FAA: Airline Safety Program on Track
>
> WASHINGTON - Federal Aviation Administration
> officials say they are making
> progress with a new airline safety system that
> targets specific areas for
> improvement.
>
> The Air Transportation Oversight System provides
> national standards for FAA
> inspectors and the airlines to follow in 95
> different areas, including
> deicing, crew scheduling and maintenance training.
> It allows the FAA and the
> airlines to focus their attention and personnel on
> areas found to have
> problems.
>
> The FAA offered its own assessment on Monday, three
> days before
> Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth
> Mead is scheduled to
> tell Congress that the agency has not finished
> developing the program and
> hasn't provided its inspectors with the necessary
> training.
>
> Mead and Nick Sabatini, FAA's associate
> administrator for regulation and
> certification, are scheduled to testify Thursday
> before the House aviation
> subcommittee.
>
> FAA officials said they were on schedule for
> expanding the program. It now
> focuses on the nation's 10 largest carriers, which
> carry 95 percent of U.S.
> passengers. ``We're confident that we have it
> right,'' said one official,
> speaking on condition of anonymity.
>
> Inadequate maintenance may have contributed to the
> January 2000 crash of
> Alaska Airlines Flight 261, which killed 88 people.
> A maintenance problem
> was overlooked by both the airline and the FAA, the
> inspector general said.
>
> Following the crash, the FAA reviewed the
> maintenance programs of nine major
> airlines and reported in February that the carriers
> had made improvements.
>
> The new FAA system, started in 1998, involves some
> 500 inspectors, who
> certify airline safety programs and then do periodic
> audits to make sure the
> procedures are followed.
>
> The program evaluates a particular airline's
> maintenance program and
> concentrates on those areas most in need of
> improvement and crucial to
> safety. For example, one airline failed to give its
> relief pilots enough
> flying experience, so it provided more training.
>
> The FAA formerly offered generic checks of all
> procedures and did not have
> uniform standards for its inspectors to follow.
>
> On the Net:
>
> Air Transportation Oversight System:
> http://www.faa.gov/avr/afs/atos

> Transportation Department Inspector General:
> http://www.oig.dot.gov

> **************
> 
Review notes shortfalls in US air safety oversight
>
> WASHINGTON, April 8 - The Federal Aviation
> Administration has not made
> enough progress over the years in developing a
> comprehensive program for
> identifying safety trends as a way to prevent
> accidents, according to a
> Transportation Department audit to be released this
> week.
>
> Sources said on Monday the review of the Air
> Transportation Oversight System
> (ATOS) by the Transportation Department inspector
> general's office
> recommends that regulators step up their training of
> inspectors and improve
> the quality of data that is being analyzed as part
> of safety reviews.
>
> An overwhelming majority of FAA inspectors told
> auditors that training and
> data quality were both inadequate three years after
> the FAA initiated the
> program, the audit found.
>
> While senior FAA officials did not dispute the
> findings on training and data
> quality, they said they had already made significant
> improvements in those
> areas and were moving forward with the project.
>
> Under the program that grew out of the 1996 ValuJet
> crash in the Florida
> Everglades, FAA inspectors examine an airline as a
> whole to see how its many
> parts function together and whether they meet
> federal safety standards.
> Information on dozens of factors ranging from
> maintenance practices to pilot
> performance goes into a database that is analyzed to
> flag potential risks.
>
> While the FAA has acknowledged that the program has
> moved more slowly than
> planned, the agency believes it will be effective in
> identifying the root
> causes of potential safety problems once fully
> implemented.
>
> "We're confident that we have it right," one senior
> agency official who
> spoke on the condition that he not be identified
> said on Monday. "We're also
> confident this system will evolve over time and
> become more sophisticated."
>
> The system is mostly in place at 10 major airlines,
> and analysis has
> identified safety trends that required a closer look
> on 79 occasions in the
> past 18 months, the FAA said.
>
> Regulators were reluctant to discuss individual
> cases and refused to
> identify any big airline where potential safety
> problems were found. One
> case, however, resulted in a carrier improving its
> crew training.
>
> The FAA and the airlines are jointly responsible for
> aviation safety. In
> recent years, numerous questions have arisen about
> FAA oversight of
> maintenance and other airline operations and
> inspector training.
>
> Assertions the FAA failed to properly oversee
> maintenance practices at
> Alaska Airlines <ALK.N> before one of its planes
> crashed in January 2000
> intensified criticism of the ATOS program.
>
> The FAA's 3,100 safety inspectors are responsible
> for monitoring operations
> at 139 airlines, 7,600 commercial planes and more
> than 200,000 small private
> aircraft as well as pilots, mechanics and other
> personnel.
>
> Nearly 500 inspectors are assigned to monitor the
> ATOS program. The data is
> analyzed by outside experts, some with Defense
> Department experience. 

******************* 
Curt Lewis, PE, CSP 
WEB: www.fsinfo.org

 

Juan José Iglesias G.
Phone: +58-14-380.58.06
Phone: +58-16-702.45.51
E-mail: jjiglesias@...
E-mail: jj_iglesias@...

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