GAO issues recommendations to FAA over unpredictable international validations process

Photo of Boeing 737 MAXU.S. manufacturers are exporting billions of dollars' worth of airplanes and aviation products annually and manufacturers find the approval process unpredictable. The U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended the FAA find ways to make safety validations more predictable after a thorough review of the process for managing international validations. The GAO found that U.S. companies are exporting billions worth of planes and engines each year. These products require safety approval from the FAA and the importing countries' civil aviation authorities. Agreements between the U.S. and the countries representing the five largest aviation export markets look to facilitate approvals through the acceptance or validation of the other's product certifications. The current approval process in the implementing procedures for these types of agreements are highly variable, dependent on the product type and complexity. CAA's conduct has detailed technical validations for the higher risk products with newer designs and technologies. Validations will include the thorough review of product designs and other information for the CAA to assess compliance with its country's regulations, safety and environmental standards. Of the stakeholders the GAO interviewed, 14 reported that in recent years the validation time frames have become more unpredictable and CAAs have begun requesting more information from aviation manufacturers. Stakeholders have said that contributing factors include CAAs' decreased trust in the FAA's certifications after the Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019. They shared that FAA support, like resolving disputes with other countries' CAAs, can prove a challenge due to the limited FAA staffing and resources. The FAA has recently begun collecting and using more detailed information to bolster management and international validations, like tracking the number of active validations by country. The GAO notes that the FAA has not evaluated the effectiveness of the entirety of the validation process and FAA officials said they are beginning to develop an approach to assess the process, including the identification of performance goals and necessary data. The agency also noted that the FAA did not identify the specific steps or a time frame to develop such an approach. The assessment of the validations process can help the FAA to identify improvements that might lead to the increased predictability of the process and an improvement in the accountability of bilateral agreements. According to the GAO, the U.S. has entered into bilateral agreements with some other countries to enable the acceptance of each other's certifications of aviation products. The GAO notes that some U.S. companies are continuing to report experiencing difficulties in obtaining approvals of their products in other countries. The GAO was asked to review the approvals process for U.S. aviation products. The report delves into the processes that the FAA and CAAs in the key export markets for U.S. aviation products are using to approve each other's product certifications. There is also an examination of the validation challenges that stakeholders have identified as well as an evaluation of how the FAA ensures that the international validation process is effective. The GAO has chosen five international markets based on the number of validations and reviewed selected bilateral agreements and implementation procedures, FAA data and the FAA validation policies and guidelines. The GAO has also interviewed 14 aviation industry stakeholders and CAA officials from three countries. Four recommendations were made after the report. The GAO recommends the FAA establish quantifiable goals for the international validation process, identify quality information and performance metrics to track the progress made toward those goals, use the information to assess results and inform any decisions about necessary improvements to the process, and establish a time frame and action plan. The FAA has agreed with the recommendations.