Aging Aircraft: FAA Needs Comprehensive Plan to Coordinate Government and Industry Actions: Rced-90-75

GAO assessed the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) efforts to ensure the safety of aging commercial aircraft.
GAO found that FAA: (1) sponsored a June 1988 international conference on aging aircraft after an accident involving an aging aircraft's structural failure; (2) and the airline industry initiated many promising actions to respond to conference recommendations and hosted a second conference to discuss those actions; (3) lacked a comprehensive plan for coordinating and evaluating initiatives to ensure participants' awareness of all activities and facilitate oversight of joint initiatives; and (4) could use its resources more effectively by developing hands-on aircraft inspection approaches to supplement paperwork reviews of maintenance records, analyzing trend data on aircraft maintenance and repair, and assessing the impact of the potential capacity shortage in the aircraft repair industry on the FAA inspection work force.