Most Common Part 139 Discrepancies
By Mike Speidel

In June, I had the privilege of sharing a microphone at the FAA Western Pacific Region's 8th Annual Conference with two of my favorite FAA Airport Certification Safety Inspectors, Steve Oetzell and George Aiken. Naturally, the focus of our discussion was airfield markings and more specifically, the persistent challenge they represent to the industry. While I thought our joint presentation was informative, I found their previous session particularly eye-opening.

The first session on the first day of the conference was entitled, "Preparation for an Issue Free Periodic Inspection". FAA-AWP's two current safety inspectors (Steve and George) co-presented suggested approaches to an FAA inspection from their perspectives. They elaborated on what they look for and what their approaches and thought processes were before and during airport inspections.

The FAA inspectors also shared a simple set of data that represented all recorded discrepancies during Part 139 airport inspections within their region from about January 2016 to May 2017. The discrepancies were categorized by type and sorted by frequency in a bar chart like the one shown below.

The yellow column in the table represents Part 139 discrepancies recorded during airport inspections involving signs, lights, and markings. "Markings are the tall tree", to quote a recently retired FAA inspector. That euphemism could not be more accurate, according to this data. The next most frequent type of discrepancy is recorded almost a third as often.

I'm not much of a gambler, but I would bet the rest of FAA regions report the same trend. Airfield markings are part of the most frequent, and therefore the most likely type of discrepancy airports will see as a result of their Part 139 safety inspections, at least in this region. If it were my airport, I would place special emphasis on the most probable of issues: I would reevaluate the approach to marking maintenance and I'd start with an Airfield Marking Assessment from an unbiased expert.

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