To encourage increased participation by aircraft maintenance providers and commercial operators, especially Part 135 and 91K certificate holders, in providing the FAA information on apparent regulatory violations under the agency’s several voluntary safety programs, the agency has issued Notice 8900.61 to clarify how it determines if enforcement action will be taken
For Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) submissions accepted before Oct. 1, 2015, and/or Voluntary Disclosure Reporting Program (VDRP) submissions currently open (corrective action and/or follow-up surveillance not completed), FAA inspectors have the “discretion to determine the most appropriate action, either administrative action or corrective action [i.e. enforcement],” the notice says. “It should be noted that administrative action is no longer an option within the web-based VDRP system.”
Decisions on accepting a submission are intended to be made according to specific criteria, including inadvertence of the apparent violation and satisfactory taking of immediate action followed by the development of a comprehensive fix. Repeated violations will be subject to additional reviews on a case-by-case basis, which could lead to enforcement action.
As of Oct. 1, 2015, automatic upload of disclosure data from the web-based VDRP system to the FAA’s enforcement information system (EIS) was terminated. Files that were open in the EIS on October 1, 2015, have been purged from the EIS. “However, the option will remain for the FAA to take administrative action utilizing the legacy paper-based system, as desired.”
“The FAA’s policy of forgoing civil penalty actions when one of these entities detects violations, discloses the violations to the FAA, and takes prompt corrective action to ensure that the same or similar violations do not recur is designed to encourage compliance with FAA regulations, foster safe operating practices, and promote the development of effective internal evaluation programs,” the notice further states.
For example, the FAA reports that ASAP has more than 900 active memorandums of understanding across the nation “with activity and participation increasing almost daily. With more than 100,000 reports annually, it is a tremendous source of safety information and data. Participation is expanding across the entire spectrum of the National Airspace System with even small operators able to participate through the use of the services of third-party facilitators such as the Air Charter Safety Foundation.”