Several factors have prompted principal maintenance inspectors in the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to avoid precipitous enforcement action against air carriers, such as grounding an aircraft fleet, if alternative corrective action resolves the safety issue. According to Keith Frable, FAA principal maintenance inspector for United Airlines, risk-based decision making, is being introduced as “a new way forward … a new path where we are not inconveniencing passengers but we’re still having continual operational safety at the airlines,” he said. Frable spoke in April at the World Aviation Training Conference and Tradeshow (WATS 2015) in Orlando, Florida, U.S.
The policy shift considered poor decisions about grounding airline fleets1 based on non-risk-related practices, reductions in the number of FAA maintenance inspectors, reductions in the number of maintenance professionals at airlines, and the numbers of new maintenance engineers added in the …
