Auditors from the U.S. Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) will evaluate the FAA’s surveillance of United Airlines maintenance activity, flagging “recent safety events” as a catalyst for the move.
“Our objective will be to assess FAA’s oversight of United Airlines’ maintenance practices,” OIG said May 9. “Specifically, we will evaluate FAA’s actions to address maintenance non-compliances and violations at the air carrier.”
United’s front-line operators are already under stepped-up FAA surveillance following a series of incidents. The agency is ensuring the events, which ranged from a runway excursion to losing a wheel, are not linked to fundamental weaknesses in the airline’s safety and quality systems. The OIG audit will examine how effective the FAA has been at making sure United’s systems meet regulatory standards.
The DOT OIG, fulfilling a 2015 request from members of the House aviation subcommittee, launched a series of audits on airline maintenance oversight. It has produced reports on FAA’s surveillance of Allegiant Air, American Airlines, and Southwest Airlines, and is looking into SkyWest Airlines.
Each completed audit found weaknesses in the FAA’s work. The most recent report, issued in October 2021 and focused on American, made seven recommendations focusing on data collection and inspector training when assessing airline safety management systems (SMS). Three remain open.
Among OIG’s concerns: the FAA accepted American’s root-cause analysis that didn’t adequately address the problem. OIG also questioned whether the FAA was properly assessing the airline’s risk analysis effectiveness under its mandatory SMS.
United has said little publicly about the FAA audit, being done under the agency’s Certificate Holder Evaluation Process (CHEP).
CEO Scott Kirby confirmed on the carrier’s recent earnings call that the biggest day-to-day ramification from FAA’s crackdown is a freeze on adding new aircraft to United’s certificate. At least three Boeing 737-8s are caught up in the scenario, which prohibits United from putting any new deliveries into revenue service.
Airlines undergo CHEPs regularly—every five years or so. But they can be accelerated if data analysis or other issues suggest elevated risk.
“We will go through with the FAA a pretty rigorous process,” Kirby said. “We continuously look at ways to improve safety across the board, and that’s continuing. It’s at an elevated level right now of looking for ideas, but that’s not something unique or new. We have hundreds of people whose full-time jobs are doing that day in and day out.”
The FAA has not said how long its stepped-up surveillance will last, and Kirby declined to speculate.
“It will conclude when it concludes,” he said. “We’re not going to predict the time.”
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