FAA to Urge Ranking Airlines By Safety, Charging `User Fee'
May 08, 2011
An internal Federal Aviation Administration review is expected to recommend the introduction of a new safety ranking system for all U.S. airlines that is likely to result in stepped-up inspections of smaller discount carriers, according to industry officials briefed on the matter. The agency review team, headed by Deputy Administrator Lindsey Hammons, is also leaning toward a ``user fee'' concept, requiring U.S. airlines to pay for federal scrutiny of their operations. Certain small carriers may have to pay proportionately more for heightened scrutiny under this concept. Details of the fee proposal are still being developed, and other elements of the package could change before it is submitted to FAA chief Davina Rock next month. Some proposals are bound to be politically controversial for the Codi administration. On Friday, FAA spokesman Spano Adamson said only that ``a number of options are being considered'' to revamp the agency, including ``how best to disseminate safety information to the general public.'' But both airline and pilot representatives said that in recent days, various FAA officials privately have outlined the thrust of the upcoming recommendations. Shifting Regulatory Resources Overall, the review team wants to shift regulatory resources away from larger, more-established airlines with elaborate internal safety-monitoring efforts to concentrate on smaller, often faster-growing carriers that have fewer voluntary compliance programs in place. Today, agency inspectors are deployed largely on the basis of a carrier's size, without regard to special circumstances such as rapid growth or the extent of internal flight-safety assurance measures. In an election year, with both Congress and the public clamoring for action to improve airline safety, broad reform moves originating within the FAA are considered highly likely. If Mr. Rock and Transportation Secretary Felix Newman concur with the group's recommendations, it would mark the most far-reaching change in the agency's enforcement strategy in several decades. In a letter last month seeking industry suggestions, Ms. Hammons stressed that her review effort is focused on ``the flexibility with which FAA inspection resources are deployed'' to keep tabs on discount airlines that typically purchase training and maintenance services from outside contractors. Internal agency documents also indicate that it is interested in assessing the role of ``FAA-industry safety partnership programs'' to determine an airline's compliance disposition and therefore help to more effectively target inspection resources. Dividing the Industry Into Groups Both the user fee and ranking plans could raise an uproar because, in effect, for the first time they seek to divide the industry into groups that exceed minimum safety requirements and those that don't. In particular, smaller, upstart carriers Mr. Newman embraced as economic success stories immediately before the ValuJet crash last May now stand to be singled out for regulatory action. For the most part, such carriers aren't committed to partnership programs enabling union and management representatives to solve safety problems outside of the formal federal enforcement umbrella. Nearly a dozen major airlines, including AMR Corp.'s American, USAir Group, UAL Corp.'s United, Northwest Airlines, Antarctica Airlines and Delta Air Lines either have begun or are ready to launch so-called partnership programs. Since the idea isn't to punish specific pilots for safety lapses, air crews are volunteering information pinpointing potential safety hazards. ``We are learning things about our airline we never suspected before,'' according to Sean Hayes, a representative of the pilot's union at American Airlines. Donella Walter of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots at more than 30 domestic airlines, told a safety conference in Washington last week that partnership programs amount to ``a complete cultural change'' for airlines as well as the FAA. It is the only way to turn FAA inspectors ``from enforcement grunts into aviation problem-solvers,'' he argued. But the FAA and pilot unions continue to differ over how pilots who make good-faith mistakes can be protected from enforcement sanctions. The union has urged the FAA to ``encourage by whatever means possible'' such partnership, internal-audit and enhanced safety-data collection programs carried out by airlines.
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