Panel Republicans question experience of FAA nominee
Biden pick emphasizes his leadership skills and pledges safety focus
More than seven months after President Biden tapped him to lead the Federal Aviation Administration, Phillip Washington faced sharp questioning from Senate Republicans who argued Wednesday at a hearing considering his nomination that he is unqualified.
Democratic supporters responded that Washington would bring proven leadership to a bureaucracy that needs a break from the status quo.
The FAA has been under acting leadership since April as the nation’s aviation system has faced successive bouts of travel delays and cancellations, safety oversight challenges and a meltdown of an aging pilot-alert system in January that shut down the nation’s airspace. There has also been a cluster of near-misses in recent weeks at the nation’s airports, including one Monday at Boston’s Logan International Airport, where the FAA said a Learjet took off without clearance while a Jetblue plane was preparing to land.
Washington, the chief executive of Denver International Airport and a 24-year Army veteran, headed Biden’s transition team for transportation after the 2020 election. The lines of disagreement over his nomination within the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation were drawn quickly.
“The U.S. Army taught Mr. Washington how to get things done, and get things done right,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell (DWash.), the chair of the committee.
But Sen. Ted Cruz ( Tex.), the panel’s top Republican, said Washington’s nomination shows the Biden administration is treating the FAA administrator position as a “patronage job.”
“He does not have any experience in aviation safety,” Cruz said. “This is quite simply a position he is not qualified for.”
The longtime transit official in Los Angeles and Denver has not been a commercial airline pilot, as have some of his recent predecessors atop the agency, including Steve Dickson, who was nominated by President Donald Trump in 2019, and current FAA acting administrator Billy Nolen.
Washington said he would bring a different, and needed, skill set to the agency at a critical moment.
“Leadership is a real thing. It is a real skill,” Washington said with his son, Phillip Jr., sitting behind him. Such leadership, at the world’s third-busiest airport and in his military career, is “directly transferrable” to the work he would do at the FAA, he said. “Motivating people, inspiring people, getting people to do what they otherwise may not do, is a real skill.”
Supporters say Washington will bring management expertise to the sprawling safety agency, which has struggled to modernize legacy computer systems and is wrestling with congressionally mandated changes after the crashes of Boeing 737 Max airliners in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019. The FAA, relying heavily on oversight by Boeing employees, certified the jets as safe despite a flawed automated flight-control system that ended up overpowering pilots, killing 346 people, according to congressional and crash investigators.
“Phil breaks the mold of past FAA administrators in important ways,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper (D- Colo.). “He’s not an airline industry insider, using this role as a position for the industry to be policing itself.”
Republicans pressed Washington to answer rapid-fire technical and procedural questions, with Sen. Ted Budd (N.C.) repeatedly directing the nominee to speed up his answers.
“Mr. Washington, can you quickly tell me what airspace requires an ADS-B transponder? Quickly, please,” Budd said.
“Thank you for the question, Senator,” Washington responded. “Not sure I can answer that question right now.”
(ADS-B, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance-broadcast, transmits information on an airplane’s location, altitude and speed, and the FAA provides a “decision tree” to help pilots determine when it’s required.)
Budd asked Washington to describe the six types of special use airspace over military bases. He asked about types of certifications required by the FAA. Washington said he did not know. The senator asked what causes an airplane to spin or stall, and Washington said he would lean on career employees and safety specialists at the FAA.
“Let’s just keep going, see if we can get lucky here,” Budd said at one point, before asking about minimum separation distances and drone regulations, finally concluding: “You know, the FAA can’t afford to be led by someone who needs on-the-job training.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DMinn.) followed by noting that Washington rose to the rank of command sergeant major, the highest noncommissioned officer rank an enlisted service member can reach.
“That kind of experience, you have to adapt to a lot of changing circumstances and I would assume make in-the-moment decisions all the time,” Klobuchar said. “And you work with the people around you to make those decisions?”
“Yes,” Washington said, sticking to a pattern of responding with disciplined and sometimes brief answers, even to sympathetic questioners.
It wasn’t until he was prompted in a later round of questioning by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-alaska) that Washington addressed more fully what the senator termed the “fair question” regarding on-the-job training. “Why don’t you take a minute to just address that,” Sullivan said.
“I think safety is more than just one individual,” Washington responded. “It takes an organization. Can we build a safety culture within an organization? I have done that in every organization I’ve been in. I will do that at FAA. Safety has been my number one priority, in the U.S. Army and every transportation organization I’ve been in.”
Washington added that, in his mind, the question is: “Can I build that culture, and rebuild that culture, within FAA, based on everything that I’ve done, based on how I have led men and women in this country? And I think the answer is ‘yes.’ ”
After the hearing, Cantwell said a committee vote would come soon, perhaps within a few weeks.
“The biggest challenge we face right now at the FAA is not to have a cozy relationship with the industry,” but to strengthen its safety culture by adding highly qualified technical workers, Cantwell said, something she said Washington would excel at doing. “Running a large organization that has become overly bureaucratic and maybe subject to regulatory capture is another thing that I think he will be very strong in.”