Mike Whitaker, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, said Thursday that his agency’s new hands-on oversight of Boeing will ensure that air travel is safe, even as the planemaker’s shift to an appropriate safety culture will took considerable time.
“It is the beginning of a long journey. There needs to be a fundamental change in the company’s safety culture in order to holistically address its quality and safety challenges,” Whitaker said at a US Senate Commerce Committee hearing. “There’s a lot of work to be done. .”
Until Boeing gets there, he said FAA inspectors working inside Boeing’s factories and its suppliers will closely monitor airplane production.
After the shocking mid-air explosion of a Boeing 737 MAX fuselage panel on an Alaska Airlines flight in January, the FAA initially deployed two dozen inspectors to Boeing’s MAX final assembly plant in Renton and fuselage assembly plant in Wichita, Kan. operated by supplier Spirit AeroSistemat.
These were inspectors with decades of experience, he said, “a very senior team.”
Whitaker said there are now more than 30 inspectors in place at Boeing and Spirit, and the FAA is hiring with the goal of deploying 55 inspectors.
He added that the FAA is putting “its best people on this. It’s certainly the most important issue we’re dealing with right now.”
“Air travel continues to be the safest mode of travel by a very, very wide margin,” Whitaker said. “We’ll keep it that way.”
Changing the way surveillance is done
Whitaker, who took over as FAA administrator in October, acknowledged that the Alaska incident in January exposed the weakness of the agency’s prior oversight.
“The FAA’s approach was too simplistic, too focused on document audits and not focused enough on inspections,” he said. “We’ve been very much in reactive mode, waiting for an event to happen and analyzing events to figure out what to do differently. So we’re moving to a much more proactive approach.”
In addition to deploying additional inspectors focused on manufacturing, Whitaker said the FAA will closely monitor the implementation of the plan Boeing presented on May 30 to renew its control over manufacturing quality.
This includes measures to increase the amount of training mechanics receive and to simplify the instructions and installation protocols provided, especially for new hires with limited aerospace experience.
Whitaker said Boeing will measure the employees’ abilities to perform the required work.
The ultimate goal is a comprehensively implemented Safety Management System involving Boeing and its suppliers that highlights risk trends in advance through employee feedback.
This requires a company culture that encourages employees to speak up about safety issues without fear of retaliation from managers focused on keeping up the pace of production.
Whitaker said the FAA will insist on having a clear view of internal employee safety reports.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., asked Whitaker to ensure that Boeing directly involves its unions — the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the Society of Professional Aerospace Engineering Employees — in developing the system. security management.
Markey displayed several posters of internal Boeing slides from a training course that taught managers how to deal with union organizing.
He said it exposed how Boeing “encourages managers to limit interactions between union and non-union workers,” as well as “concerted efforts to move Boeing’s critical safety functions away from the union stronghold in Everett.”
Markey said Boeing’s hostility to organized labor is a “direct detriment to safety.”
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said “we need to fix this security.”
“There’s a lot to do to be competitive in aviation and grow jobs, but safety is what allows us to do that,” Cantwell said.