A government watchdog report criticized the FAA for lax oversight of American Airlines. The agency didn’t do enough to ensure American Airlines rectified maintenance issues when they were discovered.
The Transportation Department’s inspector general said that in 171 cases it looked at, FAA inspectors accepted American’s response ‘that did not identify the true root cause of the problem.’
In one case, American operated a plane with a broken emergency-evacuation slide for almost three years before informing the FAA.
