Faced with a new Boeing crisis, the FAA is taking a harder line

When a Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed off the coast of Indonesia in 2018, killing all 189 people on board, the Federal Aviation Administration allowed other Max planes to continue flying. Less than five months later, in early 2019, another Max 8 crashed in Ethiopia, killing another 157 people. Even then, days passed before the agency stopped the planes from flying.

When a door panel flew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft in early January, the FAA responded much more quickly. Within a day, it had grounded dozens of similar Max 9 planes.

“That's night and day compared to what happened in 2019,” said William J. McGee, a senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, a research and advocacy group.

The agency didn't stop the grounding. Last month it said it would ban Boeing from increasing production of the 737 Max line until the company addressed quality control issues, a major blow to the planemaker's ability to ramp up production as it tries to compete with its main rival, Airbus. The regulator also opened an investigation into Boeing's compliance with safety standards and announced an audit of the Max 9 production line.

The FAA's handling of the latest Boeing crisis will come under scrutiny Tuesday when the agency's administrator, Mike Whitaker, testifies before a House subcommittee. The door panel accident has already prompted a new wave of questions from Congress about how the nation's air safety regulator is carrying out its oversight role.

The agency has long relied on aircraft manufacturers to perform safety work on behalf of the government, a practice that came under scrutiny after the Max 8 crashes and is now drawing renewed attention. In the case of the Max 9 incident, Boeing employees may have improperly reinstalled the door panel, also known as a door plug, after it was opened at the aircraft manufacturer's factory in Renton, Washington. were at fault, the FAA may face criticism over whether it adequately controlled Boeing's production processes.

However the problem with the plane arose, the FAA's quick and aggressive response when the door plug blew out in mid-air was unusual for the agency. It is considered the most influential aviation regulator in the world and has been dubbed the “tombstone” agency over the years because it only takes action to address potential safety problems after people have died. But in recent weeks, Mr. Whitaker has made clear that the FAA plans to take a hard line on Boeing, a manufacturing giant with a huge economic footprint.

“As Administrator Whitaker has said, this can no longer be business as usual for Boeing,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “The FAA and the Department of Transportation are seriously reviewing every aspect of oversight, with all options on the table to ensure these issues are fully addressed.”

The FAA declined to make Mr. Whitaker available for an interview, but in a statement last month he called Boeing's quality assurance problems “unacceptable.” The agency allowed the grounded Max 9 planes to return to the skies after inspection in late January.

Even before the harrowing Max 9 plane episode, the Biden administration was already under scrutiny for its stewardship of the nation's aviation system. A meltdown at Southwest Airlines around Christmas 2022 caused widespread travel disruptions, and an FAA system outage the following month forced the grounding of flights nationwide. In addition, a series of near-collisions at US airports raised new safety concerns.

Mr. Whitaker, who served as the FAA's No. 2 official during the Obama administration, took over in October. He was just over two months into his job when the door plug incident occurred on January 5, shortly after Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 took off from Portland, Oregon. While the plane landed safely and no one was seriously injured, the incident could have been much more serious if it had occurred at cruising altitude.

The episode put the FAA in a familiar position: dealing with a crisis involving the 737 Max, Boeing's best-selling plane.

Mark Lindquist, an attorney for the families of the victims of the Max 8 crashes and who now represents passengers on the Alaska Airlines flight, said the FAA's decision to immediately ground similar Max 9 planes made sense given the backlash the agency faced after the previous fatal crashes. .

“It almost seemed like the FAA almost took this opportunity to prove that they weren't just some tombstone agency and that they weren't in bed with Boeing and that they were going to prove that change by grounding this plane, even though no one died. ” said Mr. Lindquist.

After the 2018 and 2019 crashes, which were caused in part by flight control software that pushed the nose of each plane down, the FAA faced sharp criticism for the way it policed ​​Boeing and the authority it gave the company to stand in for the safety of its own aircraft. airplanes.

a report from the Democrats in the House of Representatives concluded that the regulator had “failed in its oversight of Boeing and its certification” of the 737 Max, and Congress passed legislation intended to improve the aircraft certification process and strengthen the FAA's oversight of aircraft manufacturers.

While the Max 9 accident has been a major black eye for Boeing, calling into question its quality control practices, the company has also put new scrutiny on how the FAA ensures newly produced planes can fly safely.

The aircraft that lost the door plug had just entered service in November. Before that, the FAA inspected the plane and found three deficiencies, which Boeing addressed before the regulator cleared the plane to operate, the agency said. The inspection was earlier reported by The Washington Post.

The FAA did not provide details about the deficiencies, and the agency would not say whether the inspection should have found problems with the door plug if it had not been properly installed.

Members of Congress have been closely watching the FAA's oversight of Boeing after the door plug incident. Ahead of Mr. Whitaker's testimony on Tuesday, House lawmakers sent him a letter asking him to be prepared to answer a series of questions about Boeing and the agency's oversight of aircraft production.

In her own letter last month, Sen. Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington and chair of the Commerce Committee, asked the FAA for records related to the agency's oversight of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, the supplier that made the door plug.

Ms. Cantwell wrote that early last year she asked the FAA to conduct a special audit of Boeing's production systems. The agency's then-acting leader responded that such an audit was not necessary.

“In short, it appears that the FAA's oversight processes have not been effective in ensuring that Boeing produces aircraft capable of operating safely as required by law and FAA regulations,” Ms. Cantwell said last month in a statement.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the door plug accident. Jennifer Homendy, chair of the board, said last month that the FAA's actions would be examined as part of the investigation.

It remains to be seen whether the latest 737 Max crisis will result in lasting changes in how the FAA oversees Boeing's production of new planes.

One step the agency could take is to reclaim some of the safety work currently delegated to employees at Boeing. In a statement last month, Mr. Whitaker said it is “time to reexamine the delegation of authority and assess the associated security risks.” He added that the agency is considering bringing in an independent third party to oversee the inspections conducted by Boeing.

At a news briefing on Monday, Jodi Baker, an FAA safety official, said the agency wanted to revamp its oversight work to include what she described as more “oversight” of aircraft production on the ground.

But the FAA does not have unlimited resources. Taking responsibility for safety tasks currently performed by Boeing employees could come at a significant cost to the agency, which is already struggling to convince Congress to give it the funding it needs.

“The implication is that regulators can wave a magic wand and solve the problems,” said David M. Primo, a professor at the University of Rochester who has studied plane crashes and their effects on policy. “I'm not sure that's realistic in this case.”

Santul Nerkar contributed reporting from New York.