GAO-02-127R Periodic Maintenance in Alaska

United States General Accounting Office

Washington, DC 20548

November 30, 2001

The Honorable Don Young

Chairman, Committee on Transportation

 and Infrastructure

House of Representatives

Subject: National Airspace System: Incomplete Transition Back to National

 Maintenance and Certification Standards in the Federal Aviation

 Administration’s Alaskan Region

Dear Mr. Chairman:

In 1997, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) adopted a pilot program, known

as the Corporate Maintenance Philosophy, that reduced the frequency of periodic

maintenance and certification in FAA’s Alaskan Region. Early in 2001, the Federal

Labor Relations Authority ruled that FAA must revert back to the national

maintenance and certification standards in the Alaskan Region because FAA had not

negotiated an extension of the pilot program with their unions. In March 2001, FAA

and two unions representing FAA employees, the Professional Airways Systems

Specialists and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, agreed to a

deadline—October 1, 2001—regarding when officials at installations in the Alaskan

Region would complete reinstating the national standards for equipment

maintenance and certification. One aspect of this transition process involved

entering national periodic maintenance and certification standards, specifically those

pertaining to the frequency with which equipment should be serviced, into FAA’s

computerized maintenance management system (MMS).

You asked us to assess the progress of FAA’s Alaskan Region in its shift back to

national standards. As agreed with your office, we focused our work on the following

questions:

! To what extent has FAA’s Alaskan Region incorporated the national periodic

maintenance and certification standards for National Airspace System (NAS)

equipment into MMS?

! To what extent is FAA maintaining and certifying the equipment in Alaska in

accordance with the national standards?

On September 12, 2001, we briefed you on the results of our work to date. This letter

summarizes our findings and reflects FAA’s comments on a draft provided to it.
Page 2 GAO-02-127R Periodic Maintenance in Alaska

Summary

FAA’s Alaskan Region has not fully returned to the national standards, but FAA

officials believe that the transition will be completed by January 1, 2002. Seven of 12

locations had finished updating maintenance and certification information into MMS

by the October 1, 2001, deadline. In several locations where MMS had been updated,

however, the standards that had been incorporated were not subjected to quality

control checks. We were unable to determine, therefore, whether periodic

maintenance conducted in certain areas of the region has been performed with the

frequency required by the national guidelines. FAA is hiring additional staff to

perform maintenance and certifications and will appoint managers to check the

accuracy of MMS data. The process of certifying equipment to ensure that it

functions according to national standards had been more than 90-percent complete as

of August 31, 2001, according to FAA officials.

Background

A complex array of primarily ground-based navigation and communication equipment

facilitates the safe and efficient movement of aircraft throughout NAS. Such

equipment includes radar installations, signal beacons, and communications towers.

One component of FAA, the Airway Facilities Service, is responsible for managing,

maintaining, and operating NAS infrastructure. This responsibility includes ensuring

that the system and its components are maintained according to prescribed

standards. In turn, the Airway Facilities Service assigned responsibility for

conducting on-site maintenance at the NAS facilities to the region-based Airway

Facilities Division (AFD). Although the types of maintenance differ according to the

piece of equipment, similar standards are used in FAA’s nine administrative regions

throughout the country. In addition to stipulating the checks that must be performed

and the frequency of maintenance, the standards require that a qualified technician

independently certify that each piece of equipment is functioning properly. Finally, a

report on the maintenance conducted must be entered into a national computer

database kept by FAA’s MMS. This system schedules the type of maintenance that

should be performed on equipment at any given time. Information stored in MMS

directs technicians to specific tasks identified in equipment maintenance manuals.

Without MMS and its reference to the maintenance manuals, technicians would be

required to perform the more time-consuming task of finding and extracting pertinent

information directly from the manuals.

In March 1997, FAA initiated a 3-year pilot program, called the Corporate

Maintenance Philosophy (CMP), whose goal in part was to determine whether NAS

equipment could be effectively maintained with less frequent servicing, thereby

reducing costs. Under CMP, the intervals between servicing much of its equipment in

the Alaskan Region, including some of its critical safety equipment, increased. At the

end of the pilot period, FAA decided to continue CMP because, according to FAA

officials, the program had met its objective. However, two FAA employee unions—

the Professional Airways Systems Specialists and the National Air Traffic Controllers

Association—objected to the continued use of CMP because the program’s extension

had not been negotiated with the unions. Furthermore, the unions alleged that the

less frequent maintenance performed under CMP adversely affected the NAS
Page 3 GAO-02-127R Periodic Maintenance in Alaska

infrastructure in Alaska. They filed a complaint with the Federal Labor Relations

Authority, which ruled early in 2001 that FAA should have negotiated the extension of

the program with the unions and, therefore, the Alaskan Region must revert to

current national periodic maintenance and certification standards. On March 8, 2001,

FAA and the two unions signed a Memorandum of Understanding establishing a

transition schedule for returning the Alaskan Region to the national standards. The

agreement stipulated that the transition would be completed by October 1, 2001.

MMS Was Not Updated at All Locations, and Accuracy of

Information Has Not Been Checked Everywhere

FAA officials told us that they had completed updating the national standards into

MMS in 7 of 12 locations by October 1, 2001. We found, however, that several

locations throughout Alaska responsible for performing the maintenance and

certification activities had not performed quality control checks to ensure that the

information had been updated correctly. Of the 12 key locations in Alaska that use

the standards to check equipment, 4 had completed quality control checks of the

MMS information; 3 indicated that the checks might not be completed until October

2002; and 5 planned no quality control checks at all.

Additionally, the staff at those locations performing checks reported finding errors in

the information entered into MMS, such as omissions of required maintenance steps

for certain pieces of equipment. The presence of errors in MMS has potential safety

ramifications. For example, if the system contains incomplete or incorrect

information, maintenance technicians might not service critical safety equipment

with the frequency it needs to remain at full functioning capacity. A lack of adequate

quality control checks increases the possibility that such errors will remain

unidentified and uncorrected. We discussed our findings with AFD officials, who told

us that they would require quality control checks at all 12 locations. The revised date

for completing the checks and making any necessary changes to MMS entries is

January 1, 2002, according to these officials.

Progress on Maintenance Is Unclear; Most Certifications Were

Conducted

While we could not determine the percentage of periodic maintenance that has been

conducted according to national standards, over 90 percent of certifications have

been made, according to AFD managers.1

Because of problems with maintenance records in MMS, we could not

comprehensively assess the progress that the Alaskan Region has made in

maintaining NAS equipment according to national standards. Specifically,

maintenance records in MMS had not been fully updated at the time of our review,

and MMS contains some erroneous information about maintenance that should be

 1

 These two processes—maintenance and certification—are not always directly linked. Whereas

periodic maintenance includes performance checks, inspections, and routine maintenance, a

certification is the quality control method used by FAA to ensure that its facilities are providing their

expected services. A piece of equipment that has not had all of its periodic maintenance done but is

still performing at its normal capacity, therefore, can be certified.
Page 4 GAO-02-127R Periodic Maintenance in Alaska

performed. At all 12 locations, moreover, AFD officials said that they were behind

schedule in their periodic maintenance activities, and they cited a shortage of staff as

the primary reason for their delays. Hiring of additional staff is now under way.

Regarding certifications, although AFD officials told us that over 90 percent of the

required certifications had been completed by the end of August 2001, they stressed

that they wanted to reach 100 percent as quickly as they could. Because

certifications verify that equipment is performing as intended, their completion is a

primary concern for AFD staff.

FAA officials told us that they would (1) give higher priority to ensuring that

preventative maintenance and certification were being conducted in accordance with

national standards and (2) appoint a database manager at each of the 12 locations to

address problems with the accuracy of maintenance records in MMS. As agreed with

your office, we will monitor and report early in 2002 on FAA’s progress toward

appointing these managers and whether they are checking MMS for accuracy. We

will also provide an update of the status of periodic maintenance and certifications at

that time.

Agency Comments

We provided a draft of this letter to FAA for review and comment. The comments we

received from the Director of the Airway Facilities Service, AAF-1, included

information that had become available after we conducted our audit work. The

Director informed us that as of October 1, 2001, the Alaskan Region had returned to

the national periodic maintenance and certification standards at all facilities. Seven

of 12 locations have completed entering periodic maintenance and certification data

in MMS; for those locations where MMS had not been fully updated, technicians are

identifying and extracting pertinent information from maintenance manuals to ensure

compliance with national standards. Regarding the quality control reviews of MMS

data, 7 of 12 locations have completed such reviews. The remaining locations are

using manual methods to schedule and track required maintenance activities and will

finish their quality checks of MMS data by January 1, 2002. Finally, this official said

that all facilities in the Alaskan Region had been certified according to national

standards by October 1, 2001.

Scope and Methodology

We performed most of our work at FAA facilities in Alaska. We analyzed documents

and records, made field visits to installations, and conducted interviews with

numerous FAA personnel in AFD. We also conducted work at FAA headquarters in

Washington, D.C. We performed our work from June through September 2001 in

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

__________________________________________________________________________
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We are sending copies of this letter to the Ranking Democratic Member, House

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure; Senators Ted Stevens and Frank H.

Murkowski; the Secretary of Transportation; and the FAA Administrator.

If you have any questions about this letter or the earlier briefing, please contact

Randy Williamson at (206) 287-4860 or me at (202) 512-2834. Other key contributors

to this letter were Steve Calvo and Colin J. Fallon.

Sincerely yours,

Gerald L. Dillingham, Ph.D.

Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues

(540015)