Improving the Continued Airworthiness of Civil Aircraft A Strategy for the FAA's Aircraft Certification Service (1998) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-6
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Major organizations involved in the aircraft certification process are the FAA, manufacturers, and operators. The aircraft certification process encompasses three primary elements: · rulemaking and policy development: defining and implementing new and modified regulations and associated policy guidelines for use by the FAA and industry certification: issuing new and amended type certificates, production certificates, and airworthiness certificates for new and modified aircraft, engines, and other equipment · continued airworthiness and other activities related to continued operational safety: verifying the ongoing safety of products manufactured in accordance with approved designs by monitoring existing aircraft .
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The recommended safety management process should improve the ability of the FAA/AIR, manufacturers, and operators to take corrective action based on incident data before an accident takes place and to set priorities based on assessments of current and future risk. However, the current process is already highly effectiveas indicated by the small contribution of aircraft system malfunctions to the overall accident rate and changes to the current system must be carefully structured to avoid unintended consequences that might reduce safety in some situations.
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A method for accurately assessing the effectiveness of the safety management process is important because remedial action can disrupt airline operations and reduce the competitive standing of operators and manufacturers. Accurate information on the effectiveness of remedial action would put the FAA in a better position to justify its own priorities and allocate resources to areas with the highest potential for improving aviation safety.
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The present system requires the FAA to spend considerable resources on "false starts" by applicants, particularly STC applicants, that do not have the technical qualifications to complete the engineering process required for design approval. The committee believes that safety would be enhanced if the FAA focused its design approval process on determining that applicants' design organizations are technically qualified and have internal review processes that ensure compliance with the applicable airworthiness standards, rather than continuing to rely on its own ability to determine compliance through spot checks of the applicant's analyses and tests.
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From page 5... ...
The air transport industry is highly competitive, and this natural competitiveness is a potential barrier to the voluntary sharing of data required to implement the recommended safety management process. Manufacturers and operators bear the cost of making safety improvements, and their support will be forthcoming only to the extent that the identified risks are credible and the corrective action seems reasonable in terms of effectiveness and cost.
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From page 6... ...
The safety management process for small airplanes and rotorcraft must be flexible enough to accommodate the diverse nature of these communities, and this is likely to be a difficult challenge. Final accident investigation reports for small airplanes and rotorcraft show that the majority of accidents are attributable to human error, and the small role played by aircraft system malfunctions indicates that the current aircraft certification and continued airworthiness process is working well.
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