Audits

On January 31, 2013, we issued a report on the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) progress and challenges in implementing the Airline Safety and FAA Extension Act of 2010.

We found that FAA has made considerable and important progress implementing many elements of the Act, such as advancing voluntary safety programs, improving pilot rest requirements, and establishing better processes for managing safety risks. We also found the Agency has not sufficiently targeted assistance to smaller air carriers who are furthest behind in developing new safety programs. In addition, FAA faces challenges with meeting timelines for key rulemaking efforts and with developing a long-term strategy for transitioning to a new pilot records database, including addressing privacy concerns. We made five recommendations to FAA to improve its efforts in implementing the Act. FAA concurred or partially concurred with all five, but we are requesting that the Agency submit additional information or reconsider its response for three of them.