A US federal watchdog issued a report saying the Federal Aviation Administration does not have the proper staffing, planning, and data access it needs to effectively oversee United Airlines’ maintenance practices, raising fresh questions about how the agency monitors large carriers when inspector teams run thin.
The US Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General said the FAA’s oversight was “insufficient to oversee safety risks,” and found that the FAA has sometimes conducted inspections virtually instead of delaying them because it did not have enough inspectors available.
The audit traces back to early 2024, when the FAA increased scrutiny of United after a string of safety-related incidents and the watchdog opened a review of the FAA office responsible for overseeing the airline’s maintenance program.
At the center of the report is a basic problem of understaffing. The watchdog found the FAA office overseeing United had vacancies in about a third of its positions and suffered from high turnover. The report said the agency’s failure to fill vacancies and plan for retirements left the office understaffed and ill-equipped to carry out its responsibilities.
The watchdog also highlighted how staffing levels can drift out of alignment with the fleets inspectors are supposed to cover. Reuters reported that United operates more than 500 Boeing 737 aircraft, while the FAA assigned four inspectors to that fleet. By comparison, Reuters reported three inspectors covered United’s 53 Boeing 767s. The report uses those kinds of mismatches to argue the FAA needs better resource planning to keep pace with the workload at a carrier of United’s size.
The findings come in a sensitive moment for the FAA, which has faced repeated criticism over the last two years about staffing, oversight consistency, and the pace of safety reforms. The watchdog report does not claim United’s aircraft are unsafe to fly today, but it does argue the FAA’s oversight model can leave gaps when staffing and experience levels do not match the demands of complex maintenance programs.
The FAA said it is working on broader changes to staffing and surveillance, according to Reuters’ account of the agency’s response.
For passengers, the story is less about a single airline and more about broader FAA oversight. Airlines can operate huge fleets across multiple hubs, maintenance bases, and contractors, but the FAA needs enough experienced inspectors, planning tools, and timely access to carrier data to spot trends before they become safety issues.