Aviation Safety and Security:
Challenges to Implementing the Recommendations of the
White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security
(Testimony, 03/05/97, GAO/T-RCED-97-90)
White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security
(Testimony, 03/05/97, GAO/T-RCED-97-90)
GAO discussed recommendations contained in the recently released report
of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, focusing
on the implementation issues relating to three areas addressed by the
Commission: (1) aviation safety; (2) air traffic control (ATC)
modernization; and (3) aviation security.
GAO noted that: (1) foremost among the Commission's 14 recommendations
for aviation safety is establishing a national goal to reduce the fatal
accident rate by 80 percent within 10 years; (2) however, GAO believes
that, as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) tries to
fundamentally reinvent itself as the Commission contemplates through
some of its recommendations, FAA and the aviation industry will be
challenged by: (a) FAA's organizational culture and resource management;
(b) FAA's partnerships with the airline industry; and (c) the costs of
and sources of funding to implement the recommendations; (3) recognizing
that new technology offers tremendous advances in safety, efficiency,
and cost-effectiveness for users of the ATC system and for FAA, the
Commission recommended accelerating FAA's deployment of new technology,
but given FAA's past problems in developing new ATC technology and the
technical challenges that lie ahead, there is little evidence that this
goal can be achieved; (4) GAO agrees with the Commission's
recommendations to integrate the airports' capacity needs into the ATC
modernization effort and to enhance the accuracy, availability, and
reliability of the Global Positioning System; however, GAO has two
concerns about accelerating the entire modernization effort that focus
on the complexities of the technology and the integrity of FAA's
acquisition process; (5) the Commission strongly presented aviation
security as a national security priority and recommended that the
federal government commit greater resources to improving it; (6) in the
past, FAA has had difficulty in meeting some of the time frames for
implementing safety and security improvement recommendations; and (7) to
improve aviation security, the Congress, the administration, and the
aviation industry need to agree on what to do and who will pay for it,
and then take action.
--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------
REPORTNUM: T-RCED-97-90
TITLE: Aviation Safety and Security: Challenges to Implementing
the Recommendations of the White House Commission on
Aviation Safety and Security
DATE: 03/05/97
SUBJECT: Air traffic control systems
Federal procurement
Transportation safety
Airline industry
Air transportation operations
Airports
Facility security
Navigation aids
Accident prevention
IDENTIFIER: FAA Runway Incursion Plan
FAA Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System
FAA Wide Area Augmentation System
FAA Acquisition Management System
FAA Capital Investment Plan
******************************************************************
** This file contains an ASCII representation of the text of a **
** GAO report. Delineations within the text indicating chapter **
** titles, headings, and bullets are preserved. Major **
** divisions and subdivisions of the text, such as Chapters, **
** Sections, and Appendixes, are identified by double and **
** single lines. The numbers on the right end of these lines **
** indicate the position of each of the subsections in the **
** document outline. These numbers do NOT correspond with the **
** page numbers of the printed product. **
** **
** No attempt has been made to display graphic images, although **
** figure captions are reproduced. Tables are included, but **
** may not resemble those in the printed version. **
** **
** Please see the PDF (Portable Document Format) file, when **
** available, for a complete electronic file of the printed **
** document's contents. **
** **
** A printed copy of this report may be obtained from the GAO **
** Document Distribution Center. For further details, please **
** send an e-mail message to: **
** **
** **
** **
** with the message 'info' in the body. **
******************************************************************
Cover
================================================================ COVER
Before the Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on
Commerce, Science and Transportation, U.S. Senate
For Release
on Delivery
Expected at
10 a.m. EST
Wednesday
March 5, 1997
AVIATION SAFETY AND SECURITY -
CHALLENGES TO IMPLEMENTING THE
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE WHITE HOUSE
COMMISSION ON AVIATION SAFETY AND
SECURITY
Statement by Gerald L. Dillingham,
Associate Director, Transportation Issues,
Resources, Community, and Economic Development Division
GAO/T-RCED-97-90
GAO/RCED-97-90T
Aviation Safety and Security
(341527)
Abbreviations
=============================================================== ABBREV
TWA -
FAA -
ATC -
DOT -
============================================================ Chapter 0
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
We appreciate the opportunity to share our views on the
recommendations contained in the recently released report of the
White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. The
Commission's 57 recommendations broadly cover safety, security, air
traffic control, and disaster response. As you know, 1996 was a bad
year for aviation safety. Last year, 380 people died in air
accidents involving large U.S. air carriers, the highest number in
11 years. The crashes of TWA Flight 800 off New York and ValuJet
Flight 592 in Florida accounted for most of those deaths. Although
the nation's air transportation system remains the safest in the
world and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) the model for
other nations, these tragic events have served to raise the
Congress's, the administration's, the aviation industry's, and the
flying public's consciousness of the need to continuously increase
the existing margin of safety.
During the past several years, we have reported to the Congress on
the status of a wide range of programs and initiatives intended to
expand that margin of safety. Our testimony this morning, based on
this prior work and on an analysis of the Commission's
recommendations, will focus on the implementation issues relating to
three areas addressed by the Commission: aviation safety, air
traffic control modernization, and aviation security.
We believe that the Commission's recommendations are a good start
toward an evolutionary process of making real the Commission's vision
of ensuring greater safety and security for passengers, restructuring
the relationships between the government and the industry, and
maintaining America's position of global leadership in aviation.
However, key questions remain about how and when the recommendations
will be implemented, how much it will cost to implement them, and who
will pay the cost. Our message this morning focuses on the
challenges that lie ahead in taking the next steps to convert the
Commission's recommendations from concepts to realities.
AVIATION SAFETY
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:1
The Commission made 14 recommendations in the general area of
aviation safety. Foremost among these is establishing a national
goal to reduce the fatal accident rate by 80 percent within 10 years.
This is a very challenging goal, particularly in the light of the
projected increases in the amount of air traffic in the coming
decade.
We applaud the Commission's adopting such a goal for accident
reduction and endorse many of its recommendations for improving
safety. These recommendations include, for example, expanding FAA's
inspection program to cover not only aging aircraft's structural
integrity but also such areas as electrical wiring, fuel lines, and
pumps. A number of these recommendations resonate with safety and
efficiency improvements that we and others, including FAA, have
suggested over the years.\1
However, we believe that, as FAA tries to fundamentally reinvent
itself as the Commission contemplates through some of its
recommendations, FAA and the aviation industry will be challenged in
three areas: (1) FAA's organizational culture and resource
management, (2) FAA's partnerships with the airline industry, and (3)
the costs of and sources of funding to implement the recommendations.
A number of recent studies and the FAA itself have pointed to the
importance of culture in the agency's operations. Last year, our
review of FAA's organizational culture found that it had been an
underlying cause of the agency's persistent acquisition problems,
including substantial cost overruns, lengthy schedule delays, and
shortfalls in the performance of its air traffic control
modernization program.\2 Furthermore, the lack of continuity in FAA's
top management, including the Administrator and some senior executive
positions, has fostered an organizational culture that has tended to
avoid accountability, focus on the short term, and resist fundamental
improvements in the acquisitions process.
Similarly, a 1996 report issued by the Aviation Foundation and the
Institute of Public Policy stated that the recent actions taken to
reorganize FAA have done nothing to change the long-term structural
problems that plague the organization.\3 The study concluded that FAA
does not have the characteristics to learn and that its culture does
not recognize or serve any client other than itself.
As FAA's own 1996 report entitled Challenge 2000 points out, it will
take several years to overcome the many cultural barriers at FAA,
determine the skill mix of the workforce of the 21st century, and
recruit the necessary talent in a resource-constrained environment.\4
In the light of these studies' results, we would caution that the
organizational and cultural changes envisioned by the Commission may
require years of concerted effort by all parties concerned.
In connection with resource management, FAA's fiscal year 1998 budget
request reveals some difficult choices that may have to be made among
safety-related programs. For example, FAA proposes increasing its
safety inspection workforce by 273 persons while decreasing some
programs for airport surface safety, including a program designed to
reduce runway incursions. The National Transportation Safety Board
has repeatedly included runway incursions on its annual lists of its
"most wanted" critical safety recommendations. FAA's budget request
includes a reduction in the Runway Incursion program from $6 million
in fiscal year 1997 to less than $3 million in fiscal year 1998.
Although FAA set a goal in 1993 to improve surface safety by reducing
runway incursions by 80 percent by the year 2000 from the 1990 high
of 281, the results have been uneven; there were 186 runway
incursions in 1993 and 246 in 1995. As was shown by the November
1994 runway collision in St. Louis, Missouri, between a commercial
carrier and a private plane, such incidents can have fatal
consequences--2 people lost their lives. It is unclear what progress
will be made in this area, given the proposed budget cuts.
Similarly, we have reported since 1987 that the availability of
complete, accurate, and reliable FAA data is critical to expanding
the margin of safety.\5 However, funding for FAA's National Aviation
Safety Data Analysis Center, a facility designed to enhance aviation
safety by the rigorous analysis of integrated data from many
aviation-related databases, is slated to be reduced from $3.7 million
in fiscal year 1997 to $2 million in fiscal year 1998.
The Commission's report stresses that safety improvements cannot
depend solely on FAA's hands-on inspections but must also rely on
partnerships with the aviation industry in such areas as
self-monitoring and certification. Several programs for the
airlines' self-disclosure of safety problems have already contributed
to identifying and resolving some of these types of problems.\6 For
example, one airline's program for reporting pilot events or
observations--a joint effort by the airline, the pilot union, and
FAA--has identified safety-related problems, the vast majority of
which would not have been detected by relying solely on FAA
surveillance. The discovery of these problems has resulted in safety
improvements to aircraft, to the procedures followed by flight crews,
and to air traffic patterns. As the Commission has recognized,
however, such information will not be provided if its disclosure
threatens jobs or results in punitive actions. However, FAA's role
in some broader partnerships with industry has also raised some
questions. For example, FAA's cooperative process working with
Boeing on the 777 aircraft helped enable the manufacturer to meet the
planned certification date, but FAA was also criticized by some FAA
engineers and inspectors for providing inadequate testing of the
aircraft's design.
In the case of self-disclosure programs, decisions will have to be
made on which aviation entities are best suited to such partnership
programs, how to monitor these programs and make effective use of the
data they offer, how to balance the pressure for public disclosure
against the need to protect such information, and how to standardize
and share such information across the aviation industry. With
broader cooperation between FAA and the aviation industry, the
Congress and FAA need to be on guard that the movement toward
partnerships does not compromise the agency's principal role as the
industry's regulator.
Finally, it is important to point out that the costs associated with
achieving the accident reduction goal and who should pay for these
costs have not yet been determined. In accordance with the
Commission's call for more government-industry partnerships,
government, the industry, and the traveling public would likely share
in these costs. For example, FAA's partnership programs involve
significant costs for both the agency and the industry. In the case
of equipping the cargo holds of passenger aircraft with smoke
detectors, the cost would fall initially on the industry, while the
costs associated with the recommendation that children under the age
of 2 be required to have their own seats on airplanes would fall more
directly on the traveling public.
Regardless of who bears the cost of the proposed improvements, the
Commission has correctly recognized that additional safety
improvements may sometimes be difficult to justify under the
benefit-cost criteria applied to regulatory activities. The
Commission recommended that cost not always be the determining factor
or basis for deciding whether to put new aviation safety and security
rules into effect. Specifically, the Commission notes that the
potential reduction in the fatal accident rate merits a careful
weighing of the options for improving safety in terms of the benefits
that go beyond those traditionally considered in benefit-cost
analyses. However, we also believe that it is important to recognize
that the recommendation (1) represents a significant departure from
traditional processes, (2) could result in significant cost increases
for relatively modest increases in the safety margin, and (3) could
rest on a limited empirical justification. In effect, this
recommendation may increase the number of instances in which the
primary factor determining whether or not to go forward with a safety
or security improvement is what might be referred to as a public
policy imperative rather than the result of a benefit-cost analysis.
One instance of such a decision is the Commission's recommendation to
eliminate the exemption in the Federal Aviation Regulations that
allows children under 2 to travel without the benefit of an
FAA-approved restraint.
--------------------
\1 For example, see Aviation Safety: New Airlines Illustrate
Long-Standing Problems in FAA's Inspection Program (GAO/RCED-97-2,
Oct. 17, 1996); Aviation Safety: Targeting and Training of FAA's
Safety Inspector Workforce (GAO/T-RCED-96-26, Apr. 30, 1996); and
Aircraft Maintenance: FAA Needs to Follow Through on Plans to Ensure
the Safety of Aging Aircraft (GAO/RCED-93-91, Feb. 26, 1993).
\2 Aviation Acquisition: A Comprehensive Strategy Is Needed for
Cultural Change at FAA (GAO/RCED-96-159, Aug. 22, 1996).
\3 Why Can't the Federal Aviation Administration Learn? Creating a
Learning Culture at the FAA, the Aviation Foundation, Falls Church,
Virginia and the Institute of Public Policy, George Mason University,
Fairfax, Virginia (July 10, 1996).
\4 Challenge 2000: Recommendations for Future Aviation Safety
Regulation, prepared for FAA's Office of Policy, Planning, and
International Aviation by Booz¸Allen & Hamilton, Inc. (Apr. 1996).
\5 Aviation Safety: Data Problems Threaten FAA Strides on Safety
Analysis System (GAO/AIMD-95-27, Feb. 8, 1995); Department of
Transportation: Enhancing Policy and Program Effectiveness Through
Improved Management (GAO/RCED-87-3, Apr. 13, 1987).
\6 Examples of ongoing or recent partnership programs include the
American Airlines Safety Action Program for pilots as well as the
USAir Inc. Altitude Awareness Program and the Alaska Airlines
Altitude Awareness Program.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL
MODERNIZATION
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2
The Commission also reviewed the modernization of the air traffic
control (ATC) system. FAA is in the midst of a $34 billion dollar,
mission-critical capital investment program to modernize aging ATC
equipment. This program includes over 100 projects involving new
radars, automated data processing, and navigation, surveillance, and
communications equipment. We believe this modernization is also
important for attaining the next level of safety by replacing aging
equipment and providing controllers and pilots with enhanced
communication and better information.
Recognizing that new technology, such as satellite-based navigation
and new computers in ATC facilities and in aircraft cockpits, offers
tremendous advances in safety, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness for
users of the ATC system and for FAA, the Commission recommended
accelerating the deployment of this new technology. According to
FAA's current plan, many of these elements would not be in place
until the year 2012 and beyond. However, the Commission has
recommended that these technologies be in place and operational by
the year 2005--7 years ahead of FAA's planned schedule. The
Commission's goal is commendable, but given FAA's past problems in
developing new ATC technology and the technical challenges that lie
ahead, there is little evidence that this goal can be achieved.
We have chronicled FAA's efforts to modernize the air traffic control
system for the past decade. Because of the modernization effort's
size, complexity, cost, and past problems, we designated it as a
high-risk information technology initiative in 1995 and again in
1997.\7 Many of FAA's modernization projects have been plagued by
cost-overruns, schedule delays, and shortfalls in performance that
have delayed important safety and efficiency benefits. We reported
last year that the agency's culture was an underlying cause of FAA's
acquisition problems. FAA's acquisitions were impaired because
employees acted in ways that did not reflect a strong commitment to,
among other things, the focus on and the accountability to the
modernization mission.\8 More recently, we have identified other
important factors that have contributed to FAA's difficulty in
modernizing the ATC system. For example, FAA's lack of effective
cost-estimating and -accounting practices forces it to make
billion-dollar investment decisions without reliable information.
Also, the absence of a complete systems architecture, or overall
blueprint, to guide the development and evolution of the many
interrelated ATC systems forces FAA to spend time and money to
overcome system incompatibilities.\9
We agree with the Commission's recommendations to integrate the
airports' capacity needs into the ATC modernization effort and to
enhance the accuracy, availability, and reliability of the Global
Positioning System. However, we have two concerns about accelerating
the entire modernization effort that focus on the complexities of the
technology and the integrity of FAA's acquisition process. First,
the complexity of developing and acquiring new ATC technology--both
hardware and software--must be recognized. The Commission contends
that new ATC technology to meet FAA's requirements is available
"off-the-shelf." However, FAA has found that significant additional
development efforts have been needed to meet the agency's
requirements for virtually all major acquisitions over the past
decade. More recently, two new major contracts for systems--the
Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System and the Wide Area
Augmentation System--called for considerable development efforts.\10
Second, requiring FAA to spend at an accelerated rate could prove to
be inconsistent with the principles of the agency's new Acquisition
Management System, established on April 1, 1996, in response to the
legislation freeing it from most federal procurement laws and
regulations.\11 FAA's acquisition management system calls for FAA to
go through a disciplined process of (1) defining its mission needs,
(2) analyzing alternative technological and operational approaches to
meeting those needs, and (3) selecting only the most cost-effective
solutions. Until FAA goes through this analytical and
decision-making process, it is premature to predict what new
technology FAA should acquire. For example, FAA itself points out
that while satellite communications that link the communication and
navigation functions offer tremendous potential benefits, the
technology is not yet mature enough for civil aviation--significant
development is needed to determine the requirements and operational
concepts of the technology. In this particular case, accelerating
the ATC modernization too much could increase the risk that FAA will
make poor investment decisions. Overall, our message in this area is
one of caution--accelerating the entire modernization effort will
have to overcome a long history of problems that FAA's new
acquisition management system was designed to address and a number of
obstacles.
--------------------
\7 High-Risk Series: An Overview (GAO/HR-95-1, Feb. 1995); and
High-Risk Series: Information Management and Technology
(GAO/HR-97-9, Feb. 1997).
\8 Aviation Acquisition: A Comprehensive Strategy Is Needed for
Cultural Change at FAA (GAO/RCED-96-159, Aug. 1996).
\9 Air Traffic Control: Improved Cost Information Needed to Make
Billion Dollar Modernization Investment Decisions (GAO/AIMD-97-20,
Jan. 1997); and Air Traffic Control: Complete and Enforced
Architecture Needed for FAA Systems Modernization (GAO/AIMD-97-30,
Feb. 1997).
\10 The Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System project is
expected to replace the aging computers and related equipment used at
the FAA facilities that track aircraft in the airspaces surrounding
airports. The Wide Area Augmentation System project is refining the
use of the Global Positioning System to meet the requirements of
civil aviation.
\11 Public Law 104-50, section 348.
AVIATION SECURITY
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:3
Aviation security is another component of ensuring the safety of
passengers. It rests on a careful mix of intelligence information,
procedures, technology, and security personnel. The Commission
strongly presented aviation security as a national security priority
and recommended that the federal government commit greater resources
to improving it. Many of the Commission's 31 recommendations on
security are similar to those that we have made in previous
reports.\12 For example, the Commission urged FAA to deploy
commercially available systems for detecting explosives in checked
baggage at U.S. airports while also continuing to develop, evaluate,
and certify such equipment. Similarly, the Commission echoed our
recommendation that the government and the industry focus their
safety and security research on the human factors associated with
using new devices, especially on how operators will work with new
technology. The Committee's recommendations address a number of
long-standing vulnerabilities in the nation's air transportation
system, such as (1) the screening of checked and carry-on baggage,
mail, and cargo and (2) unauthorized individuals gaining access to an
airport's critical areas. Many of the 20 initial security
recommendations that the Commission made on September 9, 1996, are
already being implemented by the airlines or by government agencies.
We found, however, that in the past FAA has had difficulty in meeting
some of the time frames for implementing the safety improvements
recommended by GAO and the Department of Transportation (DOT)
Inspector General.\13 Similarly, in the security area, FAA has also
had problems meeting the implementation time frames. For example,
FAA is just beginning to purchase explosives-detection systems to
deploy at U.S. airports, although the Aviation Security Improvement
Act of 1990 set an ambitious goal for FAA to have such equipment in
place by November 1993. This delay was due primarily to the
technical problems slowing the development and approval of the
explosives-detection devices. But we also found that FAA did not
develop an implementation strategy to set milestones and realistic
expectations or to identify the resources to guide the implementation
efforts. It is important that FAA sustain the momentum generated by
the Commission's report and move forward systematically to implement
its recommendations.
Finally, although the Commission concluded that many of its proposals
will require additional funding, it did not specifically recommend
funding levels for new security initiatives over the long term.
Instead, the Commission recommended that the federal government
devote at least $100 million annually to meet security capital
requirements--leaving the decision on how to fund the remaining
security costs to the National Civil Aviation Review Commission. The
National Civil Aviation Review Commission is charged with looking at
FAA funding issues, and we do not want to preempt its report and
recommendations. But, for example, the $144.2 million appropriated
by the Congress in 1997 for new security technology represents a
fraction of the estimated billions of dollars required to enhance the
security of air travel. To improve aviation security, the Congress,
the administration, and the aviation industry need to agree on what
to do and who will pay for it--and then to take action.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, we face a turning point. The public's
concern about aviation safety and security has been heightened. The
Congress and the administration have a renewed commitment to
addressing this urgent national concern. The Commission's work is a
good start toward an evolutionary process of reaching agreement on
the goals and steps to improve aviation safety and security. To
guide the implementation of the Commission's recommendations, DOT and
FAA will need a comprehensive strategy that includes (1) clear goals
and objectives, (2) measurable performance criteria to assess how the
goals and objectives are being met, and (3) a monitoring, evaluation,
and reporting system to periodically evaluate the implementation.
This strategy could serve as a mechanism to track progress and
establish the basis for determining funding trade-offs and
priorities. In addition, successful implementation will require
strong, stable leadership at DOT and at FAA. Although several
complex questions remain unanswered, we hope that the Commission's
work can serve as a catalyst for change and a strengthened commitment
to resolving these challenges to improving safety.
This concludes my prepared statement. We would be glad to respond to
any questions that you and Members of the Committee might have.
--------------------
\12 See, for example, Aviation Security: Additional Actions Needed
to Meet Domestic and International Challenges (GAO/RCED-94-38, Jan.
27, 1994); Aviation Security: Development of New Security Technology
Has Not Met Expectations (GAO/RCED-94-142, May 19, 1994); Aviation
Security: Technology's Role in Addressing Vulnerabilities
(GAO/T-RCED/NSIAD-96-262, Sept. 19, 1996); Aviation Security:
Immediate Action Needed to Improve Security (GAO/T-RCED/NSIAD-96-237,
Aug. 1, 1996); and Aviation Security: Urgent Issues Need to be
Addressed (GAO/T-RCED/NSIAD-96-251, Sept. 11, 1996).
\13 Aviation Safety: FAA Generally Agrees With but Is Slow in
Implementing Safety Recommendations (GAO/RCED-96-193, Sept. 23,
1996).
*** End of document. ***