Qiao Shanxun text.
As part of the aviation safety management system, the U.S. federal government hired private individuals to inspect and test aircraft as early as 1927. In the 1940s, the U.S. Civil Aviation Administration (CAA, the predecessor of the FAA) began designating personnel to perform pilot approval, airworthiness approval, and certification approvals, including the Designated Engineering Representative (DER), Designated Manufacturing Inspection Representative (DMIR), and Designated Pilot Inspector (DPE) programs.
In the 1950s, the U.S. aviation industry grew by leaps and bounds, and regulators began to adopt the Authorization Option Authorization (DOA) program to address the need for certification of small aircraft, engines, and propellers. It was also the first program to delegate power to organizations rather than individuals. The main purpose of DOA is to leverage the inherent experience and knowledge of manufacturers.
In the 1960s, the FAA created the Designated Retrofit Station (DAS), a program that allowed approved repair station engineers to issue STCs to reduce delays in certificates. The DAS program allows eligible airlines, commercial operators, domestic repair stations, and product manufacturers to issue STCs and related airworthiness certificates.
In the 1970s, the FAA reviewed the Authorized Organization Program, allowing authorized organizations to approve major retrofit data, but not major repair data. The new program allows eligible airlines, commercial operators, and domestic repair stations to develop and use overhaul data without FAA approval.
In the 1980s, the FAA developed the Designated Airworthiness Representative (DAR) program to expand the airworthiness certification functions that individual designees could perform.
In 2005, the FAA enacted the Organizational Designation Authorization (ODA) program, paving the way for them to begin delegating more responsibilities to industry and individuals. Under the plan, companies have greater autonomy in approving the airworthiness and safety of aircraft.
In 2009, the Boeing Safety Oversight Office (BASOO) was established. Many people think that this office symbolizes the takeover of the FAA. The members of the office are organized by experts in the field, who certify operators, aircraft, and components. On the face of it, BASOO has a number of methods to oversee the activities of all aircraft and operators, including on-board inspections and testing, as well as corrective action if necessary.
When the office leader picture was released, everyone was surprised to see that his head photo was placed below the Boeing leader, and this arrangement was self-evident - this unit was to serve Boeing, not to supervise Boeing.
Basoo nominally manages more than 1,000 Boeing engineers, whom the FAA assigns as ** people to inspect Boeing's designs to ensure they comply with FAA regulations. The regulations list all the steps of commercial aircraft airworthiness and contain many rigorous and detailed descriptions. The people in the department lacked experience in designing aircraft, so it was Sartre and his colleagues who codified the first statute for jet civil aircraft, SR 422.
Since then, the FAA has relied on engineers employed by aircraft manufacturers to ensure the safety of the aircraft. Engineers who were previously selected by the FAA to carry out inspections are now selected by Boeing and report to a Boeing manager.
The original intention of the FAA was to require manufacturers to be aware of the risks and improve operational efficiency. In 2015, a report by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Inspector General showed that an aircraft manufacturer approved about 90 percent of the design decisions for all of its aircraft. This is part of an industry self-regulation that reduces federal** costs and streamlines the certification process for companies.
In 2019, Dan Elwell, then director of the FAA**, said that if they were to replace the company's employees for safety certification, they would need to add 10,000 employees at a cost of $1.8 billion a year.
But in the aftermath of the MAX series of crashes, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal said, "The FAA should not be in the midst of a near-catastrophic event to review its use of the [designated inspector] program, which is actually having foxes guard the chicken coop." ”
On June 30, 1956, a DC-7 flying TWA Flight 718 collided with a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation airliner flying TWA Flight 2 over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA. The crash resulted in a total of 128 deaths, making it the worst civil aircraft crash in history at that time. After the crash, radar began to be installed at airports across the United States. Strict flight rules were in place, and henceforth, aircraft could only fly in the prescribed air corridors
On August 23, 1958, Dwight D. D. Eisenhower, United StatesEisenhower) signed the Federal Aviation Act. The bill also transfers responsibility for aviation safety regulation from the CAB to the FAA, giving it full authority to manage the military system for air navigation and traffic control.
On the last day of 1958, the FAA was inaugurated, replacing the CAA and taking over the CAB's responsibility for setting safety rules. The new agency establishes a unified national airspace system for civilian and military use. The early FAA also had the responsibility to promote, encourage and develop the aviation industry.
In 1967, the U.S. Congress merged all transportation agencies into a new Department of Transportation (DOT) with the NTSB and administered by the Department of Transportation as an independent agency. On April 1, NTSB was officially inaugurated with its initial 185 employees from CAB. Investigators have had little time to celebrate the opening of the new agency, which killed 82 people in three major aviation accidents in the United States in March.
On January 4, 1975, Gerald Ford signed the Independent Security Commission Act of 1974, and the NTSB became a completely independent body (authorized by Congress and allocated separately), but the agency only has the power to make recommendations, not the executive power, and the implementation of recommendations needs to rely entirely on the FAA.
If the FAA is a towering tree, NTSB is the woodpecker in it. The FAA has long had a seemingly contradictory mandate to promote the growth of the civil aviation industry while ensuring the safety of flights.
In the 1970s and '80s, many of the safety recommendations made by the NTSB were not implemented by the FAA, including de-icing operations, cargo hold smoke detectors, runway lighting, and other projects, and one of the important factors was the cost of implementation. At one point, the NTSB had no choice but to publish the Most Wanted List (MWL). At the end of 2023, the NTSB withdrew the MWL project, ending 35 years of safety advocacy work.
The FAA has consistently failed to implement a safety recommendation put forward by NTBS to install cameras in the cockpit. Back in 1990, the NTSB first proposed video recording of the cockpit environment, when it referred to "monitoring and evaluating the progress of the application of ** technology in air transport cockpits". In April 2000, NTSB President James Hall wrote a nine-page safety advisory letter to FAA Director Jane Garvey, stating that "Flight recorder technology has come a long way, and the need for recording has become more apparent." Recording of the cockpit environment is now technically and economically feasible", urges the installation of cockpit video systems on passenger aircraft.
In 2002, the NTSB added this goal to its "Most Wanted List of the Year", referring to "installing cameras in the cockpit to provide investigators with more information to solve complex accidents".
In a July 2004 meeting of the NTSB in Washington, D.C., Senior Investigator Frank Hilldrup said, "I believe that the cockpit image recorder will clearly greatly improve the ability of investigators to more accurately and quickly determine aviation accidents and incident signs." ”
But the NTSB's proposal was strongly opposed by the pilots' union, and in 2004 its United Pilots Association (APA) objected: "The APA strongly opposes cockpit imaging recorders because the benefits of imaging are greatly overestimated, and because of the existence of more effective and efficient tools that not only obtain the safety data needed to accurately investigate accidents, but also help prevent future accidents." ”
In 1994, the Republican Party won the U.S. midterm elections with "tax cuts and deregulation regulations", and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich announced that he would "completely recreate the federal ** and change the way the federal ** thinks, acts and treats the people", which is actually to reduce the scale of ** and streamline administration and delegate power.
On June 12, 1994, the Boeing 777 completed its maiden flight, and it was delivered to the launch user United Airlines on June 7, 1995. For Boeing's many admirers, they have once again witnessed victory!
At the time, critics argued that the FAA was more eager to help manufacturers get the job done than to become an independent safety regulator.
The 777 was the world's largest twin-engine jet at the time and Boeing's first fly-by-wire airliner, with 150 computers controlling more than 3 million components, making it the most complex airliner ever built. Some commentators have praised the 777 as a model of U.S. industrial prowess, while others have pointed to highlighting the contradictions and inadequacies of the U.S. aviation security system.
The FAA is short of staff, and they are delegating more and more responsibilities to manufacturers, leaving little room to oversee other items other than randomly reviewing the safety tests that new aircraft must pass. Boeing employees did most of the work to prove the safety of the 777, some tests differed from the original test plan, some were never completed, and most were never even reviewed by the FAA.
The FAA reviews more documents than airplanes, and it has more economists than inspectors at Boeing factories for its cost-benefit analysis of proposed safety rules. The U.S. Department of Transportation and the FAA** believe that commercial aviation is still safe, and their view is supported by data that modern jets are one of the safest means of transportation.
Commercial airlines tend to be safe for their economic interests and personal travel, but safety issues can be overlooked if they are too quick to pursue profits. A manager at the FAA's Seattle Aircraft Certification Office said, "This is their show. I didn't spend a penny. ”
Although the FAA is not the largest U.S. federal agency, its influence reaches the world, and it spends $8 billion a year, of which 3 4 are spent on air traffic control. It has 480,000 employees, managed 180,000 airports, staffing at 420 towers, 90 regional offices, overseeing 6,500 commercial airliners and 2750,000 general aviation aircraft, 4,400 maintenance stations and 500 flight training schools. All aviation professionals, from pilots to maintenance, must be licensed.
But first of all, it is important to stress that the FAA is a bureaucracy, and it also suffers from typical bureaucratic flaws.
Congress has repeatedly criticized the FAA for being "stubborn"; The aviation industry considers the institutions that regulate them to be "incompetent and tyrannical, and sometimes docile"; Department of Transportation's Inspector General's Duties: FAA "lax"; The NTSB argues that the FAA has "an almost wanton disregard for security."
The FAA is a complex complex of industry, political and ideological interests, driven by politics, squeezed by economists, and cyclically fluctuating in the airline industry by geopolitical, war, economic and labor factors, limiting the FAA's ability to hire top technologists and allowing the industry's best talent to pour into the industry. In 1979, it launched a program to hire "at least one world-class expert" in every technical area of expertise – a plan that never materialized.
The FAA also doesn't have the budget to train its staff, and in an era of rapid advances in information technology, only 1% of engineers have taken software training courses. And the vast amount of data they collect from airlines, manufacturers, and their own employees has never been analyzed. The database is poorly maintained and riddled with errors. In testimony before Congress, the U.S. Comptroller's Office criticized the FAA database as "inaccurate, inconsistent, and often incompatible."
Yang Chunsheng, former senior director of AVIC International, said: Several models of Boeing are the world's first, and the FAA has no corresponding regulations and regulations to review and certify those aircraft models, the first is the 777 aircraft, because it is the first twin-engine transoceanic passenger aircraft under the relaxation of ETOPS, its performance and boundaries can only be established by the manufacturer itself, so the FAA and Boeing have cooperated to create bureau standards.
Boeing must add some of its own things to the airworthiness certification outline, which is objectively to use Boeing's standards to inspect Boeing's products, which is equivalent to a tool in the manufacturing process and a school tool. Boeing 787 is even more so, is the world's first all-composite structure aircraft, how to certify and verify, is from Boeing's technical standards to the FAA inspection standards, Boeing's experimental methods have become the bureau's inspection standards.
Of course, this is just a simple and straightforward statement, the actual formation of a transformation process that everyone recognizes, the FAA cannot accept Boeing's data and methods in its entirety, but in fact, there is no Boeing's practice first, and there can be no subsequent FAA inspection and audit.