Par 10-1 Page 41 CHAPTER 10. PERSONNEL TRAINING
10-1. MAINTENANCE PROGRAM TRAINING REQUIREMENTS. You can find your specific air carrier maintenance training requirements in certain sections of part 121 subpart L and part 135 subpart J. Sections 121.375 and 135.433 require you to have a training program that ensures each person (including inspection personnel) who determines the adequacy of work done for you is fully informed about procedures and techniques and new equipment in use and is competent to perform his or her duties. There is an additional implied training requirement in part 121 subpart L and part 135 subpart J based on your responsibility to provide competent personnel for the proper performance of your maintenance program. A training program is the logical means for ensuring that maintenance personnel are competent. FAA regulations allow you to develop a training program fitting your particular needs.
10-2. TYPES OF TRAINING. Some of the possible types of training in your training program are initial training, recurrent training, specialized training, competency-based training, and maintenance provider training. You should select the appropriate training for your personnel, including your maintenance provider personnel, which you should base on an assessment of training needs. This assessment is a reflection of the required knowledge, skills, and ability to properly accomplish a given task or function and the current capability of those who you would assign a particular task or function.
10-3. INITIAL TRAINING. You should provide initial training right after you hire an employee, or when your existing employees begin to work on new equipment or a new assignment. Your initial training program may include subjects such as employee indoctrination or orientation, maintenance department policies and procedures, maintenance recordkeeping and documentation, aircraft systems or ground equipment, specific skills (for example, avionics, composite repair, aircraft run-up and taxi), skills upgrade, human factors, task-specific training, hazmat, or Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations familiarization. Your initial training should also include a competence-based assessment of employees. This evaluates an employee’s previous training and experience and helps identify his or her specific individual training needs. The objective is to provide training that addresses the gap between required competence and the competence an individual already has.
10-4. RECURRENT TRAINING. Recurrent training is education occurring on a repetitive basis. You must provide maintenance personnel with the information and skills necessary to maintain your standard of competence. This training also accommodates the introduction of new aircraft; aircraft modifications; new or different ground equipment; new procedures, techniques, and methods; or other new information. Your recurrent training, although occurring on a repetitive basis, may not adhere to a defined schedule. You should not provide repetitive information in recurrent training unless it is needed to maintain the desired degree of competence. Your recurrent training may include:
• Continuing competency training designed to maintain regulatory and certificate currency requirements.
• Refresher training on a seldom-accomplished task or seldom-used skill.
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• Update training for particular tasks or skills. Update training can include training bulletins, bulletinboard items, self-study tasks, and computer-based instruction (CBI).
• Any other continuing education or training that may not be provided on a defined schedule.
10-5. SPECIALIZED TRAINING. Your specialized training should focus on competence in specific tasks or areas of responsibility, such as RII, borescope, nondestructive testing, or flight control rigging. You might provide this training with initial or recurrent training. You do not need to limit it to maintenance subjects, but instead may include management skills training for new supervisors, computer skills, or other training necessary because of a change in an individual’s duties and responsibilities.
10-6. MAINTENANCE PROVIDER TRAINING. Your training program must provide appropriate information to each employee of a maintenance provider about your specific program. The training should include function-specific training appropriate to each person’s job assignment or area of responsibility. You do not need to provide training to maintenance provider personnel in areas that do not concern them. For example, training on aircraft log procedures and minimum equipment list (MEL) procedures would not be required for aircraft interior cleaners, but would be required for maintenance personnel assigned to oncall maintenance for you.
NOTE: If your maintenance provider has specific types of training for its personnel, you do not need to duplicate that training for those individuals.
However, you must ensure your maintenance provider actually has provided the training and that the training meets your own needs and training standards. This could be a CASS work-in-progress audit.
10-7. COMPETENCY-BASED TRAINING. Although air carriers historically have provided a specified number of maintenance training hours to ensure employees have the competencies needed for their jobs, studies have shown that it may be better for you to train to a competency-based standard. You do not have to perform this type of training on a defined schedule or for a specific number of hours. Rather, you should test each individual to evaluate what training he or she needs, and then use these evaluations to identify those personnel who retain a high level of subject competence and who may not require a particular block of instruction. Conversely, you also should identify those individuals who require more training.
Training to competence permits you to tailor training programs to the specific requirements of your individual maintenance personnel and maintenance providers.
a. When to Require Competency-Based Training. You could use competency-based training to raise an employee’s level of competence to that level required by the individual’s duties and responsibilities. You should have procedures to determine when an individual requires competency-based training. You may determine the need for this type of training through pre- or post-employment testing, or through the analysis and corrective action functions of your CASS.
If you use competency-based training, it should specifically address the lack of competence. In some instances, competency-based training may consist of an appropriately knowledgeable person simply reviewing procedures with an employee through on-the-job training (OJT). You should design competency-based training to fix an immediate knowledge or skill deficiency and
Par 10-7 Page 43 (and 44) the training may focus on one individual or a small group. You may include competency-based training in your initial or recurrent training requirements.
b. Competency Deficiencies. For those circumstances where you identify a competency deficiency through investigation of an event, your competency-based training should show an individual what happened, why it happened, and demonstrate, in a positive manner, how to prevent it from happening again.
c. Competency Improvement Training. You should orient your competency improvement training toward correcting personnel competence deficiencies that you have identified through your CASS.
Par 11-1 Page 45 CHAPTER 11. CONTINUING ANALYSIS AND SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
11-1. BACKGROUND OF THE CASS. Introduction of the CASS requirement resulted from an FAA industry study of a series of maintenance-related air carrier accidents occurring during the 1950s. The study found that, in many cases, the primary causal factor of an accident was a fundamental weakness or weaknesses in the air carrier maintenance program. The study found that in some cases maintenance personnel failed to accomplish required maintenance tasks or failed to accomplish the task correctly. They simply didn’t follow the manual. In other cases, the study found that the maintenance program, even when followed as planned and documented, was not effective in preventing the situation that led to the accident. It did not produce the desired results.
a. Regulations. Responding to this finding, we introduced regulations (§§ 121.373 and 135.431) that require you to establish and maintain a system for the CASS of the performance and effectiveness of your maintenance program.
b. Correcting Deficiencies. These regulations further require that you include a process in your CASS to correct any deficiency identified in your maintenance program, regardless of whether you did the work or had a maintenance provider do the work.
11-2. CASS IS A SAFETY MANAGEMENT TOOL. A CASS is your system for managing safety as it relates to maintenance functions. As a tool to manage safety, it is part of your overall structure of policies and procedures that you use to ensure your operations are to the highest possible degree of safety. It is a structured, methodical process that helps you reach your maintenance program objectives. CASS is the only management system that we currently mandate by regulation. If you use it properly, your CASS becomes an inherent way of doing business for you, and helps you to promote a culture of safety in your company by providing a formal process for your employees to identify and correct safety deficiencies. As you will see in the following brief discussion of the structure of a CASS, the same objectives of measuring and continuously improving the performance (program execution) and effectiveness (program results) of a major function (maintenance) apply equally to all safety-related maintenance program functions that you must manage.
11-3. BASIC CASS PROCESSES.
a. CASS Processes. Your CASS is a risk-based, closed-loop system that has four basic processes:
(1) Surveillance. An information gathering/audit process you use to collect data to measure your program execution and measure your program results.
(2) Analysis. An analysis process you use to identify any maintenance program deficiencies and any necessary corrective actions.
(3) Corrective Action. A planning process you use to ensure that your corrective actions are implemented.
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(4) Followup. A performance measurement process that you use to verify that your corrective actions are effective. This is also an information gathering and analysis process, thereby closing the loop.
b. Using an Audit Program.
(1) During the first step, surveillance, you will gather and obtain data using an audit program to support measurement of performance (program execution). Your audit program should be well structured, based on risk assessment, and accomplished by individuals trained and skilled specifically at auditing. Consistent with the wording of the regulation, your primary type of audit should be work-in-progress audits that evaluate if the worker is following the manual.
Your auditors would also look at areas such as manuals and other maintenance technical data, aircraft condition, actual in-process maintenance practices, training, publications, and ground operations.
(2) In addition, information gathering to obtain data that will support the measurement of effectiveness (program results) is generally a collection of flight operational data such as accidents/incidents, mechanical delays and cancellations, in-flight engine shutdowns, unscheduled landings, engine performance, pilot log book writeups, and unconfirmed component or part removals.
c. Data Analysis. In the second step, you will analyze the data to identify indications of maintenance program weaknesses. Your data analysis should be accomplished by individuals experienced and/or trained as analysts. One of your key objectives here is to not only identify a weakness, but to determine its root cause. This is where your knowledge of human factors becomes critical.
d. Developing Corrective Action. Based on the results of your analysis, the third step is for you to develop a corrective action, if necessary, again taking into account human factors so that your corrective action is likely to be successful. Once you determine what the corrective action is, you will develop and implement a corrective action plan.
e. Conduct a Followup Measurement Process. To close the loop, the fourth step of your CASS will have you conduct a followup measurement process using surveillance and analysis to verify that your corrective action has effectively corrected the deficiency that you identified. You can design this followup data-gathering process specifically for the issue of interest, or you can make it a part of your continuing surveillance that is the first step of your CASS. Determining if you need a special information gathering procedure is part of your analysis that you accomplished in step three.
f. Aspects of Surveillance. Note that both the initial and followup surveillance can and should have proactive and reactive aspects to them. In the case of audits, by auditing systems and procedures, as well as specific transactions, the analysis of audit results can identify weaknesses in a process. Correcting these weaknesses before a problem results is a proactive approach. An audit also may uncover a missed or improper maintenance action. Investigating this finding and correcting the immediate problem is a reactive process. Developing and implementing a corrective action to prevent a similar future event is equally important for improving the
Par 11-3 Page 47 maintenance program, and the regulations require it. Similarly, your analysis of operational performance data from a systems point of view can result in identification of a system’s weakness before a specific unwanted event, such as a cancellation, occurs, which is a proactive process. Investigating and correcting an undesirable operational event related to the maintenance program after it has occurred, though reactive, also is a necessary and desirable procedure.
11-4. RISK-BASED DECISIONS. All effective CASSs take into account the need to manage risk to an acceptable level, as well as the practical limitations that you must face when addressing deficiencies. Consequently, you must set priorities and make choices for planning audits and other information gathering activities, analyzing data, and selecting and implementing corrective actions. You should tie setting such priorities directly to a risk assessment process so that the resulting maintenance program achieves its objectives.
11-5. SCOPE OF A CASS. The CASS monitors all 10 elements of your maintenance program:
• Airworthiness responsibility,
• Air carrier maintenance manual,
• Air carrier maintenance organization,
• Accomplishment and approval of maintenance and alterations,
• Maintenance schedule,
• RII,
• Maintenance recordkeeping system,
• Contract maintenance,
• Personnel training, and
• CASS.
11-6. CASS DESIGN PRINCIPLES.
a. Attributes of System Safety.
(1) Clear authority,
(2) Clear responsibility,
(3) Specific written procedures,
(4) Effective controls,
(5) Performance measures, and
(6) Well-defined interfaces.
b. CASS Design. These six system safety attributes should be the starting point for the design of your CASS. It should be clear who in your organization is responsible for and who has authority over the CASS. You should not divide responsibility/authority into two or more parts due to the likely possibility that activity such as auditing and operations data analysis are poorly
Page 48 Par 11-6 coordinated. Typically, in addition to an individual with overall CASS responsibility, you should have a management board or committee to ensure good communications and coordination of all CASS functions and to maintain regular senior level management involvement. This oversight group also can provide a form of control over critical aspects of your CASS operation and measure the performance and effectiveness of the CASS itself.
c. CASS Interfaces. In addition to the many elements within your maintenance organization, there are many interfaces between the CASS and functions or organizational elements of a typical air carrier that are outside maintenance. Some of the more obvious examples are engineering, flight operations, purchasing, safety, and the FAA. It also is important that you clearly define and coordinate your CASS relationships to your other programs (if they exist) such as Internal Evaluation Programs (IEP), flight operations quality assurance (FOQA) programs, voluntary disclosures, and Aviation Safety Action Programs (ASAP).
11-7. CASS PERSONNEL REQUIREMENTS.
a. Effective CASS Skills. An effective CASS requires certain skills that you may not have readily available within your maintenance organization. For example, auditing skills are not automatically inherent in those skilled in accomplishing maintenance. Analysis capability, particularly related to root cause determination, risk analysis, and consideration of human factors, is specialized and generally requires specific training and experience.
b. Sharing Personnel. For all operators, but particularly for the smaller ones, required CASS personnel can be shared. You may choose to have your personnel perform CASS functions as a collateral duty, and you may choose to hire someone outside your organization to accomplish some or all of your CASS functions. However, it is essential that you recognize the need for knowledge and skills in your CASS that do not necessarily coincide with those knowledge and skills resulting from many years of maintenance experience repairing airplanes.
NOTE: You can find more detailed information concerning developing and implementing a CASS in AC 120-79.
Par 12-1 Page 49 CHAPTER 12. ADMINISTRATIVE
12-1. WHOM TO CONTACT. If you have questions about the material in this AC or would like to provide feedback, you may use the following communication links. By mail: Manager, Air Carrier Maintenance Branch, AFS-330, Federal Aviation Administration Headquarters, 5th Floor, 950 L’Enfant Plaza, S.W., Washington, DC 20024. By phone at: 202-385-6435.
12-2. REGULATORY REFERENCES. You can find the regulations that underlie this AC in 14 CFR. A summary of specific regulations:
• Scope of Regulatory Applicability, §§ 119.1(c), 121.1(b), and 135.1(a)(2);
• Air Carriers’ Responsibility for Airworthiness, and for Performing Maintenance, §§ 121.363 and 135.413;
• Air Carrier Maintenance Programs, § 119.5, § 119.49, § 121.133, § 121.367, or § 135.21;
• Air Carrier Maintenance Program Manual, §§ 121.133, 121.137, 121.367, 121.369,
135.21, and 135.427;
• Air Carrier Maintenance Organization, §§ 119.65, 119.67, 119.69, 119.71, 121.365, and
135.423;
• Air Carrier Maintenance Time Limitations, §§ 119.49, 121.135, and 135.23;
• Performance and Approval of Maintenance and Alterations, §§ 43.3(f), 43.7(e), 91.403,
91.407, 91.413, 119.1(c), 121.1(b), 121.379, 135.1(a)(2), and 135.437;
• Performance and Approval of Maintenance and Alterations Performed by Other Persons, §§ 119.1(c), 121.1(b), 121.379, 135.1(a)(2), and 135.437;
• Air Carrier CASS, §§ 121.373 and 135.431;
• Air Carrier Personnel Training, §§ 121.367(c), 121.375 and 135.433;
• Air Carrier Maintenance Recordkeeping and Reports, Part 121 Subpart V, §§ 43.9(b),
121.369(c), 121.380, 135.415, 135.417, 135.427, and 135.439(b);
• Maintenance Log, §§ 121.563, 121.701, 121.709, and 135.65;
• Service Difficulty Reports (SDR), §§ 121.703 and 135.415;
• Required Inspection Items (RII), §§ 121.365, 121.369, 121.371, 135.427, and 135.429;
• Mechanical Interruption Reports, §§ 121.705 and 135.417; and
• Alteration and Repair Reports, §§ 43.9(b), 121.707, and 135.439(a)(2)(vi).
12-3. OTHER RELATED REGULATIONS AND GUIDANCE MATERIAL. For more information, consult current editions:
• Title 14 CFR parts 1, 3, 43, 26, 91, 119, 121, and 135;
• Title 49 U.S.C. § 46310, Reporting and Recordkeeping Violations;
• AC 120-59, Air Carrier Internal Evaluation Programs;
• AC 120-73, Damage Tolerance Assessment of Repairs to Pressurized Fuselages;
• AC 120-77, Maintenance and Alteration Data;
• AC 120-78, Acceptance and Use of Electronic Signatures, Electronic Recordkeeping Systems, and Electronic Manuals;
• AC 120-79, Developing and Implementing a Continuing Analysis and Surveillance System;
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• FAA Order 8110.103, Alternative Methods of Compliance (AMOC);
• FAA Order 8620.2, Applicability and Enforcement of Manufacturers’ Data;
• FAA Order 8900.1, Flight Standards Information Management System (FSIMS);
• Air Transport Association (ATA) MSG–3, Operator/Manufacturer Scheduled Maintenance Development; and
• Report Number AD-A066-579, Reliability-Centered Maintenance.
12-4. OBTAINING REFERENCE MATERIAL (current editions):
• You can find this AC at http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/advisory_circulars/.
Operators can find this AC and FAA Order 8900.1, Flight Standards Information Management System (FSIMS), at http://fsims.faa.gov. The public can find this AC and FAA Order 8620.2, Applicability and Enforcement of Manufacturers’ Data, at http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/orders_notices/.
• You can request MSG-3 information from the Airlines for America (A4A); 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Suite 1100, Washington, D.C. 20004. You can also contact A4A online at https://publications.airlines.org/.
• You can get Report Number AD-A066-579, Reliability-Centered Maintenance, from the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service (NTIS), 5301 Shawnee Road, Alexandria, VA 22312. You can reach their Sales Desk at 1-800-553-6847 or 703-605-6000, 8 a.m.—6 p.m. EST, Monday—Friday. You can also access NITS information online at http://www.ntis.gov/.