FAA chief defends handling of Boeing Max safety approval
WASHINGTON — The acting chief of the Federal Aviation Administration defended his agency’s safety certification of the Boeing 737 Max jetliner, the plane involved in two deadly crashes, and the FAA’s decision not to ground the jet until other regulators around the world had already done so.
During a congressional hearing, the FAA official, Daniel Elwell, also stood by the agency’s decades-old policy of using employees of aircraft manufacturers like Boeing to conduct inspections on their own companies’ work.
Boeing is updating an automated flightcontrol system that has been implicated in the two crashes involving the 737 Max. Elwell said he expects Boeing to complete its work “in the next week or so,” after which the FAA will analyze the software changes and conduct test flights.
“In the U.S., the 737 Max will return to service only when the FAA’s analysis of the facts and technical data indicate that it is safe to do so,” Elwell said.
Meanwhile, the Senate Commerce Committee held a short hearing for President Donald Trump’s choice to take over the FAA: Stephen Dickson, a former Delta Air Lines pilot and executive.
During the two-hour questioning of Elwell by the House aviation subcommittee, lawmakers pressed him on the FAA’s reliance on designated Boeing employees during the planes’ certification process.
Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., told Elwell that the public believes “you were in bed with those you were supposed to be regulating, and that’s why it took so long” to ground the planes.
“The FAA has a credibility problem,” declared the subcommittee chairman, Rick Larsen, D-Wash.
The 737 Max is Boeing’s best-selling plane and it is built in his home state of Washington. Larsen said Congress must help make the public feel safe about flying because “if they don’t fly, airlines don’t need to buy airplanes,” and “then there will be no jobs” in aircraft manufacturing.
Other lawmakers defended the FAA and Boeing and suggested that the Oct. 29 crash of a Lion Air jet off Indonesia and the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Max were due at least partly to pilot error. A total of 346 people were killed in the crashes.
“It bothers me that we continue to tear down our system based on what has happened in two other countries,” said Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo.
Boeing is already the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. Boeing customers Southwest Airlines and American Airlines and their pilot unions have received subpoenas related to that investigation; United Airlines, which also flew the Max until it was grounded in March, declined to comment, although its pilot union confirmed that it too has received a subpoena.