Officials from all eight airlines said that they allow pilots to wear hearing protection such as earplugs or noise-reducing headsets, and officials from five of the airlines said that they allow flight attendants to wear ear plugs onboard the aircraft in operation. FAA does not generally prescribe airline policies on hearing protection, other than specifying that hearing protection must not interfere with safety-related duties. The policies reported by the eight airlines GAO spoke with regarding availability and use of hearing protection for pilots and flight attendants varied. Officials GAO interviewed from the labor groups representing pilots and flight attendants told GAO that while noise levels likely do not exceed the OSHA standard, they believe crewmembers nonetheless are sometimes exposed to unsafe levels of noise that could result in fatigue or hearing loss.
Officials from the eight selected airlines in GAO’s review said that they have conducted testing of cabin noise levels and have also found noise levels to be below OSHA’s standard. Officials from the four aircraft manufacturers GAO spoke with said that they test cabin and cockpit noise levels in each new model of aircraft they produce and have found noise levels below OSHA’s standard. Also, over the past 5 years, the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), which is a safety database maintained by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has received 10 reports about communications difficulties caused by normal ambient noise levels out of more than 26,000 total reports on safety incidents. No reports related to aircraft noise were submitted to four of FAA’s safety-related databases in the last 5 years. For example, since assuming authority to enforce its noise standard in the cabin, OSHA has received two complaints related to ambient aircraft noise out of more than 600 complaints related to commercial aviation. OSHA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have received few complaints from crewmembers related to aircraft noise levels. None of the studies GAO reviewed, which included eight that measured noise in the cabin and four that measured noise in the cockpit, found levels that clearly exceeded the OSHA standard, though two of the studies found that noise over long durations in certain types of aircraft may reach the more restrictive exposure limit published by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). While information on aircraft noise is limited, the studies and data GAO reviewed suggest that aircraft cabin and cockpit noise levels likely do not exceed the noise exposure standard established by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
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