Kin urge overhaul of FAA’s top posts
WASHINGTON — Two years after the death of their daughter in a field outside the Ethiopian capital, Michael Stumo and Nadia Milleron stood Wednesday on a broad Washington sidewalk and described how they say senior U.S. officials fell short of transforming the nation’s system meant to keep airplanes safe.
The family of Samya Rose Stumo, who was 24 when a Boeing 737 Max crashed on March 10, 2019, met Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and assailed the senior leadership and pace of change within the Federal Aviation Administration, the biggest component of the new secretary’s department.
“It was a preventable death,” said Milleron, who, along with her husband and son, Tor, wore photographs of a smiling Samya on lanyards around their necks.
“She would have been fighting now,” Stumo said, adding that his daughter was on the plane in connection with her work of improving health services for others. The family members said they would have preferred to mark the anniversary by mourning in private, but felt compelled to raise safety concerns about the plane and agency to help prevent another tragedy.
“One of the problems within the current FAA culture [is that] managers are actively excluding the most senior engineers when they consider them an obstacle to quick resolution of difficult issues.”
– Joe Jacobsen, FAA aircraft certification engineer
In an interview before the meeting, Stumo said he has lost faith in FAA administrator Steve Dickson’s ability to lead the agency, urging that the Biden administration replace both Dickson and Ali Bahrami, the FAA’s associate administrator for aviation safety.
They reiterated that message in their meeting with Buttigieg. Stumo said the secretary was attentive to the issues they raised and pledged to seek answers to many of their questions, but, as expected, did not make commitments on personnel. Buttigieg’s office did not immediately respond Wednesday to questions about the meeting.
The meeting with Buttigieg comes after a senior FAA aviation safety engineer wrote the family a detailed and wrenching account of what he said were ongoing problems at the agency.
In the letter, Joe Jacobsen, who has worked for 25 years as an FAA aircraft certification engineer, said “one of the problems within the current FAA culture” is that “managers are actively excluding the most senior engineers when they consider them an obstacle to quick resolution of difficult issues.”
Jacobsen said the FAA had not acknowledged the role its management errors played in two Max crashes, first in Indonesia and then in Ethiopia, that killed 346 people.
“FAA leadership seems to be denying any wrongdoing in the delegation failures,” Jacobsen said, a reference to a system that gives Boeing employees broad authority to oversee the safety of its airplanes on the agency’s behalf. “The Department of Transportation may need to replace the highest levels of FAA management to reverse that attitude,” Jacobsen wrote to the family.
The FAA said in a previous statement it has made substantial progress toward implementing changes, but its timeline in response to the inspector general’s report said putting all recommendations in place could take five years.
The agency did not immediately respond Wednesday to questions about statements from Stumo and Jacobsen. The FAA told the Seattle Times, which first reported Jacobsen’s concerns about the Max, that it “recognizes that the ability of employees to freely report concerns without fear of punishment is critical” to improving safety.
Boeing said last month that employees have “made meaningful improvements across our company, including organizational changes, enhanced compliance policies and training initiatives, and the creation of new mechanisms to further ensure transparent safety and quality reporting.”
Buttigieg, who says he once aspired to be an airline pilot, has pursued a broad agenda, from pandemic-related safety and climate change to crafting a vast infrastructure package. Wednesday’s anniversary was a reminder of the highly complex and deeply fraught realm of aviation oversight.
The FAA’s certification that the Max was safe, despite a flawed automation system that turned deadly, shook confidence in the FAA.
Dickson, a former captain and senior vice president at Delta Air Lines, was named to this role during the second half of the Trump administration and confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term with no Democratic support, an unusual partisan split for the position.
During his own confirmation hearing in January, Buttigieg was pressed by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Senate committee that oversees transportation, on whether he would prioritize safety changes to address FAA oversight concerns.
Buttigieg said he would, adding that “we’ll be working right away” to implement legislation passed by Congress last year in response to the Max crashes. “We need to make sure that engineers and the FAA are in the driver’s seat when it comes to safety,” he said.
“Are you willing to make changes in personnel if necessary?” she asked.
“Yes,” Buttigieg responded.
A report by the Transportation Department’s internal watchdog found communication problems between key FAA divisions.