FAA Rules Called Costly, Not Always Good
— -- FAA: Expensive Safety Rules Don't Always Work
P H O E N I X, April 11 — Federal safety rules cost airlines a lot of money and may not always make traveling safer, a Federal Aviation Administration official said late on Wednesday.
At an airline conference where a Delta Air Lines Inc. official had complained about the surging cost of complying with FAA rules, a top FAA safety official conceded the Delta official had a point.
"We're sympathetic to the problem. We don't know if there is an easy solution," Dave Cann, FAA manager of continuous airworthiness maintenance, told Reuters.
"I do accept the [Delta] comment. It's well founded and I agree. But I don't have an answer on how to fix that right now," Cann said.
Cann noted that Congress ultimately sets the FAA's agenda, which includes a mandate for safe travel.
At the same conference on Wednesday, Delta Chief Operating Officer Frederick Reid said his airline, the No. 3 U.S. carrier, had spent $70 million complying with FAA airworthiness directives in 2001, five times what it spent in 1997.
"This is not a safety issue. Safety statistics for the industry have remained relatively constant despite the increased regulation and our industry has demonstrated over many years its commitment to safety," Reid said.
Airworthiness directives, often issued in cooperation with manufacturers, order changes as simple as swapping out certain parts more frequently or as complex as removing the tail of a jetliner to look for cracks deep inside the structure.
Officials of two other major airlines agreed that the FAA at times issues questionable orders, but both backed the agency's strong mandate for improving safety.
At No. 4 U.S. carrier Northwest Airlines Corp., which operates scores of jets more than 20 years old, the FAA has helped identify procedures to control corrosion and monitoraging wiring, which can create a fire hazard.
"We have a foot in both camps," said Kirk Thornburg, director of DC-9 fleet engineering at Northwest. "You'll get a very pure perspective that there were changes we needed to do and they've added quite a lot to our maintenance program.
