FAA review finds Boeing safety employees lack expertise

The Federal Aviation Administration has leveled new criticisms at The Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) over its choice of engineers to oversee its aircraft certification, a Reuters report said.

In a letter to the company Wednesday, the agency told Boeing several of its appointees had trouble understanding its certification processes and meeting its expectations.

A Boeing spokesperson said in a statement to the Business Journal that it is “committed to ensuring the highest levels of safety and quality in all that we do, and that includes the important work of Boeing employees who are designated as authorized representatives.”

The FAA will soon begin to take a more active role in the selection of candidates under the Organization Designation Authorization, the program through which it delegates some testing, inspection and certification functions to manufacturers’ employees. Beginning in January, under the new rules, the FAA will be required to develop best practices and guidance on the technical qualifications required for members of the ODA unit. It will also be tasked with reviewing existing unit members and approving or rejecting new candidates Boeing puts forward.

“We respect the FAA’s oversight role and look forward to strengthening the ODA selection process and the program overall,” the Boeing spokesperson said.

An inquiry by the agency is already underway into whether the company exerts undue pressure on its ODA unit members, after surveys it conducted showed a third of the engineers tasked with safety oversight felt pressured not to report concerns to regulators.

The FAA itself faced questions from lawmakers in October about the speed with which it has implemented the reforms passed in the wake of two deadly crashes of the Renton-built Boeing 737 Max in 2018 and 2019. Administrator Steve Dickson said he had “reset” the relationship with Boeing at the beginning of his tenure in 2019 and has worked to root out “single points of failure” in aerospace production. bizjournals.com