In the two years since the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) implemented its new “compliance philosophy,” the number of enforcement actions taken by the agency has declined 70 percent, according to a recent speech by Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety Ali Bahrami. In the same time frame, FAA has corrected more than 8,000 safety issues through nonenforcement “compliance actions.”
FAA describes a compliance action as “an open and transparent safety information exchange” between FAA and the certificate holder. “Its only purpose is to restore compliance and to identify and correct the underlying causes that led to the deviation,” FAA says.
While it’s hard to assess such a sweeping effort’s overall success after just two years, the early results are encouraging. FAA has been clear that enforcement action is still an option for stakeholders who will not or cannot comply, yet it still has been able to address thousands of safety issue…
