Aviation Safety

Targeting and Training of FAA's Safety Inspector Workforce Gao ID: T-RCED-96-26 April 30, 1996

Although accident rates for air travel in the United States are among the lowest in the world and aviation remains one of the safest means of transportation, recent fatal accidents have raised concerns about the safety of air travel. GAO testified that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) needs to target the resources of its safety inspection program to the areas of greatest risk. Because of the magnitude of inspectors' workloads, targeting is essential because FAA may never have enough resources to inspect all pilots, aircraft, and facilities. Although FAA has been working since 1991 to develop a $31 million system to target resources for aviation inspections, data quality problems, such as information on the results of safety inspections, jeopardize the system's potential benefits. During the past decade, GAO and others have reported on problems with the technical training of inspectors, including those performing inspections for which they lacked proper credentials. Inspectors have been unable to take courses that they believe are necessary for them to do their jobs. Cuts in FAA's budget have reduced the money available for technical training by 42 percent during fiscal years 1993-96. FAA projects that it will have a shortfall of $20 million for technical training that FAA had earlier deemed essential.



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