Allyson Versprille | (TNS) Bloomberg News
Boeing Co. will need three to five years to rebuild its safety culture that regulators have found to be rife with shortcomings, the top U.S. aviation safety official said.
“It is not a six month program,” Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Whitaker told members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday. “I think it’s a long-term project and I’ve talked to the board and CEO about the need to be in it for the long term.”
The embattled planemaker is working to improve its safety and quality practices under close FAA scrutiny after a fuselage panel blew off a 737 Max jet shortly after takeoff in January. Subsequent FAA audits revealed a series of manufacturing and safety lapses at its factories.
“There is progress but they’re not where they need to be yet,” Whitaker said during a hearing by the panel’s aviation subcommittee.
Lawmakers are examining Boeing’s actions before and after the January accident, as well as the FAA’s role as the aviation industry’s chief watchdog. Whitaker is slated to testify again on Wednesday before an investigative subcommittee in the Senate.
The agency has been criticized by some lawmakers for failing to catch Boeing’s problems sooner. Whitaker has previously acknowledged that his agency should have been more hands-on in its oversight of Boeing prior to the January accident. The FAA has since taken steps to bolster its oversight, such as placing more inspectors on the ground at the planemaker’s factories.
The FAA has also begun to overhaul its own processes for identifying and addressing aviation safety risks across the agency, Whitaker told the House panel.
Whitaker said the aim is to adopt a proactive stance to “identify and mitigate risks before they manifest themselves as events.”
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, and Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois introduced legislation in August that would require the FAA to boost its safety management system and analyze prior lapses.
Long-term change
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Following the January mishap, the FAA capped production of the 737 Max and required Boeing to submit a comprehensive plan to fix the issues at its factories. That plan, provided to the regulator in May, includes a series of performance metrics that the agency is monitoring in real time to measure the company’s progress.
In an interview earlier this month, Whitaker said that Boeing’s factories must show that they’re healthy before the FAA will allow the planemaker to increase production rates beyond that cap.
The long-term mission is to rebuild Boeing’s safety culture, Whitaker said during the hearing. FAA will measure progress toward that goal by studying employee surveys and looking at whistleblower reports to gauge whether workers feel comfortable flagging problems.
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