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I read with great interest the front page article Thursday, April 3, 2008 on FAA oversight of the airline industry, “Southwest’s Cozy Ties Triggered FAA Tumult,” by Andy Pasztor. A great piece of investigative work. To really understand the extent of the problem of U.S. airline safety practices and FAA oversight, fly with me to the 30,000 foot view. The perspective you will hear is embedded in a consultant’s report my team at Booz Allen Hamilton authored in 1996 for the FAA administrator at the time, David Hinson, called “Challenge 2000,” and which is attached for your convenience. In the mid-1990’s U.S. airlines were racking up accidents at a disturbing pace. The top executives at FAA found that the safety inspector workforce was ill equipped, and had few ideas on how to remediate some very disturbing industry safety trends. Hence the need for a fresh and independent review of FAA’s oversight practices. The opening paragraph of Challenge 2000 stated the problem: Within the aviation industry, the entire range of activities in aircraft manufacturing and maintenance and in airline operation, ownership and services is becoming increasingly complex. Major structural changes and operating efficiencies are being brought about by rapidly developing technologies, the globalization of aircraft design and production, airline consolidation and changing patterns of world trade. These developments will continue at a steady pace, while Federal government resources are being constrained by the need to reduce deficit spending. These increasing fiscal pressures are placing strains upon FAA regulators to keep pace. The Challenge 2000 report recommendations called for sweeping changes in FAA’s safety regulatory philosophy and approach, its organization, the deployment of its resources, and its mix of skills. The report would have imbued a new way of operating for airlines and manufacturers too. We were convinced that this could and should all be done within expected resources provided by Congress, with the intended consequence of improving aviation safety dramatically, both nationally and internationally (many countries follow FAA regulations and trends closely). The report became publicly available at a press conference in the Spring of 1996 shortly after ValuJet’s Florida Everglades disaster. The report recommended a powerful new way of overseeing the aviation industry. Its key recommendations included: (1) Move both FAA and industry to a different regulatory model proven very effective in Europe (called JAR OPS); (2) Establish mandatory (and highly invasive) quality programs at all airlines and manufacturers and through these, make U.S. airline executives more accountable for sloppy practices and bad safety cultures (in Europe, airline CEOs have gone to jail for running shoddy operations that resulted in accidents); (3) Upgrade the FAA inspector workforce from a blue collar, guns and badges enforcement culture to a scientific and technical organization capable of overseeing, understanding, effectively regulating, and enforcing compliance in an increasingly complex aviation sector by rigorously auditing the airlines’ advanced quality and safety programs; (4) Re-organize FAA’s safety regulatory organization of 6,000 people into centers of excellence, focusing regulation, oversight, inspection and enforcement on real problems facing the sector; and (5) Augment this new organization with hundreds of freshly recruited engineers and scientists. Europe’s effective oversight of its airlines is a model we should aspire to. Here in my view is why the FAA workforce spent years trying to bury the Challenge 2000 report, and why the U.S. airlines were there with shovels.
In Andy Pasztor’s article, mention was made of the FAA’s new focus on analyzing airline data. FAA hopes that this is the silver bullet, the future way of predicting the next accident. How will analyzing data from aircraft black boxes identify a poor culture of safety, or a weak internal safety audit program, or an airline executive team willing to obfuscate to pinch pennies? This FAA emphasis and reliance on data analysis, at the expense of an intelligent workforce, implies this approach is perhaps easier to “train to,” than the really heavy lifting required to fundamentally change the way FAA does business, improving airline practices along the way – all the way into the airline board room. Challenge 2000 called in 1996 for the hiring of 300-400 NRAs (code for scientists and safety engineers with extraordinary talent and targeted specializations) to begin the process of true FAA organizational reform. There were less than 10 NRAs at FAA in 1996. In 2008, I believe you will find less than 20. See the challenge now? Michael J. Dyment Managing Director and CEO, NEXA Capital Partners, LLC michael.j.dyment@nexacapital.com 202-321-0389 Challenge 2000 – Recommendations for Future Aviation Safety Regulation: April 19, 1996 [PDF - 344KB] |
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