Makes 11 Recommendations To The FAA Concerning Safety Issues
On March 9, 2015, the FAA established requirements for air carriers to implement a formal, top down approach to identifying and managing safety risks, known as safety management systems (SMS). However, recent events have raised concerns about FAA’s safety oversight, particularly for Southwest Airlines, one of the largest passenger air carriers in the United States. In early 2018, the DOT Office of Inspector General (OIG) received a hotline complaint regarding FAA’s oversight of Southwest Airlines and a number of operational issues at the carrier. Then, in April 2018, Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 suffered an engine failure that resulted in the first U.S. passenger fatality in over 9 years. As a result, the OIG initiated an audit to assess FAA’s oversight of Southwest Airlines’ systems for managing risk.
The review identified a number of concerns regarding the FAA’s safety oversight of Southwest Airlines. First, Southwest Airlines continues to fly aircraft with unresolved safety concerns. For example, the FAA learned in 2018 that the carrier regularly and frequently communicated incorrect aircraft weight and balance data to its pilots—a violation of FAA regulations and an important safety issue. Southwest Airlines also operates aircraft in an unknown airworthiness state, including more than 150,000 flights on previously owned aircraft that did not meet U.S. aviation standards—putting 17.2 million passengers at risk. In both cases, the carrier continues operating aircraft without ensuring compliance with regulations because the FAA accepted the air carrier’s justification that the issues identified were low safety risks. Second, FAA inspectors do not evaluate air carrier risk assessments or safety culture as part of their oversight of Southwest Airlines’ SMS. This is
because the FAA has not provided inspectors with guidance on how to review risk assessments or how to evaluate and oversee a carrier’s safety culture. As a result, the FAA cannot provide assurance that the carrier operates at the highest degree of safety in the public’s interest, as required by law.
The OIG issued 11 recommendations to the FAA as a result of the review:
- Ensure Southwest Airlines complies with regulatory requirements to provide accurate weight and balance information to pilots, or grant an exemption that justifies the non-compliance being in the public interest.
- Retrain inspectors at the local oversight office for Southwest Airlines on the purpose and proper use of the Voluntary Disclosure Reporting Program.
- Train managers and inspectors of the local oversight office on their roles and responsibilities to work with Southwest Airlines for root cause analysis.
- Enhance management controls to ensure designated airworthiness representatives comply with established procedures to verify that aircraft conform to U.S. airworthiness standards.
- Develop a management control to ensure that designated airworthiness representatives verify the completeness and accuracy of maintenance records, and do not rely on air carrier provided summary data to make airworthiness determinations.
- Complete a compliance review of other certificates issued by the designated airworthiness representatives used by Southwest Airlines.
- Ensure Southwest Airlines complies with regulatory requirements that the 88 previously owned aircraft conform to U.S. aviation standards.
- Train inspectors on FAA's process to provide feedback on designated airworthiness representatives when corrective actions are needed, and provide inspectors access to the system used to provide feedback.
- Develop and implement a management control to ensure air carriers and inspectors do not use Safety Management Systems as a substitute for regulatory compliance.
- Develop and implement guidance on how to evaluate air carrier safety risk assessments to ensure the carrier has performed a comprehensive analysis, identified root causes, and established appropriate corrective actions.
- Develop and implement inspector guidance on how to evaluate air carrier safety culture and how it should be factored into oversight decisions.
The FAA concurred with all 11 recommendations to improve its oversight of Southwest Airlines’ systems for managing risk and provided appropriate planned actions and completion dates.
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, (R-MS), chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, issued the following statement following the release of the report:
“The IG report highlights very concerning lapses in FAA’s safety oversight,” said Wicker. “A carrier’s safety culture should be overseen with the highest standards to ensure the traveling public is safe. The Commerce Committee has been investigating many of the same issues brought to light by the IG report and will continue its oversight and investigation into these matters.”
(Source: OIG and Wicker news releases. Image from file)
ANN's Daily Aero-Linx (04.16.24)
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