Aviation Safety

The same number of passengers died in crashes involving large airlines and commuter planes in 1994 as in the previous four years combined, raising questions about what can be done to make an already safe system even safer. Although the U.S. air transport system has achieved a high level of safety, GAO testified that several longstanding problems not only handicap the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) ability to effectively administer its oversight responsibilities but also inhibit its ability to be more proactive in promoting safety. GAO suggests that FAA can take further steps to better promote safety. Most importantly, FAA needs to be increasingly proactive, rather than reactive. To do so, however, FAA must overcome several challenges, including ensuring that its staff keeps pace with advances in aviation technology and that it has accurate, reliable, and timely information with which to better identify emerging safety problems and make the hard choices as to which safety improvements are the most urgent and critical.