Federal Watchdog Finds FAA Too Short-Staffed to Properly Oversee United Airlines Maintenance
Washington, United States — The Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t have enough inspectors to adequately monitor maintenance at the nation’s third-largest airline, and the agency has resorted to conducting safety checks remotely rather than sending people to actually look at airplanes. That’s the grim assessment from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General, which released its findings on Friday after an audit spanning May 2024 through December 2025.
The OIG launched its review in early 2024 after United Airlines found itself at the center of a string of embarrassing and, at times, alarming maintenance-related incidents — wheels separating from aircraft during takeoff, a Boeing 737 rolling off a runway in Houston, a fuselage panel detaching in flight. The FAA responded by placing United under enhanced oversight. But as it turns out, the agency charged with doing the overseeing was barely equipped to do the job.
Four Inspectors for 521 Airplanes
The numbers are striking. The FAA’s Certificate Management Office responsible for United currently assigns just four airworthiness inspectors to the carrier’s entire Boeing 737 fleet — a group of roughly 521 aircraft that includes both Next-Generation and MAX variants and accounts for more than half of United’s total fleet. That works out to approximately 130 aircraft per inspector.
Compare that to the Boeing 767 fleet: three inspectors for 53 airplanes.
CMO managers told auditors that the 737s generate the most unplanned maintenance events and are significantly more complex in terms of avionics than other aircraft types in United’s fleet. And yet the fleet with the highest maintenance demand gets the thinnest oversight coverage.
The situation extends beyond the 737. As of July 2025, one-third of authorized positions at the United CMO sat vacant. High turnover has compounded the problem, draining institutional knowledge and forcing remaining inspectors to triage their workloads. Accident and incident investigations come first. Surveillance second. Certification activities only if there’s time left over.
Virtual Inspections, Real Blind Spots
Perhaps the most troubling finding involves how the FAA handled the staffing crunch. Rather than postponing inspections it couldn’t adequately perform — which is what agency policy actually requires — the CMO directed inspectors to conduct reviews virtually. In practice, that meant checking boxes from a computer screen instead of walking the hangar floor.
The OIG reviewed 33 virtual inspection reports and found that in nearly half of them, 50 percent or more of the inspection questions had been marked “not observable.” Inspectors told auditors their front-line managers instructed them to go virtual when staffing or travel funding wasn’t available. The watchdog warned that remote inspections create genuine safety risks because inspectors can miss or misidentify maintenance problems they aren’t physically present to examine.
It’s worth noting that the FAA wrapped up its enhanced oversight of United in October 2024, concluding that it found no significant safety issues. The OIG’s findings raise an uncomfortable question: how confident can anyone be in that conclusion if the inspectors conducting the reviews couldn’t see what they were supposed to be looking at?
A Pattern Across the Industry
United isn’t the only carrier where the OIG has flagged FAA oversight gaps. Previous audits identified similar staffing and surveillance shortcomings at American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Allegiant Air. The broader picture suggests a systemic resource problem at the FAA’s Flight Standards division, not simply an issue with one airline’s CMO.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s January 2026 findings on the fatal mid-air collision between an American Airlines regional jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington — which killed 67 people — also pointed to systemic FAA failures, adding further weight to questions about the agency’s capacity to fulfill its safety mandate.
SMS Data Access Remains a Problem
The audit surfaced another concern: FAA inspectors face significant barriers when trying to access United’s Safety Management System data. SMS records are critical for understanding the root causes of maintenance problems, but airlines have been reluctant to share them because the data isn’t categorically protected from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. Inspectors, meanwhile, haven’t been properly trained on what data they’re entitled to request and how to go about obtaining it.
The result is a feedback loop where the agency responsible for safety oversight can’t fully access the safety data it needs to do its job effectively.
The OIG issued six recommendations, including reevaluating staffing formulas to account for fleet size, developing a concrete plan to address inspector shortages, and providing better education on SMS data access. The FAA concurred with five of the six and partially agreed with the remaining one, pledging to complete corrective actions by December 2026.
Whether the FAA can follow through on its commitments remains an open question — particularly given the political and budgetary headwinds facing federal agencies. The inspector shortage didn’t develop overnight, and it won’t be solved that way either. In the meantime, four inspectors are still responsible for keeping tabs on 521 Boeing 737s. That math hasn’t changed.
Photo Credit: Tim Gouw
This article was produced in accordance with our editorial standards. Aviantics maintains strict editorial independence.
