FAA Chief: Boeing Has 'More Work to Do' After Resetting Relationship With Federal Aviation Admin

Earlier this year, the US Department of Justice fined Boeing $2.5 billion and criminally charged the company with conspiracy to defraud the Aircraft Evaluation Group of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The feds alleged that Boeing hid information from investigators probing the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes that killed a combined 346 people.

FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson told members of the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that Boeing is not yet out of the woods concerning safety reform and transparency with the federal agency.

"Boeing is not the same as it was two years ago but they have more to work to do", Dickson told the US senate committee on Wednesday, emphasising that the FAA has "reset the relationship with Boeing in no uncertain terms".

Dickson's comments came as part of the committee's hearing on the "Implementation of Aviation Safety Reform".

During his oral testimony, Dickson revealed that the FAA is promoting the use of its new safety management systems, or SMS, which allows an organisation to actively search and identify safety issues and address the root cause.

"Currently, four design and manufacturing organisations, including Boeing, have voluntarily adopted SMS, with six others in progress", he said in remarks provided to the FAA.

The FAA chief told lawmakers that he had "made it clear internally that we always do the right thing when it comes to safety — and that I have the workforce's back on that".

Dickson received some pushback from committee members, including Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), who did not appear convinced that Boeing had made safety advancements across the board. She also referenced the concerns of aviation whistleblowers.

"Line engineers had early warnings, whether it's the [Boeing] 787 battery issue, or whether it was this issue related to synthetic airspeeds or the complexity of automation and overload of pilots in the system", Cantwell said. "Those line engineers weren't listened to".

Cantwell noted that she intends to release a report on aviation whistleblowers before the year ends.

She also pressed Dickson about deadlines, noting that the FAA had failed to reach a September 2021 deadline on a workforce review that was previously recommended by the US Department of Transportation Inspector General in 2015.

"We want to get on the same page about needs", Cantwell said, warning that oversight will suffer and could receive less vital funding when deadlines are not met.