WASHINGTON: FAA’s Flight Standards Service will officially be re-organized on August 20.
“What’s important here is the change in mindset of how we’re doing business,” FAA Fight Standards Director John Duncan said at a recent industry conference, adding that he doesn’t “see any magic” in simply re-arranging an organisational chart, according to a media report.
Gone will be the duplicative regional structure in place for years. Instead of handling business, such as managing certificates, based on regional proximity, FAA is grouping activities together by subject. The new organization places an executive director above four branch offices: Air Carrier Safety Assurance, General Aviation Safety Assurance, Safety Standards, and Foundational Business. Each will have its own director—a de facto accountable executive.
All of this is part of FAA’s Future of Flight Standards Initiative, the agency’s “service-wide effort to transform the culture of Flight Standards into an organisation that facilitates critical thinking, interdependence, and consistency to better serve aviation safety,” it explains in an industry update on the program.
“The reorganised Flight Standards will be a streamlined structure that will allow for faster response times, single points of accountability in each functional organization, greater agility and consistency.”
The new organisational structure presents “a much more streamlined opportunity to elevate issues that you may have to the right folks and get the answers you need, and get consistent responses,” Duncan said. That last part—consistency across the country—is crucial, Duncan emphasized. Right now, the regional offices work “relatively independently,” Duncan acknowledged. “We see this as fixing that.”
