House bill aims to fix Boeing safety lapses

The top Democrat and Republican on the House’s transportation committee unveiled a bill Monday aimed at addressing some of the problems that contributed to two fatal crashes of Boeing’s 737 Max jet.

Many of the changes in the bill, which is expected to be formally announced Tuesday, would fix safety lapses that Democrats on the committee identified in a scathing report less than two weeks ago. The report blamed Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration for a series of safety failures.

“For the past 18 months, the Boeing 737Max has been synonymous with the tragic loss of 346 innocent people, a broken safety culture at Boeing and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA,” Rep. Peter De Fazio of Oregon, the Democratic chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said in a statement. “And like many people, I was alarmed and outraged by many of the findings that were revealed over the course of our committee’s investigation into the certification of this aircraft.”

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, the committee’s top Republican, and Rep. Rick Larsen, the Washington state Democrat who leads the aviation subcommittee. It includes dozens of changes, including strengthening whistleblower protections and requiring experts to review

Boeing’s safety culture.

The bill also requires that manufacturers give the FAA, airlines and pilots detailed information about any system that can alter a plane’s flight path without input from a pilot. One such system, MCAS, has been blamed, at least in part, for the crashes of the Max in Ethiopia and Indonesia.

The legislation would also strengthen federal oversight by providing the FAA resources to hire more specialists to work on airplane certification.