A Lift for Airline Safety

Two days after a ValuJet passenger plane nose-dived into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people aboard, President Clinton called on the Federal Aviation Administration to review its system of airline safety inspections. That was highly appropriate given the fact ValuJet was a young carrier expanding at breakneck speed. It was also an airline that helped meet the demand for low fares by farming out airplane maintenance to a complicated network of dozens of outside contractors.

A few weeks later, ValuJet was grounded by the FAA, which cited a number of safety deficiencies. (The crash itself is still under investigation.) Monday, ValuJet returned to limited service, offering a handle for assessing the FAA’s recently completed review of ways to keep track of start-up, low-fare carriers. The review acknowledged that the FAA had done a poor job of monitoring such airlines.

So what’s new? Essentially, the FAA says, new carriers will have to follow the process that ValuJet just went through to regain the right to fly: The number and type of aircraft used and the routes flown are now subject to FAA approval and no longer are considered an internal company matter. And, like ValuJet, new carriers must provide much more information on who performs maintenance, as well as who at the airline oversees the work.

The FAA should have gone further, setting limits on the number of outside contractors that can be used by any airline.

Congress voted Monday to give the FAA more inspectors and support staff. That’s good. But the FAA has been slow to respond to trends in the deregulated airline industry, including outside contracts for maintenance. Now, the scrutiny that compelled the FAA to review its inspection practices must continue, to ensure that the reforms are at least as good in reality as they look on paper.