Light Hand of the Law Laid on Violators

New report charges lax safety enforcement
Apparently crime does pay, especially if a rule-breaker confesses before the cops discover the violation. This is one of the principal findings of a new report on Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety enforcement and compliance efforts.

The July 16 report by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, was done at the request of Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), ranking member of the House Aviation Subcommittee. The GAO found that of nearly 200,000 enforcement actions initiated by the FAA over the period 1993-2003, more than half were closed with "administrative actions" such as warnings. And of the cases where recommended fines were involved, overall the value of the fines was cut in half, from $334 million to $162 million. Of more than 30,000 cases closed with no action, the primary reasons involved lack of evidence or no evidence that a violation occurred.

Reacting to the GAO report, DeFazio said, "The FAA's penalty and compliance structure is patched and pasted together to form the semblance of a safety monitoring system."

"At a time when the airlines are struggling financially, ineffective or inconsistent enforcement of aviation safety regulations could undermine public confidence in the safety of flight," DeFazio added.

FAA officials generally agreed with the GAO report.

Confessions and corrections had a great deal to do with curtailing fines. Under the FAA's partnership programs, such as the aviation safety action programs in place at many carriers, self-reported violations tended to be closed with administrative actions, or warnings. In cases where sanctions (fines) were proposed, they tended to be reduced significantly if "the violator is attempting to correct the violation or new evidence arises that may exonerate the violator," the GAO noted. The agency did not address the problem of insufficient inspectors and resources to provide effective oversight of the industry, which a senior FAA official recently told ASW is a serious problem aggravated by increasingly constrained budgets (see ASW, Feb. 16, p. 1). A table at p. 6 of the GAO report shows that the ratio of FAA inspectors to entities inspected ranges from 1:4 to 1:16. The Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General (DOT/IG) recently commented on how thinly the FAA's inspectors were spread to provide oversight of repair stations. As an example, one FAA inspector was responsible for oversight of 21 repair stations (see ASW, July 21, 2003, p. 1).

The problem of judicial inconsistency and inequity also raised its head. GAO investigators found that the fines proposed at one FAA regional office might not match at all a fine recommended by a regional office in another part of the country for the same violation.

Of greater import, the GAO said the FAA does not evaluate in any systematic fashion whether its enforcement actions have any impact on deterring future violations. However, any such systemic evaluation is hampered by gaps in the FAA's Enforcement Information System (EIS) database.

DeFazio said he is evaluating whether legislative action is necessary to tighten the ship. (See related p. 9 brief. The full GAO report may be viewed at

http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-646


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Findings of the GAO report (extracts):

The FAA is limited in its ability to evaluate enforcement efforts because the agency lacks comprehensive nationwide data. For example, FAA field offices maintain independent, site-specific databases on enforcement cases because of missing or incomplete information in the nationwide Enforcement Information System database, but these databases are not linked. Thus, data maintained in one office are not readily available to other offices.
From 1993 through 2003, the FAA closed about 3,200 cases annually (about 18 percent of all cases) without taking action. In about two-thirds of those cases, management recommended no action after reviewing the inspector's initial report. The reasons most often cited by the FAA for closing the cases in such a manner was that investigative reports submitted by inspectors did not contain sufficient evidence to support the allegation of noncompliance of safety regulations or that no violation occurred.
The FAA's enforcement policy calls for inspectors and regional counsels to recommend or assess enforcement sanctions that would potentially deter future violations. However, the agency's practice of generally closing cases with administrative actions rather than legal sanctions and often reducing the amount of the fines is at odds with that policy.
Source: GAO-04-646, FAA Enforcement Efforts


Desired but not required.

Although Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials proclaim the doctrine of "data-driven safety," they have not required implementation of two significant safety-related programs: flight operations quality assurance (FOQA), and aviation safety action programs (ASAP). FOQA, based on data captured on quick access recorders (QARs), basically tells analysts "what" happened during a non-routine event. The crew reports submitted via ASAP tell "why" it happened. This description is a gross simplification, but it describes the complementary relationship of these two programs. The FAA requires neither, but has encouraged airlines to implement them.

However, volunteerism has its limits, as evidenced in the General Accounting Office (GAO) critique of FAA safety management and compliance programs (see related p. 1 story). The GAO report shows limited application of FOQA among air carriers, with nil FAA access to the data, which might provide systemwide insights (e.g., across carriers). Moreover, the GAO report shows that without a mandate for FOQA, the United States may well fall behind safety system practices in other countries, surrendering world leadership in safety management systems and regulatory oversight.

From the FOQA annex to the GAO report:

Year established: 1995

Participation: As of March 2004, 13 airlines had FAA-approved FOQA programs, and approximately 1,400 airplanes were equipped for the program (ASW note: that number of airplanes represents about a third of the U.S. airline fleet).

Purpose: FOQA is designed to enhance aviation safety through analysis of digital flight data generated during routine flights.

Process: FAA does not receive FOQA data. Instead, data are maintained by air carriers, who are responsible for the analysis of FOQA data and reporting to FAA information on safety trends. According to FAA officials, air carriers do not want to release these data to any outside party (including FAA) because of concerns that the data could then be publicly released.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has recommended that airlines from member countries implement a FOQA program. The FAA has notified ICAO that the program will remain voluntary in the United States.

Results: The FAA has no formal national evaluation program to measure the overall effectiveness of [the] FOQA program. Source: http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-646, pp. 43-44

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