Aviation Safety

About 96 percent of the 2 million safety and security inspections conducted by two offices of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) resulted in no reports of problems or violations. However, GAO questions whether this rate is a meaningful indication of the aviation industry's compliance with regulations. First, many inspectors do not report all observed problems or violations. Second, many inspections are not thorough or structured enough to detect many violations. Third, FAA's inspection-tracking systems do not distinguish major from minor violations. FAA's information on compliance in the aviation industry is thus incomplete and of limited use in providing early warning of potential risks and in targeting inspection resources to the greatest risks.

GAO noted that: (1) while there are no direct measures of the aviation industry's compliance with aviation safety and security regulations, the results of FAA's inspections provide both an indirect measure of the industry's compliance and an early warning of potential safety and security problems; (2) in FY 1990 through FY 1996, nearly 96 percent of the 2 million inspections conducted by Flight Standards and Security resulted in no reports of problems or violations; (3) GAO questions whether this rate is a meaningful measure of the aviation industry's compliance with regulations for several reasons; (4) many inspectors do not report all problems or violations they observe; (5) many inspections are not thorough or structured enough to detect many violations; (6) FAA's inspection tracking systems do not distinguish major from minor violations; (7) FAA's information on compliance in the aviation industry is thus incomplete and of limited use in providing early warning of potential risks and in targeting inspection resources to the greatest risks; (8) during FY 1990 through FY 1996, FAA inspectors opened nearly 110,000 enforcement cases to follow up on reports of violations from their inspections and from noninspection sources; (9) 45 percent of the 110,000 enforcement cases were initiated as a result of inspections conducted by FAA; (10) FAA inspectors also followed up on reports of violations from outside sources, which accounted for 41 percent of the enforcement cases opened; (11) in the remaining 14 percent of the cases, FAA inspectors followed up on violations reported by other FAA personnel; (12) inspectors exercised discretion in opening enforcement cases in response to reported problems and violations; not all reported problems or violations resulted in enforcement cases; (13) the amount of paperwork and the time needed to reenter inspection results in a separate enforcement database also discouraged inspectors from opening cases; (14) FAA resolved almost 121,000 enforcement cases during this same period, using administrative actions (46 percent), legal actions (34 percent), or no action (19 percent); (15) the resolution could not be determined for 1 percent of the enforcement cases because of missing data; (16) when resolving cases through legal action, FAA's legal staff generally negotiated lower penalties than the agency's inspection staff had recommended; and (17) the impact of FAA's enforcement is difficult to asses because FAA has not followed up on the aviation industry's implementation of corrective actions.

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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