Aviation Business Journal 3rd Quarter 2012 - 61

NATA Maintenance Perspective
Continued from page 59

step away from the FAA’s practice of pounding industry with a big hammer when the FAA discovered a violation. All that did was drive safety issues deeper under ground, allowing them to fester and possibly cause a much larger event down the road. The move by the FAA in the 1990s to get industry to volunteer or disclose a potential violation, perform a root cause analysis, and submit a corrective action plan to correct the problem was the beginning of the Voluntary Disclosure Reporting Program (VDRP). Fast forward to 2012, and we have a fully functioning and matured VDRP that is open to air carriers, repair stations, qualified fractional ownership programs, and production approval holders (PAH), to name a few. The program provides incentives for an eligible FAAregulated entity to identify, report, and correct instances of regulatory noncompliance voluntarily. When all of the criteria are met for filing a self-disclosure, the FAA will accept the voluntary disclosure and forego legal enforcement action. The FAA also protects the release of information to the public for qualifying disclosures and corrective actions. In a nutshell, the criteria for filing a VDRP are:

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The certificate holder notifies the FAA of the apparent violation immediately after detecting it and before the agency learns of it by other means.

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The apparent violation must be inadvertent. The apparent violation does not indicate a lack, or reasonable question, of qualification of the certificate holder.

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Immediate action, satisfactory to the FAA, is taken upon discovery to terminate the conduct that resulted in the apparent violation.

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The certificate holder, qualified fractional ownership program, or PAH has developed or is developing a comprehensive fix and schedule of implementation that is satisfactory to the FAA. The fix must include a followup self-audit, in addition to any FAA audits.

There are several aspects of the criteria that are important to understand. First and foremost, the apparent violation must stop. In my experience, this can be a big issue, especially if you are an air carrier that just discovered you have not complied with an AD and you have airplanes in operation. What
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Aviation Business Journal | 3rd Quarter 2012

Aviation Business Journal 3rd Quarter 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Aviation Business Journal 3rd Quarter 2012