U.S. aviation regulators should audit airlines’ voluntary disclosures of safety failures to prevent abuses of the program, said a federal panel formed after questions were raised about oversight of the carriers.
The panel made 13 recommendations to try to prevent repeats of Southwest Airlines’ failure to inspect 46 planes and American Airlines groundings that stranded 360,000 passengers.
“We cannot afford any sense of complacency,” Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said in releasing the report Wednesday. She said all the recommendations will be implemented.
Southwest may have to pay a record $10.2 million fine for operating the Boeing Co. 737s on 59,791 flights in 2006 and 2007 without full examinations for fuselage cracks. The carrier disclosed the failure to the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency’s actions in that case caused some members of Congress to question whether the FAA is too close to the industry.
Audits of such voluntary disclosures can help ensure that carriers don’t use the admissions to avoid complying with safety directives, the panel said. The FAA, part of Peters’ department, will “immediately” start to collect and analyze data, the department said.
The FAA should also check how airlines meet directives in advance of deadlines to prevent groundings such as those in April at AMR Corp’s American. The carrier scrubbed 3,300 flights and stranded 360,000 passengers after the FAA required wiring inspections and repairs on 300 Boeing Co. MD-80s.
