The Federal Aviation Administration, under criticism for its handling of ValuJet Airlines, needs sweeping reform so it can learn from past mistakes, according to a study released Wednesday.
Current reform efforts, said the study, have done nothing to change the agency's long-term structural problems.It said the ticket tax helping to finance the FAA should be ended and the agency should be fully funded by user fees paid by the airlines it regulates.
The study by the Aviation Foundation, a research organization, and the Institute of Public Policy at George Mason University in suburban Virginia, said financial reform was the most direct and fastest way to reform the agency.
The study said that with the FAA's air traffic controllers commanding the biggest share of the agency's budget, the FAA now considers the controllers its clients and so gets no feedback from its ultimate users.
But there would be constructive feedback if the airlines and passengers funded the agency, it said.
Funding by user fees only would "bring the FAA and the industry it regulates into a closer partnership," it said.
The ticket tax fluctuates with the price of fares and has little bearing on FAA costs of handling takeoffs and landing, where a user fee brings the cost to consumers more into line with the cost of FAA services.
"We do not feel that any of the recent actions taken to reorganize the FAA have done anything to change the long-term structural problems that plague it," the study said.
Following the crash of low-fare ValuJet flight 592 in Florida on May 11, killing all 110 people on board, the FAA intensified its yearlong investigation of the firm for alleged shortcomings in its maintenance program.
On June 17, the agency grounded the airline and on June 18 it announced reforms that include a stepped-up program of surveillance of new airlines and the early retirement of its senior safety official.