Shortly after takeoff. All 189 people aboard perished. Five months later, Ethiopian Air trio to departed out of ethiopia. Just like lie in flight 610, Ethiopian Airlines flight rio to experienced problems shortly after takeoff and crashed. All 157 persons on board died. Both of these accidents were entirely preventable. We cannot fathom the pain experienced by the families of those 346 human beings who were lost. Family members are here today and we appreciate their ascendance. I appreciate many of them meeting with membersrs of the committee over time. As chairman ofma this committeei promise their loved ones that we are working to obtain a full answer as to how to prevent future tragedies. These families deserve answers, accountability and action. And the public deserves no less. The type of aircraft involved in both accidents is a 737 max eight manufactured by boeing. Safety regulators began grounding the max the day after the ethiopian crash. On march 13, federal Aviation Administration grounded the aircraft in the United States. Contingent on boeings work with the faa to test and certify to the mcas control system. In order for the max to return to Service International regulators also need to be satisfied that it is safe to fly as the certification process continues, many questions remain about boeings actions. The faa action during the Design Development and certification processes. As well as the operation of the max. Todays hearing is divided into two panels. The committee will follow regular order recognition of both panels, a five minute rule will be observed strictly because we have so many people that wish to participate. On the first panel, testifying on behalf of of the manufacturer accompanied by John Hamilton chief engineer for Boeing Commercial Airplanes who will provide Technical Expertise. Our second panel will examine these issues from the governments perspective. The way this is today includes National Transportation safety Board Chairman robert and chairman of the joint authorities technical review. Chairman, overseeing the ntsb which recently released a report and recommendations regarding the certification. Chairman hart, faa commission that included the faa, nasa and foreign safety authorities which are reviewing the Flight Control systems. Submitting a broad range of recommendations to the faa. Chairman hartar has extensive pt Government Service in aviation safety. He is a private citizen today who agreed to meet. We have many concerns that boeing should address today. We need to know if boeing and the faa rushed to certify the max, in particular, critics have focused on the development and testing. Criticizing the communication with the faa on the development. Particularly after the system was modified to activate at lower air speeds. Also criticized for relying on outdated regulations, guidance and certificationon procedures. Failing to incorporate realistic Human Behavior factors into its assumptions. The ntsb also called into question boeing and faa assumptions about pilot reaction during the activation. These questions were especially important for stressful information with multiple alerts going off in the cockpit. The old system called organization designed authorization. In this case boeing. The lda has been used to certify many aircraft over the years. Some have criticized the system emfor committing an inappropriae close relationship between companies and their safety regulator. The correspondence dating from as early as 2015 the former chief technical pilot and faa personnel released on october 18 reflect a disturbing level of casualness and flippancy that seemed to cooperate these systems. I was disappointed to learn of a november 2016 instant messenger conversation. In which he acknowledge misinforming the faa. Should have notified the faa about the conversation immediately upon its discovery. Although with the agencies lack of responsiveness to my request dating back to april of this year. For documents relevant to the pex as part of the investigation i opened as chairman based on whistleblower disclosures. Regulating agencies and organizations they regulate is important. So are the internal reforms that boeing is implementing. I invite them to describe the straps boeing is taken to include aviation safety and to ensure that technical experts never experience undue pressure to put profits and relationships ahead of safety. The Committee Oversight is not admitted to past actions. They note that future Aircraft Systems are likely to be even more complex and interdependent than current models. Managing interfaces will become even more important as automation increases. Continuing expanding around the globe. Flying in countries without the same training requirements and Safety Standards that we have in the United States. We welcome the witnesses thoughts and certification in the future to account for these major changes. This hearing will by no means and our inquiry. Additional oversight hearings will be held. Carefully review the final report which was released on friday as well is the Ethiopian Airlines report which is forthcoming. The committee will also consider the findings and recommendations and all other investigations and reviews. I now recognize the distinguished Ranking Member for her Opening Statement. Thank you. Thank you for this important hearing. I want to take a moment and recognize the families that have lost loved ones in the Ethiopian Airlines and lion air tragedies. Some of whom who are here with us today. I cannot imagine the loss and the enduring pain that you must feel. I thank you for your vigilance on this issue just as we have seen the families vigilant help us improve safety for the future. Right now these families, millions of Airline Passengers and 150,000 Aerospace Workers want to know what we are doing to fix what went wrong and what did go wrong. To date, we have not gotten all of those answers. Hopefully todays hearing will help provide some. One thingng is crystal clear. You have to be the leader in aviation safety. Aviation demand especially 4737 and single planes is exploding 101 growth over the next 10 years. Something like 35,000 planes and planes and 3 trillion. We cannot have a race for commercial airplanes become a race to the bottom when it comes to safety. The company, thety board, cannot prioritize profits over safety. Safety always has to be job one. It is troubling to hear that they may have asserted the application process over a desire by airlines to have more fuel efficient planes but without Pilot Training. This issue of lowering standards is permeating through all of aviation. My democratic colleagues have led the charge to try to stop o companies coming here to say they dont want to have the same training for copilots on the regional jets because they dont have enough pilots. Rest requirements for cargo pilots having the same as passenger planes. Thank god captain sullenberger made it clear. When you are in an emergency, the pilot and copilot do not have a lot of time to communicate. That is why today we need answers to how the first 737 mac certification mac certification process was done and especially need transparency on this process of review before the 737 max is included in the air again. The public needs to know and fully understand what i testing, what review, what processes were conducted both by boeing and the faa before this plane is put back in the air. We also want to know today about boeing Safety Culture. Whether the employees raised safety concerns that were not listened to. Whether there was enough testing and complex system into a cockpit alert system that we now all know was flawed. Whether there was even enough data presented to the faa. These are all questions that are important. There are many questions about software and cockpit automation and overload. I guarantee you, the faa codes and log are clear when it comes to the standards for certification. Requirements for pilots have all led to 10 years between 2009 2018. More software and more automation without robust thirdparty testing and validation will lead us to where we are today. The last aviation accidents have all involved this issue of automation and pilot response to automation whether it is lion air, ethiopian, the french or 330 accident. They were all in response to an automation and command response to the pilot. That is why last week i introduced legislation with my colleagues to implement the recommendations of the ntsb safety board and the Inspector General report on Better Safety management systems, better cockpit prioritization and a new center of excellence on automation and human factors. The faa needs the best engineers to understand the engineering challenges of the future and stay ahead from this Human Behavior response to new automation. Ive seen people on the transportation automobile side. It isit the same issue in advand vehicles. I look forward to hearing from the chairman about their findings on improving the safety review process that we have included in this legislation. I would just say again, our sorrows are nothing like the families who are with us today. I do want to know the 737 max have struck at the heart of everyone in the northwest. Soon after the ethiopian crash the seattle fire fired approach me and asked if i thought he could get a job at boeing. He said i just want to go there and make sure we get the safety right. Everyone feels that way. Generation of workers in the Pacific Northwest have dedicate their lives to aviation excellence and safety. That spirit lives on. This is a question about a corporate view from chicago whether there is enough attention to manufacturing and certification. Taking offense to the fact that people say it is a Great Company not being ran correctly. For the 346 people that trusted boeing without a second thought, we need to get this right. These families are counting on us. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you,u, senator. You have submitted an extensive written statement. Will be entered in full at this point. I understand mr. Hamilton will not be making a formal statement at this point to summarize your Opening Statement for five minutes. Thank you for being here. Chairman. Committee members, thank you for the opportunity to join you today. We share your commitment to aviation safety. Directly to the families of the victims that are here with us. On behalf of myself in the boeing company, we are sorry, deeply and truly sorry. As a husband and father myself, i am heartbroken by your losses. I think about you and your loved ones every day. Ti know our entire team does as well. I know that probably does not offer much comfort and healing at this point. I want you to know we carry those moments with us every day. Every day that drives us to improve the safety of our airplanes and our industry. That will never stop. I am grateful and humbled to be here today. To be able to say these words to the families directly. I want to convey our absolute commitment to safety. Our commitment to learning. Our commitment to rebuilding the publics confidence in what we do. Dod to preventing accidents from like this from ever happening again. We will never forget. That is our commitment going forward. Mr. Chairman, i know this committee has many questions about the max. Wean will do our best today to answer all of those questions. One of the accidents is still underr investigation. We know both evolve the repeated activation of a flight system which responded to erroneous signals which measures the airplane angle. Based on that we have enhanced in three ways. First, it will now compare information from both sensors instead of w one before activatg only activate a single time. Mcas will never provide more input than a pilot can counteract using the control column alone. Pilots will also continue to have theve ability to override mcas at any time. We have brought the best of boeing. We have spent over 100,000 engineering and test hours. Flown more than 800 test flights hundred test flights. Conducted similar sessions for 99 customers and 4141 global regulators. Il flown on a couple couple of flights myself. This has taken longer than expected, but we are committed to getting it right. During this process we have work closer with the faa and other regulators. Provided themor documentation. Answered their questions. Regulators around the world should rigorously scrutinize the max and only approve its return to fight when they are completely satisfied with the safety. The public deserves nothing less today in every day overy, 5 Million People will board a boeing airplane and fly safely to their destination. Decades of cooperation and innovation by industry and regulators and the oversight of this committee have reduced accidents by more than 95 over the last 25 years. No number other than zero accidents is ever acceptable. We can and must do better. We have been challenged and changed by these accidents. We have made mistakes and we have gotten things wrong. We are improving and we are learning and we are continuing to learn. We establish a permanent Airspace Committee of our board which was a new Safety Organization tiered all engineers now report up through the chief engineer. We are also helping to rebuild the families and communities impacted by these. We have pledged a Million Dollars to this effort. Experts in this area entering families can access these funds as quickly as possible. No amount of money can bring back what was lost, but we can help the families meet their financial needs. Mr. Chairman, i started at boeing more than 30 years ago as a summer intern in seattle. I was a junior at Iowa State University studying engineering. Awestruck to work at the company that brought the jet age to the world and help land a person on the moon. Today i am still inspired by what towing does it by the remarkable men and women who are committed to its outstanding legacy. These heartbreaking accidents and the memories that the 346 lives lost are now part of that legacy. Solemn duty to learn from them and we will. Recently, there has been much criticism of boeing and our culture. We understand and deserve thiss scrutiny. More than 150,000 of the thousand of the most dedicated honest hardworking men and women in the world. Their commitment to safety, quality and integrity is unparallel. We will stay true to those values because we know our work demands the utmost excellence. Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, mr. Mullen berg. I mentioned an instant message conversation and a series of emails. Between the 737 max and a colleague. It expresses concerns about the operation. Boeing knew about this for months but failed to share it with the faa until recently. With regard to the emails, the former max chief technical pilot , calling for removing any mention from the flight crew operating manual. Talking about jedi mind tricking of regulators. With at least one person that works for the faa. With regard to the instant message conversation, when were you made aware of the existence of the november 2016 messages. Mr. Chairman, as i recall, i was made aware of that message earlier this year. Discovered as a document gathering process in response to a government investigation. So it was after the crashes. As i recall, i believe it was prior to the second crash. Was that your decision to wait months before disclosing it to the faa . It had been identified as a document as part of an ongoing investigation. I relied on our counsel to provide that to the appropriate authorities. What did the council telll u . Im going to supply it to the Justice Department . I will get it to appropriate authorities. I dont recall having a specific conversation about which authorities, again, as part part of this process, our intent to cooperate fully and provide it to the appropriate authorities. I think over this time we provided half a million pages of documents and supported it for various requests. Do you agree this should have been provided to the faa in retrospect. Senator, as i became familiar with the details of the document over the last few weeks, as i expressed our disappointment and concern with how this came to the faa, i think you heard the same from the administrator. I called him and apologize for how this came through the process. Involved in the document process counted on our team to make sure all the great authorities were provided. Turning over all such safetyrelated communications to the faa related to the 737 max. Our Team Continues to cooperate with request for documentation. I am sure additional documents will be provided over time as they are discovered. We will cooperate fully with the requests. It seems to me that a request should not have been made with regard to that conversation. When did you become aware of the emails that i referred to in the second part of my question about jedi mind tricking regulators. Just recently it have been informed of the details of those emails. Give us an idea of how recently. Over the last couple of weeks when it became public news. You did not know about it until then. I dont recall being briefed on the details of those documents any time prior to that. Can you see that this raises much concern about the level of coziness between boeing personnel and faa regulators. Mr. Chairman, i understand the concern there. We are doing our best to lean forward and provide information as part of this process. I can tell you, the comments, comments, the values, the approaches described in those emails are counter to our values. I i understand the concern. Share the concern. Just want to convey it is not consistent with our values as a company at all. Only in the last few weeks. I was aware of the documents that were being produced as part of a investigation. That is what i recall from earlier this year. I dont recall getting briefed on details of the documents. They are things that i learned of overen the last few weeks. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I have a lot to go through. Bo we will try to move quickly through it. Was boeing aware of the system which it failed to disclose to the faa at the time the aircraft was int development and certification . The development occurred over a lengthy time. We have learned from both accidents and weve identified changes that need to be made. We did during the Development Process to follow our certification standards. Longstanding standards behind the design. Clearly, we have learned. Was boeing aware which has failed to disclose the aircraft in development and certification senator, i just have to question the premise of the question. As part of our process, we do identify hazards and failure modes. Part of the analysis that we shared as part of the certification process during that time. You think everything thatts u were aware of was disclosed to the defects in the system. Senator, things that we need to fix, we have identified three areas that we talked about needing to address. One was the single sensor feet. A piece of the architecture shared with the faa. The fact that the system would operate more than once during a flight, that was also part of the design description. The control authority at various parts. Do you know what he is referring to when he says lying to the faa are jedi mind tricking. I am notea sure what he meant by that. We have not been a real to talk to him. You also do not know what he disclose. Theres a lot to discover and process. Did boeing test the consequences of the m cast reliance on the sensor. Any different aspects. We did thorough play testing. John, if you want to comment on the details. Senator, one of the safest. Did you test the reliabilityi of the sensors in general . Ns did you test the reliability on a single sensor . Did you consult with the pilot on the lack of guidance in the flight manual . Did you test the degree alert to ensure liability . Did you test the human factor response . These are all things from the report. My guest is you did not. That is at the heart of this. If youe did any of data on that and it was provided to the faa, that is what we want to see. Senator, we did test inputs to the state advisor system due to whatever causes was driving it. Not specifically to an aoa sensor. We assessed the hazard level. Ue hindsight, senator, yes. That is one of the areas. Here is the thing im very confused about. We want to get this right. We do want to go forward. Automation in many aspects of our lives. This robust testing that must occur in thirdparty validation i just do not understand how your sensors on the outside of a plane. You will let that send the command to the inside of a plane. 2. 5 degrees. All of a sudden, you will be all that from the cockpit from somebody saying pull up. At the same time, you are being forced down. It does not seemed like robust testing was done to me. If it was, the line there incident would not happen. I want to just bring up look. All of us to get right. Those crashes about automation, even the crash related to a faulty tube. I dont know how much we should be trusting things on the outside of the plane to give commands to the inside when they could be damaged. I do want to know that you are improving the Safety Culture. This issuegh of both reporting, people not being able to talk to faa oversight people. Some of the Quality Inspectors. I want to understand that Safety Culture will exist. Senator, anything i can leave with you today, i want to reinforce the culture safety at boeing. Some of those can be public recently. Inspecting those inputs. We take action. Recently taking a number of improvements for the safety review boards. Elevating them in increasing transparency and safety. Boeing engineers reporting directly to our chief engineer. I will ask t you to come back on the boeing Quality Inspectors thank you, mr. Chairman chairman. Thank you. I have the duty of telling the distinguish that he is limited to five minutes. [laughter] thank you, mr. Chairman. My understanding is that it has been redesigned to several redundancies. I think you raise a very aimportant point. As john began to allude to earlier, the original concept was an extension of what we call the speed trim system. A single sensor system safe in flight. One of our safety principles is to minimize change from model to model. That is a good standard safety process. That was a a concept behind the original design. What we have learned from both accidents is that we made some mistakes. There are some things that we ofcan improve. One of them is this idea of going to dual instead of single. Mcats to a single action or activation during a flight tiered those are improvements that we have identified tiered we take responsibility for that. We feel responsible for our airplanes. We know that there are some fixes that we need to make. We own that it we are implementing those fixes going forward. As we discuss possible improvements. How safety is supposed to be integrated all the way to flying 30,000 feet, filled with passengers, since these crashes, we have heard concerns about whether boeings relationship with the faa is too cozy. We want a certification process that is efficient and promote u. S. Competitiveness but one that always prioritizes safety. What would you say to address the concerns that have been raised about regulatory capture. Senator, i agree with the focus in that area. I would say over the last couple of decades, improvements that made are because of strong government oversight. That includes the work of this committee. It includes the oversight of the faa. The delegated authority process as it is structured contributed to safety of the industry. I mentioned about a 95 improvement in safety over the last few h decades. Some of that is associated with the delegated authority. I think it is very important that we have strong government oversight. Strong faa oversight. We also have the Technical Depth that can be brought to the table that is a concept. If we need to rebalance it, i fully support evaluating that concept. Looking at at the details. Could you briefly explain how boeing and the faa Work Together t senator, i could. I think mr. Hamilton is a deeper expert on that if i could ask him to take that question. Certainly. Senator, the faa is in control of a certification process process all time. Let me just kind of walk you through the process very quickly it starts off by identifying the requirement that certified the airplane. That is the Sole Authority of the faa. It establishesng the certificatn basis of the airplane. The second is identifying the method of compliance to those requirements. How you will show that they meet the requirements. The faa is the Sole Authority. That is their action. The third step is doing the testing, the analysis and the documentation that demonstrates the airplane meets those requirements. That is done by boeing, in our case as far as the applicant. Then there is the review of those documents to validate they actually met the requirements. That can be done by the faa or the oda who was a designee. Or it can be a combination. Finally, there is an oversight. Oversight of the actual members. Oversight of the oda and are you following the processes. Oversight of did you find compliance as they expected with the compliance. And then theysi do systemic oversight of entire systems. Mr. Mullen berg, how are youk working to ensure safety that tployees that raisey concerns, even if they inhibit your ability to get a market quickly are taken seriously and importantlyy those concerns raised to the top and not brushed aside. Senator, in my role as the ceo of this company, i take that very seriously. We have a number of hotline avenues that our employees can use. When it comes to delegated authority, we also have Additional Survey tools that we deploy. We openly share that data with the faa and make improvements. We knowfe we can improve. One of the areas ive taken recent action on is to restructure our Safety Organization. We have now created a new Safety Organization. Reporting to my chief engineer who reports directly to me. That Safety Organization has responsibility for all safety related accident investigations. Our oda process and responding to any employee concerns. Senator. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I also want to give my sincere thanks tor the people that are here. Who lost their loved ones in these two crashes. You are here not only for them. It must be hard to hear these technical issues when you think of your brother or sister or father or mother or son or daughter. I want you tois know that we wat to get to the bottom of this and we want to change this. I start with where the senator was going with the faa and boeing and its relationship recent Inspector General report found that only 4 of airline any facts or employees were responsible for debt conducting the certification. They conducted oversight. The same report found that one manufacturer proved about 95 of certification for their own aircraft. What can you tell us about the percentage of what boeing conducts on its own aircraft . I would have to follow up. The systems for the company. Certified the same for the faa. Approximately 1000 members that work. What percentage of themvi certify the safety. Those are roughly 1000 members that find compliance. That is beyond the systems. It includes structures across the whole. Just to clarify, we have about 50,000 engineers at boeing. About 1000 of them are in this area that john is referring to. These are members who have the authority and the training. We will follow up. When the faa steps in and you certify yourself. We will get that later. Two months after he sent these messages expressing safety concerns, he asked the faa to remove mention of the mcat automated Flight Controlco feate from the max pilot flight manual and training course. The Committee Report on the light and air crash confirmed that the knowledge was one of the key reasons for the plane crash. How frequently our new Automated Systems left out of the manual and training that you give to pilots . Senator, first of all, one of the things we have learned from both of these accidents as we need to provide Additional Information to pilots just to give you a context as we develop our training manuals. Responding to the effects of failures as opposed to trying to diagnose failures. That is a very important distinction. More information in the training manuals is not necessarily safer, but, as we understand from both of these accidents, we need to provide more information to enhance safety. We do try to include information in the training manual. Do you think it is acceptable that pilots are flying planes without knowing about these systems . Our approach is to train the effects of a failure mode. The automation system, when it fails, it fails in a runaway stabilizer. We try to train pilots to respond to the failure as opposed to diagnose. After these terrible crashes have claim 346 lives, do you think it makes sense for the aircraft to fly in some countries and not others . Each country can make its own decision. Senator, we respect the jurisdiction of the regular authorities around the world. You think it is acceptable. Just say yes or no. That is not a decision that we can make. We respect the authority of the regulators. You are saying the same thing again. I am going to go with a yes. Several factors highlighted in a recent article in the washington post. A faulty angle which gave pilots and airplane system unreliable information the day before it crashed. Do you thinkob that that is a problem and what steps can be taken to change that . Senator, in the case, we got the implementation wrong. I mentioned in my comments up front that we made some mistakes we made a mistake in that implementation. Once we discovered it, they convened convened a safety review board. They confirmed that it was an operational safety issue. They subsequently concurred with that. Nonetheless, we got the onimplementation and we have addressed the process. We affixed that in the alert will be standard implementation on all max is going forward. Thank you. Senator fisher. I, too, would like to recognize for my sympathies to the people that are here today. And the people that are at home who have lost loved ones in his crashes. I hope that we can get answers at this hearing and also in the future so that these issues, these mistakes will not happen again and cause future loss of life. Jo mr. Mullen berg, the joint joint authorities technical review notes that boeing made several other changes to the max that differ from the earlier model such as structural changes that would accommodate the new mentions that were planned on the plane and other advanced technology the senator touched on this with the delegated authority with boeing. Over the certification of those certifications as well. I cannot answer that completely. There were a number of changes. Those were done and evaluated jointly with the faa. If you want to comment on any specifics there. s approximately 92 certification plans. Encompassing the change to the airplane. Are you looking into the certification processes as part of the review of the 737 max . Yes, we are. An independent committee about five months ago. That committee did its work. With the other authorities, we are continuing to take a hard look at that. Taking action on those reports. The technical review included a recommendation any Flight Control surfaces the faa should be directly involved. This is based on the observation that the faa was not completely unaware. So fragmented and they were delivered to disconnected groups within the process. Recognizing the impacts and the implications of this system. Do you agree that the communication between boeing and the faa is fragmented to the point that relevant information was not provided to the agency . Is this what you are referring to when you talk about getting the balance right . Senator, i think you raised some very important notes. A Technical Expertise area. Documentation and communication. We found some areas where we could have, should have done better. Improving the communication with the faa. Do you think it has a responsibility to also change its process to improve communication . I want to say that is only the faas responsibility. We need to make improvements in communication. Owned that and we are committed to doing that. Based on a certificate. That was originally provided in 1967, i believe. It has been amended to address the different models since then. Technical review notes that some elements of the design and certification remain rooted in the original 1967 certification of the boeing 737. Did they review the elements of the 737 that are based in the 1967 certification for continued safety . New models of the airplane are reduced. Senator, if i could ask john to feel that question. There is a single Type Certificate for the 737. As the design has evolved, the safety standard on which the airplane is designed have also evolved. Yes, there are some amendments. Maybe referencing back to an earlier amendment level. Those are likely changes that have not changed in the family of airplane since the original design. Some structuralth elements. However, we have stepped up in many areas voluntarily to later amendment levels to demonstrate the needs of the latest standards and compliance. Thank you, senator fisher. Senator blumenthal. Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today. Thank you most important to the relatives who have lost loved ones. If you could please stand so we could thank you all. Thank you for being here. If you could just stand. Thank you. Go ahead and hold up the photographs. You have been very kind. I was going to ask that you hold up those photographs. I understand for security purposes that you cannot. During the hearing. Just for this short period of time. Thank you. If the timekeeper could start, senator blumenthal time. Thank you very much to the family members. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. As i watch those loved ones stand and frankly as i reviewed this file over the past week or so, if i sit here today, my anger has only grown. These loved ones lost lives. Because of an accident that was not only preventable as the chairman set at the very start, but was the result of a pattern of deliberate concealment. Boeing came to my office shortly after these crashes and said they were the result of pilot error. Those pilots never had a chance. These loved ones never had a chance. They were in coffins as a result of boeing deciding that it was going to conceal mcat from thehe pilot. The best evidence is this message from mark saying in effect we are going to conceal mcat, delete it from the manual used in training. When did you become aware of the fact that mcat was not going to be included in the flying manual senator thirst, i could express my y deep sympathy. When you became aware of the efforts. Senator, i cannot reference that email. Im not asking about the email. I am asking you about boeing policy as reflected in this email. The chief test pilot deciding he was going to mislead pilots that were then going to take passengers into the air. These loved ones and turn those planes into flying coffins. Im not sure what he meant by that email. I can tell you that certification and training materials are not determined by one individual. In fact, let me me just interrupt you again. In the over 600 paid original flight manual a boeing 737 max, the aircraft new mcat Computer System was mentioned only once. Once. In 1600 pages. In the glossary of abbreviated terms. When boeing came and said it was the pilot, an experienced pilot, you are lying to us as well. Senator, if i could try to respond to your question, first of all, the premise that we would lie or conceals is not consistent with our values. I know its not consistent with the values you are articulating here. Would you agree that this system is absolutely broken. That is a weapon here. Boeing lobbied to congress for more delegation and now we have to reverse that delegation. Would you support those legislative efforts . Senator, i support support taking a hard look. I am asking you for a commitment here because you have the opportunity to make things right. Im not familiar with particular legislation. Boeing asked for the legislation that exists right now. Will you commit to supporting efforts such as many of us on this committee. Senator, we will commit to participating in those efforts in providing our inputs. I agree thatt your input woud be valuable. I am looking for input in support of reform that will stop outsourcing by the faa. I might just sad that the faa has been really disappointing in its disclosure to us. This is an example of a total redaction. I have asked for full disclosure of documents. They have failed to provide them ive asked them to return my phone calls. They have failed to do so. I think the faa as part of the problem as well. It is the result, at the end of the day, a boeing rushing this process, im using the chairmans term, putting profit over safety, rushing the certification process with you in charge of that certification. Expired,safety and my time is but the folks who deserve time the people who lost loved ones. Thank you, senator. Lets do this. This poster is entitled, mcas. Ofyou could provide a copy that, we will admit it into record without objection. Says mcason, when it does live in both, what does that mean . Mcas function is replicated in both computers. The computers and it was a data from now it will see data from both centers. Was the failure and the policies and protocols that failuread in place or consequences . The in some cases, weve relied on these longstanding industry policies in standards and certified to those. That gets back to the pilot result wants time response time. Overall, we did follow the certification process and steps, but nonetheless we learn to promote these accidents. Theyre both in policy and making sure the policies are once theyaking sure are in place. I assume there is other certification, developments that are always ongoing. Have you changed your behavior pieces ofs for other equipment that boeing is now receiving towards certification . We are still learning. We mentioned earlier that it changed our view board structure. The realignment of our Engineering Team is 50,000 engineers and we are looking at longstanding assumptions on how to design as we look at next generation. As this committee looks at certification and look at the faa, what suggestions does boeing have for this committee when you look at any policies or failures of the faa . Major organizations involved in the process, one is the manufacturer boeing and the other is the federal agency. My assumption is neither one did something did things right and what have you learned that we should note as we look at the faa now and in the future . That work we are proceeding on over the mnext few weeks an months. But i think its important that the airplane will return to service when its safe. This is not going to be timeline driven. We are committed to answering every question the regulators have an airplane will fly when everyone is ngconvinced it is safe. That is the most important thing. It troubles me that to get to that point, its certainly not its taking so long but i want the result you described but the right circumstance before we are flying again. But it suggests to me it was more significant problems with the max 37 if it was previously certified. And now it takes so long for fi something more than just a glitch. Something more than just a minor change. That makes me concerned about the process that allowed it to be concerned in the first place. What am i missing . Senator, i think you raise aw good point. Earlier this year it was focused on the mcas updates. As we were evaluating the data, we identified safety enhancements we could make. Not something that was required for certification but something we thought while the airplane was grounded, was the right thing to do and the safety enhancement. Rather than waiting to do that later, after returned to service, we as a company and with the aa decided we would take the additional time for those software updates. Thats the work weve been doing for the summer and into the fall. Thats designed to add Additional Software redundancies and that is the final software we are testing. What i want to convey isthis is culture of boeing. I understand the questions being raised but when our fine teams find opportunities to others if it takes time or money to do that, thats where we are focused. And thats why its taking longer than some anticipated. Senator markey. Senator peters. Thank you mr. Chairman. Let me begin by expressing my sympathies to those who lost loved ones in the crashes. Id like to thank the families that are here today for your continued attention to safety and for working to prevent future tragedies ntike we saw here. Over the years, our Aviation System has become the safest in the world. But these reminders that we cannot rest. That safety can be taken for granted. Theres no doubt that many mistakes were made. And the consequences were unfortunately tragic. The report from technical experts underscore that as Technology Becomes increasingly complex, the debate about how to move forward can be simply about a onesizefitsall regulatory regime. Verses, let the free Market Police itself type approach. I believe a new paradigm may need to be developed to address the challenges associated with complex technology and that something this Technology Committee needs to weigh heavily as we move forward. As you know, the Bp Oil Disaster in the gulf of mexico killed 11 workers. Lasted 87 days and cost upwards of 65 billion. And in the wake of that disaster, it was revealed the oil and gas industry has lobbied for the reduced safety for cautions that could have prevented that disaster. We we often hear in congress about how much it costs and industry. Im curious in boeings view on oversight has changed in the wake of this tremendous human tragedy. As well as the cost of this company is facing right now. Has your view changed . You talked in response to an earlier question about having a balance. Clearly something is wrong with that balance. Please let me know if your fonts have changed recently. Senator, my thoughts have changed. We have learned lessons from these two accidents. And the families here with us today, the pictures we saw, they are heartbreaking. They remind us of the importance of the work we do and the paramount importance on safety. Thats what makes this industry great. And strong oversight is part of the fabric of our industry. Always has been. This should give us pause to take a hard look at that. You said we need to look at the balance point has the balance gone too far to allowing industry to police itself . Senator, i dont know if i can characterize it that way. My sense is that we all have the same objective and we want the safest industry possible. My sense is that we could look at the balance. There are refinements that would be worthy. You think its out of balance now based on what happened here . That we have to not just take a look at it, but seems to understand the balance may be out of whack if we delegate too much to industry and to have an impartial eyes to make sure the military regime is egsufficient that you truly have impartial eyes looking at these factors. That you want put a company for the cost to have that is out of balance right now . Yes or no . Senator, again, i think it can be improved. I completely agree with you on the importance of strong oversight. Ive worked in this industry for more than three decades from airplanes to spacecraft. Peoples lives depend on what we do and strong oversight from the government is the key to our subjects from, the safety of our industry. I think we have a shared objective and we will work with you on examining any improvements we can make. We have a mutual interest. The ntsb report indicated the faa had historically used highly trained test pilots to verify the safety of new aircraft models, rather than average pilots who typically have less experience. Does boeing use pilots with average training and experience . Senator, our boeing test pilots are experienced, highly qualified pilots. We work with airlines, the faa, the regulators to bring other pilots in from around the world as part of the evaluation. I think as youre pointing out, as we look to the future, we want to make sure the testing we are doing is representative of that future pilot population. Thank you. Thank you senator peters. Senator i want to say to the families that are here, my sympathies but also my gratitude for you coming forward through your pain. To bring to us. This is not an easy thing to do. Your frustrations are probably stronger feelings in the lost of your loved ones. I will say that when flight 34 seven went down in buffalo in early 2009, the families that came forward to us. I was on the Transportation Committee on the house side. Made such an incredible impact and has made flying on our Regional Airlines much safer because of that. So hopefully that will be what the result of this is for you today and for all of us. Mr. Wallenberg, particular attention has been called to the fact that boeing later in the Development Process of the max s. [indiscernible]. But that boeing did not notify the faa of these changes at the time. This is troubling if in fact this is true. Was boeing not obligated by the faa to report changes like the ones i just described . Senator, i believe youre referring to the lowspeed extension of mcas. It was done in a rigorous way. In a visible way. There was testing done on that from the mid2016 timeframe to the early 2017 timeframe, including flight tests with the faa on board. The faa was aware of the lowspeed extension and ultimately certified back. I believe faa leadership has publicly stated the same. So thats a false report that. I believe its a false an report. The lowspeed extension was certified by the faa. After the second flight went down, it was reported boeing actively lobbied the faa to keep the planes in the air. Can you respond to that . Senator, can you clarify your question . After Ethiopian Air flight went down, there were several countries that expressed, a limited flight of that plan. We have not done that in the United States yet. There are media reports that boeing was lobbying the faa to keep the planes in the air at that time in this country. Is that true . Let me clarify what was happening in that timeframe. Could you make a brief blue screen. Immediately after that accident, we reached out to the faa. It has made aviation state is that we make decisions based on data. At that point, we didnt have data. So we with the faa were looking to understand what happened. There were early reports that the airplane had some kind of a lowspeed, low altitude problem that turned out to be incorrect. Arwe with the faa were pursuing data to make a good safety based decision. That was our position with faa. When data became available, satellite data referred to in the media. Again, with the faa, we came to a conclusion that there could be similarities between the two accidents and that led quickly to a decision to ground the fleet. In retrospect, i think it was pretty obvious. I dont want to say conclusively so, that there was a problem and a consistent problem. The other thing that bothered me about this whole thing. Between the lion air crash and the Ethiopian Air crash. It defies logic to me that some of these folks that wrote emails or send Text Messages did not come to you and to the expertise of the engineering of these engines and of these planes and say, this is what we were talking about. Was there any reaction at all like that within your company after the lion air crash. And dont me because you didnt have the official report. That would have made the saved those people in the Ethiopian Air flight . Senator, i think about that decision over and over every day. If we knew everything back then that we know now, we would have made a different decision. Did people come to you at the highest level . At any level and say, wait a minute, this is sounding familiar . Yes or no . Senator come after the first accident, we convened. It wasnt any single individual or small team. It was a broad team and we brought those experts to bear, trying to assemble data from the accident. Understand what occurred. We quickly with the faa issued an operational bullet or bulletin to remind everyone of the training and emergency scenario. Around that particular system . Around what we call runaway stabilizer. At the same time, we began on an mcat software update. E so the answer is yes. Are you saying the faa didnt know about the 2. 5 trim, not. 6. 2. 5. Ythe faa knew about that . Senator, youre referring to the lowspeed extension. The faa did know about that. Thank you. Senator udall. Thank you mr. Chairman and thank you to the Ranking Member for having this hearing. And mr. Mullen berg, you know, i first want to say to all the people that stood up. Im very moved by you being here and your losses are very i think heartfelt across the committee here. You know, the thing that really bothers me is knowing is preventable. Makes it even more outrageous that we havent made the kind of dramatic changes that i want to talk to the ceo hear about. You showed some emotion when these folks stood up and everything. What should come from that emotion is some action to do something to really make a difference. For this committee to coalesce around a solution that will move us forward. Require you to step forward and specifically say what you support. I havent seen you do that in all the questioning. Youve been asked over and over. What would you support . Its absolutely clear that its too cozy a relationship with the faa and your airline. So what is that youre going to commit to specifically in terms of reform . Thats why youre up here and thats what we want to see you do. Is to weighin with us, this is what would make a difference. This is what would make it safer. This is what would make sure we dont lose passengers like this in the future nor chthe crew. Senator, while i respectfully dont agree with the characterization of the coziness with the faa. We respect the independent oversight of the faa and at some point was, safety principal standpoint. We have taken a number of internal actions that we think are meaningful as they relate to our own internal reforms. We are engaged in the legislative process. And senator, i appreciate your invitation for us to be involved in that i know there are many stakeholders. As you heard from me earlier, we are committed to strong oversight in the Aerospace Industry. Its part of what makes the system safe. We have a shared objective. If there are things we can do to make it better, we will be i dont know john if you have any specific i would say one of the big issues was we used an industrystandard assumption on pilots and how they would react. And that proved incorrect in these two accidents. In terms of things of things we need to change. We need to revisit some of these regulatory guidances and make sure theyre up today. I would even tell you there are probably regulations that we advocated as part of the faa reauthorization bill. 10 regulations that faa should work to update based on technology out there today. In terms of coziness, i used to be the lead administrator for the and i can tell you we have a respectful relationship with the faa. But we do have our differences of opinion sometimes. But we discuss those. We work it out. On howwere going to comply. Its not a cozy relationship. Its a professional relationship. Its a relationship that didnt work for the consumers and for your employees that went down in those flights. You and others in your company blamed the deceased pilots and the culture of the countries where the crashes occurred for the accidents. But from what weve seen in the last year since the first crash, it appears that boeings own culture is more blameworthy for installing a faulty system that resulted into many deaths and could have caused more. This culture starts at the top. And thats why ive been asking for the specifics of what you support. I hope after this hearing, you will come forward and when theres legislation out there say, this will make it better. Come appear and spend time to build a consensus to get this done. Because i think the large , powerful interests that are part of this dont want any reform. They want you to tinker around like youre talking about but they dont want to see reform. If boeing cannot guarantee that pilots were prepared to fly these jets. Your company should not have sold them. Did anyone at boeing question, hesitate or raise any issues prior to selling the 737 max eight with this software to lion air or Ethiopian Air . Senator, first, we look forward to responding to your request and providing input on the reforms. To your question, we do rely on the airlines and the regulatory authorities around the world but as this integrated system to make it were fielding airplanes and crews that can fly safely. I think its important to clarify a point you made earlier. We have not blamed the pilots. I know thats been reported in that is not our company position. And it never will be. We are responsible for our airplanes. We are responsible. And we owned that regardless of cause. Any accident with one of our airplanes is unacceptable. That change is welcome but thats about the culture went out from your Company Early on. Thank you mr. Chairman. Lets do this at this point. Mr. Mullen berg, the published 12 recommendations. Well both of you get back to whats on the record and tell boeings positions with regard to these 12 recommendations . Senator, we will. Senator markey is next. Thank you mr. Chairman. Let me begin by recognizing the families who lost so much on this flight. Many of you are here today including the parents of university of massachusetts graduate and a resident of sheffield, massachusetts who was tragically killed on the ethiopian flight. The losses of the family and all of the families suffered is absolutely inexcusable. And we will remember that as we are moving forward in the drafting of legislation. We will do it in the memory of t your families. One thing is clear to make sure safety is our top priority is to guarantee every aviation safety measure is builtin to every plane and that it is never for sale. Unfortunately, our current laws only prevent aircraft manufacturers like boeing from selling. Existing rules allow companies to charge extra for noncritical safety enhancing features. And boeing actually does charge more for those technologies. The 737 max aircraft involved in the crashes lacked two safety enhancing features. An angle and a disagree light. Both of these would have helped pilots recognize the faulty center readings were causing the planes automated Flight Control system to push the aircrafts nose and down toward the ground. With that knowledge, the pilots may have been able to take more effective action to prevent these crashes. In fact, the indonesian crash report released last week specifically cited the lack of a disagree light on the 737 max as catering to the tragedy. Thshamefully, the law allows boeing to treat the Safety Technologies as c la cart addons that airlines can obtain by paying a next her fee. C la cart items. Safety. Not like xm radio e. Safety is c la carte. Its an addon on feature. These tragic crashes made it all too clear that there should not be any distinction between critical and noncritical safety enhancing features. Thats why ive introduced my safety is not for sale legislation. My bill will require aircraft manufacturers like boeing to offer or provide any technology that measurably enhances safety without an Additional Charge to airline carriers. If you believe that safety should never be for sale, the question is, why was it . You seem to now recognize the disagree light should be standard. But you have yet to say the same about the angle of attack indicator. And whether or not that should be offered for free. Or whether or not each airline should be given the option of not building it into the plane for free. So, i think you have to make a decision here in terms of where youre going to go. Because otherwise, your light is still on. So i want first of all, to have you answer whether or not, according to the wall street journal, you agree that boeing did not originally include the disagree light on the 737 even though the same technology was standard on prior models of airplanes. Is that correct . Senator, i feel i need to respond to your earlier point about selling safety. We dont sell safety. That is not our Business Model i do want to clarify your points on the angle of attack indicator. That is a system that we have offered as an option to neairlines. Some airlines dont want it. Its not necessarily a safety improvement. It deftly takes up space on the flight deck displays. More ininformation on the displ is not necessarily safer. Sothats not a safety feature. Im saying, you should not offer for a price. You should give the option without any price attached to it. Do you agree to do that . Senator, yes. Weve already announced it will be on all macs airplanes going forward, standard. An angle of attack indicator will be available as an option. Given your stated support of the principle of my legislation, will you support my legislation that ensures that you offer to provide any technology that measurably enhances safety without an additional fee . Would you agree to support tha legislation . Senator, i havent seen the specific legislation. I think the principal about focusing on safety as a top inpriority, i agree with that a its a worthy principle. I asked if we can take a look at the legislation. The key is free to airline to anything that measurably affects safety. You agree . We dont sell safety and thats not our Business Model. Thank you senator markey. Senator duckworth. Thank you mr. Chairman. Im going to try to put some of the issues here into laymans terms. My sincere condolences to the families that are here but also to the families in ethiopia and indonesia who are watching this hearing. For the indonesians [speaking of indonesian] what i just said is we will ask senators get to the bottom of this tragedy and we will continue to investigate this and we will not stop. As you see, boeing sells its aircraft to the world and we have in america, i will earned reputation as leaders in aviation and i want to reach that shining example once again. Pilots know that tragedies dont occur in a vacuum. Catastrophic outcomes are long progression of failures that often overwhelm the pilots at the helm of the aircraft. We call it the accident chain. There are many links that must happen. That will eventually overwhelm the pilot and will result in the crash. Many of these links happened with boeing and your decision in the development of the 737 max. Let me talk about what has happened here. You put a sensor, which is standard. Pubut you allow that sensor to override the pilots input in the system. So in every other 737 aircraft, theres a function but you can pull back, the cut out. And that would override the nosedown attitude. That is standard. The basic assumption. As you said, you used an Industry Standard on how a pilot would react to a malfunction like that. On commanded nosedown, and a pilot, you pull back. But what you did is you put an mcat system into an air. He didnt tell the pilots this was in there and you put in a function for them to work, after the pilot does the on commanded action to the nosedown bid in every other 737, thats the end of it. In the 737 max, after five seconds, the system resets and pushes the nose right back down. The pilot had three seconds to pull up and now weve got a do a new procedure that did not exist in previous 737 models which is an electronic cutout switch. Because you now put in a system that overrides the pilot in command of the aircraft. So youve been telling this committee that yes, use basic pilot reactions. But youve not been telling this committee the whole truth. Time and again, this is my frustration. Boeing has not told the whole truth to this committee and to the families looking at this. Yes, the pilots did what they were supposed to do but five seconds later. If that sensor is still stuck, it overrides what the pilot has done and pushes the nose right back down again. Three seconds. The pilots best friend is time and altitude. On takeoff, there is no altitude and hes got no time. You set those pilots up for failure. When i sent a letter asking you to answer several questions. It took boeing over five months to respond. I only got the answers the day before you and i met. One of the questions i asked was, what they did boeing discover that a stock angle of attack would result in mcat with Unlimited Authority to put the aircraft nosedown bid in laymans terms, will divide faulty directions and will push that nosedown over and over. No matter how many times an experienced pilot pulls back. Five seconds later, nose back down. You knew in 2016. You knew in 2016 that this was happening. And your team at boeing deciding it, we didnt need to fix that because of [indiscernible]. The problem is, is the pullback. But you added something else. You put in a system you didnt tell pilots and then put in an override by resetting the system five seconds later. Boeing is the company that built the flying fortress that saved europe. I remember watching b17s fly. Its an Historic Aircraft that rescued the free world. And yet, you knew what these problems and you continue to put them into the put the system into place. And we asked you to answer question, you told this committee have troops over and over. Including in that meeting. This is why im so upset that you have not told us the whole truth and these families are suffering because of it. Thank you senator duckworth. Members of the committee, at this point, senator scott is deferring his time to the chairman of the subcommittee. You are recognized for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman. I have to say the testimony here today has been quite dismaying. I want to focus on the Text Exchange that has been referred to and probably reported often this is a Text Exchange between was then boeings technical pilot for the max. Chief technical pilot. And mr. Who in 2018 was promoted to being boeings 737 chief technical pilot. Is that right . I believe thats the case, senator. So this exchange is stunning. Shock or alert, mcat is now active down its running rampant in the sim on me. His response, oh great, that means we have to update the speed trim description in volume 2. So basically i live to the regulators, unknowingly. Gustafson, it wasnt a live. No one told us that was the case. For dinner, im leveling off at 4003, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like crazy. Im like, what . Gustafson, thats what i saw on sim one. But on approach, i think thats wrong. I suck at flying, but even this was egregious. That exchange describes what happened in lion air and Ethiopian Air. The men and women were gathered here with the photos of your loved ones. 346 people are dead. Because what these chief pilots described as egregious and crazy. Thats their language. Boeings internal language in this exchange. What i find truly stunning, boeing handed this exchange of the department of justice in february. In march, i chaired a hearing of the aviation subcommittee on these two crashes. Boeing did not see fit to give this committee that exchange. Nor did boeing give it to the faa or the department of transportation. But what i find most stunning is your testimony here today that you said you first learned of this exchange a couple weeks ago. These are Senior Leaders at haboeing, in an exchange saying and i will quoteagain. So i basically lied to the regulators. I practiced law a lot of years. You had your lawyers look over this document. And they read a senior leader. After these crashes occurred, saying they lied to the regulators. How in the hell did nobody bring this to your attention in february when you produced this to the department of justice, how did you just read this a couple weeks ago . , senator, to clarify my earlier comments. Ti was made aware of the existence of this kind of document, this issue as part of that discovery process in the investigation. Early in the year as you pointed out. At that point, i counted all my counsel to handle that appropriately. Did you read this exchange . I was made aware documents were being produced. That is the passive voice and disclaiming responsibility. You are the ceo. Itthe buck stops with you. Did you read this document and how did your team not put it in front of you, ron and with their hair on fire saying, emweve got a real problem here. How did that not happen what does that say about the culture at boeing if they didnt give it to you and you didnt read it . And if you didnt say, i want to read and see what wehappene. Your testimony today is we are not sure what they were talking about because hes not at boeing anymore. How did you not in february, send out one night alarm fire saying we to know what happened. We dont want another person to die. As you mentioned, i didnt see the details of this exchange until recently. We are not quite sure what mr. Four, meant by that exchange. His lawyer suggested he was talking about a simulator that was in development in that time period. Thats where he was working. That could be the case. We dont know. I fully support diving deep into this and understanding what he said and what he meant. But i can also tell you in that same timeframe where his original message was made. Mr. Gustafson still works at boeing. Yes. Have you had that conversation with him . Senator, i have not. Thank you senator cruz. Lets do this. If you can have that reduced in size and we will enter it into the record without objection at this point. I want to thank you and the Ranking Member for having this hearing. I know for the two folks on the panel this morning, its probably a painful morning for you. But the fact is, its infinitely more painful for the folks sitting a couple rows behind you. You have said many times that mistakes were made and obviously they were. Unfortunately, that admission was made after 346 people died. And there are a lot of reasons an airplane can go down whether its pilot error, equipment now function or birds. But safety should not be one of them. In the previous question, you said you guys dont sell safety. Ill be honest with you, i didnt listen to the whole thing but you them well better sell safety. I fly for legs a week. Could have been me on one of those airplanes. We expect there to be safety. Obviously, something went wrong. And its not the first time. Theres the mcas situation that was pointed out as several people on this committee pointed out to you. And nothing was done. And to your leadership team, opthere was a South Carolina whistleblower that talked about debris being left. Those technicians g were remove. Theres a case e 46, finding bolts and trash inside a new airplane. That was in june of this year. A cargo 777. It goes on. So the question is, the one that senator udall brought up that you didnt answer. And that is, what do we do . What do you do . So ill be a little more specific. I do believe theres a cozy relationship and i dont believe that quite frankly, time and money are no object because there are plenty of examples in 2014. Faa remade regulatory changes to safety standard that would require changes to add new crew alerts. Boeing appealed to seek an exemption arguing it would cost much money. 10 billion. Which is a lot of money. Gu but the truth is, it wouldnt have happened if faa were doing their job or if you wouldnt know what the hell was going on. My question is, there was a push, a number of andecades ago about privatization and i think thats how we got here. Privatization and government. But why dont we turn to the certification back to the faa and let them do it then they would be sitting at this desk and not you. Why not do that . Senator, we share your focus on safety. K i can confidently say that is our number one priority. But we failed in this case and is a whole bunch of people going through incredibleanguish because we failed. Senator, i agree. We we feel i can pivot with the best of them. I know when people are pivoting. You are pivoting. Tell me if you would support having the faa do the certification . Senator, we believe that delegated authority process that we have today has contributed to improve safety over the last two decades. I mentioned earlier, we are open to improving it. But the idea that we can tap the deep Technical Expertise across the Aerospace Industry is a valuable part of the certification process. But the faa is the Certification Authority and should be and should continue to be. But they really arent. The truth is you can say they have the ultimate responsibility. But the truth is if the issues arent flagged by your people, by your people doing the certification. The faa never does it because po quite friendly it would cost more money to have faa do the certification of it and it cost you money so we can charge you for that certification to help pay for it so it would have no reflection on the taxpayers. So the question becomes, when the faa you didnt need to do this. Its fine if nothing happens. But when 350 people die, weve got a problem. You bring up the point that senator cruz product that there was plenty of information out there on this and nothing was done. When it comes to safety, time and money are no object . The record certainly doesnt show that. Senator, i understand your points and criticism and i think its true we operate in a competitive world. We are the only large airplane, commercial airplane maker left in the united lestates. But i can also tell you, that never takes precedence over safety. I think it could be argued that it did in this case. And i heard senator duckworths questions and boeing has had an incredibly valuable name. But ive got to tell you and i think i told you guys sometime ago, i would walk before i was to get on a 737 max. I would walk. Theres no way. The question becomes, when issues like this happen, it costs your company huge. And so, you should be cutting corners and i see corners being cut and this committee will have to do something to stop that from happening. Thank you senator tester. Im going to ask that mr. Malmberg answer on the record his opinion of the current system. Senator johnson. Let me add my condolences to the families and friends of the victims of these strategies. Among many failures, it strikes me as to primary failures. In the original design and certification process and the reaction after the first crash. Tell me if im getting this right. The 737, more fuelefficient engines were available to you wanted to include an upgrade of that, correct . New fuelefficient engines and other enhancements. It created an another aerodynamic for the aircraft. Thats correct. The mcas, is that a standard type of automatic pilot type of Software System on planes . Is that pretty standard to have Something Like that . Senator, the mcas system we have on the mac is unique to rdthat airplane. So it was put in there specifically because you added a different type of engine to a successful airframe which made that less stable and required as you called it, a runaway stabilizing system. If i can clarify that for the 737 family has a system calls the speed and trim system and the mcas is an extension thats unique for the max. But unique because of that added engine design. Retailer the software we tailor so they optimize the handling qualities for the unique airplane configuration. Going into the introduction ueof this 737 max, you realize that airframe was changed because those engines and required this mcas system. For stabilization. That was one of the additions we made to create the handling qualities we wanted for the pilots. We also made changes to things like the war text generators on the wings. Its an integrated solution. You were well aware that this Design Change created something that required an mcas system. Now fastforward. You have the lion air tragedy. Senator cruz put up the email. There are people in boeing that knew exactly or certainly suspected what went wrong. Because the integrated new design, you had a mcas system to take care of this eventuality, correct . Senator, again, im not exactly sure what was meant by that email traffic. But i can tell you seems pretty obvious, doesnt it . Again, you are engineers. You understand how this was designed and you knew you needed a mcas system to make up for that instability. And then something happened. Pretty well diagnosed, pretty fast. Im reading these things but on the a pilot or aerospace engineer. And yet im scratching my head going, whoa. Something really wrong happen. Why didnt you react faster . M separate from the email traffic and what it might mean, our team quickly up to the lion air accident assembled with the regulators and evaluated the data from the accident. We saw that mcas was involved. So we began to take quick action immediately. Doesnt have to do with that email. Thats not relevant to that discussion. Our team which is exactly my point. The fact it took another tragedy to ground the airplane seat have a true fix that worked. I think is what is on the table here. The diagnosis is why didnt we react . Why didnt we ground that aircraft sooner so one tragedy wouldnt happen . Senator, we have asked that question over and over. That we know now, we would have made a different decision. But the decision made at that point with the data we had, we quickly convened a safety review board. The faa confirmed to the continuing airworthiness of the airplane and issued that officially been that was the safety case that was built. But senator, as you point out, weve learned from the second accident c. If we could go back, we would have made a different decision. And we have learned. Were making those improvements to mcas and thats where our focus is going forward. Boeing is an appointment company. Its important for our economy. I want to see you get this right but you have to properly diagnose and accept response ability for what happened. So we have to can make those changes. Both within boeing and the faa. Thank you mr. Chairman flex. Thank you senator johnson. Senator rosen. Thank you and i want to thank the families here today will have lost their precious loved ones. Their deaths should not be in vain. And we all have to do every bit of our part together to make sure we prevent future tragedies from happening in order to honor the memories of these 346 souls in the empty chairs they will leave behind. This thanksgiving and christmas and on and on. So you said Additional Information wasnt available. I want to talk on mcas in brazil. According to news reports when the Brazilian National Civil Aviation agency came to the u. S. In 2017 to test out the max eight, they determined the changes made to the old 737 were significant enough that they need much more information from boeing were going to provide it for their pilots. When they eventually published their Pilot Training requirements, they were therefore able to flag the mcas as one changes the pilots needed to take into consideration when flying the max eight. And yet, for United States pilots, mcas wasnt mentioned in their manuals. So, why was this information not flagged for your other customers who had 737 maxs in their fleets . Did you prevent your company from sharing these differences . I have the brazilian manual. They decided their pilots should learn this. Why wouldnt you provide it to the United States pilots . Senator, i cant comment on the brazilian document. John may be able to. Let me make the point more broadly is that is how the process is supposed to work. We provide information and evaluate with the regulators in various jurisdictions what should be included in the training. We have no desire to hide features of the airplane. It was significant enough for them to put this in their manual. Then why would you consider that it was a significant change . Senator, i understand your point and that was a decision made in brazil. Im not familiar with the details of that one. Let me just ask you this question then. Moving forward, will you commit to making it a practice when other countries are clearly paying attention enough to make significant changes to their pilot manuals based on major operational changes . That boeing will send these notifications to the other users of these aircraft so at least they have the opportunity to train their pilots . You deny them the opportunity, sir. We are committed to providing that information. I also want to note that the discussion around mcas training and whether it would be included in the manuals was an active discussion with the faa. And it was a decision made based on safety. We try to put information in the training manuals that focuses on the effects and failures and things that will be valuable to the pilots. Its not always the case that more information adds to safety. Atalthough in this case, we understand this and this is one of the additions going forward. All these changes have taken place. Of course, over the years. This plane is still working off its original certification from 1967. This is despite the fact that pilots have told me that the max eight is in no way functionally similar, the original 737s that took to the ilskies 52 years ago. They said in the last hearing that we had, seems its been mo significant modifications. Almost as if you took a canoe and turned into a cruise ship. So mr. Hamilton, can you tell me how many derivative certificates boeing has received since additionally being certified over 50 years ago . Senator, i dont have the exact number in my head. Approximately 14. 14 or 814. 14 derivatives. But i will take actions to follow up with you on that. I appreciate that. Do you believe the 737 max is functionally the same plane that was certified in 1967 . As i mentioned earlier, the Safety Standards have evolved as the airplane has evolved. One of the important things to understand is whats really important is for the pilots as they transition to the newer version, that the airplane behaves the same way. That was important, handling characteristics 10 point. Important enough for brazil to mention but not for us. With respect to that. Theres a joint evaluation that determines the training. But other regulators can determine what training they po want to do above and beyond. I dont know the specifics of the brazilian document you are referencing. We can follow up on that. Thank you senator rosen. Thank you chairman. I dont want to absorb you from both the opportunity and responsibility to go back and look at that long question from senator tester and answer it for the record. But. Fo vernment . What impact would that have on safety . Senator, i believe the data clearly shows that creation of the delegated authority process and its implementation has enhanced safety over the last couple of decades. I mentioned earlier about a 95 improvement in aviation safety over the last couple of decades. I think a portion of that at least can be attributed to the delegated authority process. That doesnt mean we shouldnt refine it, reform it over time. F strong government oversight combined with deep industry Technical Knowledge and the right balance is a strong safety process. I firmly believe that is one of the things that has contributed to aviation safety. That process demands oversight roand we are fully supportive of strong overnight but we also fully support the idea of tapping deep industry Technical Expertise and that combination is the safest combination. What happened do you think the view of the industry technicians is of their responsibility there, do you think they feel a level of responsibility and liability of providing the information that they need to provide . Today in the question that and the questions that have been raised about our culture. Ive been at this company for 34 years. I know the people of boeing. You will know the people of boeing. These are 150,000 people that every day come to work because they have an important mission. They are honest key they are resolution they are honest. They are resolute. Every employee at boeing that is how we think about the work that we do. We are going to continue to improve as a company. I am not saying we have done everything right. As i have noted, we have done some things wrong. This is a Great Company with a great legacy that has committed to excellence. Where we will learn, we will. Our culture is about safety. That is at the core of boeing. It has been that way for 100 years. I had to read three questions that senator rosen just asked pursuing that further. You have a 1967 certification that has had 14 variants since 1967. You have a significantly different plane based on the 14th variant with variant of the original plane. What difference do you think it would have made if the certification process would have gone back to the certifying a new plane . Would that have made a difference in the am cast system . What difference would it have made if we had not built on the of this halfcentury planes history and just started with a new plane . Would that have been better or worse . In part 21 of the federal regulations, expose out the change product rule. It is how you accessed how you assess for derivative type certification. Ff inrocess in the the faas regulation. Look at allyou to significant changes. I think there is an assumption last ivative types is is less robust. Type, youook at a new often times have some exceptions. Very similar to what you see on a derivative. I am not sure it would have resulted in a safer airplane. It may have driven some different design decisions. Fundamentally, one of the things that happened in these accidents was the assumption over how we expected crews to respond in certain situations, which proved to it did not happen. That is a fundamental issue we have to address in the industry. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator blackburn. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here today and for taking our questions. Responded, you have addressed senator, senator, senator. I think you should be addressing victims because they are the ones we are asking questions on behalf of. They are the ones who have come today on behalf of their family members. Another thing i want to ask you you have mentioned a couple of times a lack of awareness of emails or documents or communications. We have something around here before we vote. We read the bill. So we know what is in it. If we need to ask questions, we ask questions. We develop the awareness that is so necessary to make good decisions. Of thehave a full view situation that is in front of us. Disconcerting to hear someone who is to be the leader of a company to say, i was not aware. Or, i did not know. That. Had not read nobody made me aware of that. Buck. L that passing the it is your responsibility if you are going to lead the company to have that awareness. Have you at this point read each and every page of every document that is relative to the situation in this case . Say i have i cannot read every document, every page. I know we have provided more than half a million pages of documents as part of the production process over the last year. I accept your input and your criticism. I am accountable. Our company is accountable. But iappreciate that, think it is unsettling to hear you say i have not read that. Let me move on. I do believe you are in the business of safety is a priority. Even though you say you do not sell safety. Lets talk a little bit about the simulators. Because, you had pilots who were training in the simulators as well as training inflight, correct . The youry during are referring during the Max Development . Yes. The simulators being used for training, where they built by the same engineers with the same components, the same sensors, the same sensors the same systems as the max system . Senator, we have a wide variety of simulators. Some of which are what we call conformed simulators, which represent the hardware or software of the airplane. Some of the pilots were not training on the specific simulator. Mr. N, you also speeders had started down mr. Peters had started down a line of questioning with you about the pilots. The pilots that were trained. You only had highly experienced pilots in simulators before newing before flying the mac system, correct . Senator, i was referring to the boeing test pilots. Why would you not choose pilots with a variety of experience . A wide range of experience with a, there are pilots wide range of experience who are going to be in that cockpit flying the plane in real time. Senator, i agree with your view on the necessity of having a variety of pilot experience. Our billing pilots are not the only testers in the process. What changes are you going to make in the simulators and in the training that is going to bring to account for human factor . Have made several changes and have more to come. To start, the baseline Training Program for the max is a 24 day Training Program, which includes heavy use of simulators, advanced simulators. We have also modified the computerbased training for the incremental training between the mg and the max. We have that visibility to the training materials for the mcat system. That new training is being evaluated and will be certified by the regulators to make it a baseline in the program. We are also investing r d significantly. I appreciate your answer. Occurrences, did you feel that your training was not sufficient . Senator, no. We implemented the training that was planned and certified for the airplane. Thank you, senator blackburn. Senator scott. Thank you, mr. Chairman. My heart goes out to all of the families. I cannot imagine the impact on these families after these tragic accidents. I come from florida. Air traffic is a big deal for us. 126 Million People travel to florida as tourists last year. The line share of them come by aircraft. The safety of everybody is really important. , the ceo of your commercial airlines would let go after this. What is your process to hold people accountable to make sure this does not happen again . All, myor, first of company and i are accountable. I believe that accountability starts with me. My board took some recent actions regarding my position, which i fully support. It will allow me to focus more on safety. Takena reaction we have to try to focus on safety. I have taken some management actions. Those are focused on Operational Excellence and safety going forward. Completed, if we see additional actions that need to be completed in some cases, accountability also includes improvements to our processes and organizational structure. That gets to some of the changes we announced on her safety review announced on our safety review boards. All of those accountability actions are important. All of them are focused on safety. Any nybody if whether it is engineers are not engineers, if somebody has a concern in the future about safety, what is the process you have created to make sure it gets to you and you can react to it . As a ceo, the buck stops at you. Senator, that has been one of the key learnings from this process. We need to elevate the visibility on safety issues that might come up at the ground floor level. Make sure they get the right visibility in action. A couple of things we have done, we have restructured our safety review boards. I get a weekly update on safety review boards across the boeing enterprise. Which i find to be very helpful. With our new Safety Organization, instead of having the safety teams underneath our businesses, they are separated and report to our chief engineer. Any safety concerns employees have will come through that organization. We set up a new anonymous reporting organization for those employees who might want to make anonymous report. We continue to have a range of ebix hotlines across our enterprise that encourage employees to make their inputs. Culture of asking our employees to speak up. We want to make sure they are heard and that we take action. Tag you made any changes at the board level have you made any changes at the board local to increase accountability . Our board has been very engaged in this process. Sixthe things we did month ago, i asked our board to set up an independent review. Tremendous has safety background. That committee came forward with a number of recommendations. Some of which ive mentioned in the things we havent lamented. Be board will continue to engaged in the process. The new Safety Organization i providesout it also independent audit back into our board. Our board has set up a new Aerospace Safety committee that is now permanent, headed up by admiral jim bosch danny. We added admiral richardson, who has deep experience in safety. He will be a member of that committee. Our Safety Organization will have an independent reporting line to them as well, which i think is a good discipline process. I did not get to hear all of the testimony. Have you made any recommendations to this committee for things at the federal level we ought to be doing differently to make sure whether it is boeing or airbus to make sure this does not happen again . Senator, we have discussed a number of options. We have learned and there are some things we need to fix that are related to the airplane design and training and communications. We also think there are to reform our processes and how we Work Together as government and industry. Any actions that would enhance safety. Thank you, senator scott. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to express my sympathies and condolences to the family members here. We have a safe commercial Aviation Industry in america. I think we always have to look at ways to improve industry airlines, faa, congress timeshare it is difficult for from a members to be here. It is important you are here. I want to thank you for that. I want to start with a parochial question. , mr. Hamilton, alaska airlines, it is a good airline. It is critically important to my state. I notice for the Ranking Member state as well. They fly almost all 737 boeing. Alaskans travel a lot. Ive had many constituents in the aftermath of these max crashes that have asked me, are the 737s we are flying on all the time in alaska to and from seattle and other places safe . Assure myf you constituents that the 737s are safe, that are such an important component of the alaska air travel . The 737 ng fleet alaska operates is a safe airplane. It has about 200 million hours of air safety track record behind it. List i have a 10 . Mr. Hamilton . I agree with mr. Muilenburgs comments. I also want to state heavy weekly we have a weekly meeting june report on whether they are potential safety issue or not. So the max issues are not issues that exist with your 737s, 800s, 900 . No. That is correct. Let me ask i know the house side was looking at this issue as we focus on the tragic 737ons learned from the max accidents. Should we also take the time to ensure the other 737 models that are receiving less attention now are nevertheless continued to be safe and to take the opportunity to look at the faa certification process on those to make sure that that is not bedeviled with some of the challenges we are discussing with regard to the max . Would you agree that as an opportunity to not just focus on the max but the overall process to reboot the focus, both of your company and the faa, on safety . Areenator, i believe there a number of independent reviews underway right now looking at the broader certification process. We support that broader look. Models that are not just the max . All models. Looke taking an end to end at the certification process. I believe there are a number of government independent reviews focused on that. Two for both of you, i keep hearing from Safety Experts about the importance of what they refer to as functional safety. That is, the way that different systems Work Together with the operator as opposed to looking at each system as it is added to a new model in vacuum. It seems to me that this issue corenctional safety is a issue as it relates to the max given what has happened. Can you tell of the committee about what your companys approach can you tell the committee about what your companys approach to functional safety is when you are adding new systems to an existing aircraft like the 737 . Obviously, there was a failure on that issue. How are you working to improve that . Focushe faa do enough to on this idea of functional safety, not just the individual additions to existing and older models. Thatwill ask john to take question. I think it starts with the requirements breakdown of what our airplane level requirements theem and violating at system level and airplane level how change and method levels across. You also talked about regulatory requirements. There is something does the faa focus enough on functional safety . There has been some recent changes in what we call developmental assurance. I think that has continued to mature. Functionalat the safety and some of the things you are focused at is the breakdown and requirements on how different systems interact with that. Pointed out,burg some of the recent reports have discussed this. Willwill support we support those recommendations and the faas actions going forward. Thank you to the panel. We appreciate you being with us. Questioning you further as we continue to get. Ore reports our second panel of witnesses will be escorted in now. We thank you two gentlemen for being with us. The second panel as i have said is mr. Robert some malt, chairman of the National Transportation safety board. And the honorable christopher hart. He is the team share of the joint authorities technical review. We use the shorthand. I will refer to the number of times. Art is the former chairman of the National Transportation and safety board. Have been waiting patiently. These two and a half hours. Gentlemen, we appreciate you being here. You have submitted testimony. We ask each of you to summarize your testimony in five minutes. You are recognized. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Good afternoon. Opportunity tohe testify before you today. This afternoon, i will address the ntsbs rican recent recommendation report regarding the 737s max certification process. This report issued last month contained seven recommendations. Is your microphone on . It is on. I will move closer. Recommendations are the result of the ntsbs involvement and the credited representative to the indonesian government investigation into the lion air crash and the Ethiopian Government investigation involving Ethiopian Airlines. The ntsb precipitates in foreign investigation in correlation practices ofthe International Aviation accident investigations. Under annex 13, the state of occurrence leads the investigation and the u. S. Has the right to purchase paid in the investigation when it involves a u. S. Fractured or u. S. Registered or designed aircraft such as the 737 max 8. This is so any designed or any designed our manufacturing issue can be addressed by the faa or the manufacturer. As an accredited representative to these investigations, the ntsb investigated and initiated thendepth investigation of u. S. Certification processes used to certify the max. Issues were identified revolve around three basic areas. Our seyfert are safety recommendations are centered on them. First, the system safety assumptions used by boeing and ultimately accepted by the faa did not use realistic pilot recognition and corrective actions in response to uncommitted Flood Control inputs. Quits quite simply, the assumptions boeing used did not consider or account for the impact multiple flight deck alerts or indications could have on pilot responses to uncommitted activation. Identified a need for manufacturers to evaluate their response assumptions using scientific to improve cockpit design, procedures, and training. We believe the use of validated methods and tools to assess pilot performance in dealing with failure conditions and emergencies would result in more effective requirements for flight deck interface design, pilot procedures, and training strategies. Finally, we believe manufacturers should develop and orporate airline cockpits in airline cockpits, mechanize tos that would allow pilots react to multiple alarms. The pilot in the lion air and ethiopian crashes were faced with multiple alerts. Research demonstrates emergency situations would increase workload and i require and require to manage effectively because of the stress involved in possible confusion regarding which actions are necessary to resolve the problem. Each of our seven recommendations are detailed in my written testimony. It should be noted that the ntsb investigators continue to examine the design certification process and we may issue additional recommendations in this area if warranted. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to your questions. Hart, you are recognized. Thank you for inviting me to this hearing today. I would like to extend my condolences, joining others who of already done so, to the families and friends of the passengers and crew on lion air flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302. The faa the faa created the joint tentacle review because these crashes created a need to review the certification process. The jtr, which included representatives from the faa, nasa, and other authorities, was created to review the max certification process to determine whether the appropriate regulations were applied to assess whether compliance was shown, and to recommend improvements. I commend the faa for seeking the review and for making it public. The max grounding was unprecedented. Previous groundlings where the Mcdonnell Douglas dc10 when engine separated from the wing and the boeing 787 in 2013 due to battery fires. In those groundings, the airplanes were rendered on unairthy rendered rworhtyh. Thegrounding of the max on other hand involves automation that usually word, but sometimes filled paid when it failed, some pilots knew how to respond, but some, including those who crashed, did not. Because the scenario is not just an airplane problem, but a problem of airplane pilot interaction automation complexity increases, anticipate future problems are more likely to be of the airplane and pilot type rather than airplane only. After three meetings in seattle in which boeing and faa were helpful and open, and extensive work between the meetings, the ja are gave recommendations. We did that on october 11. Some of the recommendations arise from the need of the certification process to address how a single system failure may create failures in other systems. Other issues raised systems become more complex, the likelihood increases compliance with applicable regulations will not ensure safety. Moreover, as systems become more complex, the certification process should ensure failed safety Design Principles prioritize the mitigation of hazards to design minimizing reliance on pilot action as primary means of risk mitigation. Delegation will become more prevalent as regulators encounter increasing difficulty hiring and retaining technology leaders. Although the recommendations do theyddress the delegation, do recommend how to make the oda process less cumbersome to avoid stable income indications. Whether Inadequate Communications resulted in the failure to address the effects of maneuvering the augmentation system from a benign system to a more aggressive system. Modifyinghether and cast other recommendations relate to the faa standards regarding the time for pilots to identify and respond to problems. Jatr members recommend whether standards are appropriate for todays standards. Query how adequately the certification process considers the impact of multiple alarms as well as the effect on the ability of pilots to respond these two crashes are the latest of several recent crashes in which pilots encountered scenarios they had never seen before, even in training and responded inappropriately. Increasing complexity and reliability exacerbate pilots exacerbate the challenge of training pilots responding to problems theyve never seen. Increasing complexity exacerbates a challenge because it reduces the likelihood that pilots understand the system. It increases the difficulty of determining what types of problems might occur. In conclusion, members hope their recommendations will continue improving aviation safety by improving the certification process. Thank you for inviting me and i look forward to your questions. Thank you, gentlemen. Is the work complete regarding the max for either of your organizations . Mr. Sumwalt . Mr. Sumwalt mr. Chairman, thank you for that question. We are continuing to go through scores and scores of design certification documents and we are looking if we need to make additional recommendations, we certainly will. To answer your question, our work is not completed. Sen. Wicker mr. Hart . Mr. Hart our work is completed because we were told to review the situation and give recommendations to the faa. We did that on october 11th. That completed our work. Thank you for asking. Sen. Wicker so, this particular jatr, joint Authority Technical review, is over and disbanded . Thats correct. Sen. Wicker all right. Lets talk about the time between the first crash and the second crash. It was it was evident pretty clear after the first one, after the lion crash, that the mcas system was not working correctly. Is that true, mr. Sumwalt . Mr. Sumwalt yes, sir, that is correct. Sen. Wicker mr. Hart, there are many factors, but little but the dysfunction of the mcas was central. Mr. Hart thats correct. Sen. Wicker and at that point, what notice was sent out to other airlines and to the pilots to make it clear that that was the main problem . As sumwalt mr. Chairman, you are aware, today is the oneyear anniversary of lion air. On october 29th was the crash. I believe it was october the correction, november the 7th when the faa put out an air worthiness directive to require certain procedures procedural modifications. Sen. Wicker was that a typical air worthiness directive or was it highlighted as an Emergency Air worthiness directive . Im not sure. Chris, do you know . Air worthiness directive pretty much by definition are considered emergencies, so i think this one was definitely was one that is supposed to command the attention of the entire industry. Sen. Wicker mr. Sumwalt is consulting with staff. Its fine if he supplements that. But this was a red flag sent out about the max and mcas part of it, is that correct . Would you would you either of you gentlemen quarrel that this was a red flag warning . Industrywide warning that everyone who flies this airplane needs to know about the issue. So to that extent, yes. Sen. Wicker well, is there a way we could have made it more explicit . Was there something about this advisory that didnt get the job done, mr. Hart . Im sorry, but i cant speak for the faa and their decision process on how to handle this. The decision process to have the air worthiness directive within days of the second crash was intentional to get the word out as quickly as possible, but im really i was not privy to the decisionmaking process. Sen. Wicker no, but im talking about the way it would typically have been received internationally and in the Aviation Industry. This would have been taken seriously and given a heightened bit of attention, is that correct . Thats certainly the purpose of an air worthiness directive, yes. How people responded to it, i dont have a good answer to that. Sen. Wicker did i hear you say, mr. Hart, that some pilots reacted in one way, which was sufficient, and some pilots did not, for whatever reasons, do that . If you could elaborate on what you were telling the committee. Mr. Hart yes, thank you for that question. I was referring specifically to the fact that in the lion air crash, the day before that crash , the same problem was encountered and the pilots responded to it appropriately. Sen. Wicker well, what do you think there was a failure at lion air to notify the other crews that a problem had occurred, it was resolved in this fashion, and we need to be mindful of it . Do you know if that was communicated between the flight that did land safely and the one the next day . Unfortunately, i do thank you for the question. Unfortunately, i do not know the details of who told what to whom. Whether it was the mechanics, the other pilots. I dont know the details of what happened the day before was transmitted to the subsequent pilots and subsequent mechanics. Sen. Wicker mr. Sumwalt, do you want to clarify anything youve said based on some advice youve been getting . Mr. Sumwalt in fact, it was an Emergency Air worthiness directive issued by the faa, as mr. Hart has indicated. Sen. Wicker so, that is a term of art. An Emergency Air worthiness directive . Mr. Sumwalt thats correct. That means it does not allow for Public Comment. Oftentimes for a normal air worthiness directive, the faa has to put it out for Public Comment unless its an Emergency Air worthiness directive. Sen. Wicker is it fair for me to characterize that as a red flag . Mr. Sumwalt well, as chris hart indicated, it does indicate there was something that needed immediate awareness within the aviation community. Sen. Wicker senator cantwell. Sen. Cantwell thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank the second panel for being here. I wish there were as many people listening to this as the first because this is the hard work that we have do in getting this right and moving forward and i so much appreciate mr. Sumwalts ntsb recommendations and, mr. Hart, your committees recommendations. My colleagues and i, snorl senator duckworth, senator blumenthal, have already introduced legislation on the ntsb and other recommendations last week. Hopefully well be able to move forward on those. You heard the discussion, i believe were here for this issue about what happened in the cockpit and the level of distraction, which i think is the point mr. Sumwalt, of at least two of the recommendations we put in our legislation, that is your recommendation, that the faa direct boeing to have clearer corrective actions from uncommand systems. And that there be this some sort of resolution that theyve had in other planes to the cockpit situation so were not bombarding pilots. Also that they develop the same kind of assessment. Now, when i read the circulars, and ive read many, its pretty clear to me that this already should have been done. I mean, its pretty clear that you have to talk about the effectiveness that when you submit a plan for a plane, you have to submit this alert plan. Well see well find out at some point what alert plan was submitted and what was reviewed. Its very clear that you have to have this effectiveness intended for human and machine integration you know, people understanding the alerts, compatibility with other displays and warnings, ensuring the system is telling the pilots what to do. So, listen, i appreciate your recommendations. And we are going to get them. Into law, trust me. The question becomes like, what are we doing on top of something that isnt already clear here, what is it were doing that doing in helping people understand . What is it were doing here to make this system safer . The reason i ask this, because as i said in my Opening Statement, i actually believe this is the issue du jour. I think it is for automobile safety, on more avs, and airplanes. Theres going to be more integration into the cockpit. So any time youre taking over command of that plane with a response, we need to know and we need to understand that functionality. So, what are these alert system requirements that were asking the faa to do both for the max and for all planes . What is that really giving us that we dont currently have now in the statute . Mr. Sumwalt well, thank you for the question, senator cantwell and thank you for your leadership and advocacy on this issue. We did identify holes in the design certification process. Id be glad to get into some of those holes and what those recommendations are. But i dont want to dominate your time. I defer to you. Sen. Cantwell well, my question was, why do you think this is important . You actually dont think the details are there . Mr. Sumwalt we really what the long and the short of it, woven throughout each of the seven recommendations is that we found that with when pilots are faced with multiple alerts, theyre not performing or reacting in the way that boeing thought that they would react when they developed their design assumptions. Sen. Cantwell and what about Safety Management systems for aerospace manufacturers, what about that recommendation . Mr. Sumwalt the ntsb has has found the benefits of Safety Management systems in many modes of transportation, including aviation. We dont have specifically a recommendation for an sms for the manufacturers, however we do believe that when youre properly analyzing and assessing your risk, that is improving safety. So i think personally that would be a good idea for manufacturers to have a Safety Management system in place. Sen. Cantwell what does that mean to most people trying to listen to this conversation, post the one we just had . What does that actually mean that happens . Mr. Sumwalt ive always looked at Safety Management systems and i like the term Safety Management instead of Safety Management systems because its an active thing. We want to manage safety the way we would manage other vital business functions. So, theyre generally thought to be about four tenets of sms. One is Safety Risk Assessment where youre actively assessing your risk and managing those risks to an acceptable level. So, thats a key component right there of a Safety Management system. Well, this issue of Risk Management is critical and thats what i believe, is you have to say, what are the highest risks so you can focus on those. No one thought the change of a new system that took outside information, controlled the plane, gave different commands that gave different alerts, that do different things. It wasnt tested. We have to implement this. The faa was given this, i dont know if it was a directive or nudge before, but then they pulled back on a rulemaking in 2014 on this system management, but you believe others are recommending this is what we should go for because it creates this robust conversation, is that the right way to describe it. Mr. Sumwalt as a safety practitioner, i agree with that. The ntsb has not really gone on the record to have a recommendation from that but from a safety practitioners perspective, again, when youre managing your risks, youre managing safety. Sen. Cantwell thank you. My time has passed so, senator blumenthal. Sen. Blumenthal thank you, senator cantwell. And i want to express my appreciation to senator cantwell and senator duckworth. The legislation we are working on together and additional legislation we hope will be based on your reports and others. I had a lot of questions for our previous witness, which unfortunately i didnt have time to ask. One of them would have been, why did he call the president of the United States . In effect, circumventing the faa if they were really going to respect safety . Are either of you aware of the call or calls that were made by mr. Muilenburg to the president of the United States seeking to prevent grounding of these airplanes in the immediate aftermath of the second crash . Senator blumenthal, im certainly not aware of that. I sat in this hearing in march when you asked mr. Elwell the same questions. Im not aware of that. We were not involved in the decision to ground the aircraft in any form or fashion. Sen. Blumenthal mr. Hart . Mr. Hart it was not within the purview of the jatr. We were looking at the certification process to decide how to make it better. Sen. Blumenthal the fact of the matter is the United States of america were among the last nations to ground those aircrafts, correct . Thats certainly my my understanding. And normally the United States would be at the forefront of safety, correct . Mr. Hart good question, senator. Just for your awareness, i am on record through an oped on usa today to waiting to see if they had enough data to see if it is a oneoff event, and because if not, they will be grounding airplanes after every crash. If it was more than a oneoff . Sen. Blumenthal in retrospect was it a wise decision . , after the fact. Sen. Blumenthal the u. S. Was the last to have that data, for whatever reason . Well, everybody had the same data at the same time, but the faa has a reputation for waiting for the data to react. Sen. Blumenthal let me ask you. Your report found that key aspects of the mcas functions such as the intended function description, and the interfaces and architecture were not directly visible to the faa in a straight forward manner through the certification deliverable documents. I am trying to put that in simple english that you would use in a usa today article. They did not do full fair disclosure to the faa, did they . In simple language, the process was complicated enough, challenging enough that the communication was stifled and the communication did not get to where it needed to be when it needed to be there. Sen. Blumenthal i think that answers my question. And that is something that we should correct, correct . That is something that the jatr has recommended correcting an the wall street journal reported that internal boeing surveys reveal 30 other of employment have pressure from managers regarding safety, complaint that asserted, quote, boeing management was more concerned with cost and schedule than safety or quality, end quote. Did your report did your investigative work indicate that pressure to move the safety process at the expense im sorry, move the certification process at the expense of safety. Thank you for your question. Our review found enough concern about undo influence that we it be reviewedt carefully for next certification process. You indicate that you thought the delegation would continue which seems contrary to what we have found here so far, a lot of the questioning has been to reverse delegation, so i hope that maybe we can have your further thoughts on that issue, let me ask one more question of mr. Sumwalt, y on sunday, they reported undercut Regulatory Oversight early and often, the story of boeing sabotaging wig rouse safety scrutiny is chilling too all of us and more reason to keep the 737 max grounded until certification is really and truly independent and the system is reformed. What are your views onnd the amount of Delegation Authority from faa to boeing, shouldnt we reverse the delegation that exists rightht now . Senator blumenthal, thank you for that question. Serve as credited representative to each active investigations as much we looked at the design certification process of 737 max and we issued the 7 recommendations, we have not looked at the oda process, thats not something that we have done . Why . Well, because there are approximately 79 organizations that have oda approval, weve b got about 2 people that have the expertise to dwell into the design certification issues, weve devoted those energies to come up with these 7 recommendation that is we issued one month ago, thats enormous task under impression that they are doing study of the issue. As numerous other entities. Thank you, senator. Thank you, mr. Chairman, at the march hearing chairman asked simple question concerning lions air flight 610 and i quote, what should the pilots have done and you responded as follows, well, i flew 737 for 10 years and i believe theres a procedure at least for flinstone version and that would engage cutout function and to me this answer makes sense, the most reliable initial human response is to pull back on, would you concur with this view . Yes, i do. Ive actually looked at the procedure and it says to grasp and to hold it firmly, but as you know, as an experienced pilot, your natural reaction would, in fact, if its going into a direction youre not intended to, you intend to oppose which should in older models of boeing aircraft, 727 and 737 that would engage and stop from running, but as you pointed out in earlier round, it will not do that on 737 max. Right, thats what i would like to add to your response, critical importance of column e cutting function its not just limited to the very old 737 but boeing engineer responsible, 747 and 747 400, 737 max, its stopped by column motions only, you dont have to do another step, once you pull back, thats it, theres nothing that resets and pushes the nose back down 5 seconds later. Theres nothing else you have to ts, that is it and every other model of boeing aircraft of 737s, but for the max with the malfunction, the pilot has to also apply manual within the 3second window otherwise the mcast which the pilots did not know was installed could reset and put the nose back down. Now youre telling pilots, natural reaction, you pull backt overwrote it, you think thats now you have to troubleshoot for a system that you dont know exists and overriding command and are you aware of boeing notifying commercial 737 pilots before the lion air crash that activates during flight with cutoff safety function, overrides the safety function . Senator duckworth, im under the impression just as you said prior to these two tragic crashes that information was not widely known within the piloting community. Thank you. The mcast malfunction should have been elevated to hazardous rating and worsened by tripling the rate which made severe likely especially with persistent malfunction, had boeing done this, instead of rating as major hazard, we would not be where we are today, would you agree with that . It changes how to report to the faa, am i correct . Yes, the hazard category of major as i understand it only require to be one angle if it was at higher hazard category it would have required the input from 2. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, i would likese to enter peter, flaw assumptions, disaster into the record. Without objection. Mr. Sumwalt, can you talk aboutid decisions and leads to lion air pilots fighting to save the aircraft, and how the decisions add up . Yes, we as you know, senator duckworth, ntsb was accreditor, we participated closely with both of them but since the lion air wrapped up we have worked closely with the International Authorities and we feel that their report, indonesian report, nkat report, comprehensive and and we are satisfied with that report, so i think that report outlines the chain of chain of events, not just one factor but several issues that led to that crash. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you senator duckworth. Senator cruz. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Chairman sumwalt the ntsb report that you mentioned in your testimony, stated that ntsb is concerned of mcast operation were not consistent of underlying assumptions and response that boeing used based on faa guidance for Flight Control system functional hazard assessments including mcast as part of 737 max design, why do you think it was that boeing d made the wrong assumptions . Senator cruz, thank you for that question and what we do know is that to simulate the mcast or to assess the level of hazard, the level of risk associated with that, they put boeing pilots, test pilots in the engineering simulator and while they were flying all of a sudden the trim started moving, they wanted to see how a pilot would have reacted and if they reacted the way that boeing expected them to do, then they said, okay, well, a pilot will immediately recognize this problem, theyll notice because the nose is starting to pitch down, theyll notice because its increased pressure on the control wheel and one other thing, and the wheel was moving. Thats all correct, but what boeing failed to account for ini their assumptions was to consider that the mcast could have failed because of another reason, the macst, could have activated because of failure of angle of attack which would have led to numerous other alerts and warnings in the cockpit, so with angle of attack, they would have had low air speed indication on their flight display, they would have gotten a stick shaker or stall warning which is rattling the stick and make august lot of noise, they would have gotten ngwarning that said air speed l, air speed low, they would have had various lights in the cockpit, the long end and short of it is, boeing only evaluated pilots performance selfmoving, they did not simulate or replicate how multiple failures could affect ain pilots performance. And why did the faa processes not catch this, not catched the failed assumptions . Well, its a great question, senator, im not sure that i know the answer to that, thats the 7 issued recommendations so design assumptions can be more realistic, we found in 3 incidents in two accident flights, plus the lion air flight prior to accident flight, we have seen 3 case where is the pilots did not perform in accordance with the assumptions that boeing used. And is bird strike a scenario that that engineers designing a plane should anticipate and regulators focusing on a plane should anticipate . I believe so and i believe they do in certain areas, im not sure how it might apply to this. En out the aoa sen, so and i dont know if that is a part of the total Risk Assessment for the 737 max as it is relating to mcas. Sen. Cruz and any indication of boeing or the faa considered the possibility that a bird attack would shear off the sensor . Was quote, incomplete and fragmented. The jt are then went on to say the faa had been more involved in the certification of the mcast, this would haveresulted in Design Changes tethat would have improved safety. Based on the jaatrs findings, why would the faa except incomplete and fragmented Safety Information from boeing and what can be done to fix that . Thank you for the question. Thats the purpose of the recommendation the communication process that the oda, the less bureaucratic and less complicated so the communication process is undermined by the complexity of that situation. The fda was not aware of the evolution of the mcast from a relatively weak system to a more robust system, the faa wasnt aware the details of how adequately the transformation of the mcast from a highspeed windup turn direction to a lowspeed angle of attack correction and where the assumptions properly considered in the process and mark the were not adequate to be fully aware of the impact of those issues. Thank you senator crews, senator blumenthal. I have just one question and you may consider it outside of your expertise, but the ceo of boeing told us today that they made mistakes andregretted them. And wanted to take action in response to do the right thing for the families who were affected, the loved ones, the victims. Boeing has said it will take responsibility specifically for the lion aircraft resulting in the death of 189 people in indonesia last year and the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed hundred 87 people. But it has filed Court Documents for the lyons aircraft indicating it will move to change the venue of the case to indonesia, where the plane was maintained. If settlement talks fail. The case was filed in the Northern District of illinois where boeing is headquartered asyou know. Resolving these claims in indonesia seems a lot less likely to provide justice to those families. Theres no seven amendment right to a jury trial there, no requirement of discovery. Theres no rule allowing fordepositions. Would you agree with me that equity, fairness, justice to regard you in favor of keeping these cases in the United States . My friend chris hart is a harvard educated lawyer. Harvard law schoolgraduate and practicing lawyer in addition to being a pilot , so if you want to defer to him thats fine. Absolutely. I have a harvard attorney so to speak but i dont know anything about the litigation strategy to be able to comment on what they want to do litigation wise. Thats wayoutside of my lane. The dhcr did not consider it and i dont consider myself competent to that issue. In general would you consider courts of the United States being a better place to do justice for American Families than the courts of indonesia . Thank you for the question but im not enough of a litigator to your answer. Thank you mister chairman. Thank you senator blumenthal. Were going to close thishere and now. One more thing. Senator can wait. Thank you, i just wanted to clarify mister hart i heard early from the testimony on the company that they actually do think that the faa new about the level of trim. Theres going to be a big issue, i think were going to hear a lot more about this but you would hope that the plan at the beginning of certification would include that data , then they would edmake decisions but i am concerned that the level of automation and technology in human response, i want to see the best engineers. I think when the Automobile Industry and toyota went through this we didnt know what happened. We basically called nafta and said when you look at this code and figure out what happened . What nafta to look at software code. I want to faa be the best Technology Engineers and in understanding problems with software, problems with automation and colleges with human response. Outline part of our legislation is that center of excellence for the faa which by the way ive done two other center of excellence is, one on composite manufacturing because the faa didnt know enough about composites that know how to certify the plane and one on biofuel because they also dont know how to certify fuel sources for claims that they dont understand fuel themselves. So im a believer that we get the faa extra resources and tools so they can stay ahead for at least be, know the right parameters of debate, but in the right parameters of debate have to focus on this Human Technology interface today at mark e,that where we are because we saw those 10 years of making it safer and yet this level of integration is also solicited five of the last accidents for all around this and i think that for me and Many Americans in waking up wondering what is a po tube and aoa center on the outside of the plane getting commands and responses to inside the cockpit without the pilot so i just feel that the faa, and weve had this discussion with captain sullenberger needs to understand human response to these automation systems. What do you say about that recommendation of a center of excellence, mister hart . Thank you for the question and gives me an opportunity to respond to senator blumenthal raising the same issue and that is i think that as first of all the type of problem were going to see with airplane safety fin the future in my view is going to not be falling off the airplane like the dc10 engine, its going thto be airplane interaction issue so the human factor is crucial and thats why im totally on board with the human factor recommendation the ntsb may. There are two problems. One is the reference was to multiple things going wrong at the same time. I would add that its not just multiple things going wrong, never having any training, thats the challenge is when they are chseeing this for the first time in realtime this series of accidents or this had happened and its been unsuccessful, the one exception was solely when he had unintended situation that he had never seen before even in training and he handled it masterfully. I think ive consulted him a lot about this, but that is why he came to lust after golden air and said do not change the regulations on the copilot for regional aircraft you dont have enough time. You dont have enough time to talk so i think if youre going to develop a system for certification to the faa aa have to know the parameters of human response and what pilots are capable of. We just need a lot moredata. This is the route were going to keep going on innovation , then we just need to know a lot more about what is a factor, i dont want to speak forhim but i think his perception is that where you have to start because you dont have any way to judge a system, if you dont understand what the human limitation is. That goes to my point that the leading technologists in these rapidly advancing innovative technology, leading colleges are not going to be with the regulator, thats why this is not an faa problem, this is an International Certification problem because the regulators unable to hire and retain the leading technologists in these advancing technologies, theyre going to be the companies. But i want the faa to have enough Data Information and understanding to ask the un right questions because if theyre not asking the right questions they dont understand the technological impact, were going to have a problem. We have to make sure they understand the r and d and at least the parameters, whether that composite volume fuels are content automation. That wife information is so crucial. Take your point, thank youfor making that point. Just one quick question, the faa were able to pay enough to offer career opportunities, would that affect your judgment that they cant hire the leading technologists as you put it . I cant the totality of ha the circumstances why the regulators dont have as people that part of it. Im just really discouraged and frankly and somewhat skeptical about your view that the faa should be sort of doomed to failure. And has to outsource safety. I dont mean to suggest there doomed to fail, i suggest thats why the collaborative process of the e delegation will continue because theres no way in my view in the way that things are currently situated the faa will have the expertise within house to do it without the collaboration. Putting aside the word collaboration , i hope we can prove you wrong. By in fact incentivizing both financially and otherwise people with those skills to go to work for the faa because thats where the disinterested and independent the function belongs. If you outsource safety, that is doomed to failure. I agree with you, that would be ideal. Senator blumenthal. Thank you very much and thanks to the members of the committee who participated, throughout. I have to say this is has been one of the most difficult hearings ive ever participated in. And i know its been difficult for the family members are still with us in the room , some have had to leave. Let me reiterate what i said at the outset and that is this committee under my leadership and senator cantwells leadership is working to obtain is full and answeras possible. We always to the public andwe know it to the families. And to the victims and you have my assurance that we are not finished with the work. That said, the hearing may remain open for two weeks. During this time senators are asked to submit any questions for the record. All witnesses are requested to submit their written answers to the itcommittee as soon as possible. Thank the witness for appearing today and this hearing is now adjourned. Cspans campaign 20 20 coverage continues live today with president ial candidates in iowa and mississippi. Starting at 7 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan, the democratic president ial contenders speak at the liberty and justice celebration in des moines. Featured speakers include speaker michael bennett, former Vice President joe biden, senator cory booker, governor c bolick, mayor pete buttigieg, john delaney, kamala harris, bernie sanders, tom stier, senator Elizabeth Warren and andrew yang. And at 8 pm eastern on cspan2, president of the Campaign Rally with supporters in tupelo mississippi area and what campaign 2020 coverage live today at 7 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan and at 8 pm eastern on cspan2. Watch anytime on cspan. Org and listen on the go with the free cspan radio app. We are making it easy to follow the impeachment inquiry on cspan. Org. 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It began with the fact the United States has never since the syrian uprising began known what itwas doing trying to accomplish there. The environment. Right now were powering airconditioners with coal and thats where the ad is coming from. Call waste has lead, mercury, all the things are talking about and we sidle these in poor communities, unities of color. But Nuclear Plants can produce electricity without all those pollutants and aquino talk by civil rights attorney ben crump. States like florida and tennessee, one out of every five black men are convicted felons and these offenses are similar in many states across the country and experts suggest if this trend continues in the next 25 years, it will be one out of every three black men in america who are convicted felons. Watch the boston book festival saturday at 2 pm eastern and be sure to catch miami but their lives saturday and sunday, november 23 and 24th. On the tv on cspan2. 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