The FAA began a massive overhaul of airline inspection procedures after the 1996 crash of a ValuJet plane in the Florida Everglades highlighted problems in the agency’s oversight. In October 1998, the FAA began the Air Transportation Oversight System (ATOS) at the 10 largest carriers at the time, billing it as the leading edge of a “data-driven” effort to pinpoint unsafe practices at carriers that could lead to accidents.
       But the report says the FAA has provided “minimal training” for many of its inspectors, adversely affecting data quality. The report concludes that the overall inspection program hasn’t been “fully implemented” at the nine largest carriers that are part of the program.
 

FAA says new maintenance program is proceeding on schedule

By JONATHAN D. SALANT
The Associated Press
4/8/02 6:03 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Aviation Administration officials say they are making progress with a new airline safety system that targets specific areas for improvement.

The Air Transportation Oversight System provides national standards for FAA inspectors and the airlines to follow in 95 different areas, including deicing, crew scheduling and maintenance training. It allows the FAA and the airlines to focus their attention and personnel on areas found to have problems.

The FAA offered its own assessment on Monday, three days before Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead is scheduled to tell Congress that the agency has not finished developing the program and hasn't provided its inspectors with the necessary training.

Mead and Nick Sabatini, FAA's associate administrator for regulation and certification, are scheduled to testify Thursday before the House aviation subcommittee.

FAA officials said they were on schedule for expanding the program. It now focuses on the nation's 10 largest carriers, which carry 95 percent of U.S. passengers. "We're confident that we have it right," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Inadequate maintenance may have contributed to the January 2000 crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which killed 88 people. A maintenance problem was overlooked by both the airline and the FAA, the inspector general said.

Following the crash, the FAA reviewed the maintenance programs of nine major airlines and reported in February that the carriers had made improvements.

The new FAA system, started in 1998, involves some 500 inspectors, who certify airline safety programs and then do periodic audits to make sure the procedures are followed.

The program evaluates a particular airline's maintenance program and concentrates on those areas most in need of improvement and crucial to safety. For example, one airline failed to give its relief pilots enough flying experience, so it provided more training.

The FAA formerly offered generic checks of all procedures and did not have uniform standards for its inspectors to follow.

On the Net:

Air Transportation Oversight System: http://www.faa.gov/avr/afs/atos/

Transportation Department Inspector General: http://www.oig.dot.gov/

WASHINGTON (USA) - In the wake of Sept. 11, the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) was stripped of its mandate to oversee airline security thanks to its own incompetence. It wrote weak regulations and allowed airlines to get away with cheap, bungled baggage screening. But a new report by the Department of Transportation's inspector general raises troubling questions about the agency's ability to handle its key remaining job: ensuring that airlines operate safely.

On Thursday, FAA officials will appear before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to answer findings that a highly touted system for improving airline maintenance and operations, unveiled in 1998, is still fraught with dangerous problems. Training is inadequate, inspectors are ineffectively used, and elements of the system were never put in place, Inspector General Kenneth Mead found.

The program was established to close perilous safety gaps revealed by a 1996 ValuJet crash, in which 110 died. The FAA had written lax fire-safety rules and then ignored ValuJet's many problems. Yet in January 2000, when Alaska Airlines Flight 261 plummeted into the Pacific, the crash revealed that the FAA's new safety regimen failed to catch obvious signs of maintenance lapses at what was then the nation's 10th-largest airline.

The new program's concept is sound: replace hit-and-miss safety checks of the nation's enormous fleet of planes with a new data-collection system aimed at detecting trends that presage serious problems. Even so, the new report found several flaws:

* Spotty data analysis. While the heart of the program is analyzing data and kicking it back to correct weaknesses, the FAA, nearly four years into the program, is still developing these basics. That means inspectors cannot ''effectively determine changes air carriers need to make'' or ''target resources to the greatest safety risks.''

* Poor training. Many inspectors don't understand the checklists they're using to find safety problems; 71% of those interviewed by investigators said they haven't been adequately trained to use the new inspection tools.

* Nonsensical assignments. Inspectors are often headquartered far from the airlines they oversee, undercutting their ability to get the most out of inspections. One office overseeing two airlines with major bases in Tampa and Cincinnati has no field inspectors near those cities. Inspectors overseeing a huge airline with hubs in Denver and Chicago are housed in three other cities with little of that airline's traffic.

The FAA says it's addressing the problems quickly. The agency is about to field-test improvements to its data-analysis program. Other changes, such as training for inspectors, will be completed soon. After reviewing the FAA's actions since his inquiry was completed last November, the inspector general says the agency has made progress.

But Michael D. Fanfalone, president of the union that represents inspectors, questions the FAA's improvement claims. He says inspectors still lack critical training, analysts don't have enough solid data to work with, and inspections involve ''more activity, less substance.''

Six years after the Valujet crash revealed a virtual collapse of safety oversight, the FAA should be far beyond training inspectors and field-testing a new system.

The inspector general's critique is a sobering reminder that simplifying the FAA's mission after Sept. 11 left the agency still facing complicated challenges.