But that still raises questions about whether FAA should have taken this action to ground the carrier at an earlier date or whether maybe they should have taken it at all.

Of the 34 incidents cited in the consent order grounding ValuJet, at least 13 took place before the May 11 tragedy.

We need to know, in the course of this hearing, whether FAA was aware of these incidents before May 11. If not, why not? Why did the inspection process fail to uncover these violations and send up a red flag serious enough for the FAA to take action before May 11?

We also need to know what happened in the internal process at FAA when a February 14 memo was prepared in the Washington office of the flight standards staff which recommended, "Consideration should be given to an immediate FAR 121 recertification of this airline." I'd just say, Mr. Chairman, if I had seen that memo and if I had had that recommendation come across my desk, I would have hit the roof. I've been in this business long enough to know that that's a red flag. That's a signal to take action. Yet, it sat on a desk and didn't go to Mr. Broderick and didn't get to Mr. Hinson.

There was an explanation for it. We've asked a number of questions about it. But that kind of thing is serious, and the people in the decisionmaking process and the chain of command that have to make those decisions need to have that kind of information in their hands. There is a shortcoming that needs to be addressed in a structural way within the agency.

I want to acknowledge that the ValuJet accident and its aftermath have resulted in more than the grounding of ValuJet and public concern about the safety of these new entrant carriers.

The concerns about the accident and the lessons learned have come at the expense of a single professional within the FAA who has labored the longest to improve aviation safety throughout the toughest era in aviation, in that period immediately following deregulation.

A report of this subcommittee said safety has taken a back seat to economics, and it was Tony Broderick who was at the forefront of safety within the FAA, doing an objective, tough, and fair job. Without him pushing against a grain that would have had no changes. Instead, we have had reforms in duty time regulations, in de-icing standards, in fabric flammability, in material flammability within the interior cabin of an aircraft and crash survivability standards.

It's fair to say that the 110 people who walked away from the Sioux City DC-10 crash survived because of 18 G-force seat supports that were in place because of what Mr. Broderick insisted upon and what this subcommittee also insisted upon.

I hope that in the aftermath and in the reorganization of FAA that the leadership will be wise enough to find people of the caliber of Tony Broderick with the institutional desire to put safety at the highest possible level conducting this important work of the agen

cy.

We have a lot of ground to cover today. The hearing has been structured in an appropriate fashion, and I look forward to the witnesses and to the responses that they will be making.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Oberstar.

I can assure you and all of the witnesses that the hearing today will be conducted as fairly as humanly possible, and we are pleased to start now with-as I previously announced, the leadership of the committee, the full committee Chairman, Mr. Shuster, and Mr. Oberstar, and the committee staff have agreed that any other opening statements will be placed in the record.

We will begin now with the witnesses.

We are honored to have as our first witness Senator William Cohen, who has been one of the real leaders in the other Body on issues involving the FAA, and recently conducted some extensive hearings into the operation of the FAA.

Senator Cohen, it's a privilege for us to have you with us. You may begin your testimony.

TESTIMONY OF HON. WILLIAM S. COHEN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM MAINE

Senator COHEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank the committee for allowing me to offer a few comments this morning.

I want to agree initially with Chairman Shuster when he pointed out that air travel is the safest form of travel that we have in this country and, indeed, globally.

I also agree with Congressman Oberstar when he says that we should be cautious in the use of our words, and indeed we should, but we should also be candid in our assessments and not in any way paper over some of the safety deficiencies that exist and are in need of correction.

I want to comment first of all on the specific concerns surrounding the May 11 crash of ValuJet Flight 592. I want to point out initially it's not my intent to in any way denigrate the Clinton Administration or any of its officials. The deficiencies that have existed in some of the safety programs have long preceded the arrival of the Clinton Administration, so my comments should not be construed in any way as being critical of the Administration or in any way as politically motivated.

I think it's important to focus on the adequacy of the certification process and whether or not ValuJet should have been flying on May 11. Congressman Oberstar raised this issue in his recent comments.

As all of you I think are aware, a number of documents have been released since that crash that clearly raise serious questions about the degree of ValuJet's compliance with aviation safety regulations prior to the crash. As has been pointed out, in the aftermath of the crash the Department of Transportation and FAA officials repeatedly made statements such as, "We found no substantial safety shortcomings or regulatory violations." "The airline is safe; otherwise, we wouldn't allow it to fly." "We have not found a basis to shutdown " ValuJet."

Even ValuJet's recently hired safety czar stated, "We found nothing so far to cause us to believe the airline is unsafe." I frankly find these comments to be rather inconsistent with the information that has been made available for some time to both the Department of Transportation, the FAA, and ValuJet's management.

More troubling to me were the statements made just last week by the Secretary of Transportation and the FAA administrator when they were questioned as to why ValuJet was not shut down earlier and how they could have given such unqualified endorsements of the airline.

Both senior officials stated that their earlier declarations were based on information available to them at the time those statements were made. However, when those statements were made, DOT and the FAA had several documents in their possession that clearly questioned ValuJet's safety record and showed that the airline was not in full compliance with the Federal Aviation Regulations.

Specifically, DOT and FAA had an October 1994, FAA inspection report; an August 1995, Department of Defense inspection report; a September 1995, FAA inspection report; two February 1996, memoranda from the FAA to ValuJet senior management; a February 1996, FAA report; a May 2, 1996, safety analysis of low-cost air carriers; and a May 6, 1996, draft report on FAA's special emphasis inspection.

I have copies of all of these documents. I believe the committee has them in its possession.

A review of these documents, as well as FAA's inspection results since October 1993, clearly shows that ValuJet began having problems almost immediately after it began flying, and some of those problems persisted throughout its period of operation. But, to me, one of the most serious violations was discovered in September 1994 when an FAA inspector found that a ValuJet aircraft made 148 flights while unworthy.

And then a February 1996, memo from the FAA to the president at ValuJet stated that the FAA had concern that ValuJet was not meeting its duty to provide service with the highest possible degree of safety in the public interest, as required by law.

This memo further stated that ValuJet did not have a structure in place to handle its rapid growth, and that it may have an organizational culture that is in conflict with operating at the highest possible degree of safety.

And then, moreover, a February 1996, report prepared by three FAA inspectors recommended that the FAA consider having ValuJet go through an immediate recertification.

Notwithstanding these documents, the president at ValuJet issued a press release 1 month prior to the crash which stated, in part, "ValuJet is known by the FAA to have an excellent record of self-audit, self-disclosure, and voluntary efforts to achieve the highest levels of safety." And the president further stated that ValuJet's safety record is "certifiably among the very best in the airline industry." Certifiably.

Mr. Chairman, we know the documents I've just referred to were available to DOT, FAA and ValuJet's management.

The Transportation Secretary and the FAA administrator either unintentionally misled the American people with assurances that were false or were mislead by false assurances of their own subordinates, but, in either case, truth became the first victim in the campaign to assure travelers they had no cause for concern.

Mr. Chairman, the deficiencies in the FAA's inspection program have been documented numerous times over the years. FAA administrators in the past pledged to correct the problems.

To give you an illustration, in a June 18 press conference, when discussing ValuJet's use of contract maintenance, the Transportation Secretary stated, "This method of maintenance operation was new and different, and the FAA had to make adjustments in how it oversees these types of operations." The FAA administrator also said the use of contract maintenance was a new trend.

Mr. Chairman, we had a hearing in 1986 in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. At that hearing Mr. Anthony Broderick, who has been praised by Congressman Oberstar, testified, "Perhaps the biggest single problem our inspector work force has faced is the management of new entrants. The proliferation of contract maintenance has been difficult to deal with, has also caused a large work load.

"We had to educate inspectors in new ways of doing business and to alert airline management to the complexities and problems that such innovation could create.

Chairman, contract maintenance is not a new trend, it's an old problem that has gone unaddressed and unsolved.

Another issue related to the crash of Flight 592 is the FAA's apparent lack of standardization-what some call "selective enforcement." The FAA administrator has said that the recent grounding of ValuJet was based on the results of the agency's 30-day intensive inspection program where there were some 2,000 inspections conducted, but just last month the FAA issued an emergency order suspending another air carrier's operating certificate because of discrepancies in its training, testing, and qualifications of flight attendants.

Meanwhile, the FAA allowed ValuJet to continue flying, despite its knowledge of equally, if not more serious, deficiencies.

Just 2 weeks before the crash, my subcommittee held a hearing to examine some systemic weaknesses in how the FAA regulates and inspects our Nation's aviation industry. We found at that hearing the FAA is not providing inspectors with sufficient training to adequately prepare them for their jobs, it's not successfully targeting its inspectors to the areas of greatest safety risk, and it's not holding managers and inspectors accountable for the quality of the inspections they perform.

GAO testified at the hearing. They outlined a series of problems. We had one case in which an inspector received training to inspect an aircraft that he was responsible for 2 years after the airline went out of business.

We had another FAA inspector who had spent two decades inspecting general aviation aircraft, was then transferred and required to inspect large modern jets, and he didn't know how to open the door, and he was calling out for retraining for a long time and did not receive it.

A critical challenge that faces the FAA is the effective use of its limited assets. We all can recognize the FAA is never going to be in a position, given its limited resources, to be able to fully inspect the thousands of entities within its jurisdiction, so it's essential

that they target those inspection resources to the areas of greatest safety risk.

GAO and the Inspector General have both found that the FAA's system for tracking this information is plagued with inaccuracies. We know that Secretary Peña has recently called for accelerating the deployment of the new SPAS system, new tracking system, but that is going to be counterproductive unless they correct the information that is going into it. To simply accelerate the deployment of a new system while the old system has many inaccuracies is not going to deal effectively with the problem.

I think, Mr. Chairman, that the problem with FAA's data integrity is symptomatic of a greater deficiency with oversight of the inspectors. I think the majority-the overwhelming majority of FAA inspectors are hard-working, they're dedicated, they're loyal, but the fact is that they are in desperate need of training and more instruction.

I'll give you another example. With the help, back in 1995, of an inside informant, the FAA sent a special team to Florida. They identified a litany of deficiencies with a particular airline. This carrier was not, for the record, ValuJet.

The violations were so egregious the carrier was effectively playing an undetected game of Russian roulette with the aircraft and the unsuspecting public. Despite having conducted over 500 inspections the previous year at that airline, local FAA inspectors had failed to uncover the seriousness of the situation.

In the absence of the inside informant who alerted the FAA, it's unlikely that those deficiencies ever would have been detected.

I think, to pour a little more salt into this wound, not a single inspector who conducted those 500 inspections was ever reprimanded or received any kind of discipline for overlooking those serious deficiencies.

I will comment very quickly, Mr. Chairman-I know time is running on the need for minimum standards. GAO has indicated it's very hard to make any kind of an assessment on the part of the FAA if they don't have some minimum standards that the inspector is required to meet. When you go in for an automobile checkup for your inspection there is a list. We have brakes, we have horns, we have lights, we have other things. There is nothing in the FAA's inspection process which details what is being inspected.

The attitude of the FAA is, "Well, we have qualified inspectors and we trust their judgment." But it makes it virtually impossible to determine whether an inspector is making simply a cursory kick at the tires or whether they are, in fact, making a detailed examination of particular aircraft.

I also want to point out that, prior to our hearing, my staff interviewed over 200 individuals within the FAA, and the private sector, and since the hearing I had over 150 letters, faxes, and phone calls from throughout the industry, including more FAA inspectors. They're saying we have just scratched the surface, keep going, because there are serious problems.

I want to give you one example of a problem that has really troubled me. As Congressman Oberstar mentioned, it's very difficult to get FAA inspectors to come forward. They are terrified about their