Improvements to FAA Air Safety Ordered

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has announced a series of measures to improve the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) safety inspection program and tasked a newly created independent review team with crafting recommendations to improve the air safety system. The FAA will implement a new...

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The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has announced a series of measures to improve the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) safety inspection program and tasked a newly created independent review team with crafting recommendations to improve the air safety system.

The FAA will implement a new program to track the inspections being conducted by field offices that will alert key personnel whenever a safety inspection is overdue.

Senior level FAA officials at field offices will be accountable for accepting voluntary safety disclosures from airlines. The FAA will revise ethics rules to require a cooling- off period of two years before FAA inspectors can work for an airline they used to oversee or interact while at the agency.

And the FAA will establish a new National Safety Inspection Review team that will be deployed to air carriers to conduct focused and comprehensive safety reviews.

DOT Secretary Mary Peters also announced that she has tasked the Department's Office of Aviation Safety Enforcement in the Office of General Counsel to gauge whether airlines have adequate plans in place to accommodate passengers should a carrier have to abruptly ground its aircraft.

The outside team of aviation and safety experts will evaluate and craft recommendations to improve the FAA's implementation of the aviation safety system and its culture of safety.

She tasked the team with developing recommendations within 120 days on how the agency can do an even better job safeguarding the skies.

The outside safety panel includes: Randy Babbitt, a former president of the Air Line Pilots Association; William McCabe, an executive at business aviation firms; Malcolm Sparrow, with the Harvard Kennedy School; Ed Stimpson, the former head of GAMA; and Carl Vogt, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Lawmakers say Peters appears to be taking the right steps toward reestablishing faith in the FAA.

"Today's action by Secretary Peters is long overdue recognition that the safety oversight between the FAA and the airlines isn't working as well as it should," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WW), chairman of the Senate aviation subcommittee, said in a statement. "More must be done to get the FAA's house in order, and restore public confidence in our national aviation system."