FAA is still working to implement safety reforms in wake of Boeing 737 Max crashes
The FAA has also overseen the ongoing development of a safety management system at Boeing in line with international safety standards.
Three years after two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max planes, the Federal Aviation Administration is still working to implement many of the safety reforms that were passed in their wake.
In a report to the House Transportation Aviation Subcommittee last week, Administrator Steve Dickson said there have nonetheless been major changes to the relationship between the Chicago-based Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) and the FAA and the agency’s oversight of aerospace manufacturers.
Lawmakers pressed Dickson for details on how those reforms have been rolled out and in some cases expressed frustration with the speed of the agency’s implementation of the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act and the 2020 Aircraft Certification, Safety and Accountability Act.
Some 63% of around 300 individual provisions in the bills have been enacted, Dickson said.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson says there have been major changes to the relationship between Boeing and the FAA and the agency’s oversight of aerospace manufacturers.
The two bills will continue to reshape how planes and plane parts across the entire U.S. aerospace industry are reviewed, Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, who chaired the hearing, told the Business Journal. In particular, they have overhauled the way Organization Designation Authority units — the technical experts who report safety data to the FAA — are governed.
“Those units will be much more accountable to the FAA first than they have been in the recent past,” Larsen said. That will serve to eliminate “over-delegation of oversight to manufacturers” that contributed to the design failures of the Renton-made 737 Max.
“Even though the crashes were Max crashes, it happened within a system that applies to all manufacturers in the U.S.,” Larsen said.
The hearing was the first chance for Congress to check in with the FAA since the Aircraft Certification, Safety and Accountability Act was passed last December.
Larsen added the bill was not “about Boeing as it is about the entire manufacturing supply chain.”
Other representatives asked for assurances that similar issues wouldn’t be repeated within Boeing’s 777X and 787 Dreamliner programs. Dickson said the company has increased its voluntary disclosures and suspended production on the Dreamliner to work out issues it and regulators identified, steps that weren’t taken in the case of the Max.
The FAA has also overseen the ongoing development of a safety management system at Boeing in line with international safety standards.
That’s all in an effort to root out and prevent “single points of failure,” in the aerospace system, Dickson said.
A Boeing spokesperson said the company would “never forget” the victims aboard the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights or their families.
“We are implementing the hard lessons learned from this chapter in our history and continuing the work necessary to rebuild trust,” with regulators and customers, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Reforms include internal changes and “full cooperation and transparency” with the FAA, the spokesperson said.
Lawmakers also asked for updates on the FAA’s hiring efforts, including measures to ensure it was engaging diverse candidates, to support the increased oversight. The 2020 bill added $27 million per year to the FAA budget to recruit and retain engineers, safety inspectors and other specialists to provide technical expertise.
That enabled the FAA to “expand its ability to hold manufacturers accountable and to be much more aggressive in the certification of parts,” Larsen said.
Dickson also fielded questions from legislators about pilot training, barriers within planes to prevent passengers from reaching the cockpit, and how the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal employees may affect holiday travel. bizjournals.com