From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: FAA Oversight of Pilot Training Audio interview by GAO staff with Gerald Dillingham, Director, Physical Infrastructure Related GAO Work: GAO-12-117: Initial Pilot Training: Better Management Controls Are Needed to Improve FAA Oversight Released on: November 15, 2011 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and nformation from the Government Accountability Office. It's November 15, 2011. Pilot performance has been sited as a potential contributing factor in four of the last six fatal commercial airline accidents in the United States. A group led by Gerald Dillingham, a director in GAO's Physical Infrastructure team, recently reviewed initial pilot training programs, which are overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Gerald to learn more. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Can you talk about the recent incidents that prompted Congress to request this report? [ Gerald Dillingham: ] Yes, I think some context is probably helpful here in that the United States Aviation System is one of the safest systems in the world; however, there's still risk involved with flying. And as a result of a crash that occurred in February 2009 near Buffalo, New York, Congress became interested in exactly what kind of training do pilots have, because the National Transportation and Safety Board determined that it was pilot error as a contributing factor to that accident that resulted in the death of more than 50 people. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You're focusing particularly in this report on the initial period of pilot training. How does that period, how does that training usually work? [ Gerald Dillingham: ] Well, pilot training usually involves two aspects: one is the formal training in the classroom and then there's the practical training of actually flying an aircraft. And most people start off with a private pilot's license and you can get that in any number of ways; there are probably about over 3,400 different places where you can get a pilot's license. You can either get it from a flight instructor, an individual flight instructor, or you may go to a vocational school, or you may in fact go to a university, like Emery Riddle in Florida, for a full training agenda, and they all take the same courses and take the same FAA training in the end. And as you matriculate into pilot, being a pilot you will also earn other kinds of certificates that will allow you to carry passengers or fly by instrument or any number of other things, but everyone starts the same place and you build up your certifications to the point where you are ready to be hired by an airline. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, has over sighted these pilot schools and pilot certification. How do they attempt to carry that oversight out? [ Gerald Dillingham: ] FAA has an annual National Inspection Program, and in that inspection program they will look at the schools to ensure that the schools are complying with the standards. They will also inspect what we call the gate keepers, the flight instructors who actually give the tests and so forth to make sure that they are in fact complying with the standards and regulations that FAA has set up. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And to what extent did your team find that these inspections are happening as intended? [ Gerald Dillingham: ] This is one of the difficult issues that we ran into. We were only able to determine what happened within the last year or two because of the way FAA collects its data or, in fact, does not collect its data or aggregate its data. We found that for the last year nearly three-quarters of all the inspections that the agency was supposed to do for that annual program they did in fact do, but we couldn't tell if there was a trend because we couldn't get data from back beyond 2010. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Finally, what is GAO recommending in this report? [ Gerald Dillingham: ] Well as we talked about the inability to measure the extent that FAA was carrying out its oversight responsibilities, our major recommendation was that they in fact develop the kind of program and the kind of data and data analysis that would allow them to see trends and go back beyond one year. We found that FAA was already doing some of the things to update or modernize its training curriculum so we didn't make a recommendation there but we think the data is very important so that you can know if your resource--and they're limited resources--are being applied in a way that will get you the biggest bang for your buck. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO's website at gao.gov and be sure to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.