The Federal Aviation Administration does not have enough inspectors or resources to properly monitor United Airlines’ maintenance operations, according to a federal watchdog report released on February 20, 2026. The audit by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General found that staffing shortages, high turnover, and a reliance on virtual inspections instead of required in-person reviews have left significant safety risks unchecked. The findings land at a moment when United continues to grow its fleet and route network, raising direct questions about whether federal regulators can keep pace with the airline’s expansion.
Watchdog Finds FAA Inspection Staff Cannot Keep Up
The OIG report, filed under project ID AV2026014, carries a title that doubles as an indictment: the FAA’s oversight of United Airlines’ maintenance practices is hindered by inadequate inspection resources. The audit details how the FAA office responsible for United has struggled with persistent vacancies and employee departures, creating gaps in the agency’s ability to verify that the carrier is meeting federal safety standards. In practical terms, this means fewer eyes on aircraft maintenance work at one of the country’s largest airlines.
One of the most striking findings is that FAA inspectors substituted virtual reviews for required in-person inspections. That workaround may have kept paperwork moving, but it undermined the physical verification that maintenance oversight is designed to provide. When an inspector cannot walk a hangar floor or examine an aircraft component firsthand, the entire regulatory framework loses its teeth. The report includes six recommendations aimed at closing these gaps, among them a proposed “resources not available” control that would formally flag when the FAA lacks the capacity to carry out required oversight activities and force leadership to confront the resulting safety risk.
Six Recommendations Target Staffing and Workplace Culture
Beyond the resource shortfall, the OIG pushed the FAA to rethink how it assigns and retains inspectors. One recommendation calls for a reevaluation of staffing rules governing the office that oversees United, an acknowledgment that the current formulas for allocating personnel are not matching the scale or complexity of the airline’s maintenance footprint. Another urges the FAA to commission an independent workplace survey, a step that suggests the watchdog sees internal culture problems, not just budget constraints, as part of the dysfunction. If inspectors feel overburdened, unsupported, or discouraged from raising concerns, even well-designed oversight systems can falter.
Together, the six recommendations paint a picture of an oversight office that is both understaffed and potentially demoralized. The OIG’s call for better tracking of inspection backlogs and more transparent reporting of missed surveillance tasks underscores how far the agency must go simply to understand the true scope of its shortfalls. For passengers, the practical consequence is straightforward: the federal agency charged with ensuring aircraft are safe to fly has acknowledged, through its own inspector general, that it cannot fully do that job for United. The FAA did not offer a detailed public statement of its own in response to the findings. Instead, the agency referred questions to a letter it sent to the OIG that was included in the report, a move that limits public visibility into what specific corrective steps and timelines the agency is prepared to commit to.
A Pattern of Oversight Failures Across Major Airlines
The United audit is not an isolated case. The DOT inspector general has issued similar findings about FAA oversight at other major carriers over the past several years, repeatedly warning that the agency’s surveillance system is not keeping pace with industry growth and technological change. A 2020 report found the FAA needed to improve its oversight to address maintenance issues at Allegiant, concluding that inspectors did not always verify whether corrective actions were effective. That same year, a separate audit concluded the FAA had not effectively overseen Southwest Airlines’ safety risk controls, raising concerns that systemic hazards could go undetected in day-to-day operations.
In 2022, the watchdog determined the FAA lacked effective controls to verify whether American Airlines managed maintenance risks in line with federal standards, again citing weaknesses in data, staffing, and follow-through on identified problems. This track record matters because it reveals a structural problem rather than a one-off lapse confined to a single carrier. Each audit identified similar weaknesses: insufficient staffing, incomplete or poorly used safety data, and oversight processes that looked robust on paper but failed in practice. The fact that these deficiencies keep recurring across different airlines and different years suggests the FAA has not translated prior audit recommendations into lasting institutional change. When the same watchdog office keeps finding the same problems, the reasonable inference is that the fixes are not working or are not being implemented with enough urgency.
2024 Safety Incidents Triggered the Audit
The watchdog opened the audit in 2024 after a series of safety incidents involving United drew public attention and raised questions about whether the airline’s rapid growth had outpaced its maintenance systems. Among them was a March 8, 2024, event in Houston where a United 737 MAX slid off a taxiway, an episode that fortunately did not result in serious injuries but highlighted potential vulnerabilities. An NTSB preliminary report on that incident noted landing gear damage and uncertainty about runway conditions. The pilot reported that brakes seemed less effective than usual, a detail that pointed to possible maintenance or operational concerns that regulators would be expected to scrutinize closely.
That Houston incident was part of a broader cluster of events that put United under heightened regulatory scrutiny. The FAA issued a statement on May 16, 2024, confirming that it had not approved expansion of United’s routes or fleet and that a Certificate Holder Evaluation review was ongoing. The agency said safety would determine the timeline for any approvals and noted that FAA personnel were present for final inspections of newly delivered aircraft, an unusually hands-on posture for a major carrier. By the time the OIG launched its audit, the question was no longer whether United warranted extra attention, but whether the local FAA office actually had the people and tools to provide it. The 2026 report’s conclusion, that resources were insufficient to oversee safety risks at United, suggests the answer was no.
What the Recurring Gaps Mean for Air Safety
Most coverage of the OIG report has focused on the staffing numbers and the specific recommendations, but the deeper issue is how much risk the public is willing to tolerate in the name of regulatory efficiency. Modern commercial aviation remains statistically very safe, a fact owed in part to layers of oversight that are designed to catch errors before they lead to accidents. When an inspector general finds that required in-person inspections are being replaced with virtual reviews because there simply are not enough people to do the work, that safety net begins to fray. The United audit shows that on-the-ground surveillance (walking the hangar, talking to mechanics, and physically examining aircraft) is being treated as optional in practice, even though it is central to the FAA’s own oversight model.
The report also underscores the importance of independent watchdogs in a system where regulators can become stretched thin or overly reliant on the airlines they oversee. The DOT inspector general is part of a broader community of federal oversight offices coordinated through the inspectors general council, which exists to strengthen accountability across agencies. By documenting patterns of missed inspections, cultural problems, and unimplemented recommendations, these auditors provide Congress and the public with a roadmap of where safety systems are failing. Whether that roadmap leads to more inspectors, better data tools, or changes in FAA leadership priorities will depend on how policymakers respond. For now, the United report stands as a warning that the gap between the FAA’s statutory responsibilities and its real-world capacity is widening at one of the nation’s largest airlines, and that similar vulnerabilities may persist across the industry unless the underlying resource and culture issues are addressed.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
