Individual Inspections

FAA guidance prescribes an annual inspection to cover all aspects of a repair station’s operations, including the currency of technical data, facilities, calibration of special tooling and equipment, and inspection procedures, as well as to ensure that the repair station is performing only the work that it has approval to do. Most inspectors are responsible for oversight at more than one repair station. In the past 4 years, an average of only 23 of these inspections have been conducted annually at repair stations (less than 1 percent of the repair stations performing work for air carriers). From fiscal year 1993 through 1996, we found 16 repair stations that were inspected by a single inspector and were also inspected by a special team of inspectors during the same year. Many of the deficiencies the teams identified were systemic and apparently long-standing, such as inadequate training programs or poor quality control manuals. First, many FAA inspectors responsible for conducting individual inspections said that, because they have many competing demands on their time, their inspections of repair stations may not be as thorough as they would like. Thus, in our October 1997 report, we recommended that FAA expand the use of locally based teams for repair station inspections, particularly for those repair stations that are large or complex. Follow-Up and Documentation of Inspections

FAA’s guidance is limited in specifying what documents pertaining to inspections and follow-up need to be maintained. However, responses from the repair stations were not on file in about one-fourth of these instances, and FAA’s assessments of the adequacy of the corrective actions taken by the repair stations were not on file in about three-fourths of the instances. Without better documentation, FAA cannot readily determine how quickly and thoroughly repair stations are complying with regulations. Just as important, FAA cannot identify trends on repair station performance in order to make informed decisions on how best to apply its inspection resources to those areas posing the greatest risk to aviation safety. FAA is spending more than $30 million to develop a system called the Safety Performance Analysis System, whose intent is to help the agency identify safety-related risks and establish priorities for its inspections. To address these problems, we recommended that FAA specify what documentation should be maintained in its files to record complete inspection results and follow-up actions, and that FAA monitor the implementation of its strategy for improving the quality of data in its new management information system. FAA Actions Under Way to Improve Repair Station Oversight

FAA has several efforts under way that may hold potential for improving its inspections of repair stations. This update, begun in 1989, has been repeatedly delayed and still remains in process. The most recent target—to have draft regulations for comment published in the Federal Register during the summer of 1997—was not met. A third effort involves increasing and training FAA’s inspection resources. Survey responses from current inspectors indicated that the success of this effort will depend partly on the qualifications of the new inspectors and on the training available to all of those in the inspector ranks.
Why GAO Did This Study

GAO discussed the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) oversight of repair stations that maintain and repair aircraft and aircraft components, focusing on: (1) the practice of using individual inspectors in repair station inspections; (2) the condition of inspection documentation; and (3) current FAA actions to improve the inspection process.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) FAA was meeting its goal of inspecting every repair station at least once a year and 84 percent of the inspectors believed that the overall compliance of repair stations was good or excellent; (2) more than half of the inspectors said that there were areas of compliance that repair stations could improve, such as ensuring that their personnel receive training from all airlines for which they perform work and have current maintenance manuals; (3) while FAA typically relies on individual inspectors, the use of teams of inspectors, particularly at large or complex repair stations, may be more effective at identifying problems and are more liable to uncover systemic and long-standing deficiencies; (4) because of insufficient documentation, GAO was unable to determine how well FAA followed up to ensure that the deficiencies found during the inspections were corrected; (5) GAO was not able to assess how completely or quickly repair stations were bringing themselves into compliance; (6) because FAA does not tell its inspectors what documentation to keep, the agency's ability to identify and react to trends is hampered; (7) FAA is spending more than $30 million to develop a reporting system that, among other things, is designed to enable the agency to apply its inspection resources to address those areas that pose the greatest risk to aviation safety; (8) as GAO has reported in the past, this goal will not be achieved without significant improvements in the completeness of inspection records; (9) since the May 1996 crash of a ValuJet DC-9 in the Florida Everglades, FAA has announced new initiatives to upgrade the oversight of repair stations; (10) these initiatives were directed at clarifying and augmenting air carriers' oversight of repair stations, not at ways in which FAA's own inspection resources could be better utilized; (11) FAA has several other efforts under way that would have a more direct bearing on its own inspection activities at repair stations; (12) one effort would revise the regulations governing operations at repair stations, and another would revise the regulations governing the qualifications of repair station personnel; (13) the revision of the regulations began in 1989 and has been repeatedly delayed; (14) the third effort is the addition of more FAA inspectors, which should mean that more resources can be devoted to inspecting repair stations; (15) FAA has recently announced a major overhaul of its entire inspection process; and (16) it is designed to systematize the process and ensure consistency in inspections and in reporting the results of these inspections so as to allow more efficient targeting of inspection resources.