Aviation Safety Faa And Dod Response To Similar Safety Concerns

Aviation Safety: FAA and DOD Response to Similar Safety Concerns

This report details the case study approach supplemented by a review of FAA's and Department of Defense's (DOD) aviation safety oversight processes and related interdepartmental communication efforts to (1) examine different responses by FAA and DOD/military services to similar aviation safety concerns and (2) assess the processes used by FAA and DOD to communicate information about similar aviation safety concerns.

U.S. airlines are increasingly relying on code-share partnerships with foreign carriers to provide additional sources of revenue. Code-sharing is a marketing arrangement in which an airline places its designator code on a flight operated by another airline & sells & issues tickets for that flight. To determine whether the foreign code-share partners of U.S. airlines meet an acceptable level of safety, the Dept. of Transportation established the Code-Share Safety Program, which requires U.S. airlines to conduct safety audits of their foreign code-share partners as a condition of code-share authorization. This report assessed the fed. government's efforts to provide reasonable assurance of safety & security on foreign code-share flights. Charts & tables.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is responsible for promoting safety in civil air transportation. This report focuses on two questions: what has the FAA's overall record been in responding to, agreeing with, and implementing significant recommendations concerning aviation safety from 1990 through 1994? To what extent have specific recommendations in the areas of aircraft certification, airline inspections, oversight of foreign carriers, and safety on runways been fully implemented? Charts and tables.

To improve aviation safety, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to have in place the initial capabilities of a risk-based approach to safety oversight, known as a safety management system (SMS), by the end of fiscal year 2010. FAA is also implementing new procedures and technologies to enhance the safety, capacity, and efficiency of the national airspace system. Data are central to SMS and FAA's ability to test the impact of these changes on safety. This report addresses FAA's: (1) current and planned use of data to oversee aviation safety; (2) access to data for monitoring aviation safety and the safety performance of various industry sectors; and (3) efforts to help ensure data quality. Charts and tables.

The FAA uses the Air Transport. Oversight System (ATOS) to oversee 7 legacyÓ airlines & 9 other airlines. This report refers to airlines that are not in ATOS as non-legacy airlines. Two other processes are used to oversee 99 non-legacy passenger airlines (NLPA), which represent a fast-growing segment of the commercial aviation passenger industry & carried 200 million passengers. in 2004. These establish a set of inspection activities for NLPA, & use principles of system safety to identify additional risk-based inspections for those airlines. This report assesses the processes used by FAA to ensure the safety of NLPA. Reviewed the strengths of FAA's inspection oversight for NLPA & the issues that hinder its effectiveness. Charts & tables.