The FAA Giveth, and Taketh Away

In the credit-due department, I have to commend the FAA for finally getting something right on the FAA website. I’ve been complaining for a long time about how much of the data that is important to mechanics is scattered around the FAA website, making the data difficult to find.

But finally, someone at the FAA has figured out that placing most of the everyday safety data that mechanics need on one easily accessible web page is a good idea. Just recently, thanks to a reader, I learned that the one place mechanics need to bookmark in their web browsers is here: www.faa.gov/aircraft/safety/alerts.

The FAA calls this page Aircraft Safety Alerts. The page couldn’t be simpler. It includes links to six important topic areas that mechanics should be checking probably on a daily basis.

These pages used to be scattered all over the FAA website and they were difficult to find. For some odd reason, typing SAIB into the FAA home page search box did not lead a user directly to the SAIB page. And the same was true with the other areas.

Why are these pages so important?

Mechanics, especially inspectors, need to learn as much as possible about the aircraft they are working on, and the information on these web pages is a treasure trove of historical data on problems that mechanics need to consider. Here are some of the six areas:

• Airworthiness directives are well-understood; most mechanics know that ADs are laws that cannot be ignored.
• SAIBs are a method for the FAA to disseminate aircraft problems to the maintenance community that aren’t considered serious enough to warrant an AD. SAIBs are strictly advisory and not mandatory.
• Maintenance Alerts used to be printed and distributed to thousands of mechanics, but budget cuts have forced the Alerts online. You can print the Alerts and hand it out in your shop so that everyone can read about typical problems that some airplanes are having, as reported by other mechanics.
• Service difficulty reports are an important database of aircraft problems and can be useful in searching for problem trends and specific troubles. SDRs are the source of Alerts and lead to issuance of many ADs. Not enough mechanics submit good information to the SDR database, and I recommend that mechanics use it more often.
• Unapproved parts notifications are also important because they can help you find products that shouldn’t be in service. Many UPNs list parts and components by serial number to identify specific items that have been overhauled incorrectly or using improper data. Don’t ignore UPNs because they identify some shockingly shoddy work practices and you don’t want to be signing the logbooks for any aircraft carrying parts that are the subject of a UPN.

The Aircraft Safety Alerts web page is great. Thank you, FAA, for creating this page, keeping it simple, and including everything that was on my wish list. (Not that I take credit for this improvement.)

Now, on to yet another critique of the FAA. Recently, someone at the FAA decided that Flight Standards District Office inspectors can’t be trusted to manage their own websites. FSDOs now all have an ugly, generic website. This is a terrible move, and I’m willing to bet it was dreamed up by one of the FAA’s lawyers, worried about potential lawsuits.

What is the Web? It is simply a communications medium. The Web is more dynamic and information-rich than other media and with the right treatment, is a tremendously useful communication tool.

Take the now-defunct Philadelphia FSDO website. While it wasn’t the prettiest site, Philly FSDO’s web page was full of useful links for mechanics. The great inspectors at Philly placed link after link on their site, anything they thought might be useful for mechanics. It was a pleasure to surf the Philly website. But now the formerly fantastic Philly FSDO website is gone, replaced by a bland, generic, FAA-lawyer-approved web page.

So here’s my message to the FAA regarding the new FSDO website policy: bad move! Any time that communications between a regulator (the FAA) and its constituents (mechanics) is constrained, less information is shared, and safety is compromised. The FSDOs should be allowed to communicate as needed, using every tool possible, including the Web, to whatever extent is necessary. A high level of safety is built on the free flow of information.