(Bloomberg) -- The top US aviation safety regulator said his agency plans to boost the number of government inspectors placed inside Boeing Co. factories this year as he faced a grilling by lawmakers over the agency’s oversight of the embattled planemaker.
The Federal Aviation Administration aims to have 13 inspectors at Boeing’s 737 Max final assembly plant in Renton, Washington, compared with 11 currently, FAA Administration Michael Whitaker told a Senate panel on Wednesday. It’s part of a broader push to place 55 inspectors on-site at Boeing and its suppliers’ facilities by the end of the year, up from 46 today, he said.
An Alaska Airlines 737 Max left the Renton facility without four bolts meant to secure a door-sized panel that blew off the plane shortly after takeoff in January. The accident led to revelations of a series of manufacturing and quality-control breakdowns inside Boeing’s facilities that lawmakers are examining.
“We’ve substantially changed our oversight model with Boeing,” since the accident, said Whitaker, who has led the agency for a little less than a year. The FAA imposed a cap limiting 737 Max production “because we were not willing to see production go up until we were certain that each airplane was being manufactured safely.”
Members of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations seized on the January incident and issues exposed after two 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 as they questioned the agency’s work with Boeing.
Years after the crashes that killed 346 people, “the same questions persist about what the FAA is doing to ensure that Boeing is properly designing and building its aircraft,” said Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the subcommittee.
Whitaker acknowledged during the hearing that the regulator’s oversight has been too reactive in the past. “It’s been too static and not dynamic enough to adjust to circumstances that change,” he said.
Whitaker is overseeing a push to revise how the agency identifies and manages risk in the aviation system. The FAA is also monitoring real-time metrics of how Boeing’s factories are operating to gauge improvements, such as the amount of manufacturing tasks that are performed out of the normal sequence.
Missouri Republican Josh Hawley questioned whether the relationship between FAA and Boeing personnel has been too cozy.
Whitaker said he has not seen that during his tenure, though he acknowledged that the certification of the Max and the fallout from the crashes showed “some culture problems between the two.”
He said the FAA today is focused on ensuring there isn’t “regulatory capture,” including by rotating the agency’s inspectors and executives.
Production Pressure
Prior to the hearing, Democratic committee staff released an internal Boeing survey that found many factory workers still felt pressure to prioritize speed over quality, months after the January accident.
The survey of about 2,100 Boeing workers in May found that less than half of front-line manufacturing personnel stated that schedule pressures didn’t cause their team to lower standards.
In a statement responding to the staff memo, Boeing said it’s “taken important steps to foster a safety culture that empowers and encourages all employees to share their voice.”
“Under the FAA’s oversight, we are continuing to implement our comprehensive plan to strengthen Boeing’s safety management, quality assurance and safety culture,” the company said.
--With assistance from Julie Johnsson.
(Updates with Senate hearing details from the first paragraph.)
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