FAA Issues New Safety Goals - NTSB Says Existing Risks Not Being Reduced

Air Safety Week, Nov 15, 2004

'To make an intractable problem go away - redefine it.' - Anonymous

The plan to provide a stable vision of progress toward a higher level of safety is itself unstable, with some measures of safety performance dropped and others likely to be modified significantly to put the best face on an expected increase in near mid-air collisions. The document in question is the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Flight Plan 2005-2009. The plan, now in its second year of publication, lays out the agency's goals for the next five years.

The latest edition drops the prototype safety index that was such a prominent feature of last year's plan and, with an anticipated increase in air traffic control operational errors, FAA officials said statistics will be revised to feature rates instead of absolute numbers.

"We'd like to use rates more," said FAA Administrator Marion Blakey. The drive behind this shift is evident in the latest statistics for the most serious types of air traffic control "operational errors" or, in lay terms, near misses. The actual numbers of such errors exceeded FAA targets for each of the three months in the last fiscal year ending September 2004.

Nevertheless, the second edition, Flight Plan 2005-2009, lays out the overall focus of FAA efforts over the next five years. Russ Chew, chief operating officer of the new Air Traffic Organization (ATO), said, "The flight plan ensures continuity beyond changes in leadership."

The plan features 30 performance targets divided into four groups: safety, increasing capacity, international leadership and organizational excellence. Blakey pointed out that the agency hit 24 of its 30 targets for Fiscal Year 2004, which ended in September, for an 80 percent success rate. She added that performance bonuses for FAA officials are based on achieving 90 percent of the yearly safety goal for which they are responsible, thereby providing a built-in incentive to achieve the target.

In the safety arena, the box score is better than 80 percent, with the FAA claiming it has met targets in eight of its nine goals, for an 88 percent success rate. Two of those goals deal with injuries and damage to civilians and property in FAA-licensed commercial space launches. The 13 such launches in fiscal 2004 could be likened to a grain of sand relative to the entire beachfront of commercial and private airplane activity. Nevertheless, even if the two goals (personal injury/property damage) relative to space launches are deleted from the target list, leaving strictly airplane-related activity, the fiscal 2004 score still comes in at success in six out of seven safety metrics, for a rate of 86 percent.

The view of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is quite different. Last week the NTSB downgraded its assessment of FAA progress in three "Most Wanted" aviation safety improvements from "Open - Acceptable Response" to "Open - Unacceptable Response." Those items involve aircraft fuel tank explosions, airframe icing and runway safety. If these items are matched to the FAA's seven aviation-specific performance measures, only five of the items could reasonably be characterized as meeting goal, for a success rate of about 70 percent.

Indeed, the question comes to mind about the goals the FAA has set. Some targets are clearly more important than others in terms of their potential for loss of life and aircraft.

Accidents in Alaska and wayward space launches are clearly niche aspects of the aviation system at large. On the other hand, runway safety, the risk of mid-air collisions, and the safety record in general aviation are big issues meriting attention in the Flight Plan. In addition, the NTSB's "Most Wanted" safety improvements deal with chronic, system-wide issues. The highestvisibility items on the NTSB's list are subsumed under the FAA's general goal to reduce fatal airliner accidents. A case could be made that the NTSB's "Most Wanted" items could be elevated to comparable safety goals in the FAA, replacing some of the less important goals. A conceptual taxonomy might focus more attention on those safety shortcomings posing the greatest risk of injury or death.

In the meantime, the status of current FAA safety targets is as follows:

Target: Reduce the commercial airline fatal accident rate. The goal for fiscal 2004 (ended Sept. 30) was a rate not to exceed 0.028 fatal accidents per 100,000 departures, which equates to about one accident every 3.5 million flights. The 0.028 target worked out to not more than three fatal accidents in fiscal 2004. Two fatal accidents occurred, prompting FAA officials to hail 2004 as the safest year ever for airline travel.

Significantly, the FAA is measuring only fatal accidents, while the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) measures safety in terms of both fatal and nonfatal accidents. By this measure, the safety board shows a rate of fatal and nonfatal accidents that is roughly 80 percent higher than the FAA's bookkeeping: roughly an accident for every 1.9 million flights. The latest NTSB statistics show airliner accidents occurring at an average rate of one per week for calendar 2003, which overlaps fiscal 2004 by nine months. The NTSB's accident rate for 2003, based on 52 accidents in the year, was the highest since it began keeping score in 1984 (see ASW, March 29). Thus, the FAA and the NTSB see two completely different pictures. From the FAA's perspective, fatal accidents are declining by number and rate. From the NTSB's perspective, accidents overall are on the increase.