Air Force Depot Maintenance

More Efforts Are Needed to Improve Safety and Training Gao ID: NSIAD-91-89 May 23, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the Air Force's efforts to correct aircraft maintenance training and safety problems that caused similar major accidents within a 13-month period at 3 air logistics centers (ALC).

GAO found that: (1) maintenance workers' failure to remove vent plugs prior to fueling aircraft caused similar accidents at the 3 ALC within a 13-month period; (2) poor supervision, operating procedure violations, and safety hazards contributed to the accidents; (3) untrained and uncertified workers continued to perform critical maintenance tasks for which they were not qualified; (4) the failure of managers to give adequate priority to safety concerns led to poor work practices; (5) the Air Force Logistics Command (AFLC) was developing a new training program to provide a more structured and standardized training approach; (6) much of the certification and safety regulation was left to the interpretation and application of individual supervisors and to each ALC; (7) some maintenance equipment and tools failed to meet standards; and (8) without stronger direction and improved AFLC oversight, ALC could continue to ineffectively and inconsistently implement improvement efforts, and the potential for major maintenance accidents would continue.

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.

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