INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT ECHOES PASS’S CONCERNS

Details: Published: July 18, 2013

Report Highlights FAA’s Insufficient Staffing and Budgetary Constraints

WASHINGTON, DC— On June 3, the Office of the Inspector General (IG) released its “Audit of Safety Oversight of an Air Carrier Industry in Transition,” which highlights the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) current budget and staffing challenges in light of the subsequent changes occurring in the industry and the corresponding risks to air safety. Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS), the union that represents FAA safety inspectors, supports the IG’s investigation into aviation safety oversight. “We are pleased to see the IG draw attention to the serious issue of the oversight of our airline industry,” said Linda Goodrich, PASS regional vice president representing FAA inspectors.

Many of the report’s findings are not new to PASS and its members. A primary concern in the report is that the FAA expects to lose 300 aviation inspectors to retirement in FY 2005 while only replacing 97. The IG speculated whether hiring only 97 inspectors is “sufficient to ensure that all high-risk or emerging issues receive adequate coverage.” The report also concluded that “adequate resources need to be committed to air carrier oversight to ensure the continuity of safe operations, particularly as the airline industry makes significant and ongoing transitions in their operations.”

“The report points out what PASS has been raising with the FAA for years. There are simply not enough inspectors to oversee the industry properly. We cannot continue to be expected to do more with less,” said Goodrich.

In light of insufficient staffing, the IG expressed concern with the increasing trend among the airline industry to outsource aircraft maintenance. According to the report, in 2004, most major air carriers outsourced 50 to as much as 80 percent of maintenance work. “The industry trend of outsourcing maintenance work combined with the FAA’s failure to provide adequate inspector staffing to oversee this work is a serious threat to aviation safety, and layers more responsibility on FAA inspectors already stretched beyond capacity,” said Goodrich.

PASS also shares the IG’s concern with the FAA’s failure to fully implement the Air Traffic Oversight System (ATOS) to all 127 carriers and their reluctance to focus on nighttime inspections, which, according to the report, is when 90 percent of maintenance is performed.

The FAA contends that it has taken into consideration the concerns brought forth by the IG; however, it has failed to address the critical staffing issue in regards to safety inspectors.

“Our inspectors do a tremendous job despite the limited resources they are given. It’s time for the FAA to step up to the plate and give inspectors the resources they need to ensure the safety of the flying public,” said Goodrich. “No one wants a tragedy in order to finally wake up the FAA. We applaud the fact that we have not seen a serious crash in the past three years; PASS wants to keep it that way.”

The IG report can be found at http://www.oig.dot.gov/item.jsp?id=1575.

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PASS represents more than 11,000 employees of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense who install, maintain, support and certify air traffic control and national defense equipment, inspect and oversee the commercial and general aviation industries, develop flight procedures and perform quality analyses of the aviation systems. For more information, visit the PASS website at www.passnational.org.