Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) didn’t pull any punches when questioning the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Randy Babbitt. She started out stating that her experience with the FAA has not been good. The relationship has been poor through both Republican and Democratic administrations.
The Senate Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety and Security hearings showed that in terms of safety oversight the FAA had not acted on National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommendations, corrected maintenance lapses or implemented a system to report complete pilot flight records.
The spanking new FAA Administrator, Randy Babbitt, was right in Sen. Boxer’s line of sight and decades of displeasure were evident.
After hearing from NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker that 450 safety recommendations sent to the FAA by the NTSB have not been acted upon. Some of those recommendations are 10-15 years old. Sen. Boxer all but exploded, “This is an indictment of the FAA. This is not about anybody personally. It’s the institution, it’s the way they think and it’s very disturbing to me.”
FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said it has been the agency’s position that it’s not obligated to implement every one of NTSB’s recommendations. Sometimes the board will recommend steps or equipment for which the technology doesn’t exist and would take years to develop. Other times the agency disagrees with the board’s conclusions.
However, he agreed that the FAA owed the NTSB some kind of communication about each of their recommendations — notification that the FAA was taking action or that they were not implementing the recommendations and why.
The institutional mindset of the FAA was called into question by Calvin Scovel, the Inspector General U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). His testimony underscored the apparent cozy relationship between the FAA and the airlines. According to IG inspections the FAA is still lacking in oversight of safety.
According to written testimony provided by Scovel, even with last year’s revelations of aircraft inspections that allowed major airlines to bypass required airworthiness directive compliance for years, “4 of the 21 inspections were still incomplete at the time we testified before this Subcommittee; some had not been completed for nearly 8 years.”
He went on to say, “Thus far, we have determined that lapses in oversight inspections were not limited to SWA — FAA oversight offices for seven other major air carriers also missed Air Transportation Oversight System (ATOS) inspections.” Obviously this FAA maintenance oversight is still suffering a hangover from almost a decade of abuse.
In terms of transparency of pilot records, Babbitt noted that some records are kept by the FAA and others by the airlines. Privacy regulations protect these pilot flight records, however a waiver must be signed by pilots applying for airline jobs to open the last five years of their records. This requirement was instituted with the Pilot Records Improvement Act (PRIA) of 1996.
According to testimony by the NTSB Director, “However, the PRIA does not require an airline to obtain FAA records of failed flight checks.”
Hence, though reports surfaced about the Colgan Air captain having “a history of multiple FAA certificate disapprovals involving flight checks conducted before his employment,” the airline was not aware of them since they followed requirements to obtain records from “any organization that had previously employed the pilot during the previous 5 years.”
Colgan Air did not know about this pilot’s deficiencies when they hired him. They did not know that he had “not initially passed flight tests for the instrument flight rating (October, 1991), the Commercial Pilot certificate (May, 2002), and the multiengine certificate (April, 2004). In each case, with additional training, the captain subsequently passed the flight tests and was issued the rating or certificate.”
The NTSB Director went on to say in written testimony, “To date, the FAA has not issued any rulemaking to require airlines to obtain a release from all fight crew applicants to release their records to permit the airline to consider past performance in hiring decisions. These changes could also be made by modifying the statue, but to our knowledge, the FAA has not asked the Congress to do so.”
These safety hearings are uncovering a disturbing pattern of an FAA that seems in many cases to be serving to protect airlines and pilots more than they strive to protect the passengers.
When we look at the FAA handling of NTSB recommendations, their oversight of mandated maintenance programs and their current blanket hiding pilot flight testing results from the both potential employers and the flying public, it is hard to see where the public interest is being put first.
Sen. Boxer is right. It is time for a major shift in the FAA institution and its administrative mindset.
