The New FAA Approach to Compliance is Working

May 3, 2018 - The FAA’s new Compliance Philosophy initiative is paving a proactive, more meaningful way for the aviation community to follow best practices and promote aviation safety. The goals for this new philosophy seek safety-enhancing, educational activity that corrects errors immediately in order to make the pilot a better aviator. This positive course of action is contributing to a much-improved exchange of safety information and actual improvements in safety and accident rates.

This counters years of the aviation community associating FAA compliance solely with enforcement action, which had created a negative tone and fearful community that was not always forthcoming with critical safety information and data for fear of enforcement jeopardy.

Though enforcement of rules and regulations is not going away and will continue to remove those who intentionally disregard safety, the new Compliance Philosophy places safety awareness and education above all. Most importantly, it educates and develops those pilots who are striving for safe flight but made an honest error, and removes those who believe the rules don’t apply to them.