U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, delivered the following opening remarks at today’s hearing to review the findings and recommendations from the FAA’s Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) Expert Review Panel’s final report. The landmark Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act required the FAA to convene an independent expert panel to review the safety management processes and culture of ODA holders like Boeing and make recommendations to address any safety deficiencies.

Read the testimonies and watch the hearing here.

Chair Senator Cantwell’s Opening Statement As Delivered: 

Good morning, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will come to order. I want to thank our witnesses who are here today on the FAA ODA expert panel report. I also want to recognize our former colleague, Peter DeFazio, is in the audience and I thank him for his work on the ACSAA legislation with this Committee.

Today, we will hear from three experts on the Organization Designation Authorization (ODA) Expert Panel’s final report.

I appreciate the witnesses being here today, but I want to acknowledge, this is directly from the report that “the successful completion of this report was made possible with the cooperation and assistance of the following organizations: the Federal Aviation Administration, the Boeing Company, American Airlines, Bell Textron Inc., the University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering, and special thanks to Brittney Goodwin, Mina Mitchell and Heather Thorson, and analysis supported by Data and Assessments Team within the office of FAA’s ODA Office.”

I want to mention that because you’re the representatives of all of those people today. We could have had many people here, but wanted to appreciate the work of the two chairs of the committee, and for you being here as representatives of these individuals today.

We are joined by Dr. Javier de Luis, Lecturer of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Dr. Tracy Dillinger, Manager for Safety Culture and Human Factors at NASA; and Dr. Najmedin Meshkati, Professor, University of Southern California School of Engineering, Aviation Safety and Security Program.

The expert panel’s 53 recommendations regarding Boeing’s ODA, Safety Management System and safety culture serves as an important catalyst for future aviation safety legislation. While we have made safety improvements through the aircraft certification reform law—and some of that is still playing out with the new Administrator—who I think is more aggressively taking the responsibilities of the Act seriously—we look to build on those advancements with a 5-year FAA reauthorization bill and some enhanced safety features, but we’re not going to stop there. There is more to be done to implement the recommendations from your report. 

We owe a debt of gratitude to those who are here today. I want to especially thank you, Dr. de Luis, for being here. I can’t imagine the tragedy of losing your sister in one of the MAX crashes. And then continuing to be involved in trying to correct and improve our safety culture. I so appreciate you being here and the active role that you have played in all of these discussions. 

The expert panel’s final report focused on the importance of the Safety Management Systems (SMS).

While Boeing was required to adopt an SMS in 2015 as part of an FAA settlement agreement, and while the FAA later adopted standards for voluntary SMS programs, the expert panel’s report makes it clear now that we need a real SMS with teeth. Both Boeing and the FAA need strong and effective Safety Management Systems—not in name—but in reality.

Safety Management System might for the public sound like management strategies that maybe they shouldn’t pay attention to, but when it comes to this management strategy that revolves around aviation, it is about saving lives. 

That is why section 102 of ACSAA required that the FAA develop a real SMS standard for aviation manufacturers, and the FAA expects to finalize that SMS rule this June.

This Expert Panel made several recommendations and findings about the safety culture and about ODA and I want to highlight some:

• Boeing’s Safety Management System procedures are not thoroughly understood throughout the company. I’m sure you’ll expand on this. That it is only focused on 1 of the 4 pillars of what ICAO, the international standard has said that you have to meet if you’re going to have an SMS program understood by the workforce at large.
• The expert panel raised concerns about FAA’s ability to effectively oversee Boeing’s SMS. I believe the FAA not only needs a strong workforce strategy to exercise the oversight of the manufacturers to ensure proper implementation of SMS. I’d like to query the panel today on exactly what SMS the FAA should implement in their own house to make sure that they are improving the safety culture and standing up on these important safety measures.
• Right now, we are relying on employee safety reporting system “Speak Up” which you talked about. And I think comprehensive safety reporting system that employees know and understand has to be a key component of SMS.
• Documentation provided by the interviewers of Boeing employees show that they may not have understood how safety fit into the culture of the overall obligations of the company.
• Human factors have not been prioritized as a technical discipline. And human factors are at the core focus of what we need to do both at the FAA and at Boeing.
• While I think you did talk about the loss of experience and capability of a workforce, we definitely want to build that expertise throughout the government, clearly at the FAA so that they can keep pace with technological change.
• While the restructuring of Boeing’s ODA unit did decrease the opportunity, as your report is saying, for retaliation, we still are seeing that interference occurring. This is unacceptable. ACSAA strengthened the FAA’s oversight and put them in charge of these employees and we certainly expect the FAA to back up those individual engineers and machinists who are calling out safety and making sure that they address those. 

Although the final report gave Boeing 6 months to make this action plan a reality, the expert panel’s recommendations, the FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker has cut this to 90 days.

I expect the company to comply with this deadline and submit a serious plan that demonstrates the commitment to these kind of safety measures.

And FAA must also demonstrate that it is going to be a strong regulator on these issues. I hope to query the panel about how to ensure that, how we as the oversight committee of FAA strengthen this oversight by the FAA.

So I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today. Again, thank you so much for being here.