Transcripts For CSPAN2 Boeing CEO Govt Officials Testify On 737 MAX 20240713

This hearing will come to order. Thank you all for being here today. One year ago today lion air, flight 610 crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff from jakarta, indonesia. All 189 people on board perished. Five months later Ethiopian Airline 302 departed out of ethiopia just like lion air flight 610, ethiopian flight 302 experienced problems shortly after takeoff and crashed. All 157 persons on board died. Both of these accidents were entirely preventible. We cannot fathom the pain experienced by the families of those 346 human beings who were lost. Many family members are here today and we appreciate their attendance. I appreciate many of them meeting with members of the committee over time. As chairman of this committee i 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 max8 manufactured by boeing. International aviation safety regulators began grounding the max the day after the ethiopian crash. On march 13 federal Aviation Administration formally grounded the aircraft in the United States. The maxs return to service is contingent on boeings work with the faa to test and certify fixes to the mcas Flight Control system which activated during both crashes. In order for the max to return to service, International Regulators also need to be satisfied that its safe to fly. As a certification process continues, many questions remain about boeings actions. And the faas actions during the design, development, and certification processes, as well as the operation of the max. Todays hearing is divided into two panels. There will be known the five minute rule will be observed strictly because we have so many people who wish a participate. On the first panel dennis muilenburg, president and ceo of boeing will testify on behalf of the aircraft manufacturer. He is 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 Witnesses Today include National Transportation safety Board Chairman robert somwalt and the joint technical review, chris hart. Ment overseas the ntsb which released a report and recommendations regarding the max certification. Chairman hart led the jatr, that included with the tasked reviewing the Flight Control systems. The jtr has submitted broad recommendations to the faa. And chairman hart has extensive past Government Service in aviation safety, but he is a private citizen today who agreed to lead the jtr. 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 mcas development and testing. The jtr criticized boeings communication with the faa on mcass development after the system was modified to act at lower air speeds and jtr criticized for outdated regulations, guidance and certification procedures and failing to incorporate realistic Human Behavior factors into its assumptions. The n. T. S. B. Called into question boeings and faas assumptions about pilot reaction during mcas activation. These were important for stressful situations with multiple alerts going off in the cockpit. Our witnesses should address the company and safety regulators actions regarding max certification in general and mcas in particular. The process for certifying the max with a Close Partnership between boeing and faa. Under a decades old system called organization, design, authorization, or oda, the faa has delegated certainly certification activities to the oda holder, in this case, boeing. While the oda has been used to certify many aircraft over the years, some have criticized the system for permitting an inappropriately close relationship between companies and their safety regulator. Indeed, email correspondence dating from as early as 2015, between the maxs former chief technical pilot, mark forkner, and faa personnel released on october 18th reflect a disturbing level of casualness and flippancy that seemed to corroborate the instances. I was disturbed to learn of an instant message conversation between mr. Forkner and a colleague in which he acknowledged misinforming the faa. Boeing should have notified the faa about that conversation immediately upon its discovery. Although faa is not testifying today, let me express my frustration with the agencys lack of responsiveness to my request dating back to april of this year for documents relevant to the 737 max as part of the investigation that i opened as chairman, based on whistleblower disclosures. The relationship between regulating agencies and organizations they regulate is important, but so are the internal reforms that boeing is implementing. Witnesses should provide their views on the oda system and whether or not reforms are needed. I invite mr. Muilenburg to describe the steps boeing is taking to improve 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 limited to past actions. The reviews by both jtr and ntsb note that future Aircraft Systems are likely to be even more complex and interdependent than current models, managing interfaces between humans and machines will become even more important as automation increases. At the same time, commercial aviation is set to continue expanding around the globe. Many future pilots will fly in countries without the same training requirements and Safety Standards that we have in the United States. We welcome the witnesss thoughts on how to improve design, development and certification in the future to account for these major changes. This hearing will by no means end our inquiry. Additional oversight hearings will be held. The committee will carefully review the final lion air report which was released on friday, as well as the Ethiopian Airlines report which is forth coming. The fight will consider the findings and recommendations from jtr and ntsb and all other reviews. I now recognize the distinguished Ranking Member, senator cantwell for thank you mr. Chairman and i, too, want to recognize the families of the victims of the lion air and ethiopian tragedies some of whom are here today. I cant imagine the loss and enduring pain you must feel. I thank you for your vigilance on this issue just as weve seen the families of vigilance help us improve safety for the future. Right now, mr. Muilenburg, these families, millions of Airline Passengers and over 150,000 Aerospace Workers want to know what were doing to fix what went wrong and what did go wrong. To date, we havent gotten all of those answers. Hopefully todays hearing will help provide some. One thing is crystal clear, if you want to be the leader in aviation manufacturing, you have to be the leader in aviation safety. Aviation demand, especially for 737s and single planes is exploding to 101 growth over the next 10 years, Something Like 35,000 planes and 3 trillion. I think thats actually 20 years. But we cannot have a race for commercial airports become a race to the bottom when it comes to safety. The company, the board, cannot prioritize profits over safety. Safety always has to be jobs one. So it is troubling to hear that boeing may have skirted the faa certification process over a desire by airlines to have more fuel efficient planes, but without Pilot Training. Now, this issue of lowering standards is permeating through all of aviation. Were dealing with it here in the committee. My democratic colleagues have led the charge to try to stop 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, or the issue my colleague has examined on rest requirements for cargo pilots having the same requirements for rest as passenger planes. Thank god captain sullen burger, the hero of the hudson made it clear, when youre in an emergency, the pilot and copilot dont have time a lot of time to communicate. So thats why today we need answers to how the first 737 max certification process was done, and we especially need transparency on this process of review before the 737 max is put in the air again. The public needs to know and fully understand what 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 boeings Safety Culture, whether boeing employees raised safety concerns that were not listened to. Whether there was enough testing and complex System Integration and information into a cockpit alert system that we now know was flawed and whether there was even enough data presented to the faa. These are questions that are important, including outsourcing of engineering and coding. There are many questions about software and cockpit information and overload. I guarantee you, the faa codes and laws are clear when it comes to the standards for certification. Yes, software and automation, flight training, better rest requirements for pilots have all led to ten years between 20 2009 to 2018 as the safest ten years in aviation history. But more software and automation without robust Third Party Testing and validation will lead us to where we are today. We should note that the last five aviation accidents have all involved this issue of automation and pilot response to automation, whether its lion air, ethiopian, the asiana, the french or qantas 330 accidents, they were all in response to an automation and command and response to the pilot. Thats why last week, i introduced legislation with my colleagu colleagues, on Better Safety management systems, better cockpit prioritization and a new faa center of excellence on flight automation and Human Factors. The faa needs the best engineers for the future and stay ahead on this Human Behavior response to new automation. Were dealing i see people here on the transportation automobile side. Its the same issue in advanced vehicles, what automation exists and how do humans respond to it. So i look forward to also hearing from chairman somwalt and chris hart on improving the safety review process that weve included in this legislation. I would just say, again, our sorrows are nothing like the families who are with us today. But i do want to note the 737 max accidents have struck at the heart of everyone in the northwest. Soon after the ethiopian crashes, seattle firefighter approached 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 dedicated their lives to aviation excellence and safety and that spirit lives on in everett and renton. So this isnt a question about line workers, this is a question about a corporate view from chicago, whether theres enough attention to manufacturing and certification. You should take, you know, offense to the fact that people say its a Great Company not being run correctly. So for the 346 people who trusted boeing without a second thought, we need to get this right. These families are counting on us. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator cantwell. Mr. Muilenburg, you have submitted an extensive written statement, it will be entered in full in the record at this point. Youre now and i understand mr. Hamilton will not be making a formal statement. So, mr. Muilenburg, you are recognized at this point to summarize your Opening Statement for five minutes. Thank you. Thank you for being here, sir. Chairman wicker, Ranking Member cantwell, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to join you today and we share your commitment to aviation safety. Before we start today id like to speak directly to the families of the victims who are here with us. On behalf of myself, and the boeing company, we are sorry, deeply and truly sorry. As a husband and father myself, im heartbroken by your losses. I think about you and your loved ones every day, and i know our entire boeing team does as well. I know that probably doesnt offer much comfort and healing at this point, but i want you to know that we carry those memories with us every day and every day that drives us to improve the safety of our airplanes and our industry, and that will never stop. Im grateful and humbled to be here today and to be able to say these words to the families directly, and i want to convey our absolute commitment to safety, our commitment to learning, our commitment to rebuilding the publics confidence in what we do, and to preventing accidents from like this like this from ever, ever happening again. We will never forget and that is our commitment Going Forward. Mr. Chairman, i know this committee has many questions about the max. Well do our best today to answer all of those questions. While one of the accidents is still under investigation we know both accidents involved the repeated activation of a Flight Control system called mcas, which responded to erroneous signals from a sensor that measures the airplanes angle of attack. Based on that weve enhanced mcas in three ways. First it will compare information from both sensors instead of one before act evaluated. Second, mcas will only activate a single time. Mcas will never put more input than the pilot can counter act using the controller alone. And pilots have the ability to override mcas at anytime. Weve brought the best of boeing to this effort. We spent over 100,000 engineering and test hours, weve flown more than 800 test flights. Simulator sessions from over 800 participants and 49 customers and 41 global regulators. Ive flown on a couple of flights myself. This has taken longer than expected, but were committed to getting it right. During this process, weve worked closely with the faa and other regulators, weve provided them documentation, had them fly the simulators, answered their questions, and regulators around the world should regular rigorously scrutinize the max and only return to flight when theyre completely satisfied with safety. The public deserves nothing less. Mr. Chairman, today and every day over 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 rigorous oversight of this committee have reduced accidents 95 over the last 20 years, but no number other than zero accidents is ever acceptable. We can and must do better. Weve been challenged and changed by these accidents. Weve made mistakes and we got some things wrong. Were improving and were learning, and were continuing to learn. We established a permanent Aerospace Safety committee of our board. We stood up a new Safety Organization. We strengthened our Engineering Organization so all engineers report up through. And we have have pledged 100 million to this evident and hired Renowned Experts in this area to ensure families can access these funds as quickly as possible. No amount of money can bring back what was lost, but we can at least 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, having grown up on a family farm in iowa. I was awestruck to work at the company that brought the jet age to the world and helped land a person on the moon. Today im still inspired by what boeing does and by the remarkable men and women who are committed to its outstanding legacy. But these heartbreaking accidents and the memories of 346 lives lost are now part of that legacy. It is our solemn duty to learn from them and we will. Recently theres been much criticism of boeing and our culture. We understand and deserve this scrutiny, but i know the people of boeing. They are more than 150,000 of the most dedicated, honest, hardworking men and women in the world. And their commitment to safety, quality and integrity is unparalleled and resolute. Well stay true to those values because we know our work demand the utmost excellence. Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, mr. Muilenburg. During my Opening Statement i mentioned an instant message conversation and then a series of emails. The instant message conversation was between the 737 max chief technical and a colleague and it expresses concerns about the operation of the mcas. Boeing knew about this instant message for months, but failed to share it with the faa until recently. With regard to the emails, again, mr. Forkner, the former max chief technical pilot calls for removing any mention of the mcas Flight Control system from the flight crew operating manual. He talks about jedi mind tricking of regulators, with at least one person who works for the faa. So 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. It was discovered as part of a document gathering process in response to a government investigation. So it was after the crashes you . You were made aware of it this year . Sir, as i recall, i believe it was prior to the second crash. Prior to the second crash. Was it your decision to wait months before disclosing this to the faa . Mr. Chairman, at that point it had been identified as a document in response to an Ongoing Investigation and i relied on our counsel to provide that to the appropriate authorities. Okay. Well, did the what did the counsel tell you . Did he say im going to supply it to the Justice Department or im going to get it to appropriate authorities . Mr. Chairman, i dont recall having a specific conversation about which authorities, just again,s a part of this investigative process, our intent to cooperate fully with the request and to provide that to the appropriate authorities, i think over this time period this year, weve provided on the order of half a million pages of documents in support of various requests. Do you agree that 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 administrator dixon, i called him and apologized for how this had come through the process. Again, i was involved in the document production process, but counted on our team to make sure the right authorities were notified. Okay, so we should look to the team then. Can you assure the committee that boeing has now turned over all such safety related communications to the faa related to the 737 max . Senator, i our people continues to cooperate with all requests for documentation. Im sure that additional documents will be provided over time as theyre discovered, as would be normal to the process, but we will cooperate fully with the request. It seems to me that a request shouldnt have to have been made with regard to that im conversation, sir. Let me ask you, when did you become aware of the emails that i referred to in the second part of my question, about jedimind tricking regulators . Senator, again, just recently ive been enveloped of the details of the emails and the can you give us an idea how recently . Over the last couple of weeks when it became public news. Okay, and you did not know about it until then . Sir, i dont recall being briefed on the details of those documents anytime prior to that. Can you see that this raises much concern about the level of coziness between boeing personnel and f. A. A. Regulators . Mr. Chairman, i understand the concern there and again, were doing our best to lean forward and provide information as part of this process. I can tell you that the comments, the values, the approaches that are described in those emails are counter to our values. That in no way would meet any expectation i would have for our team, or our employees, so i understand the concerns, share the concern, and just want to convey, its not consistent with our values as a company at all. And this series of emails has only in the last few weeks come to your attention, is that right, sir . Senator, as i said, i was aware of the documents that were being produced as part of an investigation. Thats what i recall from earlier this year. I dont feel getting briefed on details of these documents. Those details are things that i learned of over the last few weeks. Senator cantwell. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And if you could help, i have a lot to go through, so were going to try to move quickly through it. Was boeing aware of the defects in the mcas system which it failed to disclose to the faa at the time the aircraft was in development and certification . Senator, as you know, the mcas development occurred over a lengthy time period, about a sixyear Development Program of the max. We have learned from both accidents and weve identified changes that need to be made to mcas. We did, during the Development Process, follow our certification standards and longstanding Industry Standards behind the mcas design, but clearly weve learned and there are things we need to improve on mcas. Are you saying answer the question. Answer the question, mr. Muilenburg. Senator, could i ask you was boeing aware of defects in the mcas system which it failed to disclose to the faa at the time the aircraft was in development and certification . Senator, i just have to question the, ill say the premise of the question. As part of our Development Process we do identify hazards and failure modes. And they were disclosed . That was part of the failure mode analysis that we shared as part of the certification process during that time period. So you think everything that you were aware of was disclosed to the faa as it relates to defects in the mcas system . Well, senator, as we get to defects, things we need to fix, weve identified three areas that we talked about needing to address, one was the single sensor feed. That was a piece of the architecture that was 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. And they the control authority of the system at various parts do you know what mr. Faulkner is referring to when he says unknowingly lied to the faa, our jedi mind tricking . Senator, im not sure what he meant by that. We havent been able to talk to him. He doesnt work for boeing anymore. Weve been trying to contact him here is my concern, if you dont know what he meant, you also dont know what wasnt disclosed and so, we dont know if there are things in the mcas system that were defects that he or someone else knew about that werent disclosed. So i hear what youre saying that theres a lot to discover in a process, but id like to go over some of the very specifics about what was tested. And did boeing test the consequences of the mcas reliance on a single aoa sensor . Did it test that . Yes, senator, we tested a broad array of different aspects of the mcas system, a set of failure modes. We did thorough flight testing. John, if you want to comment on the details there. Yes, senator. You know, ng is one of safest airplanes and look, were trying to understand what got did you test the reliability of the aoa sensors in general . Did you test on a single sensor . Did you consult with pilots on the lack of mcas in the flight manual . Did you test the aoa sensors degree of alert reliability. Did you test the human factor response . These are all things from the lion air report and my guess is you didnt test those and thats at the heart of this, but if you did, and you have data on that and it was provided to the faa, thats what we want to see. Senator, we did test the mcas on commanded inputs to the stabilizer system due to whatever causes was driving at. Not specifically due to an aoa sensor. We assessed that hazard level. We talked about which now do you think is wrong . In hindsight, senator, yes. I. Thank you, because i agree. Yeah. Senator, if i could just add a point to that because as john pointed out, we relied on these longstanding Industry Standards as part of our evaluation of Response Time behind mcas and thats one of the areas that here is the thing we found shortfall. Here is the thing im confused about which is just this larger issue and look, we want to get this right because we want to go forward and we know that theres going to be automation in many aspects of our life, but this robust testing that us occur and third party validation, there were just i just dont understand how you have sensors on the outside of a plane and youre going to let that send a command to the inside of the plane, that basically says trim the plane 2. 5 degrees and all of a sudden, youre going to be yelled at from the cockpit from somebody saying, pull up, and then, the same time youre being forced down in your nose and you have seconds to respond because youre in takeoff. That doesnt seem like a lot of robust testing was done to me. Because if it was, then the lion air incident wouldnt have happened. Okay. So i see my time. I have a few seconds left. I want to just bring up look, i think this whole issue of air speed is a major issue rit large for all of us to get right. The sector, those crashes about auto makes, even the air france crash is related to a faulty peto tube. I dont know how much we should be trusting things on the outside of the plane giving commands to the inside of the plane when they can be damaged. I do want to know that youre improving the Safety Culture, the issues of reporting and people not being able to talk to f. A. A. And oversight and the issue of some of the machinists, boeing Quality Inspectors being their work being taken over. I want to understand that a Safety Culture is going to exist. Senator, if anything, i can leave with you today. I want to reinforce the safety of culture of boeing and we know we can improve. Ween courage our employees to speak up when there are issues and some have been public recently. We respect and accept those inputs. We take action following on those. Weve recently made a number of improvements that includes restructuring our safety review boards, elevating them to increased transparency and focus on safety. Weve moved all 50,000 boeing engineers to now report directly to our chief engineer, celebrate being them from im going to ask you to come back on the boeing quality inspector two different issues in response. Thank you, mr. Chairman, ive gone over my time. And now i have the opportunity to telling the distinguished whip he was five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. My understanding its been redesigned for redundancy to prevent erroneous reaction. Can you tell us why that was not considered in the initial development. System . I think you raise an important point. As john began to allude to earlier, the original concept of the design was existential of what we called the speed trim system on the previous version of the 737. Thats a single sensor system proven safe in flight more than 200 million flight hours. One of our safety principles is it to minimize change from model to model. Thats a good standard safety process. That was the concept behind the original mcas design. What weve learned from both accidents is that, we made some mistakes, there are some things we can improve. One of them is this idea of going to a dual sensor feed instead of single, as well as limiting to a single action or activation during a flight. Those are improvements that weve identified. We take responsibility for that. We feel responsible for our airplanes and we know that theres some fixes that we need to make. We own that, and were implementing those fixes Going Forward. As we discussed possible improvements to the certification of aircraft, would be helpful for you to explain how it was from the initial conception of the aircraft all the way 30,000 feet filled with passengers. Since then weve heard that the boeings relationship with the faa is too cozy and we want a certification process thats efficient and promotes u. S. Competitiveness, but prioritizes safety. What would you say to address the concerns that haven about raised by regulatory capture . Senator, i agree with the focus in that area. I would say that over the last couple of decades improvements made in aviation safety are because of strong government oversight, that includes the work of this committee, includes the work of the faa. The delegated authority process as its structured we do think has contributed to safety of the industry. I mention in my comments that its about a 95 improvement in safety over the last two decades. Some of that i believe is associated with the delegated authority. But we have to get the balance right and i think its very important that we have strong government oversight, strong faa oversight, but we also tap the technical depths that our industry teams can bring to the table. Thats the concept, but if we need to rebalance it, i fully support evaluating that concept, looking at the details and making sure weve got the balance. Okay, could you briefly explain, very briefly if you could, how boeing and faa Work Together to certify aircraft . Senator i could, but mr. Hamilton is a deeper expert if i could ask him to take that question. Certainly. Senator, the faa is actually in control of the certification process the whole time. Lets me just kind of talk you through the process very quickly. Starts off by identifying the requirements to certify the airplane, thats the Sole Authority of the faa. It establishes the certification basis of the airplane. The second step is identifying the methods of compliance to those requirements so this is how youre going to show that your airplane meets those requirements. Again, the faa is the Sole Authority on that, they thats their action. The third step is doing the testing, the analysis, and the documentation that demonstrates the airplane meets those requirements. And that is done by boeing in our case. Or as the applicant. And then theres a review of those documents to validate that they actually met the requirements. And that can be done by the faa or the oda, who acts as a desginee of the faa or a combination and finally theres oversight. The faa does oversight of the unit members. Oversight of the oda and are you following the processes. They do oversight, did you find compliance as expected with the methods of compliance and systemic oversight of the entire system. Mr. Muilenburg, how are you working to ensure coming back this issue of safety, that employees who raise concerns, even if they inhibit your ability to get a product to the market quickly, are taken seriously and that importantly, those concerns are raised to the top and not brushed aside . Senator, in my role as the ceo of this company, i take that responsibility very seriously. Now, we have a number of ethics hot lines avenues that our employees can use. When it comes to delegated authority in particular, we also have Additional Survey tools that we deploy and we openly share that data with the faa and make improvements. That said, one of the areas weve taken action on is now weve create add new Safety Organization, vicepresident pastor reports to my chief engineer who reports directly to me. That Safety Organization has responsibility for all safety related accident investigations, our oda process, and also responding to any employee concerns. Thank you, senator. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator klobuchar. Thank you, mr. Chairman and thank you to senator cantwell. I also want to give my sincere, sincere thanks to the people who are here who lost their loved ones in these two crashes. I think you know you are here not only for them, and it must be hard to hear all of these technical issues when you think of your brother or sister or father or mother or son or daughters. But i want you to know that we want to get to the bottom of this and we want to change this. So i guess my id start with where senator thune was going with the faa and boeing and this relationship, recent Inspector General report found that only 4 of Airline Manufacturers employe employees responsible for conducting the certification were certified by the fda faa that they conducted oversight. The same report found that one manufacturer proved about 95 of certifications for their own aircraft. What can you tell us about the percentage of certifications that boeing conducts on its own aircraft . Senator, i cant answer that number off the top of my head. I dont know, john, if you have no, id have to follow up. Okay, how many boeing engineers both designed systems for the company and then certify those same systems for the faa . Im just trying to get at a safety check on the outside. We have approximately a thousand members that work not just in systems what percentage of them certify the safety as opposed to having the faa certify the safety . Those are roughly a thousand unit members acting on behalf of the faa to find the compliance, but thats beyond just systems, this includes structures and propulsion, so its across the whole airplane. Senator, just to clarify, we have about 50,000 engineers at boeing, about a thousand of them are what we call operating in this area that john is referring to unit members. So these are members who have the authority and the training. Okay. Why dont we well follow up on that. Im trying to get at when the faa steps in and when you certify yourself. Well get that later. Two months after mr. Faulkner sent the messages expressing safety concerns, he asked the faa to remove mention of the mcas automated Flight Control feature from the 737 max pilots flight manual and training course, approved by the faa in 2017. Note the reporten 0 the lion aircraft, the mcas one of the key reasons for the plane crash. How frequently are new Automated Systems are left out of the training manual that you give to pilots . Senator, first of all, one of the things weve learned from both of these accidents is that we need to provide Additional Information on mcas to pilots, just to give you a context, as we develop our training manuals, our idea is to provide training on pilots so they can respond to the effects of failures, as opposed to trying to diagnose failures and thats a very important distinction. So 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 on mcas to enhance safety, but we do you think its acceptable to have pilots flying planes without knowing about the key automated Flight Systems . Senator, again, our approach is to train the pilots on the effects of a failure mode. So in this case, the mcas automation system, when it fails, it fails in what we call a run away stabilizer, uncommanded movement of the horizontal tail. And thats whats in the training manual and we try to train pilots to the effect of the failure as opposed to diagnosing. Let me move on to two more quick things. After these terrible crashes have claimed 346 lives, do you think it makes sense for these aircraft to be allowed to fly in some countries and not others . Because the faa says each country can make its own decision. Senator, we respect the jurisdiction of the regulatory authorities around the world. So you think its acceptable. Just say yes or no. Senator, thats up to the regulatory authorities. Thats not a decision that we can make. We respect the authority of the regulators. Okay. Youre saying the same thing again. So im going to go with a yes. While there have been several factors that contributed to the plane crashes, one that is particularly troubling was highlighted in a recent article in the Washington Post which found that lion air had a faulty angle of attack sensor which gave pilots and airplane systems unreliable information the day before it crashed. Do you think thats a problem and what steps can be taken to change that . Senator, in the case of the angle of attack disaagree alert. We got the implementation wrong. I mentioned in my comments upfront that we made some mistakes. We made a mistake in implementation. Once we discovered it our engineering teams quickly went to the review board and determined it wasnt an operational safety issue and the faa subsequently concurred with that, but nonetheless, we get the implementation wrong and weve addressed the faults in the process and weve fixed that and the angle of attack disagree alert will be standard implementation on all maxs Going Forward. Thank you, senator klobuchar. Id too, would like to recognize my sympathy to the people here today and at home who have lost loved ones in these crashes. I hope that we can get answers in this hearing and also in the future so that these issues, these mistakes will not happen again and cause future loss of life. Mr. Muilenburg, the joint authorities technical review note that boeing made several other changes to the 737 max that differ from the earlier model, such as structural changes that would accommodate the new engines that were planned on the plane and other advanced technologies. Senator thune touched on this with delegated authority with boeing, delegated authority over the certification of those changes as well. Senator, i cant answer that question completely because as you pointed out there were a number of changes. Again, those are done and evaluated jointly with the faa. John, do you want to comment on any specifics there . Yeah, theres approximately 92 certification plans associated with the max which encompassed the different changes to the airplane. The faa reviewed approximately eight of those initially and are you looking into those certification processes as part of your review of the 737 max . Senator, yes, we are. I asked my board to set up an independent review committee headed by admiral basianai, and theyre working and with other authorities were continuing to take a hard look at that and were looking forward to taking an action on those reports. And also the joint authorities technical review included a recommendation that states, quote, if any Flight Control surface is used in a novel manner, the faa should be directly involved. This is based on the observation that the faa was not completely unaware of mcas, but because information and discussions about mcas were so fragmented and they were delivered to disconnected groups within the process, it was difficult to recognize 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 on mcas was not provided to the agency . Is this what you were referring to when you talked about getting the balance right . Senator, i think you raised some very good points there. I do think one of the areas we can improve and weve seen it in the jatr report and others is system wide integration, crossSystem Integration in expertise areas and improvements in documentation and communication. Again, we found some areas where we could have, should have done better do you think those steps will improve your communication with the faa . Senator, i do. Do you think that the faa has a responsibility to also change its process to improve communication . Senator, i believe the faa does, but i wouldnt say thats only the faas responsibility. We at boeing need to make some improvements in communication and we own that and were committed to doing that. And boeings 737 airplanes are based on a Type Certificate. That was originally provided in 1967, i believe. And it has been amended to address the different 737 models since then. That technical review notes that, quote, some elements of the design and certification remain rooted in the original 1967 certification of the boeing 737100. If boeing or the fa reviewed the elements of the 737 that are based in the 1967 certification for continued safety, when new models of the airplane are produced . Senator, if i could ask john to field that question. Senator, as you note, theres a single Type Certificate for the 737. But as the design has evolved with each new generation of airplanes, the Safety Standards on which the airplane is designed to have also evolved. Yesterday, there are some amendments that the design might reference back to an earlier amendment level, but those maybe are likely changes that have not changed in the family of airplanes since the original design. An example might be some of the structural elements. However, we have stepped up in many areas voluntarily to later amendment levels to demonstrate those still meet the latest standards in compliance. Thank you, fischer, senator bum b bumen blumenthal. Thank you for being here today and thank you to the relatives of loved ones, if you could please stand so we could think all for being here. Thank you all, if you could just stand. Thank you. And go ahead and hold up the photographs that you brought. Youve been very kind to i was going to ask that you hold up the photographs. I understand for security purposes that you cant during the hearing, but just for this short period of time. Mr. Muilenburg so, thank you. And if the time keeper could start senator blumenthals time ov over. Thank you very much to the family members. Senator blumenthal. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Mr. Muilenburg, as i watched those loved ones stand and frankly, as i reviewed this file over the past week or so, again and as i sit here today, my anger has only grown. These loved ones lost lives because of an accident that was not only preventible as the chairman said at the very start, but was the result of a pattern of deliberate concealme 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. Were going to conceal mcas, delete it from the manual used in training. When did you become aware of the fact that mcas was not going to be included in the flight manual . Senator, first, if i could express my deepest sympathies for youve done that and my time is limited. I apologize for interrupting you, but i want to know specifically when you became aware of this. Senator, i cant reference that email. Im not speeded im not asking about email. Email. Im asking you about bowling policy as reflected in this email. Its chief test pilot deciding he was going to miss the pilots who were then going to take passengers into the air, these loved ones, and turn those planes into flying coffins. Senator, im not sure what mr. Forkner meant by that email. I can tell you that certification and training materials were not determined by one individual. In fact, let me just interrupt you again. In the over 1600 page original flight manual of boeing 737 max, the aircraft new mcas Computer System was mentioned only once, once, in 1600 pages here in the glossary of abbreviated term. So when boeing came to us and they said its the pilots, inexperienced pilot, you are lying to us as well. Senator, if i could try to respond to question. First of all, the premise that we would lie or conceal, its just not consistent with our values. I know its not consistent with the values that you articulating, but let me come since my time is limited, move on. Would you agree that the system of certification oversight is absolutely broken . Thats a lesson, isnt it, that boeing lobbied the congress for more delegation and now we have to reverse that delegation. Would you support those legislative actions . Senator, again, i support taking a hard look at the delegated speeded im not asking you for hard look. Im asking you for commitment here, because you have the opportunity to make things right. Senator, im not than they with particular legislation but speedy boeing asked for it. Boeing asked with a legislation that exists right now. Will you commit to supporting Reform Efforts such as many of us on this committee have advocated . Senator, we will commit to purchase been in the Reform Efforts and providing out inputs. Well, i agree that your input would be valuable. Im looking for input in support of reform that will stop outsourcing by the faa, and i might just add, the faa has been really disappointing and its disclosure to us. This is an example of the kind disclosure the faa has given us, total redaction. Ive asked for full disclosure documents. The faa has failed to provide the bit i asked for the faa to return my phone calls. Its failed to do so. I think the faa is part of this problem as well, and it is the result come at the end of the day, of boeing rushing this process. Im using the chairman sturm, putting profits over safety germans term rushing the certification process with you in charge of that certification and prioritizing speed and cost over safety. My time is expired, but the folks who really deserve time here are the people who lost loved ones here. Thank you, senator blumenthal. Lets do this. This poster is entitled in cats lynx in both fccs. If you can provide a copy of that we will admitted into the record at this point without objection. Thank you. Mr. Hampton, let me ask you. Mcas does live in both fccs, what does that mean . Shirley. Briefly. The mcas function is replicated in the two Flight Control computers on board the airplane perks pics of each flt control computer previously received input from one cent on the left or right side. In the software change when making Going Forward now both Flight Control computer computl receive the data, compared and only if they agree it will activate. Thank you. Senator moran. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Mr. Muilenburg, have you determined that the failures that result in the tragic consequences, were they failures in the policies and protocols that boeing had in place, or was it a failure to comply with those protocols and policies that resulted in these consequences . Senator, in some cases we relied on these longstanding Industry Standards, policies, and certified to those. We are now raising questions about those. That gets back to this by Response Time discussion we had earlier. In some cases we missed on implementation, as an agent earlier with the angle of attack sensor. That overall, we did follow the certification process and steps, but nonetheless we have learned from both of these accidents and the fixes we need to make our clear. So both in policy making certain the policies are followed once the new policies are in place . Senator, i i believe both ae true, yes. Thank you. And i assume theres other certification and developments at boeing that are always ongoing. Have you changed your behavior and or policies for the certification and develop and process for other pieces of equipment, other aircraft that boeing is now preceding towards certification Ranking Member cantwell senator, we have and will continue to change. As i said we learn that we are still learning. I mentioned earlier the change our review board structure, thats a big change. The stand of our new Safety Organization, the realignment of our engineering team, those 50,000 engineers. We are also looking at the longstanding assumptions behind how we design as a look at nextgeneration products like the 777 acts as an example. Were taking a conference of approach to those updates. As this committee looks, certainly at certification as a look at the faa, what suggestions does boeing have for this committee when you look at any policies or failures at the faa . The way i would view this is we have two major organizations involved in this process. One is the manufacturer, boeing. The other is a federal agency that is there to certify get my assumption is that neither one did things right, and what have you learned about the faa that we should know as we look at the faa now and into the future . Senator, we have a great deal of respect for the faa. I personally worked with the faa for many years, have Great Respect for them and their professionals. I know the faa is also taking a look at all of the reports and inputs and investigations, and is committed to making changes. I think youve heard that from administer dixon. You have suggestions they should make . I dont have specific recommendations but we will be glad to follow up on that it would be useful. Where are we now in the 737 max . It seems like every week theres a report that an airline is going, believes theyre going to that plane flying again or certification is nearby. What is the status . Senator, were in the final stages of the process, so we are currently testing the final Software Updates when writing and with the faas approval we will proceed to certification flight in the near term. Subsequent to that it will be the faas responsibility to evaluate an issue and airworthiness directive. Thats work we are proceeding on over the next few weeks and months, but i think its important again 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 that regulars have and the airplane will fly when everyone is convinced safe. That is the most important thing here. It troubles me that, to get to that point, its certainly not that is take us along. I want the result you just described. I want the right circumstance for were flying again. But it suggests to me there is much more significant problems with the max 37 it was previously certified and yet now it takes so long, it something more than just a glitch. That something more than just a minor change. That makes concerned about the process that allowed it to be certified in first place. What am i missing . I think you raise a very good point. Our initial effort early this year was focus on the mcas updates weve already talked about. Around the middle of the year as we were invalid with all of the other inputs and data, we identified some additional safety enhancements that we could make. Not something that was required for certification, but something that we thought while the airplane was grounded was right thing to do, and the safety enhancements. And rather than waiting to do that later after return to service, we as a company and with the faa decided that we take the extra time for those additional Software Updates. Thats the work weve been doing through the summer and into the fall. Thats designed to add Additional Software redundancies throughout the Flight Control computers, and that is the final software we are testing. Why to want to convey here is this is really the culture of boeing. I understand the questions that are being raised, but when our teams find opportunity to improve safety, that goes to the top of the list. If it takes time, if it takes money to do that, thats where we are focused and thats why its taking longer than i think some anticipated. I would request your followup on your thoughts about the faa. Thank you. Senator markey, senator udall, senator peters. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And what they begin also by expressing my sympathies to those who lost loved ones in the two treva seven crashes. I like to thank the families that here today for your continued attention to safety and working to prevent future tragedies like we saw here. Over the years are Aviation System has become the safest in the world but these tragedies remind us that we cannot rest. Safety cannot be taken for granted. There is no doubt from what weve been hearing in the testimony here today that many mistakes were made and the consequences were unfortunately tragic. The reports from technical expert underscore that as Technology Becomes increasingly complex, the debate about how to move forward cant be simply about a onesizefitsall Regulatory Regime versus a let the free market just police itself type of approach. I believe a new paradigm may need to be developed to address the regulatory challenges associate with very complex technology and that something this committee needs to to wein heavily into as we move forward. Mr. Muilenburg, as you know the Bp Oil Disaster in the gulf of mexico killed 11 workers, lasted 877 days and cost upwards of 65 billion. And in the wake of that disaster, it was revealed the oil and gas industry had lobbied for the reduced safety precautions that could have prevented that disaster. We often hear in congress about how much regulations cost industry here however, thoughtful regulation place an incredibly Important Role in protecting the public. So im curious if in bonus view on notice as change in the wake of this tremendous human tragedy owings view as well as the cost this company is facing right now. As your view changed . You have talked earlier in response to an earlier question about having a balance. Clearly, something is wrong with that balance. Please let me know if your thoughts have changed recently. Senator, my thoughts have changed. We have learned lessons from these accidents, and the families that are 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, and you think they should give us pause to take a hard look at that. You said when you look at the ballot. 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 here. We all want the safest industry possible. That is our objective. My sense is that we could look at the balance, that there are refinements that would be worthy. Technology do you think its out of houston based on what happened here . Do you think, not just take a look at it but seriously understand the balance may be out of whack if we delegate too much the industry and dont have impartial eyes to make sure the right attorney regime is efficient, effective to have impartial eyes looking at these factors. What is going to save lives and you wont put a company to the cost that you have. When you balance those regulation. Is it out of balance right now, yes or no . Senator, again i think it can be improved. I completely agree with you on the boards of strong oversight. I work 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 successful, the safety of our industry. So i think we have shared objective there, and we will work with you on examining any improvements we can make. We have a mutual interest. The ntsb report indicated the faa in the industry have 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 is 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. But he think as you point out, as a look to the future again we want to make sure the testing we are doing is representative of that future pilot population. Thank you. Thank you, senator peters. Senator capito. Thank you, chairman and the Ranking Member as well. I went to see first of all to the families who are here, extending my families but also my gratitude for you coming forward through your pain to bring to us to congress, which is not an easy thing to do, your frustrations and probably stronger feelings in the loss of your loved ones. I will say that when colton culn flight 3407 when that in buffalo in the early 2009, the families that came forward to us, i was on Transportation Committee on our second make such an incredible impact and it made flying on a Regional Airlines much, 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. Muilenburg, particular attention has been called to the fact that bowling later in the developing process of the max revised range of flight conditions that could lead to activation of the mcas. 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 you are referring to the lowspeed extension of mcas, and i seen the same reports but they do not reflect the facts. The extension of mcas lowspeed was done in a rigorous way, in a very visible way. There was testing done on that from the mid2016 timeframe to the early 2017 timeframe including flight tests, including flight test with the faa on board. The faa was aware of the lowspeed extension, and ultimately certified that. And they believe faa leadership has publicly stated thats a false report then . I believe its a false report. I believe the lowspeed extension was fully certified with the faa. Another report thats been out in the media is after the second flight went down that boeing actually actively lobbied the faa to keep the planes in the air. Can you respond to that . Senator, could you just clarify your question . After the Ethiopian Air went down, that there was quite, several countries have expressed, had limited the flight of that plane. We had not done that yet and the United States. There is media reports that boeing was actively lobbying the faa to keep the planes in the air at that time in this country. Is that trip . Senator, at me clarify what is that timeframe. Could you make it brief, please . Yes. We in the early after the accident reached out to the faa and other Regulatory Authority to understand what happened in the accident. What is the aviation safety is we make decisions based on data it at that point we did not have data and so we with the faa were looking to understand what happened. There were earlier reports that the airplane had some kind of a lowspeed, low altitude problem that turned out to be incorrect. So we with the faa were pursuing data to make a good safetybased decision. That was was our position with the faa. When data became available, satellite data that was referred to, again with the faa we came to a conclusion that there could be similarities between the accidents and that led very quickly to a decision to ground the fleet. Well, i think in retrospect, i think it was pretty obvious. I do want to say conclusively so, but there was a problem and a consistent problem. The other thing that really bothered me about this whole thing and the question this in the last Committee Hearing we had. Between the lion air crash and Ethiopian Air crash, it defies logic to me that some of these folks who wrote emails or sent 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 light air crash and dont tell me because you didnt have the official report that would have maybe saved those people in the Ethiopian Airplane . Senator, i think about that decision over and over every day, and if we knew everything back then that we know now, we wouldve made a difference. The question then, did people come to you at the highest levels, at any level, and say wait a minute, this is done familiar . Yes or no . Senator, after the first accident reconvened our broad Technical Team across boeing. It wasnt any single individuals or small team. It was a broad team. We brought all those experts to bear, trying to assemble data from the accident, understanding what occurred. We quickly with the faa issued an operational bullet, or bulletin to remind everyone of the training and the emergency scenario about that particular system . Around what we call runaway stabilizer which again is the effect of that system. And at the same time we begin work on an mcas Software Update in that timeframe. So the answer is yes, thank you. Mr. Chairman, just one point a cliff occasion. Are you saying, mr. Muilenburg, the faa did know about the 2. 5 trim, not. 6, but 2. 5 wrecks that faa knew about that. Was yes. Youre referring to the lowspeed extension which is the 2. 5 trim. That is 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. Muilenburg, 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, very, i think, heartfelt across the committee here. You know, the thing that really bothers me is knowing that its preventable. It makes it even more outrageous that we have made the kind of dramatic changes that are want to talk to the ceo here about. Mr. Muilenburg, you showed some emotion when these folks stood up and everything, but what should come from that emotion is some action to do something to really make a difference. And for this committee to coalesce around the solution actually going to move us forward would require you to step forward and specifically say what you support and i havent seen you do that in all the questioning. You have been asked over and over again, what would you support . Its absolutely clear that its too cozy relationship with the faa and your airline here and so what is it youre going to commit to specifically in terms of reform . Thats why you are up. And we want to see you do, is to wait in with us, this is what would make a difference, this is what would make it safer, this is what would make sure that we dont lose passengers like this in the future, or the crew. Senator, while i i respectfy dont agree with the characterization of coziness with the faa, we respect the independent oversight of the faa and thats very important to us from a safety principal standpoint. We have taken a number of internal actions that we think are meaningful as they relate to our own internal reforms on safety. We are engaged in the legislative process, and senator, i appreciate your invitation for us to be involved in the. I know there are many stakeholders. As shown from earlier were committed to the strong oversight in the Aerospace Industry. Its part of what makes this system safe. We have a objective, and if there are things we can do to make a better we will. I dont know, john, if you have any specific ideas were not. Thank you. Senator, you know, i would say that one of the big issues was we used an Industry Standard assumption on pilots and how they would react, and that proved incorrect in these two accidents. So in terms of things that i think we need to change, the faa, we need to go revisit some of these Regulatory Guidance is a a make sure theyre up to date. I would even tell you theres probably some regulations that we advocate as part of the faa reauthorization bill, ten regulations that faa should work with industry to update based on technology that is out there today. But in terms of i i used toe the lead administrator and i can tell you that we have a respectful relationship with the faa, but we do have our differences of opinion sometimes. But we discussed those. We work it out on how we are going to comply, and 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 blame the deceased pilots and the culture of the countries with the precious the card 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 sense of the resulted too many deaths and could have cost more. This culture at the top, and thats what i been asking you for the specifics of what you support. And hope after this hearing you will come forward and when theres legislation after, say this is going to make it better, and. Spend some time to build a consensus to get this done. Because i think the large, powerful interests that are a part of this, they dont want any reform. They want you to think around like a talking about but they dont want to see any reform. If boeing could not guarantee that pilots were prepared to fly decent these objects, 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 the software to lie in error or Ethiopian Air . Senator, first, we look forward to responding to your request and provide inputs on the reforms. To your question, we do rely on the airlines and the regulatory authorities around the world as part of this integrated system to make sure were fielding airplanes and crews that can fly safely. I do think its important for me to clarify a point you made earlier. We still have not blamed the pilots, and i know thats been recorded, but that is not our company position. And it never will be here 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. Changes welcome thats about the culture without from your Company Early on. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator udall. Lets do this at this point back. Mr. Mullin berg, mr. Muilenburg, published 12 main recommendations. The both of you get back to us on the record and tell you boeings position with regard to these 12 12 recommendations . Senator, we will. Thank you. 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 michael and not yet come the parent of some media, a universe of massachusetts amherst graduate and a resident of sheffield massachusetts who was tragically killed on the ethiopian flight. The losses of the family and all the families suffered is absolutely inexcusable and we will remember that as we are moving forward in the drafting of legislation. We will do in the memory of your families. One thing is clear to make sure that safety is our top, top priority is to guarantee that every aviation safety measure is built into every plane and that it is never for sale. Unfortunately, our current laws only prevent aircraft manufacturers from, like boeing from selling critical safety elements for an additional price. Existing rules allow companies to charge extra for noncritical safety enhancing features, and boeing actually does charge more for those technologies. The 737 max involved in the indonesian and ethiopian crashes lacked two, two safety enhancing features, and angle of attack indicator, and i disagree like. Both of these technologies wouldve helped the pilots recognize the faulty sensor readings were causing the planes automated Flight Control system to push the aircraft nose down towards 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 the disagree light on december 37 max as contributing to the line and tragedy. Shamefully, the law allows boeing to treat the Safety Technologies as all a cart addons that airlines can attain only by paying an extra fee. Oligarch addons can safety. Not like xm radio or leather seats. Safety is an addon feature. These tragic crashes have 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 would cry or 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 have yet to say the same thing about the angle of attack indicator, and whether or not that should be offered for free. Or whether each airline should be given the option of not building a into the plane for free. So i think you have to make a decision here. In terms of where youre going to go, otherwise your disagree light is still on coming from boeing towards the safety features. So i i want, first of all, to e your answer whether or not, according to the wall street journal you agree that boeing did not originally include the disagree light on the 737s in the same technology was standarg on five 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. And 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 airlines. Some airlines dont want it. Its not necessarily a safety improvement. It actually takes up space on the flight deck displays. And more information on the displaced is not necessarily safer. So that is not a safety feature on the angle of attack i think you should not offered for a price. You should give the option to the airline without any price attached. Senator, desperate in fact, already announced that the angle of attack disagree on that will be on all macs airplanes Going Forward, standard, and angle of attack indicator will be available as an option. So given your state support for the principle behind my legislation, will you support my legislation that ensures that you offer to provide any technology that measurably enhances safety without an additional fee to airlines . Would you agree to support that legislation . Senator, i have seen the specific legislation. I think the principal about focusing on safety is a top priority. I agree with that and its a worthy principle. I would ask if we could take a look at the legislation the word is free to airline for anything that measurable impacts safety. Do you agree . We dont sell safety and thats not our Business Model. Thank you. Thank you, senator markey. Senator duckworth. Thank you, mr. Chairman. So im going to try to put some of the issues it into lehmans terms. I want to first report, give my condolences to them so here but also to the families in ethiopia and indonesia who are watching this, what are watching this you out for the intonations [speaking in native tongue] we will get to the bottom of this charge and will continue to investigate this we will not stop. Because you see, boeing sells the aircraft to the world and we in america have a well earned reputation as leaders in aviation and will and i want us to reach that china example once again. Pilots know that tragedies dont occur in a vacuum. Catastrophic outcomes result of long cessation of failures that often overwhelm the pilots at the control of the aircraft. We call it in aviation the accident chain. There are many links in accident chain that must happen that eventually overwhelms the pilot and result in the crash. Many of these links in the chain happen with boeing and your decisions in the development of the 737 max. Let me talk about what has happened here. You put a sensor which is standard but you are allowed that sensor to override the pilots input in this system. So in every other 737s aircraft there is a function of, you could pull back, the pilot, to conduct and double override that nosedown attitude. That is daddy. That is a basic assumption. As you put, as you said, you use an interest in and out a pilot would react because, to malfunction like that. Nosedown, every pilot including helicopter pilots, you pull back. But what you did what you put them in cast system into an aircraft, you didnt tell the pilot this into a system was in there, and you put in a function in order for in cast work the way you want it to work, after the pilot does uncommitted reaction to the nosedown. In every other 737s cut out, thats the end of it. In the 737 max, after five seconds the system resets and it pushes the nose right back to the pilots had exactly three seconds to pull nosedown, pull up, now we have to do a a new procedure that did not exist in previous 737 models, which is electronic cutout switch. Because you have now put into system that overrides the pilot in command of of the aircraft. So you been telling this committee that yes, you use basic pilot reactions. That is true but you have not been telling this Committee Told truth. Time again, this is my frustration, boeing has not told the whole truth to this committee and to the families and to the people looking at this. Yes, the pilot did exactly what theyre supposed to do but five seconds later, especially if that sensor is still stuck, it overrides what the pilot does and pushes the nose back down again. Three seconds, the pilots best friend is time at altitude, and on takeoff theres no altitude and hes got no time. You set those pilots up for failure, and when i send you a letter asking you to answer several questions, it took boeing over five months to respond to my question. I only got the answers the day before you and i met. One of the questions i asked was, what date did boeing discover that a stack angle of attack think would result in in cast issuing persistent commands Unlimited Authority to trim the airplane nosedown course in laymans terms, if this thing is stuck in cast will continue to provide multiple direction and keep pushing that nosedown over and over and over again, though matter how many times and experience 737s pilot pulls back, i seconds later, we said, nose back down. You knew in 2016, you knew in 2016 that this was happening, and your team at boeing decided, we didnt need to fix that because of techniques and procedures. But the problem is that piloting technique and procedures is to pull back and thats it. But you added something else. You put in a system and you didnt tell pilots about and then you put in an override of resetting the system five seconds later. Boeing is the company that builds the flying fortress that saved your. Im from i watch them fly big it is a storied aircraft that is rescued the free world, and yet you knew about these problems and you continue to put them in the system, the system into place. When they ask you to answer these questions you have told this committee and told me halftruths, including in that meeting. This is why ive so upset. Youre not told us the whole truth and the 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, senator cruz. You are recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Muilenburg, i have to say the testament here today has been quite dismaying. I want to focus on the Text Exchange that is been referred to and is been publicly reported on. This is a Text Exchange between mark forkner within boeing technical part of, chief technical pilot for the max, and mr. Costa ten who in 2018 was promoted to be boeings 737 737 chief technical pilot, is that right . I believe thats the case. So this exchange is stunning. Mr. Faulkner, shocker alert. Mcas is now active down to him to make. Its running rampant in the simulation me. At least thats what this thinks its happening. Response, great. That means we have to update this be trim description in volume two. Mr. Faulkner, so basically i lied to the regulators unknowingly. It wasnt a lie. No one told us that was the case. Forkner, blood licked off like 4000 feet, 230 knots and the and the point is trending itself like crazy. Im like, what . Gustavsson, thats what i saw but on approach i think thats wrong. Forkner, granted, i suck at flying, but even this was egregious. That exchange describes what happens in life air and Ethiopian Air. The many women were gathered here with the photos of your loved ones can the hundred 46 people are dead because 346 because what these chief pilots described as the egregious and crazy, thats their language. Thats always into the language in this exchange. Now, what i find truly stunning, boeing headed the 16th over to the department of justice in february. In march i i chaired a hearingn 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 learn of this exchange a couple of weeks ago. These are Senior Leaders at boeing in an exchange saying, and i will quote again, so i basically lied to the regulator regulators. Look, i practice law a lot of years. You had your lawyers look over this document, and the red a Senior Leader after these crashes had occurred saying apply to the regulators. Mr. Muilenburg, how in the hell did nobody bring this to your attention in february when you produce this to the department of justice . How did you just read this the couple of weeks ago . Senator, again, to clarify my earlier comments, i 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 on my counsel to handle that appropriately, and did you read this exchange . Look, i was a made aware documents were being produced, that it passive voice, and disclaiming responsibility you are the ceo. The buck stops with you. Did you read this document, and how did your team not put in front of you, right in with their hair on fire saying, weve got a real problem here . How did that not happen and what does it 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 happened, your test when here earlier today is, were not sure what youre talking about because hes not at boeing anymore. How did you not in february set out a ninth alarm fire to say we need to figure out exactly what happened . Not after all the hearings, that after the pressure, but because 346 people have died and we dont want another person to die. Senator, as you mentioned, i didnt see the details of this exchange until recently. Were not quite sure what mr. For permit by that exchange. Faulkner. His lawyer has adjusted talk about a single later that was in developing into time period. Thats thats what he was working. That could be the case. We dont know. I fully support diving deep into this and understand what he said and what he meant but i could also tell you that in that same timeframe for his original message was made mr. Gustavsson still works at boeing, correct. With yes, he does. Have you had that conversation with him . Senator, ietms talked to patrick as well. Have you had that conversation . Senator, i have not. Thank you, senator cruz. Senator tester. Lets do this. The entire senator cruz, if you could have that reduced in size and we would enter it into the record, without objection at this point, so ordered. Senator tester. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and Ranking Member privateering. And i know for the two folks on the panel this morning, it is probably the painful morning for you. But the fact is its more painful for the folks sitting a couple rows behind you. You have said many times, mr. Muilenburg, 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 weather, equipment malfunction or birds. But safety should not be one of them here in the previous question you said you guys dont sell safety and ill be honest with you i i didnt listen to e whole thing, but you damn well better sell safety. I fly four legs the week and theres a lot, not for the grace of god it couldve been the one of those airplanes, and we expect there to be safety. Obviously something went wrong, and its not the first time. Theres the situation here that was pointed out as several people on this committee have already pointed out to you, and nothing was done or to your leadership team. There was a South Carolina whistleblower that talked about the debris being left in the planes. Those technicians were removed. Theres a kc46 finding, range bolts and trash inside and you airplane. That was in june of this year. There was a cargo 777. You get the deal. It goes on. And so the question is, the one that senator udall product that you didnt answer and i think of the people honestly also brought it up, 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 the dont believe that quite frankly time and money are the object because theres also plenty of examples, for example, in 2014 faa made regulatory change to Safety Standards that would have required changes to add new crew published at boeing appealed to seek an exception argument it would cost too much money, 10 10 billion which is a lot of money. If the truth is is that it wouldnt happen if faa wouldve been doing the job and also if you wouldve known what the hell was going on. My question is, and i know there was a push and never affected to go about privatization of federal government and the think thats how we got here. Is privatization of government. Why dont we just turn over the certification back to the faa and let them do it and then they would be the one sitting at this desk and not you. Why not do that . Senator, we share your focus on safety. And i can confidently say that our number one priority. Okay cool, but we feel in this case and theres a whole bunch of people back there that are going through incredible anguish because we failed. Senator, i agree. We feel lets get to the question. And look, i can pivot with the best of them. I know how to pivot. I know when people are pivoting. You are pivoting. Tell me if you would support having the faa to the certification. Senator, we believe that delegated authority process that we have today that has contribute to improved safety of the last two decades, as i mentioned earlier we are open to improving it. But the idea that we can tap the deep Technical Expertise of our company is because the Aerospace Industry is a valuable part of the certification process. But the faa is a Certification Authority and should be and should continue to be. But they really are not. The truth is you could say that the ultimate responsibility, but the truth is if the issues are not flagged by the oda, by your people, by your people doing the certification, the faa never doesnt because quite frankly it would cost more money to have the faa do the certification. And by the way it has cost you money so we could charge her for the certification to pay for it so would have no reflection on the taxpayers. So the question becomes, im going to tell you what, when the faa says you dont need to do this and you come in and say no, you dont need to do this, its fine if nothing happens. But when 350 people die, we have a problem. And you bring up the point that senator cruz brought up that there was plenty of information out there on this, yet nothing was done. And so the whole thing about, when it comes to safety, time and money are no object, the record certainly doesnt show that. Senator, i understand your points and criticism. I think its true that we operate in a very competitive world and we are the only large airplane, commercial airplane make left in the United States. We do have Competitive Pressures around the world but i can also tell you that never takes precedence over safety. Our Business Model i think it absolutely could be argued that it did in this case, and i the questions, and boeing has had an incredibly valuable name. But i have to tell you how to think i told you guys this in the office sometime ago. I would walk before us to get on a 737 max. I would walk. Theres no way, and the question becomes, when issues like this happen, it costs your company huge and so you shouldnt be cutting corners. And i see quarters being cut and this committee will have to do something to stop that from happening. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator tester. Im going to ask mr. Mullin berg, answer on the record, his opinion of the current oda system and whether they should be modified in answer to the question. Senator johnson. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Let me add my condolences to the surviving family members and friends of the victims of this tragedy. Mr. Muilenburg, among many failures it strikes me that are two primary field. First and foremost in the original design and certification process, and second in the reaction after the first crush. Lets cant pay on those. Tell me if im getting this right. The 737, successful airframe, new more fuelefficient engines were available and so you wanted to include that an upgrade of that airframe, correct . New fuel efficient engines and some other enhancements. Those engines create a Different Air dynamic for the aircraft, correct . Thats correct. Is the him cast system, is a standard type of automatic pilot type of Software System on planes mcas . Is a standard . The mcas system that on the max is unique to that airplane. So is put in there specifically because you added a different type of engine to a known, a successful airframe which made that less stable and required some type of, as you called it, and when we stabilizing system . Senator, if i could clarify that. The 737s them has a system called the speed trim system, and the mcas is an extension of it that is unique for the max. But speed is unique because of that added Engine Design . Retailer the software of each one of our airplanes so that the optimize the handling qualities for the unique configuration. Going into the introduction of this 737s max, you realize that airframe was changed because those engines required this mcas system . That was one of the additions we made to create the handling qualities we want for the pilots. We also made some changes to things like the generators on the wings. Again, you are well aware that this Design Change created something the required and mcas system. So now fast forward. You have outlined their tragedy. According to senator cruz, the email he sent after which i believe was written on november 15, 2016, just a couple weeks after that line air crash, there are people it appears in boeing that knew exactly or a suspected what went wrong because the integrated design. You hadnt mcas system to take care of this eventuality in the flight characteristic, correct . Senator, again, im not exactly sure what was meant by that email traffic, but i can tell you in that timeframe it seems pretty obvious, doesnt it. Again, you are engineers. You understand that this was design. You understood you needed and mcas system to make up for that instability, and then something happened. I would think diagnosed pretty fast. Again, im reading these things. Im not a pilot. Im not an Aerospace Engineer and get im scratching my head going, something really wrong happen. Why didnt you react faster . Senator, completely separate from the email traffic and what it might mean, our team very quickly after the line air accident assembled with the regulators, we evaluated the data from the accident. We saw mcas was involved and so we begin to take quick action immediately. It doesnt have to do with that email. Thats not relevant to that discussion. Our team was immediately identify which is exactly my point. The fact it took another tragedy to ground the airplane seat could have a true, a six that works, as i think its on the table here. The diagnosis is, why didnt we react . Why didnt we ground that aircraft soon so another tragedy would not happen . Senator, weve asked that question over and over. You know, if we knew everything back then that we know now we wouldve made a different decision, but the decision that was made at that point with the data we had we quickly convene a safety review board. The faa coming out of that confirm that continuing airworthiness of the airplane and issued that officially. That was the safety case that was built. But, senator, as you point out, weve learned from the second accident, and if we could go back we went and made a different decision. We have learned. We are making those improvements to mcas, and thats where our focus is Going Forward. Boeing is an important company. Its important for our economy. I want to see her get this right but you have to probably diagnosis. You have to accept responsibility for what happened so we actually can make those changes. Both within boeing also within the faa. Thank you, mr. Chairman,. Thank you, senator johnson. Senator rosen. Thank you. I do want to thank all the families that are here today who have lost their most precious loved ones. Their death should not be in vain, and we all have to do every bit of our part together to make sure that we prevent future tragedies from happening. And in order to honor the memories of these 346 souls and empty chairs that they leave behind this thanksgiving and christmas and on and on and on. So you said Additional Information was available. I want to touch on mcas and 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, i determined that changes made to the old 737s were significant enough that they needed much more information from boeing ever going to provide it for the pilots. When the eventually published their Pilot Training requirements, they were therefore able to find the mcas as one of the 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, mr. Muilenburg, why wasnt this information not flagged for your of the customers who had 737 max in the fleet . Did you prevent this company from sharing this information . I appear the brazilian manual. They decided their pilot should learn this, and why wouldnt you provide it to the United States pilots . It was significant enough for them, was this in the manual when you consider it was a significant change . I understand your point and this was a decision that was made in brazil. Im not familiar with the details of that one. Let me just go to 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 of changes to the other users of these aircraft so at least they have theopportunity to train their pilots . You could give me the opportunity, sir. Senator we are committed to sharing that information but i also want to note again that the discussion around mcats training and whether it would be included, that was an active interactive discussion with the faa. And it was a decision made based on 50. We tried to put information in the training manuals that focuses on the effects of failures and things that would be valuable to the pilots and its not always the case that more information adds to safety although in this case we understand this and this is one of the additions Going Forward. Theres no thought added to their safety but i want to touch on senator fisher question that she raised earlier. All these changes have taken place over the years and 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 emotionally similar to the original 737s that took to the skies 52 years ago. And i said in the last hearing that we had it seems to me like there have been so many significant modifications its almost as if a new and turn it into a cruise ship so mister hamilton and telus, derivatives they have received for the 737 cents initially beingcertified over 50 years ago . Senator, i dont have the exact number in my head. Approximately i think 14. 14 or 814. 14 derivatives let me take the action tofollow. I appreciate and the last thing im going to ask you, do you believe the 737 is functionally the same claim was certified in 19 67 . To the earlier center standards evolve as the airplane basketball. And one of the important things i think to understand is whats really important also is one of pilots as they transition from the earlier version of the 737 two the newer version, the airplane behaves andhandles in the same way. That was important from handling characteristics standpoint. And important enough or result in engine but not for us. With respect to that, there is a joint operation Evaluation Board determines the training but other regulators and determine what training they want to above and beyond based ontheir information. I dont know the specifics of the brazilian flight youre referencing. We can follow up on that. Thank you senator rosen, editor blunt. Iq chairman. Mister muilenberg, i want dont want to absorb you from the responsibility to go back and look at long question from senator chester and answer itfor the record , but for now, one of the sources , one of the essential in question was should, why should we change this process and go back to where it is no longer operative where the agents full responsibility. Give me the answer to that, should this process be changed where the federal government is fully responsible with employees only hired by the federal government, what impact would that haveon safety . I believe the data clearly shows that creation of the delegated authority process and implementation as enhanced safety over the last couple of decades i mentioned earlier about a 95 percent improvement in aviation safety over the last couple of decades. I think a portion of that lease and the treated to the delegated authority process. That doesnt mean we shouldnt reform in overtime but the fundamental process which on government oversight combined with the industry Technical Knowledge and the right balance is a strong safety process and i firmly believe at one of the things that contributed aviation safety that process the mans oversight and we are fully supportive of strong oversight. But we also fully support the idea of tapping the industry Technical Expertise in a combination is the safest domination. And what you think the view of the industry technicians is of their responsibility there . Do they feel the right level of both responsibility and liability of providing the information they need to provide . Senator, they do. And i can tell you that the culture ofour company. And the respect the comments that were made today and the questions thathave been raised about our culture , we deserve the scrutiny ive been at this company for 34 years area i know the people of boeing. You all know the people of boeing, these are 50,000 people every day come to work because they have an important mission. They are honest. They are resolute in their efforts. They are committed to safety. Our culture and every employee mowing, thats how we think about the work we do. And were going to continue to improve as a company. Im not saying that we got everything right because as ive noted today we gotten some things wrong. This is a Great Company with a great legacy committed to excellence and where we can improve we will. Where we can learn, we will read our culture is about safety that is at the core of boeing and its been that way for on the three years. Mister hamilton, i have two or three questions of actually senator rosen asked pursuing that further. But you got a 1957 certification that had 14 variants 1967. You have a significantly different plane based on the variance of the original play. What do you think would have made the certification process would have been would have on the the or certifying a plane, without have made a difference in the system . Youve been doing this a long time. What difference would it have made we on the previous halfcentury of this planes history and just starting with a new plane without have been better or worse. In part 21 of the federal regulations it sells out the change part rule which is assessed for a career certification. And its a process in the us at a regulations and is also in european andother countries regulations. Requires you to look at all the changes andset up. I think theres something here that the derivative types is more robust than new types. When you look at a new type, you oftentimes have some exceptions or equivalent levels of safety what you see on a derivative so im not sure it would have necessarily resulted in a safer airplane. It might have dropped or driven some different design decisions though. But fundamentally, one of the things that happened in these accidents is this something around how we expected the cruise to respond under certain situations which proved to be, did not happen. And i thats a fundamental issue that we have to address to the industry. Thank you mister chairman. Thank you senator blunt area senator blackburn. Thank you mister chairman. Thank you for being here today and fortaking our questions. Ill tell you this as a responded address senator, senator, senator i think you should be addressing victims. Because theyre the ones who are asking questions on behalf of. And theyre the ones who have come today on behalf of their family members and other things iwant to ask you , youve mentioned a couple of times a lack of awareness of emails or documents or communications and mister mullen bird, we have something around here before we vote. We say we read the bill. So that we know whats in it. And if we need to ask questions, we ask questions area and we develop that awareness is so necessary to making the decisions. And to have a full view of the situation is in front of us. And it is disconcerting to hear someone whos used to be the leader of a company to say i wasnt aware. I didnt know or read that. Nobody made me aware ofthat. I depended on that. We call that passing the buck. And it is your responsibility. If youre going to leave the company to have that awareness so at this point read each and every page of every document that is relative to the situation in this case . Senator, i cant say ive read every document, every page. I know we provided more than half 1 million pages of documents as part of the production process over the last year. I accept your input and your criticism. I am accountable, ourcompany is accountable. We appreciate that but i think that it is unsettling to hear you say i havent read that. Let me move on. I do believe youre in the business of safety as a priority. And even though you say you dont sell safety, lets talk a little bit about the simulators because you had pilots that were training in the simulators as well as training in flight, correct . Your referring during the Max Development . Yes. So the simulators that were being used for training, were they built by the same engineers with the same components, 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 informed simulatorswhich represent the actual hardware and software of the airplane. Some of the pilots were not training on this specific simulator. And then you also, you know, Mister Peters and started down a line of questioning with you about the pilots. And the pilots that were trained, and you only had highly experienced pilots in simulators before flying the new max system, correct . Senator, i was referring to our boeing test pilots we also have pilots from a number of organizations and airlines. Why would you not use pilots with a variety of experience . A wide range of experience because there are pilots with a wide range of experience that are going to be in that cockpit, flying that plane in realtime. Senator, i agree with your view on the necessity of having a variety of pilot experiences in the Testing Process but our boeing pilots are not the only testers in the process. Lets take it this way, what changes are you going to make in the simulators and in the training that is going to bring to account for a human factor. Weve made several changes and have more to come but the baseline Training Program for the max is roughly a 24 day Training Program which includes heavy use of a simulator, advanced simulators. Weve also modified the computerbased training for the incremental training between the mg and the max. Weve added visibility to the training materials for the mcats system we talked about. That training is being evaluated and certified by the regulators to make it a debtbaseline in the program. Were also investing r and d significantly in advance. I appreciate all ofthat and appreciate your answer. Prior to these occurrences, did you feel that your training was not sufficient . Senator, no. We implementedthe training that was planned and certified for the airplane. Yields back. Iq senator blackburn senator scott. First off, my heart goes outto all the family. I cant imagine the impact on these familiesafter these tragic accidents. I come from florida so air travel is pretty big, pretty big deal for us, hundred 26 Million People travel to floridas tourists last year and the lions share came by aircraft so the safety of everybody is really important. Mister muilenberg, the president and ceo of your commercial airlines was let go after this so whats your process to hold people accountable to make sure this doesnt happen again . Senator, first of all my company and i areaccountable. I believe that accountability starts with me. My board took some recent actions regarding my position which i fully support and will allow me to focus even more on safety so every action we take tries to focus on safety. I have also taken management actions. Again, those are focused on Operational Excellence and safety Going Forward. As other reviews are completed, if we see additional actions that need to be taken we wont hesitate. But in some cases accountability includes improvements to our processes and our Organization Structure and to some of the changes we announced on our safety review board, new Safety Organization, our new Safety Committee and the realignment of all 50,000 of our engineers to our chief engineer in terms of reporting structure. All those accountability actions are important and all of them are focusedon safety. So if any of your letters engineers or not engineers, if somebody has a concern in the future about safety, whats the process you created to make sure that it gets to you and you can react to it because ultimately as ceo, the buck stops with you. Been one of the key learnings from this whole process is we need to elevate the visibility on the safety issues that might come up at the ground floor level, make sure they get the right visibility in action a couple of things weve done, one is restructuring our safety review boards so i now get a weekly update on safety review boards across the boeing enterprise and at a detailed level which i found to be helpful. Weve also with the standard from our new Safety Organization under that pastor instead of having those teams underneath our businesses, they are now separated and report to our chief engineer. Any safety concerns that employees have will come through that organization and we set up a new anonymous reporting system or those employees that might want to make anonymous reports to facilitate and we continue to have a full range of ethics hotline across our enterprise to encourage employees to make their inputs and we have a culture of asking our employees to speak up. We want to make sure their herd and that we take action. Have you made any changes at the board level at increased the accountability for all employees to mark. Senator, our board and been very based in this entire process, one of the things we did is about six months ago i asked our board to set up an independent review led by admiral giamatti, a tremendous safety background. Committee came with a number of recommendations and some of which weveimplemented. Our board will be engaged in that process and this new Safety Organization i talked about in addition to reporting to the chief chief safety engineer provides independent audits back into ardmore and our board is set up a new Aerospace Safety committee that now permanent, head of my admiral giovanni. You might have seen on friday we added another board member, admiral richardson who has deep experience in safety and is also a member of that committee. So our Safety Organization will have an independent reporting line to them as well which i think is in a discipline process area. I didnt get to hear all the testimony but have you made any recommendations to this committee think that the federal level we ought to be doing differently . To make sure whether its boeing or airbus or anybody else. Senator, weve discussed a number of options there. We have learned and there are things that we need to fix. We also think theres opportunities to inform our processes and how we Work Together as anindustry. In any action there thatwould enhance safety. Thank you senator scott. Thank you mister chairman and i want to express my 70s and condolences to the family members here. We have a say commercial Aviation Industry in america but we always have to look at ways to improve an industry and airlines, faa, congress so im sure its difficult for the family members to be here. Im going to start with and it is a parochialquestion. After muilenberg, mister hamilton,my state airline is a good airline. I know it is to the Ranking Members state as well. They fly almost all 737 owings. Ive had many constituents in the aftermath of these max crashes that have asked me are the 737s we are flying all the time in alaska to and from seattle and other places. So can both of you assure my constituents that these 737s are safe that are such an important component of air travel . The 737s and fleet that operates is a safe, its a safe airplane. We got two hours of air Traffic Safety record by. Mister hamilton. I agree with mister muilenbergs comments and i want to state that we have a weekly meeting that we review all of these reports coming in from the fleet. Whether or not they are of potential safety issue. So the next issues we are focused on with regard to 737s are not issues that exist with your other line of 737s. Thats correct. Let me ask and i know the house side was looking at this issue as we focus at this committee is on the tragic Lessons Learned from the max 737 accidents. Should we also take the time to ensure that 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 is not bedeviled with some of the challenges that we are discussing here with regards to the max. Would you agree that an opportunity to not just focus on the max but the overall process to reboot the focus both at your company but also in the faa on safety . Mister senator i believe there are a number of independent reviews underway right now looking at that broader certification process. Some of them have begun to report out. We support thatbroader look. So models that are just the max. All model. Were taking an end and comprehensive look at the certification process and i believe there are any number ofindependent reviews focused on that. Let me ask for both of you i keep hearing from Safety Experts about the importance of what they referred to as functional safety and that is the way the different systems Work Together with the operator as opposed to looking at each system as it added to a new model in a vacuum. And it seems to me that this issue of functional safety as a core issue as it relates to the max given what has happened, can you tell the committee about what your companys approach to this issue of functional safety is when adding new systems to an existing aircraft like the 737s. Obviously there was a failure here on that issue. Are you working to improve that and does the faa do enough to focus on this idea of functional safety, not just the individual additions to existing and older models . I asked john to take the question. I think it starts with a requirements breakdown of what airplane level requirements , level requirements and validating at a competent level the system level and the airplane level how any change met the requirements and interacted across the systemof airplane level. You also talked about regulatory requirements. Theres something called does the faa function focus enough on functional safety . Theres been changes in what we Call Development assurance that i think is continuing to mature. And again, this looks at the functional safety and some of the things you focused on is the breakdown in requirements and how different systems interactwith that. So i think as mister muilenberg pointed out, some of the recent Industry Committee reports have discussed this and i think we will support those recommendations and the faas actions Going Forward. Thank you mister chairman. Thank you to the panel, we appreciate you being with us and im sure we will be questioning you further as we continue to get more reports. On our second panel of witnesses , they will be escorted in now. We thank you two gentlemen for being with us. The second panel has said before is Mister Robert some walled chairman of the nationaltrand the honorable christopherhart , mister hart is the team chair of the joint technical review which we use the shorthand of jager for, and im referred to that a number of times during this hearing. And mister hart is a former chairman of the National Transportation safety board , they been waiting patiently during these 2 and a half hours so gentlemen, we are, we appreciate you being here. You have submitted testimony. We ask each of you to summarize your testimony in five minutes and Mister Sumwalt, we will begin with you, you are recognized. Thank you mister chairman, Ranking Member cantwell and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. This afternoon i will address the ntscsrecommendation reports regarding the 737s max certification process. This recommendation report issued last month contained sevenrecommendations. Is your mic on Mister Sumwalt . Its on. But ill move closer. These recommendations are the result of the ntsc involvement has an accredited representative to the indonesian government investigation into last years lien aircraft crash and the Ethiopian Government investigation into this years crash involving Ethiopian Airlines owing 737s max. The ntsc participate in foreign investigations in accordance with analytics 13 which details the standard and recommended practices of International Aviation accident investigations. Other acts 13 the state of occurrence leads the investigation and the us has a right to participate in the investigation when it involves the us manufacturer or us registered or designed aircraft such as the 737s max eight. This is so that any design or manufacturing issues can properly be addressed by the faa and the manufacture as an accredited representative to these investigations the ntsb investigated, initiated an indepth examination of the us design certification processes used certified the max. The issues we identified revolve around three basic areas and in our safety recommendations were centered on them. First, the system safety assumptions used by boeing for the mcat and ultimately accepted by the faa did not use realistic pilot recognition and corrective actions in response to unlamented Flight Control inputs. Simply, the assumptions that boeing used did not consider or account for the impact that multiple flight deck alerts or indications could have on pilots responses to unlamented mcats activation. Next we identified the need for manufacturers to validate a pilot response assumption using scientific methods and application of Human Factors principles to improve design procedures and training. We believe that the use of validated methods and tools to assess pilot performance in dealing with failure conditions in emergencies would result in more effective requirementsfor flight deck interfacedesign , pilot procedures and training strategies. And finally, we believe that manufacturers should develop and incorporate an airline packet mechanism that would allow pilots to better diagnose or prioritize and react to multiple alerts and alarms. The pilots in the lion air and ethiopian crashes were faced with notable oral and visual alerts. Research demonstrates that emergency situations would increase workload and require additional effort to manage effectively because of the stress involved and possible confusion regarding which actions are necessary to resolve the problem. Each of our seven recommendations are detailed in my writtentestimony. In closing it should be noted and we made additional recommendations in this area if warranted. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify and i look forward to your questions. Mister hart, you are recognized. Thank you Ranking Member cantwell and members of the committee, and you for inviting me to this hearing. I would like to extend my condolences and joining others have done so to the families and friends of the pastors and group on client air 16 and Ethiopian Air flight 32. The faa created a review because these classes reveal the need to review the robustness of the aircraft certification process. The jdr which included representatives from the faa, nasa and nine other Civil Aviation authorities was created to review the 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 certification process and for making it public. But max grounding was unprecedented. Two previous grounding for the Mcdonnell Douglas dc10 in 1979 when an aging separating from the wing and the boeing 787 and 2013 due to battery fires. In those two groundings, the airplanes were rendered on airworthy. Look at the airplanes were on airworthy confidence was not an issue. Because those groundings resulted solely from airplane problems thecountry where the airplanes were manufactured made grounding and on grounding decisions. Rounding of the max on the other hand involves automation that usually worked but sometimes fail and when it failed, some pilots knew how to respond some including those who crash did not area because the scenario was not just an airplane problem the problem of airplane systems last pilot interactions every country that licenses pilotalthough also be involved in the grounding and on grounding decisions. As automation complexity increases i anticipate future problems are more likely to be of the airplane pilot type rather than airplane only. After three meetings in seattle in which boeing and faa were open and helpful and extensive work to the meetings, the jha pr if the faa a compilation of recommendations in 12 areas and we did thaton october 11. Some of the recommendations derived from the need for the certification process to address a single system failure may create issues and other systems. Other recommendations raise the issue of whether a process that has been based largely on compliance should also address safety. And systems become more complex, the likelihood increases compliance with applicableregulations will not necessarily ensure safety. Moreover as systems become more complex the certification process should ensure that failsafe are prioritized the mitigation of hazards in design minimizing relianceon pilot action as primary means of risk mitigation. Delegation will probably be coming more prevalent as regulators encounter increasing difficulty and retaining technology leaders. Thus all those recommendations do not address the desirability of delegations but recommend examining how to make the process less cumbersome to avoid stifling communications. Query for example whether inadequate communication resulted in a failure to address the result of involving the characteristic augmentation system from a nine system to a more aggressive system. And query whether inadequate communication resulted in a failure to address the result of modifying from one scenario to another scenario. Otherrecommendations related to faa standards regarding the time for pilots to respond to problems. J atr members recommend reviewing whether existing standards are appropriate for todays complex. For example when a system failure resulting cascading failures and alarms, query how adequately the certification process and the impact of multiple alarm along with possible startle effects on the ability of pilots to respond appropriately. 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 challenges of training pilots to respond to problems theyve never seen before. Increasing complexity exacerbate the challenge because it reduces the likelihood pilots understand the system. Increasing reliabilityexacerbate the challenge because it increases the difficulty of determining what types of problems might occur including most types of problems in training. In conclusion j atr members of their recommendations will improve aviation safety by helping improve the certification process. Thank you for inviting me and i look forward to your questions. Iq gentleman. Is the work completed regarding the max for either of your organizations, Mister Sumwalt . Thank you for that question. We are continuing to go through scores of design certification documents and you are looking if we need to make additional recommendations. We certainly will so toanswer your question our work is not yet completed. Mister hart. Our work was completed because we got recommendations to the faa and we did that on october 11 and completed our work. So this particular joint authorities technical review is over and decided. Thats correct. All right, lets talk about the time between the first crash and second crash. It was evident pretty clear after the first one after the lion crash that the mcats system was not working correctly, is that true Mister Sumwalt russian mark. That is correct. Mister hart, there were many factors but this function of the mcats was essential. Thats correct. And at that point, notice was sent out other airlines and to the pilots to make it clear that that was the main problem . Mister chairman as you are well aware today its theone Year Anniversary of lion air so october 29 was the crash. I believe it was november 7 when the faa put out an airworthiness directive to require certain procedures, procedural modifications. Was that a typical airworthiness directive or was it highlighted as an emergency ordinance directive . Im not sure. Airworthiness directives by definition are considered emergency so i think this one was definitely one that is supposed to command the attention of theentire industry. And Mister Sumwalt is consulting with staff and thats fine if he supplements that but this was a red flag. Put out about the max and the mcas part of it, is that correct . Would you either of you gentlemen quarrel that this was a red flag warning western mark. It was an industrywide warning that everybody flies this airplane needs to know about this issue to that extent yes. Is there a way we could have made it more explicit . Was there something about this advisory that didnt get the job done mister hart . Im sorry but i cantspeak for the faa on how to handle this. The decision process to have airworthiness directives within days of the second crash was intentional to get the word out as quickly as possible but i was not privy to the decisionmaking process. 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 . That certainly is the purpose of an airworthiness directive. How people responded, i dont have a good answer. Did i hear you say mister hearts that some pilots reacted in one way which was sufficient and some pilots did not for whatever reasons do that . Could you elaborate on what you were telling the committee . I was referring to the back and in the lion air crash data for that crash that the same problem was encountered and the pilot responded appropriately. Whats, do you think there was a failure at lion air to notify the other cruise that a problem that occurred . It was resolved in this fashion and we need to be mindful of that, do you know if that was communicated between the flight that did land safely and the one the next day . Unfortunately thank you for the question. I do not know the details of who told what to whom, whether it wasthe mechanics, the other pilot. I dont know the details about what happened the day before was transmitted to the subsequent pilots. Mister sumwalt, do you want to qualify anything youve seen based on the advice youve been getting . It was an Emergency Airworthiness Directive issued by the faa as mister hart has indicated. Those so that is a term of art. That means it does not allow for Public Comment area often times for normal airworthiness directives faa has to put it up for Public Comment unless its an Emergency Airworthiness Directive. Is it fair for me to characterize that as a red flag . As chris hart indicated it does indicate there was something that needed immediate awareness within the aviation community. Senator cantwell. Thank you mister chairman and i think the second panel for being here, i wish there was as many people listening to this panel is the first this is the hard work that we have to do in getting this right and moving forward. And i so much appreciate Mister Sumwalt recommendation and misterhart, your committees recommendation. My colleagues and i, senator duckworth and blumenthal have introduced legislation on the ntsb and other recommendations last week and hopefully we will be able to move forward on those. You heard the discussion i believe we are here for, this issue about what happened in the cockpit and the level of distraction which i think is the point Mister Sumwalt, at least two of the recommendations we put in on legislation that is your recommendation , that the faa direct boeing to have clearer corrective actions from ondemand systems and that there be this some sort of resolution that a pad in other planes to the cockpit situation so that we, were not bombarding pilots. Also, that they developed the same kind of assessment. When i read the circulars and ive read many, its pretty clear to me that this already should have been done. And its pretty clear that you have to talk about the effectiveness but when you submit a plan for a plane, you have to submit this alert plan so we will find out at some point what alert plan was submitted and what was reviewed. But its very clear that you have to have its effectiveness intended for human and machineintegration. People understanding compatibility with other warnings, ensuring that the system is telling the pilots what to do so listen, i appreciate your recommendations and weare going to get them. Into law, trust me. The question becomes what are we doing on top of something that isnt already clear here. What is it that actually we are doing and helping people understand western mark what is it were doing to make this system safer and the reason i asked is because as i said in my Opening Statement i believe is is the issue you sure. I think it is for automobile safety moving forward on more 80s and on airplanes. Theres going to be more integration into the cockpit, so anytime youre taking over command of the plane with a response, we need to know and we need to understand that functionality so what are these alert system requirements that we are asking the faa to do both for the max and for all the lanes. What is that giving us that we dont currently have now in the statute . Thank you for the question and thank you for your leadership and your advocacy on this area. We issued seven recommendations a month ago as we did identify holes in the design certification process. Id be glad to get into some of those old and what those recommendations are but i dont want to dominate your time and i defer to you. My question was why do you think this is important because you actually dont think the details are there . Thats correct and we really, the long and the short of it moving throughout each of the seven recommendations is that we found that 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 area. And what about Safety Management systems for aerospace manufacturers, what about that recommendation . The ntsb has found the benefits of Safety Management systems in many modes of transportation including aviation. We dont have specifically a recommendation for an sms or the manufacturers but we do believe that when you are properly analyzing and assessing your wrist, that is improving safety so i think partially, i think that would be a good idea for manufacturers to have a Safety Management system in place. And what does that mean most people who are trying to listen to this conversation the one we just had, what does that mean that happens . Ive looked at Safety Management systems and i like the term Safety Management instead of safetymanagement systems because its an active thing. We want to manage safety way that we would manage other vital business functions so there generally thought to be about 4 10 of sns. One of which is Safety Risk Assessment where youre actively assessing your wrist and managing those risks to an acceptable level. Thats a key component of the Safety Management system. This issue of Risk Management is critical and thats what i believe is that you have to say what are the highest risks so you can focus on and its clear no one thought the change of the new system that took outside information to control the plane, give different commands with different alerts, it wasnt tested so we have to implement. The faa was given this i dont know if it was a directive or not before, but then they pulled back on a rulemaking in 2014 on this system management, but you believe others are recommending thisis what we should go forward because it creates this robust discussion constantly, that the right way to describe it . As a safety practitioner i agree and i want to say again that ntsb has not gone on the record to have a recommendation for that, safety practitioners perspective again, when youre managing your wrist, your managing safety. I see my time has passed. So senator blumenthal. Thank you senator cantwell and i want to express my appreciation to senator cantwell to the legislation that were working on together and additional legislation that 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 circumventing the faa if they were really going to respect safety . Are either of you aware of the call calls that were made by mister muilenberg to the president seeking to prevent grounding of these airplanes in the immediate aftermath of the second crash . Senator blumenthal, im not aware of that. I sat in this meeting in march when you asked mister elwell the same questions. We were not involved in the decision to ground the aircraft in any form or fashion. Mister hart. It was not in the purview of the jpa ir. We were looking at the certification process to decide how to get better read the United States was among the last nations toground those airplanes, correct . Thats certainly my understanding, and canada. Normally the United States would be at theforefront of safety, correct . Good question senator. Just for your awareness i am on record to an oped in usa today to congratulate the faa for waiting until they had enough data to see was this a one off event because it was a one off event to be grounding airplanes after every crash or if it was more than one off. In retrospect was agood decision to ground that airplane . After they had enough data to see the similarity of the two. But the United States was the last to have enoughdata , just saying. Everybody had the same data about the same time. I think the faa has a reputation for waiting until the data to react. Let me ask you your reports around that quote, key aspects of the mcas function sets such as intended function description its interfaces and architecture were not directly visible to the faa in a straightforward manner through the certification deliverable documents. Im trying to put that in simple english, that you would use in usatoday articles. They didnt do fall, fair disclosure to the faa, correct . In simple language the process was complicated enough and challenging enough that the communication was stifled so the communication didnt get where it needed to be. I think that answers my question. And that was something we should correct, correct . Thats something that jatr has recommended correcting. The wall street journal reported internal boeing surveys revealed that about 30 percent of its employees felt potential undue pressure from managers regarding safety, related approval and one of the boeing engineers Curtis Eubanks filed a complaint asserted quote, boeing management was more concerned with cost and schedule and safety or quality. And. Did your reports , your investigative work indicates that kind of undue pressure from boeing on its employees to move the safety process at the expense of im sorry, move the certification process at the expense of safety . Thank you for your question. Our review found enough concern about undue influence that we recommended that it be viewed carefully for the next certification process. Indicate i think in your testimony that you thought delegation would continue which means contrary to what we have found here so far, a lot of the trust 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 Mister Sumwalt. On sunday just this past sunday the New York Times reported on efforts to undercut Regulatory Oversight early and often. The story of boeing sabotaging rigorous safety scrutiny is chilling to all of us and more reason to keep the 737 max grounded until litigation is really and truly independent and the systems reforms. What are your views on the amount of Delegation Authority from the faa could boeing . Shouldnt we reverse the delegations that exist right now . Senator blumenthal, thank you for that question. The role in all of this is to serve as an accredited representative each of the respective accident investigations. As such we look at design certification processes of 737 max and issued the seven recommendations. We have not looked at the oda process. That is not something we have done. Because there are approximately 79 organizations that have oda approval. We got about two people that have the expertise to dwell into the design certification issues that we devoted those energies to come up with these recommendations that we issued one month ago. That is an enormous task and im under the impression that the us dot is doing a study of this issue. As are numerous other entities. Iq senator duckworth. Thank you mister chairman. Chairman sumwalt, welcome. At the march 20 19th hearing held by this subcommittee chairman wicker asked a simple question concerning lyons air like 610 and i quote, what should the pilots have done . And you responded as follows and i quote. I flew the 737 for 10 years and i do believe there is a procedure at least with the flintstone version of the 737 that i flew, but i do believe that the first thing you would do is oppose that motion by pulling the yoke back and that would engage the break or the stable later cut out function and to me this answer makes sense area the most reliable initial human response from an uncommitted nosedown dive is to pull back on the yoke. Would you concur with this view . Yes i do. Ive actually look 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 in a direction you dont intend to, you intend to oppose it which should in the older models of the boeing aircraft that i flew, the 727 and 737, that would engage the stabilizer break and stop the from flying but as you pointed out in your early around, it will not do that when mcas is active on the 737 max. Thats what i would like to add to your response is the critical importance of the column cut out function whether its not just limited to the very old 737 but in fact according to a former boeing engineer who was responsible for the controlled developments in the 757, 767 747 400 and every boeing airplane, and every boeing airplane until the 737 max uncommitted stabilizers runaways is stopped by column motion only. You dont have to do another step. Once you pull back, thats it. Theres nothing that resets and pushes the nose back down seven seconds later. That is it in every other model of aircraft. But for the max, with the mcas malfunction the pilot has to apply the manual electric trim within the same respect and window. Otherwise the mcas which the pilot did not know was installed could reset and put the nose back down so now youre telling pilots natural reaction, you overrode it, you think that it but now you have to troubleshoot a system you dont know exists that is not overwriting your pilots command input and pulling back to you. Mister sumwalt, are you aware of boeing notifying pilots before the lion air crash when mcas activates during manual lights it disables the column cut out safety function that overrides that safety function . Senator duckworth im under the impression that as you said prior to these two tragic crashes that information was not widely known within the piloting community. Thank you. Mister sumwalt, the malfunction should have been elevated to a hazardous rating in my opinion because the column cut out was removed and worsened tripling the rates which made severe mister likely with a persistent malfunction. Had boeing done this instead of writing it as a major hazard, we would not be where we are today, would you agree with that lesson mark. Changes how they reportto the faa, am i correct . That has a category of major as i understand it only required there to be one angle of attack center area if it was at a higher hazard category it would have required the input from two. Mister sumwalt, i like to enter either let me plot assumptions disaster into the hearing record. Without objection. Can you talk about the accident chain of these decisions that pile up and leads to those lion air pilots fighting to say that aircraft . And how these decisions add up . Yes, as you know senator duckworth, the ntsb was an accredited representative. There were several issues that led to that crash. Thank you. I yield back. Senator cruz. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Sumwalt, the ntsb report you mention in your testimony stated that the ntsb is quote concerned that the accident pilot responses to the annotated mcas operation were not consistent with the underlying assumptions about pilot recognition and response that boeing used based on faa guidance for Flight Control system functional hazardous estimates, including for mcas as part of the 737 max design. Why do you think it was that boeing made the wrong assumptions . Thank you for that question. What we do know is that to simulate the mcas or to assess the level of hazzard the level of risk associated with that, they put boeing pilots, test pilots in the engineering simulator here while they were flying all of a sudden the trend 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, a pilot will immediately recognize this problem. They will notice because the nose is turn to page down, its increased pressure on the control wheel and one other thing. And the trim will was moving. Thats all correct, but what boeing failed to account for in their assumptions was to consider at the mcas could have failed because of another reason. The mcas couldve activated because the failure of the angle of attack which would have led to numerous other alerts and warnings in the cockpit. So with a failed angle of attack and wouldve had low airspeed indication on their primary flight display. They wouldve gotten a stick shake or stall warning which is rattling the stick and making a lot of noise. They wouldve gotten an oral warning which has airspeed low, airspeed low. They would have had various lights and a. So the long and short of it is boeing only evaluated pilots perform its with a stab trim itself moving. They did not assimilate or replicate a multiple failures could affect a pilots performance. And why did the faa processes not catch this, not catch these failed assumptions . Great question and a not sure i know the answer to that but thats why we issued these seven recommendations so that these design assumptions can be more realistic. We found in three instances come in the two accident flights plus the flight, the lion air flight prior to the accident flight, weve seen three cases where the pilots did not perform in accordance with the assumptions that boeing used. And is a bird strike a scenario that engineers designing a plane should anticipate and the regulars focusing on a plane should anticipate . I believe so and a plea to do in certain areas. Im not sure how it might apply to this. Theres conjecture that perhaps a bird mother taken up the aoa sensor on the Ethiopian Aircraft. I dont know if thats part of the total Risk Assessment for the 737 max as a relates to mcas. Is or in indication either boeing or the faa considers the possibility a bird strike would shear off the attack said to . I do not know what i can look into that and get back with you if it like. Would appreciate that very much. Mr. Hart, one of the key findings of the report is that the faas visibility into important system Information System was quote, incomplete and fragmented. The jatr then went on to say if the faa had been more involved in the certification of the mcas this quote, would likely resulted in Design Changes that would have improved safety. Based on the jatr findings, wy 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 that the communication process, that the oda is less bureaucratic and less complicated so the communication process isnt undermined by the complexity of that situation. So the faa without adequately aware of the evolution of the mcas on the relatively weak system to it much more robust system. The faa wasnt aware of the details of how adequately the transformation of the mcas from a highspeed turn correction to a lowspeed angle of attack direction, and where the assumptions properly considered in the process, the faa, the key medications to the faa were not adequate for it to be fully aware of the impact of those issues. Thank you. Thank you, senator cruz. 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 and regretted them, and wanted to take action and response to do the right thing for the families who were affected, the loved ones of the victims. Boeing has said it will take responsibility specifically for the lion air crash resulting in the death of 189 in indonesia last year, and Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157. But it has filed Court Documents for the lion air crash 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, as you know, resolving these claims in indonesia seems a lot less likely to provide justice to those families. There is no seventh amendment right to a jury trial there. Theres no requirement of a discovery. There is no rule allowing for depositions. Would you agree with me that equity, fairness, justice would argue in favor of keeping these cases in the United States my friend is a speedy in addition to being a pilot, if you want to defer to them thats fine. Absolutely. Thank you for the question. I am 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 we outside of my lane. Jatr did not consider it at i dont consider myself competent to speak to the vision. In general would you consider courts of attorney to be a better place to do justice for American Families than the course of indonesia . Im not enough thank you for the question but im not enough of a a litigator to give you a competent answer. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator blumenthal. We were going to close this hee now. I have one more thing. Sure. Senator cantwell. Thank you, mr. Chairman, for a second round. I just want to clarify, mr. Hart, i think i testimony from the company at they do think that the faa do about the level of trim. I think this would be a big issue. I think will do a lot more about this, but you would hope that a plan at the very beginning of certification would include that data, then they would make 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 nasa and said would you look at this coat and figure out what happened. Okay. I dont want to call nasa to look at software code. I want the faa to be the best Technology Engineers in understanding problems with software, problems with automation, and challenges with human response. Thats why part of our legislation is that center cenf excellence for the faa. Just by the way, i have done to other center of excellence is, one on composite manufacturing because a faa did know enough about composites to know how to certify the plane, and one on biofuels are just because they also dont not a certified fuel sources for planes if they dont understand jet fueled themselves. Im a believer we give the faa the extra resources and tools so they can stay ahead or at least no the rights, the right parameter of debate. But isnt the right parameters of the behalf to focus on this Human Technology interface today . Isnt that where we are . Because we saw those tenures of making us safer, and yet this level of integration is also, five of the last accents were all around this. For me and Many Americans taking up wondering what is a peto to and assent on the outset of giving commands and responses to inside the cockpit without the pilots understand i just feel the faa, we 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 . Thank you for the question. It also gives me an opportunity to respond to raising the same issue, that is i think as, first of all the type of problem we will see with airplane safety in the future in my view is going to not be things falling off the airplane like the introduction of the human factor is crucial and thats why im totally on board with the Human Factors liquidations that the ntsb made. There are two problems. One is, the reference was to multiple things went wrong at the same time. I would add to that its not just multiple things going wrong. Its also never having seen before even in training. Thats the challenge, when theyre seeing this for the first time in real time of the series of accidents where this has happened and its been unsuccessful, the one exceptin to that was solely when he had a situation he had never seen before evening training and handled it masterfully. Listen, i have consulted him a lot about this, but that is why he came to us. After the cold air incident. Do not change the regulars on the copilot or regional aircraft because you dont have enough time. You drive enough time to talk. I think is going to develop a system for certification and give it to be at the end i think has to know the parameters of human response and what pilots are capable of. We just need a lot more data. If this is the route we going to keep going on innovation, and we just need to know a lot more about what is that factor. I do want to speak for him but i think his perception is thats we had to start because you have any way to judge assist maybe dont really understand what the human limitation is. That goes to my point that the leading technologists in these rapidly advancing and innovative technologies, the leading technologists are not going to be with the regulars. Thats why this is not a faa problem. This is an International Certification problem because the regulators cannot hire and retain the leading technology in these technologies. They would be with the companies. But i want the faa draft enough Data Information and understanding to ask the right questions, because if they are not asking the right questions because they dont understand the technological impacts we will have a problem. We have to make sure they understand the r d and at least to the parameters. Whether that is composite, biofuels are cockpit automation. Thats what adequate information is a crucial. Straight to your point. Thank you for making a point. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator blumenthal. One quick question. If the faa were able to pay enough to offer career opportunities, with that affect your judgment that they cant hire the leading technologists, as you put it . I cant speak to the totality of the circumstances why the regulators dont have those people, but thats probably part of it, yes. Im just really discouraged and, frankly, 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 they are doomed to failure. Im suggesting thats why think the collaborative process of the delegation will continue because there is no way that in my view in the way things are currently situated the faa lend loved exe within house to do without the collaboration. Putting aside the word collaboration, i hope we can prove you wrong by in fact, incentivizing both financial and otherwise people with those skills to go to work for the faa. Because thats where the disk interested and independent safety function belongs. If you outsource safety, that is doomed to failure. I certainly agree with you that would be ideal yes, senator blumenthal. Thank you. Thank thank you very much, ad thanks to the members of the committee who have participated throughout. I have to say this is one of the most difficult hearings ive ever participated in. And i know its been difficult for the family members who 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 cantwell, is working to obtain as full an answer as possible. We owe it to the public and we owe it to the families and to the victims. You have my assurance that we are not finished with the work. That said, the hearing record will remain open for two weeks. During this time senators are asked to submit any questions for the record. Upon receipt of witnesses are requested to submit the written answers to the committee as soon as possible. I think the witnesses for appearing today, and this hearing is now adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] we are live this afternoon as a group new america washington, d. C. 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