Managing Change: A Human Factors study investigating the impact of strategic decisions on personnel and processes in U.S. Airline Operations”

In May 2008 the FAA completed an assessment regarding inspections at major airlines. The assessment concluded with findings that the FAA failed to perform more than 100 recommended safety reviews at major air carriers in recent years. According to an article published in the Wall Street Journal, the importance of this examination became clear earlier in 2008 because of revelations that FAA managers allowed Dallas, Texas based Airline Southwest Airlines to fly airplanes that hadn’t undergone mandatory structural safety inspections. The article also stated that The FAA hadn’t reviewed Southwest’s system for complying with agency safety directives since 1999. The researcher will provide a qualitative approach and collect opinion data to support the previous stated questions. The researcher also intends to research possible examples of more efficient ways for the FAA and the Airline industry to manage and communicate issues that could possibly lead to deviations in federal regulations, and that could subsequently lead to an incident or accident. Since the Air Transportation Oversight System (ATOS) program is designed to support the airline regarding possible issues within their perspective departments, the interface with the FAA ATOS program needs to be reviewed to determine if the ATOS program should be voluntary or mandatory. Essential voluntary programs such as the Internal Evaluation Program (IEP), Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP), Maintenance Safety Action Program (MSAP) and Dispatch Safety Action Program (DSAP) require oversight by the FAA. There is a need to determine the effects of ATOS becoming mandatory or voluntary and the effects of the FAA ATOS system interface has on the voluntary airline safety programs. The researcher intends to answer the following two questions explicitly to support this ongoing issue with the FAA and the airline industry; since the ATOS system was designed for the FAA to provide active oversight to the airlines from a system safety perspective and for the airlines to communicate their oversight to the FAA: • Should ATOS become voluntary or a regulation for Air Carriers; Should the IEP continue to be voluntary? • Should there be more active oversight within the FAA regarding its interface with the Air Carrier?