The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) oversight of Part 135 operators is insufficient and needs to be upgraded, federal investigators say.

After investigating the July 2003 crash of Air Sunshine flight 527, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has concluded that the FAA's procedures failed to force correction of safety issues before the Cessna 402C crashed off the coast of the Bahamas. The NTSB has recommended that the FAA adopt three changes to oversight of all Part 135 operations.

The FAA has 90-days to respond to the suggestions. The suggestions come as the FAA is in the midst of rewriting the Part 135 rules. An advisory committee has delivered its suggestions on how the rule should be changed and the agency is now reviewing these suggestions before issuing a draft of the revamped rules. While the advisory committee has been focused on increasing the weight limits that cargo aircraft can carry and clarifying the flight-duty hours of pilots, it has also been writing updates for the safety and maintenance codes. However, an FAA spokesman could not say if rule changes would be needed to implement the NTSB recommendations or if the agency simply needs to change administrative procedures.

The airplane crashed near Treasure Cay in the Bahamas after in-flight failure of the right engine. In the water landing, one adult and one child died after evacuating the airplane. The airplane was being operated as a scheduled international commuter flight.

After the accident, the FAA conducted a focused inspection of the airline and determined that the record-keeping was inadequate, its maintenance program was deficient, its engine compression check interval was too high, its overwater safety briefing needed to be overhauled, and its pilot training needed to be revised.

The safety board is concerned that many of these deficiencies were uncovered before the accident, but obviously were not sufficiently corrected to prevent the crash. Of interest, the board has made similar findings regarding inadequate oversight regarding scheduled Part 121 carriers, too, notably Alaska Airlines [ALK] after the crash of Flight 261, Emery Worldwide Airlines after the crash of Flight 17, and Air Midwest [MESA] after the crash of Flight 5481.

In the Air Sunshine case, the FAA approved engine compression checks every 360 hours instead of the manufacturer-recommended interval of 180 hours. Moreover, Air Sunshine allowed an assistant mechanic, who did not hold an airframe and powerplants certificate, to perform the checks by himself without supervision. The FAA also allowed the operator to overhaul its engines after 2,400 hours, although the manufacturer had recommended 1,600 hours. In addition, the investigation determined that Air Sunshine was using an anti-seize compound on its engines that was not recommended for use in high-vibration environments because it could contribute to a loss of torque.

Perhaps most notably, the NTSB found the carrier sought transfer of its operating certificate from the Ft. Lauderdale Flight Standards District Office to its San Juan equivalent in Puerto Rico. Despite an FAA interoffice memorandum arguing against such a transfer of oversight responsibility, the request was approved.

Above all, the NTSB noted that since March of 1987 Air Sunshine had experienced four incidents and six accidents, and that three of the accidents (including the one in the Bahamas) resulted in fatalities. Yet these incidents apparently did not meet the criteria for stepped up oversight.

As a result, the NTSB urged the FAA to review and, wherever necessary, strengthen its oversight.

Among the Regional Airline Association (RAA) members, there are only two carriers with Part 135 certificates, Cape Air and New England Airlines. Air Sunshine, which flies out of Fort Lauderdale and San Juan, is not a member of RAA. While its Web site lists a number of routes, most are flown on an on-demand basis.

On the other hand, the bulk of the members of the Regional Air Cargo Carriers Association (RACCA) are Part 135 operators.

RACCA and its members cooperate fully with NTSB and the FAA to ensure the safe operation of its aircraft, said Jeb Burnside, RACCA's spokesman. "We will open up our books to the FAA on whatever schedule the FAA develops," he noted.

Not addressed in the NTSB's recommendations is the matter of overall FAA staffing. The FAA would not indicate how many maintenance facilities the San Juan office is responsible for, but clearly the overtaxed office can lead to a paucity of oversight.

The NTSB also raised the question of whether ATOS, the FAA's air transport oversight system, would have caught the maintenance shortcomings. This subject came up following the crash of the Alaska Airlines jet, and it was concluded that ATOS would not have flagged the lengthened time between lubrication intervals in that case of a failed horizontal stabilizer jackscrew. In this respect, the Air Sunshine case is Alaska Airlines all over again on a smaller, Part 135 scale.

>>Contact: Jeb Burnside, RACCA, (703) 989-5457.<<

The Heart of the Recommendations

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made the following recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) based on its review of an Air Sunshine crash involving a Cessna 402C.

• Review the procedures used during its oversight of Air Sunshine ... to determine why the inspections failed to ensure that operational and maintenance issues that existed at the company were corrected.
• Develop specific criteria regarding the number of accidents and/or incidents that would cause an increase in oversight of an operator.
• Review and revise the process through which the transfer of a Part 135 air carrier's operating certificate from one Flight Standards District Office to another is granted to ensure the adequate oversight of such carriers.

Source: http://www.ntsb.gov/recs/letters/2005/A05_08_10.pdf