After an extended audit from the US Federal Aviation Administration, United Airlines has been cleared, with the regulatory agency failing to identify any “significant” safety issues.
Nothingburger? FAA Safety Audit Concludes With Two-Sentence Verdict On United Airlines
In March 2024, after a string of unrelated maintenance-related incidents made headlines around the world, the FAA decided to take “an even closer look at multiple areas” of United’s operations.
Over the next several weeks, we will begin to see more of an FAA presence in our operation as they begin to review some of our work processes, manuals and facilities. We welcome their engagement and are very open to hear from them about what they find and their perspective on things we may need to change to make us even safer.
In a memo to employees at the time, United suggested a “variety” of certification activities would be suspended for an unspecified period:
As part of this effort, the FAA will also pause a variety of certification activities for a period of time. Those activities will differ depending on the work group and we will learn more from the FAA about that soon.
It was later revealed that the pause of certification activities included new aircraft deliveries and new routes.
The suspension was later lifted (initially prematurely) but the evaluation continued.
More than half a year later, the investigation is complete. On October 2, 2024, the FAA announced:
The FAA finished its Certificate Holder Evaluation Program (CHEP) of United Airlines. The review did not identify any significant safety issues.
A rather anti-climatic end to the saga…
CONCLUSION
It’s still not clear to me whether the string of incidents we covered earlier this year (engine issues, panels falling off, wheels dropping from midair, near-miss incidents) were evidence of any degradation of safety at United Airlines or just a string of “bad luck” heightened by increased media scrutiny.
In any case, this is a better outcome than finding more overt problems.
> Read More: United Airlines Faces Increased Government Oversight, Certification Delays
> Read More: FAA Says It Has Not Cleared United Airlines To Certify New Aircraft, Launch New Routes
image: United Airlines
There was a government statistic released stating every day in the USA the equivalent to the pax capacity of a B747 dies due to medical errors. UA is doing well in comparison.