The Federal Aviation Administration cannot verify safety improvements at aircraft repair stations because its inspectors keep poor records, the General Accounting Office concludes in a new report.
In recent years, problems at repair stations have been identified as contributing factors in several aircraft accidents. The FAA has come under pressure to improve its inspections of the 2,800 repair stations worldwide licensed to perform maintenance on U.S. aircraft. This pressure has come at a time when the number of aircraft operated by U.S. airlines and air cargo companies is growing rapidly. Since 1990, the number of aircraft has increased by nearly 1,000 planes, to more than 6,700.
About 600 of the 3,000 safety inspectors at the FAA inspect repair stations. The FAA inspects every repair station at least once a year, and 84 percent of inspectors GAO surveyed said they believe the overall compliance of repair stations is good or excellent.
But when GAO examined 172 cases in which the FAA had sent letters describing needed repairs to repair stations, it found that one-fourth of the cases did not have responses from the stations on file. Three-fourths did not have inspectors' assessments of corrective actions.
"FAA does not tell its inspectors what documentation to keep, and the resulting information gaps lessen the agency's ability to determine how well its inspection activities are working," GAO concluded in the report, "Aviation Safety: FAA Oversight of Repair Stations Needs Improvement" (RCED-98-21).
GAO warned that inspection standards need to be improved before a new $30 million reporting system is completed in 1999 that will help managers decide where to use the agency's limited inspection resources. If the necessary data aren't there, the system will not work optimally, GAO said.
GAO also found that individual inspectors are not as effective as teams of inspectors. In 19 cases where teams of inspectors were sent to a repair station after an individual inspector had been there, the teams identified a total of 347 deficiencies, while the individual inspectors had only found 15. FAA offices in Scottsdale, Ariz., Miami, Fla., and Seattle, Wash., have shifted toward team inspections.
GAO criticized the FAA for repeated delays in a comprehensive update of repair station regulations. The update, begun in 1989, is still underway and has continually missed target dates, the most recent being this summer.
FAA responded that it has started several initiatives to improve inspection work, including providing field managers with the flexibility to determine the appropriate skills for their staffs. FAA also announced an initiative to improve air carriers' oversight of repair stations following the May 1996 crash of a ValuJet airliner in the Florida Everglades.
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