The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“PROMOTING INTERNATIONAL AVIATION SAFETY” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1138 on June 7, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
PROMOTING INTERNATIONAL AVIATION SAFETY
______
HON. JAMES L. OBERSTAR
of minnesota
in the house of representatives
Monday, June 7, 1999
Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, safety is our highest responsibility in aviation. The American travelling public has the right to expect the highest standards of safety when flying on a U.S. carrier or on a U.S. carrier's code share partner.
Last September, the aviation community received a wake up call when SwissAir flight 111 crashed off the shores of Nova Scotia. On board this fatal flight were 53 U.S. passengers who had purchased tickets from Delta Airlines for Delta flight 1111, but who flew on SwissAir, through an arrangement called code-sharing. This accident brought home the realization that, in a world of close alliances between domestic and foreign airlines, the lines separating domestic safety regulation and international safety regulation have been blurred. It is clearly time to reassess our safety activities to make certain the American travelling public flies safely, whether on a U.S. or a foreign carrier.
As relationships between domestic and foreign carriers continue to grow through code sharing, we need to take a hard look at whether safety has kept pace. Since 1994, the number of code-sharing alliances has more than doubled--from 61 to 163. A passenger who buys a ticket from a U.S. airline for a code-sharing flight (ticketed as a flight by a U.S. airline) has a right to expect that the entire flight will be operated under similar safety standards. Yet, put simply, there is not a process within the Department of Transportation (DOT) for assuring that a foreign code-share partner operates under safety standards similar to those governing U.S. airlines.
A look at the world's aviation safety record establishes the need for prompt action. There is a wide disparity in the accident rates for different regions, with Africa and South and Central America, for example, having an overall accident rate considerably higher than the world average. This suggests strongly that some carriers are not offering a similar level of safety as U.S. carriers. Unfortunately, DOT does not have a comprehensive mechanism in place to determine whether particular foreign carriers have safety deficiencies before code-
sharing arrangements are approved.
Accordingly, I am introducing legislation today with my colleagues, ranking Aviation Subcommittee member Mr. Lipinski and Ms. Johnson of Texas, that will dramatically improve DOT's organizational capability to assess whether a proposed foreign code share meets safety standards similar to those required of our U.S. carries.
The legislation would require a U.S. carrier seeking to code share with a foreign air carrier to conduct a comprehensive safety audit, including on-site inspections, of the foreign carrier's operations. Prior to receiving DOT approval of a foreign code share, the U.S. air carrier must certify to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that the foreign air carrier meets the standards set forth in its FAA-
approved safety audit program. In turn, the FAA would be required to conduct a comprehensive annual review of each domestic carrier's approved audit program, thus assuring that the FAA remains vigilant in its oversight of the carrier's implementation of that program. The domestic carrier would also conduct a periodic review of the foreign carrier's operations to ensure continued compliance with the safety standards. In addition, the FAA would be directed to work with the International Civil Aviation Organization to ensure that code-
sharing oversight becomes a part of any foreign authority's air safety regulatory framework.
The importance of this requirement cannot be overstated. Currently, the FAA, which is responsible for safety oversight of our domestic carriers, conducts only limited review of foreign airlines participating in code-share agreements with our airlines. For foreign airlines, the FAA looks only at whether the flag country has a good institutional structure for regulating aviation safety. The FAA does not evaluate the safety of the foreign airline itself.
Delta's recent suspension of its code-share with Korean Air underscores this point. The FAA had no safety concerns with the arrangement because South Korea has a system for regulating safety that, on paper, appeared adequate. However, in this case--and possibly in far too many other cases--there appears to be little correlation between FAA's assessment of the foreign regulatory system and the actual safety performance of a carrier.
That observation is not meant to fault FAA for its efforts to assess the aviation regulatory systems of foreign governments. The FAA's assessment does provide valuable information about the structure and capabilities of a particular country's civil aviation authority; it does not provide specifics about a particular foreign code-share partner, when the changing nature of international aviation demands such an assessment.
This legislation will respond to the challenge of increasing the safety margin for the American traveling public by establishing a process for making meaningful safety judgments about foreign airlines.
I urge my colleagues to join me in co-sponsoring this legislation.
____________________
