industry in Transition,”) at:

 www.oig.dot.gov/item.jsp?id=1575

 

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