Aircraft Certification

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is responsible for certifying that new aircraft designs and systems meet safety standards, faces the daunting task of keeping abreast of increasingly complex technologies. Douglas Aircraft Company's MD-11 aircraft, for example, relies on sophisticated computer systems to continuously monitor and adjust the hydraulic, electrical, and fuel systems without any action by the crew. GAO concludes that FAA has not ensured that its staff are effectively involved in the certification process. FAA now delegates up to 95 percent of the certification activities to manufacturers, and FAA staff no longer conduct critical activities, such as the approval of test plans and analyses of hypothetical system failures. FAA has also failed to provide its staff with the assistance and training needed to ensure competence in the new technologies.

GAO found that: (1) FAA ability to evaluate and certify new aircraft technologies is questionable because, in response to an escalating workload, FAA has increasingly relied on manufacturers for safety certification; (2) FAA has not clearly defined staff responsibilities or performance standards to ensure that staff are effectively involved in the certification process; (3) aircraft manufacturers' technical expertise and commitment to safety have kept the number of design-related safety problems to a minimum; (4) FAA efforts to increase its technical expertise and build an in-house team of experts to oversee the certification process may be flawed because FAA has not defined when these experts are to be involved in the certification process; (5) although FAA has previously identified and attempted to address its certification staff training deficiencies, inadequacies remain because training programs do not develop staff members' competence in specific fields and the availability of technical courses remains limited; and (6) FAA plans to improve training and staff retention include new technical certification training programs and plans to create technical career paths for certification engineers; however, these programs may not be adequate to overcome current training and staff limitations.

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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