Aviation Safety

To ensure the safety of the flying public, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspects airlines for compliance with aviation regulations. Last year, FAA inspectors identified about 300 regulatory violations and 1,900 unsafe practices on scheduled commercial airlines. Yet GAO found that FAA's inspection program contains many deficiencies that impede FAA's ability to ensure the safe operations of airlines. FAA lacks adequate information to help oversee its inspection program. In addition, FAA cannot effectively evaluate airlines' safety conditions because it does not (1) have adequate guidance for properly classifying airline problems, (2) assess the conditions inspectors found or evaluate their severity, and (3) know whether airlines are correcting problems. Since FAA will never have enough money and manpower to inspect all carriers all the time, it needs to make more effective use of its limited resources. FAA's Program Tracking and Reporting Subsystem--a computer-based system designed to provide data for planning and overseeing FAA's inspection program--does little to help the agency decide which carriers need more inspections and which need less. A system to systematically and uniformly determine risk could provide FAA with information vital to enhancing its inspection program. Although FAA has monitored the Defense Department's system for years, it has done little, until recently, to apply the concept of risk assessment to the management of its inspection resources.

GAO found that: (1) FAA lacks complete and accurate information on its inspection program; (2) without such information, FAA cannot determine whether it achieves inspection priorities, conducts adequate and timely follow-up activities, and uses resources effectively; (3) FAA inspectors spent only 23 percent of their time performing inspections instead of the 35 percent required for fiscal year (FY) 1990; (4) FAA required one operations, maintenance, and avionics inspection annually for each airline, but 36 percent of the airlines did not receive the required inspections in FY 1990; (5) although FAA maintains numerous databases on airline-related safety information, it does not inspect airlines on the basis of safety risk; (6) FAA often spent more inspection time on airlines DOD rated as better performers than on poorer performing airlines; and (7) FAA recognizes that a system similar to the DOD system can help FAA better manage its inspection program and hopes to develop and evaluate a prototype system for air carriers by FY 1993.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: