A Safety Fight at the FAA

Airline safety is about to become less comprehensible and more controversial. That's because the Federal Aviation Administration will this month release the results of a safety audit that the airlines say was so botched by the agency as to be confusing to the flying public and damaging to carriers. It will give some bad marks to the major airlines, which carry 80% of all passengers in the world's safest system. The audits are so problematic that the Inspector General's office of the Department of Transportation has launched its own investigation into the agency's auditing process.

The FAA's audit blitz began in the aftermath of the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 in January 2000. That airline not only had a widely admired safety record but also was operating under the careful view of the FAA's most rigorous oversight program, the Air Transportation Oversight System (ATOS). After the crash, the FAA rushed to discover what went wrong with its oversight as well as with the airplane's mechanical systems. Immediate changes were ordered in Alaska Airlines' operations.

Since then, the FAA has launched high-speed "safety audits" of the country's nine largest airlines. Critics, including the airlines, pilots and outside safety experts, are furious, charging that the process was flawed from the start, hastily done and staffed by inexperienced personnel. "For those passengers who wonder if the Federal Government is doing all it can to make flying safer, this safety-audit process represents exactly the wrong way to go," says Jim McKenna, the former safety writer for Aviation Week and now executive director of the Aviation Safety Alliance, an industry group set up to improve public understanding of safety issues.

Officials at the FAA defend the idea and execution of the audits and claim safety has been enhanced by reviewing just how the system stays safe. In her first comments on the process, FAA head Jane Garvey explained, "The end result of these audits is stronger airline programs. These safety audits focused the FAA and the airlines on how to raise the safety bar even higher than it is." Sources at the agency admit the process has been tense and the FAA has been forced to rethink how it goes forward.

The Alaska Airlines accident, which probably occurred because a mechanical failure caused the pilots to lose control of the plane, cast a harsh light on the agency's failings as well as the airline's. After the crash, the FAA's officials found that the agency had not fulfilled its fundamental responsibility of supervising Alaska. It uncovered 150 cases in which aircraft maintenance could not be documented. The Alaska crash came less than a year after the General Accounting Office had sharply criticized the effectiveness of the ATOS and suggested that the FAA not expand the program until it was changed.

Last December an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board into the Alaska crash further detailed the failures of the FAA's supervision and staff. "The Alaska crash raised the question: If the FAA can't keep track of the smallest airline in ATOS, what can it keep track of?" says Bob Francis, who was vice chairman of the NTSB until 1999. Two weeks ago, 13 families who lost loved ones on Flight 261 filed a claim against the FAA for negligence for its failure to oversee Alaska Air.

The FAA had no concrete evidence of Alaska-type problems at other carriers when it announced late last June that it would audit four safety systems at each of the nine other top airlines. It cited only unspecified "concerns." The other carriers audited--United, Delta, American, Continental, Northwest, US Airways, Southwest, America West and TWA--were, like Alaska, already participating in ATOS. "We had no real problems with the concept of the FAA coming in," notes John Marshall, head of safety for Delta Airlines.

But after meeting with FAA officials in July, the airlines concluded that the agency wanted to rush to complete the audits before the NTSB public hearing on the Alaska crash. Reason? To project the impression that the agency was on top of any problems when the NTSB came down with its expected criticism in the fall.

The airlines also allege that the FAA is reneging on a promise not to publish the detailed results and name names. For decades safety experts--at the FAA and at the airlines--have kept some information to themselves to foster frank internal discussions of mistakes, near mistakes or problems, and to find ways to improve. (The practice is not unusual--hospitals and doctors, for instance, do likewise.) According to several people present at the July meeting, Nick Lacey, the FAA's head of flight standards, assured the airline reps that the audits would not be made public. Last week Lacey, through a spokeswoman, denied specifically to TIME that he ever made such assurances.

When the FAA dribbled out preliminary results about each carrier last December, experts were stunned at some of the odd results that Lacey presented. For example, United, which has some of the most sophisticated safety-monitoring systems in the world, fared poorly. Experts familiar with United's safety program say the FAA's narrow checklist could not accurately assess the complexity or size of United's multiple systems. Other airlines got high marks for actions many experts consider largely symbolic, such as requiring the top safety officer to report directly to the airline's CEO.