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By Hugh Cameron
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A U.S. senator has asked the Federal Aviation Administration to conduct a "root cause analysis" of its oversight of Boeing, and warned that its lenient treatment of the aerospace giant may have led to the company's safety issues.
In a letter sent from Maria Cantwell to FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker on Saturday, the Washington senator wrote: "I have serious concerns about FAA's audits of Boeing and its suppliers, including whether the results of these audits indicate ongoing production issues or ineffective regulatory oversight, or both."
Cantwell currently serves as chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. In June, Her committee conducted a hearing on aviation safety, in which Cantwell pressed Whitaker on the regulator's oversight of Boeing, and asked the FAA chief what he would do to change the safety culture at Boeing.
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During the hearing, Whitaker admitted that his agency was "too hands off" in its treatment of Boeing prior to the January 5 Alaska Airlines door plug blowout.
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Following the January incident, Cantwell requested that the FAA perform a special audit to determine whether Boeing was in compliance with the regulator's safety requirements for aircraft production.
Whitaker complied, and the audit found 97 instances at Boeing and 21 at its supplier, Spirit, in which planes did not satisfy FAA standards.
According to Cantwell's letter, the regulator has performed a total of 298 audits of Boeing and Spirit over the past two years, none of which resulted in any enforcement actions.
Cantwell said that this raises "serious questions" about the FAA's passive treatment of Boeing, and whether it "accepted corrective actions from Boeing and its suppliers that were inadequate to actually fix the underlying root causes of the identified noncompliances."
"It remains unclear how FAA will improve its oversight of Boeing and ensure that Boeing addresses the root causes of the noncompliances identified from all these recent audits," Cantwell said. "While the FAA has rightly focused on Boeing's production quality shortcomings, I am concerned about whether FAA action—or inaction—contributed to Boeing's problems."
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In amending these issues, Cantwell requested that the FAA perform "a thorough root cause analysis to identify any deficiencies" in its treatment of Boeing, develop a plan for implementing corrective actions against the company, report its progress to the senate committee, and "provide information as to how FAA will strengthen its policies to improve its oversight of aviation manufacturers."
The FAA told Newsweek that it intends to "respond directly" to Cantwell, without giving further details.
Cantwell recently demanded that Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun appear before her committee, in preparation for a new piece of legislation aimed at improving the FAA's oversight mechanisms and requiring it to adopt agency-wide safety management systems.
"FAA's effective regulatory oversight is key to ensure Boeing, other aviation manufacturers, and the United States remain the gold standard for aviation safety," Cantwell said. "To this end, we believe it critical for FAA to undertake this process of self-evaluation."
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