Transcripts For CSPAN3 FAA Administrator Whistleblowers Testify On Boeing 737 MAX Part 1 20240713

May come to order . I consent that military can call resources, i ask unanimous chant that they recognized for ten minutes each during the question rounds, and without objection, so ordered. Before i begin and similar to the previous hearing on the 737 max, with the ceo of boeing testifying in october i want to explain that administrative manners regarding some documents we may use, i will be making two unanimous consent requests and reference to to document lists, list a, list be. First the documents contained on this to be our marked export controlled, apparently they stamp everything. We have been advised by house general counsel that they provide ample authority for us to release these documents. However, with regard to documents i will be making unanimous consent requests regarding the release of these documents, pursuant to the control act. Second, i will be making unanimous consent request to enter the documents on a list day into the hearing record. This includes additional documents, we have made at the Ranking Member of staff aware of the documents from both lists. The documents have been available to them, and with that i would ask unanimous consent that the documents on lots to be, from a four eight because of withholding such information is contrary to the national interest. Hearing no objection, so dordered. In addition, i ask unanimous consent to enter all documents on lets day into the hearing record. Without objection, so ordered. I now recognize myself for opening remarks. And in response to two to catastrophic crashes that claimed 346 lives in a span of five months, i would like to recognize the family members up those killed, some of whom are here today, and our thoughts are with you as always. We are here to ensure the lives of your family members were not lost in vain, and without response. You can be short this committee will continue to be aggressive in our oversight efforts to determine what went so horribly wrong, lie, and we will not rest until we have enacted legislation to prevent future an where the airplanes. In November November 2018, a few days after a powerful system running in the background of the 737 max, called mcas, blitzed lion air flight 610 into an uncomfortable dive. The faa issued and Emergency Airworthiness Directive that reported to inform pilots on how to respond to erroneous activation of mcas, well, it never mention the system by name. In fact, during the certification of the 737 max, boeing forced the faa to remove references from mcas from the operating manual as revealed in the emails and instant messages from boeing executive mark forkner, which boeing failed to provide to the committee. The faa except to the boeings push for men on went on to both but he was deadeye mine trucking, in quote, other Civil Aviation regulators around the world to adapt the faas faulty decision. Perhaps most chillingly we have learned that shortly after the influence of the air worthiness directive, the faa performed and analysis that if left and correct it, it could result in as many as 15 future fatal crashes over the life of the fleet, with the assumption, which is questionable that 99 go to comply with the airworthiness directive where within ten seconds. So today some said it is wrong. Despite his own calculations, the faa rolled the dice and let them continue until boeing could overhaul its software. Tragically, the faa never saw the light of day beyond the closed doors. In the next crash, taking more lives five months later, Ethiopian Airlines flight 300 into, march 2019. A communities investigation was launched desk days after the second accident, we received more than half 1 million pages of documents from boeing. The faa and other parties continues to analyze, and that does not include numerous emails from the faa that we have requested. We just received another large blotch on monday night, in response to our april request and others have yet to be provided. We have interviewed and spoken with employees, going whistleblowers, among others, these documents, emails interviews are crucial to our investigation, which has uncovered a broken Safety Culture within boeing and an faa that was unknowing, or unwilling to step, up regulate and provide appropriate oversight of boeing. The faa failed to ask the right questions, the answers that agency staff received from boeing our investigation, revealing that many faas own technical experts believe faas management often side with boeing, rather than standing up for the safety of the public. Ive read your testimony, i appreciate the tenor and the substance of your remarks, i commend your commitment to cultivating ageist culture among faa employees and ensuring they have the analysis and tools necessary to make the right decisions in the name of safety. But our investigation today it has established that faa employees did not have the analysis and tools necessary to make decisions. The safety theres no situation that is they should be subjected. I suspect you and your subordinates will back them up, defended their decisions based on technical evidence, and mandated compliance. But wing made egregious errors, including the implementation of mcas, while knowing it could prevent present a catastrophic risk, and failed to do its job without providing the Regulatory Oversight to ensure the safety of the flying public. They trusted put did not verify Key Information and assumptions boeing presented about the max and this was at a time when boeings own employees, as we learned reported they perceived undue pressure from management. Were trying to figure out what went wrong here to fix it legislatively and not ever allowed Something Like this to happen again, in that spirit, on this panel we will hear from administrator steve nixon, and a member of their panel that is assessing remedial changes. Mr. Dixon, as i said i appreciate what i read in your testimony about the approach, but i will still have some tough questions for you, and i hope to hear from you about they have identified as false failures, in the certification of the max, what concrete steps you are taking to prevent them, and i appreciate your commitment to ensuring it will not take flight again until they certify it is 100 confident and safe. We will hear from two former faa and boring employees, as well as two respected experts in the field of aviation and human safety factors for their perspectives on the faulty design, and we will hear from a boeing whistle blower and a former employee of boeing. Therefore i want to be certain that, i worked for a number of years and it was only after people died that i stripped faa up its promotional responsibility. And they want to be certain that has not crept back in. The Industry Needs promotion congress can do it or they can do it themselves. You and your people are there for one reason only, to assure the safety of the flying public and i look forward to your testimony today. With that, i will yield to the Ranking Member. Thank you. I want to add my comments and recognized the families and the friends of the victims. We have not forgotten your losses and i ensure that we all share the same goal to ensure our system remains the number one system in the world and the safest system in the world this is the fifth hearing on boeing and the tragic accidents that the committee has held in eight months. There are at least a dozen other reviews and investigations that are ongoing some have been completed recently and we are fortunate to have one of the representatives from the technical adviser that will be with us today and im pleased th committee is going to hear from him on the ongoing work to independently evaluate the boeing software fix. I am confident that these export reviews are going to provide us with the insights that we need to keep our Aviation System the safe this and the world. The majority has divided the current faa leaders to testify and while they can address the faas efforts since two accidents they werent in charge for that five years between 2012 and 2017 when the max certification process took place. Until we hear from the officials, the in investigation is in complete his incomplete at best. Should the investigations revealed problems and the certification process, congress should act accordingly. We have to ensure that we have the benefit of all export reviews and investigations are still underway to focus on the facts and data from those reviews. When it comes to aviation safety we have to leave out the partisanship and the gotcha moments and i know his team and thousands of faa professionals are all dedicated to aviation safety and a proven any process that needs improvement and i look forward to what the administrator is doing with recommendations that have already been received within the last year, taking leadership at the faa i am committed to addressing any problems discovered in the process and working with the process on a bipartisan effort. Ive said this before two and it bears repeating as a professional pilot myself i still believe that the faa is the Gold Standard in the world for safety. Air travel if the safety is mad of transport in history. And when it is clear to fly it again, it will be safe to fly, no doubt in my mind. We are working to ensure the Safety System improves and we have a responsibility to do that together. With that, i look forward to todays hearing, and i yield back the balance. Thank you. Thank you my comments will be relatively brief as i released a video statement yesterday, and i refer folks to that for my full comments, but i will summarize it. The committee reaches a new milestone in this investigation. Its clear the process by which the faa evaluates is in repair. We must ensure the safety of the flying public. As this work continues 346 lives have been lost in the lion air and Ethiopian Airlines crash as. Will remain at the forefront of these efforts. Several of the film members are here today and i extend my deepest condolences to you and your loved ones. Youre advocacy makes a difference. The faa must fix its credibility problem. Desk as i asked communities last hearing they expect to hear from the faa a two write mistakes they had, made and the specific stakes they are taking to restore public confidence. Ill look forward to hearing about the tap process as it looks over faa soldier as they return the decision. The two former employees are providing an important perspective on questionable management decisionmaking. They seem to prioritize economic interests. Im interested in learning more from Safety Experts on the panel about the integration of Human Factors as Aviation Technology becomes increasingly automated. Airplanes are changing, but the federal government and certification does not seem to be changing with those airplanes. And 2019 is coming to an end, committees investigation is far from over. The committee will continue to maintain safety as its guiding principle and use all available tools to ensure the safety of the traveling public. I yield back. I now recognize Ranking Member of the subcommittee mr. Graved from louisiana. Thank you, i like to thank the family for being at the hearing today, our fifth hearing on the max as ive said at every previous hearing your efforts remind us that this is about people, not government bureaucracy process, its about people and safety so i want to thank you for your advocacy efforts throughout this process. Mister chairman, we are on our fifth hearing today and there are extraordinary efforts underway to ensure that were able to extract every single lesson that we can from the 7 37 Max Disasters. As some have noted the ongoing investigations that have completed the special committee of the safety oversight certification advisory committee, or the technical Advisory Board the boeing board of directors as a committee the National Transportation safety board, the very committee that the majority has underway. We have the Inspector General, department of justice criminal investigation, securities and Exchange Commission and others, the indonesian and the ethiopian authorities as well, so multiple investigations with a lot going on. We have the administrator of the faa, so thanks for being here. As i recall youve been on the job for four months so you are here to talk right now about a path forward. Where we are, what weve learned and the path forward. In the second panel, we have a number of folks including, quasiwhistleblowers. They have not sought official was deplore status but folks that play that role of whistleblowers so we have folks that were there intimately involved in the process and theyre able to shed some light on what was going on on the ground, so we have someone who is the current administrator who has been there for four months, we have folks that were involved in the process on the ground that are somewhat whistleblower status. But what we have not hadnt any of these hearings are the people that actually made the decisions, back when this process was being certified, there is a gap in this hearing and Ranking Member graves and i have requested over and over again that we fill the void. I can say all these acronyms and talk about the investigations but if we dont have the full slate of understanding of whats going on then we are at risk of making decisions that dont have the full view. I have no desire to rub someones face in the ground, but i do, and it made a commitment to those folks and i will fulfill it. I do want to make sure that we understand everything that happened and we dont allow mistakes to be made again. We need to learn from the mistakes and to learn from the successes, and build upon both of. Those so i do hope, as we continue this process, as we move forward in the investigation, that we fill the void and understand what has happened every step of the way, and that we are able to make decisions that truly eased the safest Aviation System possible, and that we are able to ensure that passengers on airlines, domestic and foreign will continue to be flying on the safeties means of transport available. So i want to thank you for being here, i want to thank you and many folks behind you for all of the work that you have done to get us to where we are. I think everyone knows what our end goal is and that is to ensure that we prevent absolute perfection. Im looking forward to hearing your testimony as well as that of the second panel. Before i begin my questions, i would observe that weve been asking since we received our first emails from faa in boeing, to interview career staff, and the people that made the decisions. And until recently, with the new administrator, we were being stonewalled and being told that we cant talk to the employees that raise concerns. We can only talk to managers, that has changed with this administrator and we have interviews is scheduled with people making decisions. If we find that it went higher than that, we will call those people. But we just spent seven hours jointly, republican and democratic staff questioning the current head of safety who was there when this document was issued about the probability of another crash, and says he was not aware of that or anything that went on, so i dont know how high up this went, and i think thats one of the problems. We have to look at. That most of these decisions were made by captive regulator managers in the seattle offices and no one knew about it. So we are going to get to the bottom of this, and if it goes any higher than that we will have those people, so with that, i will recognize myself for questions. I forgot. Thank you. I got carried away,. Good morning members of the committee, thank you for inviting me here today to speak with you about the federal aviation administrations approach to safety oversight and to provide you with an update concerning the boeing 737 max. With me today is the executive director of the faas Aircraft Certification Service when we fly anywhere in the, world we enjoy safety that is on arrival in the modern transportation era. Thats because the faa in the world understand that the success of the global Aviation System rests squarely on our shared commitment to safety, and our common understanding of what it takes to achieve it. Together, we build a Safety Record that is the envy of other transportation modes, the Health Care Field and others. But we are humble we are our best efforts fail. On behalf of the United States department, i would like to once again extend our deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims of the Ethiopian Airlines and lion air accidents, and we thank you for being here today, we have met with the family members and friends of those on board, seeing their pain, loss and a reaffirms the seriousness with which we must approach safety every single day, thats why were working tirelessly to ensure the Lessons Learned from these terrible losses will result in a higher margin of safety globally. For the 737 max return to service the faa fully controls the approvals process and is not delegating anything to boeing. We will retain authority for all new 737 Max Airplanes manufactured since the grounding. On the 737 max is return to service, it will be because the safety issues have been addressed, pilots have received all the training they need to safely operate the aircraft. This process is not guided by a calendar or schedule. Actions that might still take place include a certification flight test, and completion of work by the joint operations evaluations board, which will include Pilot Training needs. Additionally, the faa and the technical Advisory Board will reveal the final designed documentation. Finally, i am not going to sign off on this airplane until i fly it myself. Todays unprecedented Safety Record is built on proactive seeking of improvement. This investigation and other congressional efforts will come to scrutiny and recommendations from other independent reviews, including in these, are the joint authorities technical reveal that the faa launched to conduct a conductive assessment of the automated Flight Control system a lot of mission, to conduct an independent review of the proposed integrated system, training and continued operational safety determination for the aircraft. And id like to recognize and think mr. Mckee who testified here this morning for his work as a member of this, recommendations from the ntsb the d. O. T. s Inspector General and finally a report from the secretarys special committee on aircraft certification, we believe the transparency open and honest communication and our willingness to improve our systems processes are the keys to restoring public trust and the faa beyond the 737 max the faa is committed to addressing issues regarding aircraft certification processes, not only in the United States but around the world, this includes moving towards a more holistic brushes transactional item by item approach integrating Human Factors more effectively throughout the design process, and ensuring coordinated and flexible information flow during the faas oversight process, we end our International Partners was also foster improvements and how aircraft are designed and produced but also how they are maintained and operated. We are prepared to take the lead in this phase of human safety. The hard lessons have paved the way to create a global aviations system but an enviable Safety Record, but we recognize that safety is a journey and not a destination and we must build on the Lessons Learned and never allow ourselves to become complacent. Thank you and this concludes my statement and im happy to take your questions. Mr. Key for . Your testimony. Good morning. Thank you for having me here today it is an honor to be on the panel for. I would like to first start by expressing my condolences to the family and friends of those who lost their lives in the lion air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents. Their memories were with us on our team as we did our work. I currently work for the u. S. Air force, ive worked in the Aviation Industry for over 25 years in the military and in the private sector. This is included work in flight tests, system designed integration, Engineering Management and systems safety. As an officer in the navy reserve i was responsible for the navy is part of the joint team that performs combat analysis on Aircraft Panel damage. Im also a private pilot, with over 600 hours of flight experience. I was asked by the faa to participate on a team known as the boeing 737 max technical Advisory Board, also known as a tab. This is an independent team of Industry Experts with no past involvement in the 737 Max Development or certification. Our team is made up of various experts from various specialties including test pilots and chief scientist with background and Flight Controls, flight operations, simulators, Human Factors, Computer Systems and systems safety, we were chosen for our ability to take a look at a 737 changes objectively with fresh eyes because we are independent from boeing and the faa certification effort of the aircraft. Our team will staff to review the changes they are making to the 737 max system and make recommendations back to the faa adds to the suitability of those changes for the aircrafts return to service. Our team had our first facetoface meeting with boeing at their facilities in seattle in may where we spent time working with the boeing into nearing department. This meeting started off for by digging deep into the systems and scrutinizing the work that has been done to develop the solutions to the problems that led to the accidents and give our unbiased opinion as to the suitability of those fixes. We started by learning about how this system functioned as well as having discussions on the various Failure Modes of the system. We were given indepth briefings on what happened with the two mishap aircraft including information on the lion air flight that occurred the day before the first accident. We were given detailed briefings with the discussion on the changes that have been made and developed. Our team was off to given the opportunity to fly the simulator at the boeing engineering facility. Many of our team members got the opportunity to fly the simulator with the old software and with the new. We were able to experience the accident scenarios and were able to observe the aircraft behavior with the system operating properly as well as how the aircraft handles with the system disabled. During these meetings which included multiple conferences and to face to face meetings at boeing our team had the full cooperation of boeing engineering and flight pace staff as well as good participation from the avionic subcontractor. The team start to develop action items that we determine were necessary before returning the aircraft to service and theyre being actively track by the tab interpreter and with boeing and the faa. All items have been addressed foreclosed are presently in work. We are still working to accept products to close the remaining items. Once this is complete we will present the final report to the faa. We still have work to do to complete our assessment and are awaiting more information on the development assurance. Testing of the software and final training for the aircrew. Pending the determination that they meet our expectations our team feels that the changes made it should vastly improve the safety of the aircraft in keeping with highly successful Safety Records of the previous models. Thank you, and im happy to answer your questions. If thank you for your testimony. I recognize myself for the first round of questions. Administrator dickson, we know you werent there but i expect that you and your staff have put a substantial amount of energy in trying to determine what happened and how it happened as you are charged with making it right for the future. I have to ask about this analysis which was done in december 3rd 2018. You are there and he met with me and mr. Larsen and told us this is a oneoff accident in february yet this analysis which was going to be put up was available at that time. He says he wasnt aware of it but no there was such a process but did not know they had evaluated this plane and the system. This analysis says that this is post lion air that and the lifetime of this aircraft an operation they predicted they would be a potential of 15 fatal crashes. Im not aware of any other certified aircraft that has such analysis. The normal analysis is ten. That far exceeds that. A question why given this why the aircraft was not grounded once this analysis was done as opposed to allowing the plane to fly while boeing worked on a fix weve talked a lot about being a Data Driven Organization when we had the second incident when the plane stayed up yet for another couple of days the assumptions that were made here is only one out of 100 pilot would not react properly and effectively in that ten Second Period yet in the two instances, well, there were actually three. There is a triggering that was recovered in indonesia and then a trigger that it was not. And then ethiopia. So we have a 33 success rate. Even after the first we had a 50 success rate. I am just wondering in retrospect you think it should have been grounded after lion air given this analysis . Thank you for your question and i will say at the outset i was not at the faa when this was done. However, i want to advocate for my people and they need, we are a Data Driven Organization as you said and i know with all due respect, any indication that any level of absences is acceptable in any analysis is not reflective of the 45,000 dedicated professionals at the faa, whether theyre involved in air traffic or aviation so i want to make that clear, that is absolutely our highest priority. Having said that, the reason that we have the safest airspace in the u. S. And the world has been through decades of developing data systems and decisionmaking tools that will allow us to make the best decisions and prioritized in the interests of safety. So remember in the information that was available at the time we really did not know what the cause of the action was. I only have ten minutes, and i have some other questions. Were not going to say anything definitive, i would hope that he would look into the distribution of this, it did not come to the attention of head of safety so i dont know where it went or who had access to it and what they may have advocated. I think its a credible thing and im not wear any other aircraft where the sort of analysis has found something that is going to cause crashes inevitably. It doesnt meet your standard so i appreciate the fact that youre going to look into that and revise that feel. I want to ask, again, im concerned about boeings influence over this all stops. We will find out with further interviews with a a employees but with seven hours, hes not aware of any issues we raised where decisions were made. There were two issues, with the Lightning Protection boeing decided to strip it off, and after they produced, they certified a full and would like you to change your decision but its necessary, again, safety analysts objected and they were overruled by a local. The issue was actually seven, and we have photos of what happened when you lose rudder controls on an airplane. I wish the staff could put that staff up thats lined up for. They were upheld at two levels of review, so in total we had 14 people at the faa say they should located at the controls on the wing. So they were overruled by a single level. This cause us concern on my part, but there were levels of review. Are you looking at that . Thank you for the question, and i think its important to understand that as we work through these processes, and when you have technical people involved, this process is by design our encouraged debate. Ultimately, remember that the managers that were involved in these decisions are themselves experts of their times, when they may have been overruled. That is not a matter in my view of what the applicant or manufacture in this case once its really a matter of letting the process of work and ultimately the decision needs to be made on behalf of the agency. On occasion that maybe the manager that has a broader view, that may be able to make that decision, i do think there are some improvements that we can put in place, and aviation safety. Thank you. Im running ahead of time blowing self certified and installed defective stats on hundred and 37 airplanes, any Just Announced a 4 Million Dollar civil fine for this deliberate abuse. Weve heard a lot of other things about production pressures and we will hear more from the second panel on that. Im concerned will you look at these issues, we will hear about whether senators were installed properly because they calibrated properly because of production pressures. Again, i have concern that we are looking at, i dont get the sense that you are ready to go there that we might have a captive problem and the field offices, because theres an awful lot of decisions that have gone in boeing favor overruling a whole lot. He said you cant put a lithium battery and that without putting it in a steel box, overruled. The plane gets grounded for two months because you have to put it in a steel box its been an awful lot of people that seem to impress it, but maybe this needs to go beyond the local office when were talking about safety Critical Systems and with that i run out of time but i hope we will look at that issue, thank you. Ranking member graves . Thank you one thing i worry about a little bit is the direction we are taking in this is not about democrats or republicans, and questioning the safety of our system and that that was wearing because i want people to feel safe getting in the air. Ive heard people say that we have a system that is absolutely fundamentally broken. My question to you is, i dont think theres any system that cant use improvement when it comes to government but they believe our government is fundamentally broken. We fought to long time to get it where it is today, so are we broken . The system is not broken however with any process, and ive said many times in these last four months that all processes need to be improved really each and every day, to the extent there are gaps and the process or in the case of the max, fragmented in an adequate communication, a lack of Safety Management system at manufacturers those kind of things are all improvements that can be put into place, and i believe that the construct that we have, whether its an airport or manufacturer of the agency being in a position to exercise effective oversight and not be captive, but also have fluid information flow and data flow from the regulated entities is very important, because that is the foundation of what has led the margin of safety that we enjoy in the United States today. Im going to change directions a little bit so members can hear from a pilots perspective, and i know youre concerned with different aircraft. Name the aircraft are typed in right now. Commercial. The 727, 737, the 757, the 767, and the air bus 321. Ive talked about this. Its many things. You should never focus on one thing if you pilot issues and maintenance issues. You have boeing and everybody has a part of this that bearshas some of the blame, but ive talked about how mcas or any autopilot for that matter manifest itself and it manifests itself as a runaway, one thing we learned and pilot, brother its Pilot Training, memory homes muscle memory and you go through those little items. Can you explain sometimes i get up here and harp on this and dont explain a very well can you explain what it feels like, and i know youve gone through the scenarios as, well and a simulator of these accidents, can you explain runaway trains, can you explain for the committees benefit to muscle membrane and what you have taken away from your perspective . Thank you for the question, this actually gets to the chairmans question on looking what information was right after the lion air accident we had data that indicated issues with crew performance, we also had information with other plan was maintained, if any of those had gone in a different way that accident would not have occurred and events wouldve manifested themselves differently. A pilot is part of the system so when we are designing Flight Control systems anytime you have a Flight Control problem if the airplane is not doing what you wanted it to do the first thing you do is flying the airplane and that means discomfiting the pilot information, and lets get the airplane under control and find out whats going on and then you execute whatever emergency procedure you have. In this case if the airplane has got control pressures that are undesirable, trim the airplane up and then in most airplanes you disable the electric train system and then can do it manually, slowdown of the airplanes not on fire, you havent lost an engine and there is no urgency in addressing the issue so that is how we want to manage the workload and the cockpit but runaway stabilizer tram ive had it during my career and its not a regular occurrence on modern aircraft, its something that every pilot learns during their initial qualification and weather and light aircraft or matriculating through commercial aviation aircraft as well. Law you know and again, when you read the report to that the coal pilot asks if you can trim the aircraft which i one point i think the aircraft accelerated law, that is some of the initial you might explain that to, when you are trying to trim an aircraft thats going worry too fast the pressures that are against those control surfaces you might do a better job of explaining it to ive used the analogy of trying to push a car door when youre trying to go down 100 miles an hour and its very hard to get that, same thing you get on control services when youre trying to trim something manually you might go a little bit further with that. Sure at high speed with any Flight Control problem its important to maintain control of the aircraft and that usually means for a large commercial airplane below 250 knots and then if you have Something Like a flat base symmetry or undesirable control force, a lot of times you will go back and reestablish with the previous configuration was. In this particular case dealing with a trim issue those forces are going to be much greater which i believe is youre pointed a higher speed because they controls are a lot more effective at high speed than they are at a slower speed. You know there has been a lot of talk and directed a people blaming the pilots which i dont believe the pilots are to blame in this. I think they were fighting for their life and that is exactly what they were doing and the passengers, i think they were overwhelmed and i think they were trying to figure out what was going on. We know they reengage the system but i place a lot of that blame and theres plenty of blame to go around in this whole thing, again whether thats manufacturer or pilot response or maintenance, whatever it is but i still go back to and ive said this before the Ethiopian Government that says European Airlines and that particular crash that is who i place a lot of focus on because they put those two individuals in that cockpit and its unfortunate that that is the case and that is the thing that worries me more than anything else because we do have different training standards throughout the world, very different training standards and when you have an airline thats going as fast as they were going unearthing people in the cockpit they may know how to fly the computer but it goes back to what you said you still have to come back and ive said this before to, the most important safety factors that you could have is a pilot that can handle whatever that situation is and i dont care if the pilot has 200 hours for their parents and i will get in an airplane with and there is piles out there that have 20 hours and i wont get an aircraft with and its all about how they handle whatever situation it is and so i still come back to International Training standards and i think we will hear more about that and if we have some questions i think we will hear some things, i know they were talking about Pilot Training standards but i do appreciate your perspective on this and again i think there is a lot of blame to go around but i do feel bad for those two pilots because i do think they were overwhelmed with the task at hand. Congressman i would say i appreciate your comments but i would caution everyone and i think you would agree with this. Im not about casting blame on anyone or anything im about identifying problems, issues, and identifying solutions and improving the process and there is a lot to be done and all of these areas, both with the technical process. The human factor issues and international Pilot Training standards as well. I completely agree with you and thats exactly why we are here i appreciate the chairmans point of view of the committee is trying to do. Its unfortunate that we are trying to have People Killed to get to this point which has happened before and government and law i do think we need to be cautious as we move forward to. We have to think about this system and whatever needs to be upgraded but i do think we need to be very cautious moving forward and not having a jerk reactions and we want to keep, this comes back to my initial statement. I want to make sure we have a safe system, i do believe we have the safest system in the world and its the Gold Standard, attack sure it stays that way but i dont want to tear it apart, thank you mister chairman. Well thanks the gentleman for his questions and we will proceed in order of seniority saga. If you werent here at the beginning that. Thank you mister chairman this is a very important hearing i appreciate this hearing today and administrator dixon i appreciate you being here and let me say that i also appreciate the answers you have a prided provided so far, the skies caucus which im a cochair we are concerned obviously about allegations that faa was a captive of the industry. So i want to ask you a series of questions said go to boeings delays and providing safety information, and it looks like repetitive delays we are trying to see whether or not we can break with that. And 2015 it did the faa enter into a subtle meant agreement with boeing, that is four years ago to resolve multiple and force cases against boeing that were either pending or either an investigation of the time. Yes we did. Is it also true that under the agreement boeing had to immediately pay 12 Million Dollars and to the u. S. Treasury. Yes maam. Moving forward is it also true that boeing faced up to 24 Million Dollars an additional penalties through 2020 if certain conditions were not met. That is correct. Do these genesis of settlements show a pattern of systemic issues on the part of boeing, including a failure to identify problems, failure to put corrective actions in place, and adequate resources and inadequate training. Well i would say i have yet to conclude with respect to the Settlement Agreement but its something thats under consideration and it could be the subject of future litigation but the right to take further action result of that agreement. Over talking about a failure to put corrective actions in, place you are saying that is under litigation . No its not but it is a consideration about what actions may occur in the future with respect to the ruminate actions before the 2020 timeframe. I think those failures are pretty clear. And designing and developing and manufacturing the 737 max, boeing has run into issues in meeting the obligations in most of these categories. Isnt that true . Im sorry can you restate, im not sure i understood the question . And design and manufacturing the 737 max isnt it true boeing has run into issues and meeting the obligations and most of the categories are just previously named. Im not aware perhaps mr. Lawrence is where, im not aware of any specific issues. Has boeing then all the applications . That is don devaluation right now. Within the last decade boeing has had to worldwide groundings, a relatively new airplanes seven and encountered numerous compliance issues and the times and boeing paid the 12 Million Dollar settlement, and im assuming that was made. Has faa assessed any additional financial penalties on boeing pursuant to the 2015 agreement . And at this moment, it is still under consideration. I reserve the right to go ahead and proceed appropriately. Thank you. I think the gentlelady. I do want to extend my condolences to the families of the victims of this tragedy and its incredible to suffer through those, just to start this out you mention about identifying problems, and to me it seems like a software glitch, maybe sensory issues, awareness and training but also some of the problems that are identified. When you came in, were you concerned about what it was with the inspectors and the relationship and culture between the two . I know there are questions about that. My experience it was from the commercial Airline Industry, 27 years as grand my power and benefit, that has led to an incredible margin of safety. One of the challenges that you have an aircraft certification is that it takes place over year, the result of what weve seen so far the joint authorities technical review, my about one were going to bring in various parts of the team and how engaged everyone is, so there is the relationship between the faa, and the manufacturer, but theres also how they are fitting together and working together. Expand on that, the relationship with the european union, the Safety Agency and relationship to airbus . Its a different model, similar, but i think the issues are very similar. Over in europe they have, again, indifferent legal construct and they would actually have to take certificate action. Our system is a little bit more flexible in some respects, delegation is something that has to be armed, its a privilege, and it is reliant on our trust with the applicant, and to the extent that needs to be addressed, that will affect the decisions Going Forward. As you are a member of the board, your conducting the review, the 737, and what do you think they conclusions are today . We have action items to boeing for the further safety assessments, we are also waiting to see the final training module but the items that we have reviewed is looking good. So the Software Changes . The software tape did that have been in place are addressing the failures that led to the two accidents. Was 50 publication . Ill address that by saying one of the new changes that boeing has made has made the mcas as a system looking at both sensors on the aircraft, so that if one should feel, like they did in the two mishap aircraft, the system will detect that. On Pilot Training and awareness, do you have any concerns that the, what will they do to make sure that pilots are more aware . So far as i have, seen the training they have developed and that we have seen its adequate. Thank you, representative johnson . Thank you. Id like to have unanimous consent to put my Opening Statement in the record. Thank you. Administrator dickson, the faces of the people being shown over here, in doubly in our mind, the only thing were trying to get at is how we avoid this again. So, the last two airlines it evolved by boeing, the 787, and the 737 max have been the subject of worldwide groundings. Before the 787 grounding, the last airline type to be grounded what the dc10 in 1979. What do these groundings tell us about boeings ability to deliver quality, and what are these groundings tell us about the ability to conduct effective oversight of the aircraft certification process . He you and everyone know that my highest priority is to make sure that nothing like this happens again as we reached the margin of safety in around the world. I think these groundings illustrate what we have done we cannot be satisfied with, we have to support our people and make sure that we are making decisions the right way for, that involves culture, the separation of safety issues from Business Issues, there cannot be under pressure on one side or the other. We have to make sure that that is absolutely clean. We have to also make sure that in hindsight there are other accidents that have happened over the history were airplanes were not grounded, because we did not have data at the time. Thats one example, we had air france where there were some similar Human Factors and issues involved there, and i think that this is where pointing the finger of blame prematurely ends up being counterproductive because we just move on to the next thing. My interest is in the whole system and how all the parts interact. As flight decks an airplane to continue to become more and more modernized, we need to understand that humans are a part of the system. We are part of the design process, we are part of maintaining the aircraft, we are part of operating the aircraft. Human frailty, our ability to engage in systems and be part of a system, that needs to be taken into account moving forward. Thank you. Do you believe that the recent failures of the boeing 737 max, and boeings ability to deliver safe, reliable airplanes, says anything about the Organization Designation authorization structure . Thats a good question. As i said, the ability to delegate to the private sector as existed for decades in one form or another goes back to the 1920s. If you look at a commercial airlines which is what i am most familiar with, the certificate management offenses oversee that Major Airlines have typically, 30 or 40 applications who are supervisors a pilot force at that airline and maybe even more than 10, 000, but they rely on those that are flying every day, the line check airmen, the instructor designates that are really there and take their obligations very seriously. There is an analogy to be doing the same thing at the manufacturer but that does not mean that there are not improvements that need to be put into place. I think that the ability to have a higher fidelity data around the globe, we have airplanes that can process extreme data almost immediately, waiting to be able to put protocols we, need to work with labor, we need to work with manufacturers, we need to work with in the faa to make sure that we can take that data and make better decisions under and appropriate management system. Thank you. Thank you, mister chairman. Mr. Key for can you get into a little bit more detail about the changes to the Flight Control system that you have observed . That have been made. Yes. There are three main changes that have been made to this system and the Flight Control system, the first is, as i said there is going to be an angle of attack Center Comparison between the two angle of attack sensors, its a very more than five and a half degrees from each other the system will be disabled. The next one is a maximum trim command limit, it is a limit that is going to be the stabilizer from driving to a point where the pilot will no longer have control by pulling on the control will alone using elevator controls. The other one is the mcas rethink realization change that has been made, this changeable account for any manual trim influence that the pilot makes with electoral manual trip, while and gas and once in case hes, done or want angle of attack has come back out of the mcas, rains this will also prevent more than one mcas firing during an angle of attack event. The last change is a change that has the two Flight Control computers in the aircraft monitoring each others performance and if there is an errant or a spurious trim campaign that down from one that is not also coming from the other, it will shut that drum system off. It seems like after the first craft there was a issue the Flight Simulator, lets see how pilots respond to that and in hindsight we know that it was a combination, of the failures were combination of Human Factors, user interface design an individual component failure, in the certification process before even the plane is certified is there enough testing of in the Flight Simulator of individual component failure. It seems like with the 737 max when there were changes to the user interface, the Flight Control system every wouldve been important to go to the Flight Simulator then and then simulate failures like the angle of attack sensors instead of after the fact, can you tell us to what degree those things are tested for in the certification process. Thank you very much for the question, and Human Factors testing inflight testing is a current requirement of any aircraft certification project and in fact, that is one of the reasons why weve had a delay in the reintroduction of the 7 37, it was that very testing earlier this year that our test pilots identified some issues and required additional changes to the chain system and that is why we added more Flight Control system so that you computers will be talking to each other. It is a factor in the system and it is flight tested as well so obviously you dont want to fly test things that are dangerous thats why the simulators are used but we try to accommodate every type of failure that we can think of in the testing and certification of the aircraft. Both crashes were tragic and if we knew all the factors in hindsight it probably could have been avoided by it the second one seems more tragic considering its a similar set of factors, in hindsight are looking forward better yet what could we do between after a crash like the lion air crash, what could you do with the faa to prevent the second crash, that saying what should people have done before but what are we going to do Going Forward to stop the second crash remember happening . Well i think thats a great question and i would just go back to the availability of data earlier and to be able to look at root causes, ultimately we are looking at a process by which a fix is being put in place and how urgent and what kind of timeframe are we looking at or is it a high enough risk and remember this is all about managing risk, is it a high enough risk that the airplane we need to be grounded . Thank you, with that representative youre a pilot, youve been a pilot for delta for how long . 27 years. After that you urge for delta and operations, is that right . So during my career i flew as a line pilot for about five years and was the senior for 12 years of my career. In that role you were active inside of delta as well as that reach the federal government in a variety so i know youve only been on the job for four months but you are not airdropped into this job at faa, s all right . He started last year 2018 and before that you were active in experimental aircraft association, you were just airdropped in your job last year, into this new job right . Correct. So i think you should be proud of your credentials and not underplay them and the rule that you have played both looking forward and looking back. I wasnt in congress when a lot of things past in congress but im responsible for those things, you are responsible for the things that happen before you got, there just as other people were but youre responsible now for those things. Absolutely. As well as being responsible Going Forward. Absolutely. Im responsible. Im glad that we can agree on that, i would also note that the program didnt exist in the twenties although only a in some form did exist back in the 20, the existing one started in 2005 so that is what we are dealing with now as well, not what it was in the twenties for what it is now, its very different than what it was so i want to establish some baseline about what we are talking about, not the twenties not the fact that youre new to the job because youre actually not that new to the job so given that i want to ask you about some of the decisions that have been made. You may not have to answer them today but you need to answer, them for instance muilenburg stated that the faa fully at the safeties aspirin but the donation acts said that the faa spawns was to accept that. So fully vetted, forces simply except, within note indicated that were prove all was dedicated to boeing, so that so at the Indonesian Air authorities noted, so is that the process, is fully vetting, is all that means is that he gave to faa and faa except that . And thats what fully vetting . Means fully vetting in my definition does it mean that, i would defer to mr. Lawrence on the Technical Details but i would say that from my understanding its not unusual for design applicants to come in and ask for certain things to be delegated. Mr. Lawrence . So fully vetted would not just be a cursory review, thats not whats done in the system, delegation is really used primarily in routine and well understood areas but it also relies on the data that we are provided and as mentioned earlier today its an area that we are focusing on if we dont have the right information it will result in the correct answers. So the report also said that they were not adequately updated to reflect changes to the Flight Control, we have sorted that out in the last hearing, any during the process they notified boeing that these documents are in effect insufficient and if not, why not . Im trying to get gaps in the process we used to certified, so if not why not . My understanding is the Design Change for them cast which is what i believe you are referring to was not made evident to the Aircraft Evaluation Group which would be responsible relief for looking at the operational implications, there may have been some conversations within either the flight tests or technical area, so i think what it indicates is this issue of fragmented communication and the fact that there was information out there but it was difficult to put the whole picture together to make a sound decision, that is absolutely something that we need to address Going Forward. Okay i ran out of time, i have other questions but your credentials to show that you are qualify to answer these questions for us today and they dont all have to take we need to get to the folks that made these decisions as well but i have confidence that you have the credentials to answer these questions and help us now have confidence to find out where the gaps are and hold folks responsible for that as well, all hold you responsible for that. Thank, you thank the gentleman, now representative perry. Thank you chairman, also want to acknowledge the representatives of those families who lost in the tragedy and offer my condolences as well, we appreciate your attendance and advocacy here today. Mr. Dickinson we want to make sure we have all the information so that we can trust the fidelity of the outcome just when it is finally is complete, in that vein on october 7th of this year the ap broke a story entitled airline went into records after max crash engineer says which details of the contents of a whistleblower complaint submitted to the faa and other areas safety regulators by Ethiopian Airlines, former chief engineer can i ask with unanimous consent this entered into the record . Without objection. Thank you mister chairman. The allegations outlined in the complaint were shocking and speak to a culture of corruption per meeting the state owned airline ethiopian safety regulators and the ethiopian regulators at large. If true the fabrications signing off on shoddy repairs anyone beating those i got out of line appear to be directly relevant to investigations into the cars, do you have an update on the status of the investigation into this complaint and do you expect completion of this investigation prior to the publication of the crash Investigation Report, in light of these allegations the state owned enterprise and that nation safety regulators does the faa still have confidence in the integrity and the validity of the current crash investigation being led by the european government. Well thank you for the question i do not have an update today but i will just say that again in this process we need to make sure as we make decisions and as the agency works with the committee to improve the margins of safety globally that we take all of the factors into account and of course the faa has a responsibility to influence globally even though is that we dont directly regulate, we do some of that with the bilateral and regional relationships as well also as various facts come to light we need to take those into account as we make decisions. I appreciate your answer and i would just caution knew i suppose even though you dont have an update it would seem likely would want to make sure we had all the relevant information prior to the report, the crash Investigation Report and this might be relevant, may not bode we should know, that i would like to switch gears, here the faa has identified december 20th as a new projected date to release the remote idea tracking, is faa still on track to release the mp are them . If it does pass what are your plans to hold people accountable for the continued delays. Thank you for the question the process as its actually out of the faa at this point its gone, its preceded out of the department of transportation is under review through the omb channels and so i expect any time now that we would have it out there. I dont have an exact but im certainly hopeful that will be by such a summer 20th. Im hoping you will be out by december 20th, im certainly planning on it. But you will confirm it out of faas hands now. Yes. I yield. I think the gentleman, this is a perpetual problem as we try to move forward on safety issues and lets hope they can get this one donna promptly. With that ill turn to representative nepal autonomy. Thank you, minister decks in the u. S. Aviation industry has to be commended for Safety Record over the past decade and my deepest condolences to the families and thank you for being, here however they have uncovered the system by complacency to the commitment for safety because it has such a stellar record for so long, and complacency can be a dangerous thing particularly and industries that produce truly safety critical. Despite this we are not aware of any initiatives to emphasize and really energize the Safety Culture that once existed, we do understand that you talked about not rushing the process of an grounding, emphasizing safety first but has faa hired Safety Experts to take a fresh looks at youre process and has a began to hired more Human Factors as some suggested you should, have you personally sat down with the managers and technical staff to hear their recommendations and improving faa and their concerns over oversight of boeing, id like to know what you have done to address safety and oversight issues and faa. Well thank you its a great question and i welcome the opportunity to respond. On my first day at the agency and my first town hall i talked about the importance of just culture, which means that we need to have a systematic way for employees to bring their concerns forward and we will have better solutions, we have to have honest abate as we make these decisions and my decision, those kinds of constructs are powerful and raising the safety bar, along with that, in my first three weeks i made a visit out to seattle to see for myself and to talk to the team out there and actually had a conversation with one of our human factor test pilots and asked her whether we had adequate Human Factors expertise and whether it was embedded in our processes as effectively as it needs to be and i learned a lot from that conversation, i think theres an opportunity for us to continue to update and improve those skills in our workforce. That is a big area focus for me. Sir we are interested in the testimony of doctor inslee on the second panel dealing with the human factor involved with air craft certification in operation. A topic of discussion with a certain friend of mine, a professor of engineering, what do you think faa and boeing can do better to incorporate Human Factors into the certification process to prevent future accidents . Thats a great question im interested in hearing comments, Human Factors comments and i have had a chance to read the testimony and couldnt agree more with the principles that are articulated there, i think as cockpits become more automated over the decades the job of flying an airplane does not get easier but it changes the nature of where the threat is and needs to be mitigated, there is an issue sometimes with a manual flying skills if were operating in a manual fashion too often, there is also an issue with losing Situational Awareness and its impossible to engineer out human error so as we build modern airplanes its very important to do so in a way that keeps the pilot engaged with the flight path of the aircraft because ultimately management flight path including where it needs to be at any point in time, whether its on the ground, flying in the air, it amounts to three things and that is understanding where your airplane is supposed to, be understanding youre clearance, putting the airplane there and then making sure it stays there and humans are not very good passive monitors and this is where the issues about how engaging and the forms of tactical feedback that are presented to the pilot as here she is flying an aircraft are extremely important, even as flight decks become more automated. Thank you mister, chair thank you. Thank the gentlelady for your question, representative davis. Thank you mister chair and thank you to all of our witnesses, there are 794 boeing employees who work at their facilities in st. Lewis facility or illinois, back in october we had the boeing ceo before this committee sitting right where you are and i explain to him that anytime we have tragedies like those discuss today it really breaks my constituents, breaks their hearts because they want to make sure that the planes that they are manufacturing are going to be able to fly safely and we dont have tragic accident that are affecting so many accidents. And mr. Perrys comments our hearts go out to, our condolences but thank you for your presence. Administrator dickson, in your testimony you mentioned you are working tirelessly to ensure the faa learns from mistakes surrounding these tragedies and i know you mentioned in your testimony, i know youve answered some of my colleagues questions about what specifically have you not addressed yet, is the faa doing to ensure that oversight programs work to protect passengers and also to preserve the dignity of the workers, my constituents who built the planes. Thank you for the question, i certainly, we are all in this together and we, the situation with the 737 max is on unprecedented in many respects and for the time being we have calls that work inside the faa, we are not delegating anything to boeing because the expectation is the faa is going to use its resources and the resources of others that weve talked about to make sure that we dot every line and cross every tv. Thats not to be bureaucratic or slow about it but we need to make sure that the public has confidence, im confident that i would put my own family and the boeing employees would put their own families on the airplane once we are finished with the process, so again we have a number of milestones yet to complete, we have gone through workload management engineering that data is being analyzed and we are currently looking at how the software has been developed along with our national partners. Running all the audit trees and each of iran when youre talking about software, after that there will be a certification flight and as you know i will be flying the airplane myself before a sign off on it, separately we will be totally u. S. Train pilots but pilots from around the world in ensuring that the training requirements that we require forgetting the airplane flying are where they need to be. Mr. Lands on a few of anything else you want to add. Anything else you want to add . Okay well administrator thank you im going to relay the same thing that i relate to boeing ceo, we expect results, now family should go through the tragedy that these families have gone through, we know there are things we can all do better. We want to be here to assist you to make that happen but results matter and i certainly appreciate your presence here today, certainly appreciate your leadership and i look forward to working with you mister chairman i yield back. Gentlemen representative to plan ski. I do not believe we should get rid of oh d a, im not suggesting that but i want to preface what i was gonna say with that because you had said that the system is not broken but a proven can be made, we have seen 346 people die and there was a second correction, we knew more after the first crash before that second crash and so i would say the system is broken, something went wrong, first thing i want to raise it is something physio raised after the first craft crash. Are you aware of where this, who saw this document in the fa . I was not involved im not sure exactly, i cant speak for who sought i know that it is a Decision Tool at the. Who makes a decision . Then the board that comes together on continuous essentially uses it to make its decision, we can walk you through how that process works. So whenever we get reports and we get reports on a regular basis we are constantly evaluating what action needs to be taken and obviously this was a very large action we dont need the forms to tell us this was a tragedy and that we need to act quickly but the forms to educate us and how to respond. Was it unacceptable risk though. Its not acceptable and thats why we issued an emergency aid before we complete the first set of evaluations and then fought off with several others and what additional actions needed. So i wanted to ask why was there no mention of am cast at emergency 80 so the continuing review board is made up of pilots from our Aircraft Evaluation Group its made up of maintenance people, engineers, they evaluated all the information and they made a determination not to use those words because those words were not included in the boeing manual to start with, there was a discussion with that create too much confusion because the system that needed to be addressed was the tram system so they did not use those words at that time because the action they needed to be taken by the pilots was the. It all started with mcas not being named in the manual to begin with i dont have a lot of time, another thing that i wanted to mention and follow up a little bit is what mr. Larsen had been talking about i have degrees and Mechanical Engineering and i know a little bit about airplanes, not certainly as much as the pilots here do but i also have a degree and engineering i dont understand how its possible that you dont, that part of the procedure is not to look at the entire system, and makes no sense to me that you were just look at each piece of the system and not how the entire system works to gather and to me that says to me that the process is broken, its a broken promise i just montage to be very clear that i think that needs to be changed, administrator dixon i wanted to get your response on that. I think the use of integrated system safety assessments is absolutely an area that we have incorporated actually in the max process up to this point and putting gates into the process which occurs more frequently is definitely something that we need to be looking at and remember those systems safety assessments thats actually one of the process improvements im talking about even with ongoing certification activity. Thank you i yield back. I thank the gentleman and in my first question i did ask that you get a look at the distribution of this report given what mr. Lawyers has said specifically if the opponent receive this document and considered it at that time, thank you, with that i will recognize representative bad man. Thank you i want to think expert witnesses from the faa for your testimony, also want to thank the families and friends of those that were lost in the tragedies, before i get to my questions i just want to make a quick comment, i think its lamentable that we are once again discussing the 737 max questions, and not one faa official in charged has been made to testify, i know that Ranking Member sams has requested the chairman hold a hearing with these individuals and i look forward to that in the future, administrator dickson could you briefly discuss how other countries certify their planes and maybe mr. Warrants can chime in here as well, do they have something similar to the process that we use here its, my opinion and several others that we shouldnt throw the baby out of the bathwater because the system processes are not broken but what improvements can be made to ensure certification oversight . Its a great question all let mr. Lawrence respond to my answer. The processes around the world that we are really talking about the four primary states of design that we are working with the although there are other entities that build and design airplanes its canadians, and the brazilians. Processes are similar because of different legal formulations and the fact that yamaska is a Multi National regulator that sits on top of the other authorities there are differences and how their processes go and how its managed, i think the concepts are the same but rather than delegating individual items we have a lot of flexibility in delegating and there is basically a privilege in delegating certain items, theyre pretty routine usually but, the faa can modify those decisions once its, whereas in europe they actually have a design certificate essentially for the manufacturing entity. So really the whole process is delegated in many respects but there is not the ability to delegate individuals. Briefly as you can mr. Lawrence, i have another question or to, thank you. I think thats a very good description, the key difference is, the legal system that easa and the european is working under, it is a certificate that the manufacturer designed organization of cheats, so they have an approval its really a different system, there is not a constant review of things and in our system we can pick and choose what we want to review, what we feel we need to review, this move on from this work i would say theres a lot of reviewed understanding ahead of time and those are some of the things we are looking to do as well. Okay, thank you. We have heard a lot about how assumptions may have been made, we have learned that they may have been inaccurate, can you make some comments on that mr. Dixon . The assumptions are really of some long standing in terms of the technical requirements that were developed over previous years with test pilots and engineers. I dont know if theres any other details on that or anything youd like to share but these are some of the things that as a result of the reviews that we are doing now another reviews that are being revisited. Okay thank you and then adding to in your opinion is there anything that we in the United States can do to standardize the qualifications of pilots globally, weve done that here domestically, i think very well but what about internationally and what role with the faa play and encouraging that . Thank you for the question and i think the faa can play a very influential role, as a matter of fact we introduced a paper recently at the assembly and it was part of the team that went up there the Assembly Organization about lifting global Pilot Training standards so that is something we have taken on as an agency already but then we will also have similar discussions with regional regulatory entities and associations as well as some of the bilateral relationships that we have around the world, okay thank you ailed back my time. Representative cohen. Thank you chairman and thank you for the witnesses for being here today and the families, again i express my condolences todays hearing is another significant step in the two fatal max accidents. These tragedies claimed the lives of 346 individuals, have a slew problems regarding the faas ability to oversee that. One issue that has raised serious concern, the disagree alert, the disagree alert warrants pilots of the aircrafts angle of alert sensors do not match. In august 17 found that the oao were only functional where they were indicator, to put that into context 20 of boeing 2037 max customers purchase those indicators. They were not functioning then on about 80 of the 737 max aircrafts sold, Southwest Airlines that was operating in my hometown, only learned that the statement was optional after the lion air tragedy, we learned on the previous hearings boeing decided to fix the defect for three years after discovering this law. It also confirmed that producing planes with this known defect and did not inform the faa where customers about it until after the aircraft in october 2018. This was over a year after it learned about the defect. More alarmingly the aviation authorities filed a report quote contributed to the group being denied valid information about removal conditions, this is completely unacceptable, someone needs to be truly held accountable, someone needs to be held accountable at boeing and administrator Stephen Dixon the faa fair shares in this why is the faa not taking any actions including a simple penalty and knowingly delivering aircraft with defective parts that pilots believe her functioning. Thank you for the question congressman and i have not made a decision on this and another number of matters i have expressed my disappointment with the boeing leadership. They need to be transparent in the sharing of information with my team here at the agency so i reserve the right to take further action and we very well may do that, i will not say today exactly what that may consist of but the facts that you presented will certainly go to that decision. Thank you sir to think it borders on criminal that they acknowledge a defect and they dont even notice, they invite the flying public. I will say that in remarks an answer to my, i am not interested in casting blame, i want to run all of these issues to ground and i want to fix the problem. There will be time for the rest as we move forward, boeing is grounding the airplane, not delegating anything during the return to Service Process, we talked earlier about the enforcement action and i have ruled out other actions and i will take those actions. There are serious concerns, today we have adopted safety features and has been provided to all carries without a if no charge, they should not be treated as a luxury or sold for an extra fee, you should not turn for seatbelts. I continue to work with my fellows and ensure safety, thank you. Thank you mister chairman, i want to say to the comments that mr. Potato said about the safety of domestic treatment, i was saying how it cited prior to the 737 Max Disasters i believe it was the boeing planes one after 10 million flights comparatively, if you look at other manufacturers that are largely covered by a their Civil Aviation authorities it was an accident one for every 3 million flight so again one every 10 million flights. One and every 3 million flights and we certainly do need to get back to that level of safety or even better so there was an emergency put in place those where. But also there is a corrective action review board. Did the corrective action review board, whether any recommendations they made that faa did not follow, no it follow the recommendations from the experts on the card and they develop the software. These are technical experts, did they recommend a grounding . No they did not they did not recommend it when the plane was ultimately grounded in the hot aftermath of vp opiate and the ethiopian era disaster did they comply with 80 in that case . Well again the accident report is not out yet so it remains to be seen, on my first day at the agency i did have a chance to see the flight data recorder information from both accidents and compare this to and in my estimation for whatever reason the procedures that they expected to be followed were not followed. So i just want to make sure we highlight this because in the future if something happens and in emergency directives issued, we need to ensure there is a Better Process that those Lessons Learned are actually applied and complied with so i think thats one of the many Lessons Learned in youre exactly right i want to express caution, we need to make sure that we wait for the ethiopian report to be completed to see what their takeaways are. A question was asked of you earlier and i want to give you an opportunity to perhaps clarify. You were asked if you are responsible for decisions of your predecessors. Now look i ran for the congress because i was frustrated by what was here and i was unhappy with the performance that motivated my decision to iran, we are aware we are as a nation today as a congress we are where we are as an faa, are you responsible for each of the decisions that were made or were you responsible with where we are now and where we go. I appreciate your comments, i feel responsible regardless and thats just who i am and i think its an important that he mentioned this for the faa i need to advocate for them and i need to support them, i need to make sure they have the tools in the direction and the support, whatever the case may be my job as a Service Leader is to make sure that they have what they need to be effective at their job so i feel responsible for that and i wanna take those lessons are learned and put improvements in place so that we continue to raise the bar. And im sure the objective of raising the bar and that we have maximum safety so let me get to the last point here, so they do not recommend a grounding but the plane was ultimately grounded, was at a decision by the technical folks or was that a decision by someone else and ultimately ground the plane. . That was a decision i believe that was made by mr. I think or at least was driven by the availability of additional data, i dont know. It was my understanding law. It came from mr. Bahrami and mister chairman this was not a decision of the technical folks, this was the decision of the leadership to ultimately ground the plane, yield back. Thank the gentleman. Thank you chairman for holding this hearing. Administrator dickson thank you for being here and my heart goes out to the family members that are here, later on we will hear from at pearson who oversaw a portion of the 737 max, the final assembly in washington state. Mr. Pierson wrote two and met with general managers of boeing 7 37 prior to the lion air tragedy to express the concern that the safety and quality are being compromised due to boeings production pressures. According to mr. Pierson in early 2018 the job behind the schedule spiked ten times a normal amount and the roll out on time dropped to below 10 . Also a backlog cause them to begin experiencing out of sequence work. This means work was performed outside its planned location which increases the risk of mistakes. Boeings tracking system saw quality issues. I understand that mr. Piersons attorney has returned to you three times. He has written to, me i received a letter from him in september i believe. Mueller you to mr. Piersons concerns of chaotic, deteriorating factory conditions that he witnessed at the boeing production facility. He also wrote that he believed the flying public would remain at risk until this unstable productive environment is investigated and remedied, administrator dickson and the faa grants Production Certificate to boeings, right . Yes sir. As the faa investigated any of the production concerns of boeing that mr. Pearson had raised . We had engaged mr. Pierson and we are looking into these issues, mr. Lawrence may have more details on this but we take concerns wherever they come seriously and we have a process for dealing with that for interviewing and investigating concerns that are raised by individuals and things that we observed in our own oversight. I dont mean to be difficult but i think to look into it doesnt seem enough, i wanted to get a commitment from you that we are going to investigate these concerns. We are doing that, you have my commitment, we are doing that. Thank. You dont have any further comments. Thank the gentleman. Thank you mister chairman i want to express my condolences to the members of families here today, my prayers are with you, and ask for peace and comfort as you deal with this difficult tragedy in your lives, i had an opportunity, several months ago to have a meeting with a colleague of mine, a friend who is also a pilot and flown the 737 max, the time he was not a pilot just riding airplanes, and i know much about them but what he expressed was that there was a periodic briefing that pilots are provided watch potentially provides, essentially its a binder that includes memos directors directives, information as to where they should be in connection to safety issues that they are piloting. He told me that this particular issue was in fact included within that binder of things to be aware of but that it was buried at the bottom of a stack of memos so i guess my question, from his perspective it certainly seems from my perspective as a late person if you were to have a bibeau really through this use of those imported spirit it is stacked this big are you really providing any meaningful direction to pilots, so given that scenario is that in fact the case, can you comment on that . Appreciate, that thank you. Thank you for the question i think as deputy minister said in his previous testimony its my belief and he shares it that a pilot should have known about the system on the airplane and should have been part of the initial training, particularly as the design was changed so that it would operate the way needed. With respect to information about unscheduled stabilizer trim and the emergency awareness directive, as mr. Lawrence said earlier that is an extraordinary action and i think the last one the faa head on his about two years earlier in 2016 it is something that should be stamped on top of everyones forehead out there. So if thats not reaching the level of provenance that it needs to then its definitely something we need to look at. Thank you i would encourage you to do that because the takeaway i got from my conversation with him is that he was certainly aware of the issue but the fact that you would have such an important memo with regards to the issue is essentially buried, that cant happen it seems like those should be issues that should be number one, another question i had for you, there was a question earlier maybe i apologize are you aware of allegations by former faa safety engineer that the management Safety Culture is broken and the moralizing to dedicated Safety Professionals and if you are how do you respond to that allegation. Well i want to make sure on my first day at the agency i emphasize and this has to come from the top that we need to have a healthy reporting, halter its what we demand of those a reregulate, i come from the airline to uptake safety concerns is extremely important and i think it is equally important if not more so within the agency so we need to, as people raise issues either through their chain of command or their boss or as whistleblowers there needs to be this middle ground where we able to take in systematically safety concerns. One of the things that we need to do a better job of is going back after decisions are made and communicating to the workforce what all the considerations were and why decisions are being made because sometimes there may be a perception oh you sided with this person or that person or that company or chose to retain some of this its not the right lens that we need to be looking at through these things, also we want to have a system where we encourage healthy debate as we make decisions, whether they are violence, engineers, subject Matter Experts, you want to have that healthy debates but in these cases that you are fearing to the decisionmakers themselves are actually technical experts as well. Thank you sir, yield back. I resent that by getting back to my point here what was done about this report when i was first received by the faa . Again this was a tool used by aboard. Before this report was even completed it was recognize that we needed to do additional work. What im getting to as what was done before this report was generated. After the report was generated, there was additional action because prior to this being completed was to redesign the system with this report guided the board you look at was how much time would we allow boeing to redesign the system. Let me ask this question can either one of you admitting yourselves that the faa made a mistake and not taking action on this report when i first issued . I would say that this is something we need to look at very closely. I mean it was a mistake . Obviously the result is not satisfactory. Well you cant bring yourself to bring yourself to say you made a mistake, you werent even there at the time. Absolutely this is a part of the process where its the data, the decision did not achieve the result that it needed to achieve. Now is the fact that the faa overseeing boeing with 45 personnel to 5000 to boeing does that indicate that perhaps there is a problem with staffing the faa certification process so that we dont allow this to go to the extent that it happened with the 737 max. If you could briefly answer his question. I think thats something we need to look at, its not numbers as much as it is the skill set within the workforce because that group that is overseeing boeing has the ability to withdraw resources very similar the Certificate Management Office oversees an airline. Thank you. Thank you chairman defazio, to all of you who lost loved ones my heart goes out to you, i hope you have been able to be surrounded by family and friends and near faith and love and the light that it will bring you, it was a horror for you and my heart does go out to you. I think the discussion and the questions that weve had today from both sides of the aisle indicates how we want to not ever have this happen again, it is definitely a bipartisan issue because we are all human beings and we all want to be safe and we all, i assume we all take airplanes somewhere at some time in our life and there are moments when you fly, if youre not a pilot thing you kind of go, what was that . So moving forward it appears to me that we need more transparency and communication when it comes to a creating an International Aviation safety standard that does work for everyone, it also appears that there are many areas that we need to work on, the only way for us to come together to tackle safety is to understand that we need to take a multifaceted approach to the issue and i believe that is what you are all trying to do. Mixer just said, can you elaborate on the technical review and what exactly is included . Thank you and i appreciate the question and the opportunity to comment. I agree with you 100 percent that these issues need to be looked at from an Aviation Systems perspective and we are seeing a lot of growth in the system internationally and the u. S. Is stable, its a growing Healthy System but it is a premature sister and what we do here we are selling airplanes around the world and its people to work everywhere so the issues that we need to look at me very somewhat but in terms of the report, i think it is very important to understand that the commission that group itself but its sort of like one piece of the pie and it doesnt offer the complete perspective. The perspective from the tap is another perspective that will inform future efforts we also have the secretary special committee and we have the investigative activities of this committee as well as the Senate Congress committee and then also the d. O. T. Ig report so all of these things and including our own internal analysis will help us get to the answer and that is why we look forward to working with you, on the java report comes down to if you take all the 12 recommendation it comes down to three things, that it is a holistic reproach rather then off all of this rule and all worked on the checklist, more transactional is the word that i use in aircraft aside. A more effective integration of humor factors considerations are not just building the machine and then figuring out how to operate it. That simplistic thats not how the process works today but that is an end of the spectrum that maybe we need to move on more closely to what im describing with a more integrated Human Factors approach and then there were some shortcomings that had been identified that i have seen in how various offices communicate with each other and the entities within the faa i think we need to bolster our System Engineering expertise, we need to oversee the process which the manufacturer builds the airplane and to do that System Engineering expertise is important to understand how the systems interact and then also project management discipline because these certification projects take place over multiple years and if you look at the continuing operational safety of a fleet youre talking about a product that will be there for maybe 35 to 50 years. Okay i want to interrupt you also i want to ask you knowing that the products will be used across the world often in places that we will not be able to regulate how can we continue to improve Safety Standards across the aviation as a whole . That is a great question that is of something of great interest to me. Again there are ways that we can work through this and there are ways that we can work bilaterally and regionally but we also need to take a look at what are the responsibilities when you are developing and selling a product not just for a u. S. Manufacturer but for all of the Certification Authorities that we talked about it how do you take those issues into account and does the manufacture needs to be looking at the customers in terms of what the support is. Think the gentleman for his answer and just back for a minute, i still think this is an incredibly critical issue and representative johnson you said the result was not satisfactory, i want to really track how that was utilized in the decisionmaking process, yes you issued a directive but that was the month before and then you say wait a minute were gonna lose 15 of these planes and 35 to 50 years, but when within that time and with virtually is about five months, so it was way less than satisfactory it is catastrophic. So from there we will turn to maloney. Thank you chairman, mr. Nix and you know who at pearson is . I have not met him personally but i know of him. We understand who is the senior manage are of the washington plant. You understand that he oversaw production for the 7 37 final assembly. A moment ago when you were responding to my colleagues questions you couldnt bring yourself to say that the faa made any mistakes here and now he used to from language, i think it would feel better if you shut a little more passion for this sir so i want to give you another opportunity at this. I know you knew that he wrote to you, that mr. Pierson wrote she wants in september but in fact he wrote you three times, in september, october, and he wrote you a november. I know he just got on the job buddy he extensive information on production problems that he identified at the facility. Yes. So my question to you is have you interviewed peers . And we have reached out to schedule alata thats all my question . I know we have contacted him, yes. Excuse me hes sitting right there, will you commit that you will interview mr. Pearson. Absolutely. Will you add investigate the production problems. Have you done so today it . I know there is our ongoing activity. Sir, im sorry thats not good enough, you have a bunch of people who lost loved ones, have you today investigated production problems . I believe we have, im not aware of the details. Do you have any information on that mr. Lawrence . Have you interviewed production line workers . How many . I cannot give you a specific numbers we have open investigations. Is it more than five . I would not quarter number without going back to my investigators. So its fair to say they dont have any specific information about whether you have entry production workers. And you say you think you have, a certain we are sitting here at a hearing, youve been on the job for a while, now i think its the most important thing on your plate, fair to say. Absolutely. So are we going to interview the production workers, is going to be a real thing, can you compare us to give us some answers that are actually going to dig into because we know this wasnt just a software problem, we know is a hardware problem and you have a guy that wrote you detailed information who served at the plant as the senior manager, who served 30 years in the navy, knows what hes talking about, couldnt get an answer to three detail the letters he said to, never interviewed him and honestly would be great if you had some specifics on what you have done to look at the production problems at that facility, can you shed any light on that for us . You have my commitment that we will look into those problems and we will continue to do so. But you dont know how many workers you have interviewed . Not sitting here today, know. Mr. Lawrence . We have interviewed workers and we can provide those for questions. Have you viewed quality and production records from the facility . Yes we have. Would you tell us about that. There are ongoing investigations and again we cant look at providing additional investigative reports at the appropriate time. So you cant tell us anything if youve learned anything about whether production problems detailed and mr. Pierce insiders. Now months ago are you aware that for months before the first crash he brought these problems to boeings attention, for months. Yes the concerns were, raised. Yes do you understand that after the lion aircraft he went up and down the chain appalling, he went to the ceo, you went to the general counsel, you went to the border, you aware of that, he sent them letters to saying all the same things, you know what they did, they sat on it until a second plane crash, thats what happened a bunch more people lost their lives. Some of those pictures are right over there. So we are sitting here now a year later and neither of you can tell me whether you have anything specific on the production problems that he identified four months before the first crash. So has the faa made any mistakes here. I think thats evidence that we have issues that i need to address and that our team needs to address and that we have processes that need to be improved. So i would agree with you. You cant say that word mistake, again i dont want to play. Its about accountability. Again im accountable, i hold myself accountable. Can you say the faa made a mistake but are taking seriously persons concerns. We are taking all concerns, any concerns that are raised we are going to take seriously and run them to ground in a systematic way so we can make the right decisions. I yield back. I would just ask very quickly given the investigation what you tell us is ongoing of the production issues will that be completed and instruct you in terms of whether or not the plane is allowed to fly. And what conditions of inspection will be mandated on these planes before its allowed to fly. We well, i have one thing that i can add we have maintained these certificates and so the faa will be doing that this time. It is not going to be part of the boeing system so we will be doing that ourselves to ensure that they are airworthy before returning. Okay thank. You thank you mister chairman mr. Lawrence gonna follow up on something that mr. Maloney just shared because i think its important that we get to the bottom of this. Is it reasonable to expect that in the next 60 days you can interview an additional ten line workers at the facility . Wherever the investigation that was a softball, so im gonna throw you an inside pitch, by gosh interview at least ten interview and report back to this committee. Mr. Jackson im gonna come to you because youve obviously been advised by counsel or somebody to not admit that the faa made a mistake and im giving you youre council, your counsel is giving you bad advice, did the faa at some point in this process make a mistake . Yes. Thank you. Again i just dont want to leave at that. I get that. There is enough pictures over here and enough blame to go around, i get that, but its very frustrating when its obvious that mistakes were made that you just dont say mistakes are made and i understand lawyers always say, dont admit anything because of this but im just telling you in the real world we have to look at it that a mistake was made and obviously not one but multiple mistakes and we have to get to the bottom of this. So here is my question for you, there is the suggestion, of the committee has had the suggestion that indeed there is a perverted incentive to on the certification process where you have faa employees whether its bonuses or anything else that they dont actually engage in the proper way of putting safety first, would you agree that . Not agree with that . Comment on that . I do not agree with that and i made it very clear to my workforce that i support them in keeping safety as their highest priority. All right so we have to do to make sure what things come in. Let me say you have to people that are part of your stuff that i have the highest regard for. One worked for Committee Staffer me, there is no one that will work harder on this issue and get involved it so i know you have some people that are very capable working with you. I guess my question to you is how do we put in the process of making sure that what we have is that it doesnt go into. Im not gonna use a black hole narrative but how does it not get swept up in the bureaucracy where there is a concern, there is illegitimate concern and inches doesnt reach the right person until we have a fatality. How do we change that process . Well there are several different ways you can to get into analysis paralysis or bureaucracy in these things. You have to have Real Time Data to make decisions that is visible across the whole organizations. Im glad you said that this is not the chairmans first rodeo nor mine and when we talk about certification i wanted to streamline certification. What im concerned about is the faa looks at the certification process and we are recertifying screws and things that quite frankly are taking a whole lot of time and then on the critical areas they get the same bandwidth in terms of the certification process, whether we are working with boeing or anyone else, is there a way to highlight those new areas that are coming to the market as part of an aviation product and perhaps the emphasize some of the other things in the certification process to speed it up, whether private individuals or in this case commercial, is there a way for us to do that . I certainly think theres a way to make a process less bureaucratic and more fluid. Thats part of can you come up with four recommendations on how you can do that . Yes. Then the last thing in the 20 seconds i have left, obviously we have a system that is not being repaired and still has flaws in it. Will you commit to the American People right now that you will set up a hotline for our pilots to call in, if they are seeing an issue so that the users, the very people that have to use equipment where they can get something to you right now where that comes to your attention, will you be willing to set that up in the next six days . We have a hot line now. I know you hall and, we have hotlines all along the federal government because they take about two years, im talking about coming to you. We will set that up, absolutely. Thank you sir, i yield back. Representative proudly. Thank you mister chairman and i too wanted to add my condolences to the families that are here today as the Holiday Season surrounds us where families gather together my heart and our hearts break for all of, you i want to thank you for your presence here today because you are presence is helping us to get to the truth and its only the truth that is going to save a future lives so i want to thank all of you for being here today. I want to ask one more time with regards to this Risk Assessment protecting 15 more accidents, i wanted to ask the question maybe in a different way, mr. Dixon and you have said several times that the buck stops with you anywhere the man ultimately accountable for the faa and so weve talked a lot about the past and we understand that the past has to be fixed so itll look to the future and say that if an employee had brought this Risk Assessment to you and put it on your desk, you are the faa administrator, uber given that information, would you have made a decision, a Risk Assessment but 15 more accidents could occur, which you have grounded the airplane . You know law its hard to quarterback these things and i believe that the individuals who were involved in making the decisions were acting on the best information they had at the time. Im talking about you and the future now, you know. With what i know now yes law if that came to you and you saw that report or you would ground the airplane. Yes i would have law. Now it has been in the past, but today. With what i know today, yes, with what i know today but again its hard to go back and determine in those days what information. So im trying to set a similar story but something would happen in the future. Remember this document that we have been looking at is only a Decision Support it is not the decision. Certainly i would want to confer with them and make sure we ran all the issues on making the decision and. You would go on high alert and he would ultimately ground the airplane if i understand you correctly. Again knowing what i know now its impossible for me to go back i know a lot more now than a new back then. Thank you, the other thing i wanted to ask is that there was a Washington Post story last night that revealed the faas plans to establish the Aircraft Certification Safety Program Management Branch and apparently this is a new Safety Branch to address gaps and faas oversight following the accidents and quote will help improve understanding in systemic areas of risk and facilitate emerging safety issues. I have to say i am disappointed to read about it in the media instead of hearing directly from the faa, can you tell us why the committee was not made aware of it and secondarily how will this new office help ensure that the new mistakes are not made in the future. So this was miss reported. It was actually a reorganization that mr. Lawrence had been looking at for about two years and he can give you the details. Thank you for the opportunity to clarify that one it was a misrepresentation of an email that had gone out by my staff. There is no new office, there is an office of investigations that exists and there is no change there. It was how i was organizing my folks repeated several times here theres always opportunities to improve our systems and do a better job of communication and the flow within any organization. That was an email announcing that we were signing some wanted to look at how best to set up the flow of communication and safety within the organization. So yes we are taking action but it is not a new office and certainly was not an improved approved organization of any kind. So you evaluate a reorganization. Its part of our reorganization that was started two years ago and making me tweaks and fixes to make sure we are covering all the issues that we should be in an appropriate way. Thank you mister chairman i yield. Thank you gentle lady. Thank you mister chair im a little under the weather so try to get through these questions but first i want to offer my condolences to the families that are here today. I cant even imagine youre pain and youre loss, administrator dicks and from the emails released to the committee in october it is clear that boeing did not want to disclose the mcas in the flight cool aircraft manual. Boeing minimized or hit the true power of the system. Convincing the faa to delete mention of it and therefore hiding its existence from the flight standardization board. What do you plan to do to ensure and change this dynamic and to how will you ensure that the faa and not boeing or some other manufacturer is determining what is and is not appropriate for pilots to know about whats under airplanes. Thank you for the question, this gets back to the issue that was identified both through the interviews and emails that you spoke about and by the authorities technical review. This Design Change was not communicated to the faa and the folks that needed to make the decisions on the Aircraft Evaluation Group, they believe there were some communications perhaps to our Flight Test Group or within the engineering circles but they didnt make it so we had issues both within the agency. Mr. Takes and we could spend all day john by what transpired, but the question is what do you plan to do to change this dynamic so it doesnt continue to happen again . So improve our project management to make sure that the team is staying together as a Cohesive Team so theyre all hearing things at the same time no matter what phase of the project we are in and everyone understands what the implications of Design Changes maybe also putting gates into the process to make sure that we have checkpoints because you have a bunch of parallel process is going on at the same time from time to time we need to loop back and make sure that these systems interact correctly increase use of systems safety assessments as we talked about earlier and then finally id like to work with the congress non implementing safety Management Systems which will again facilitate better information flow between the applicant and the agency. Does that address the issue of having the faa being the driver seat of making the determinations not the manufacturers . Yes we make the determinations now and we will continue to do so. Thank you administrators dickson i would also like to get your thoughts on a recent testimony from the National Transportation safety board chairman. Where he highlights gave and a half of safety Management Systems. Given your experience in the aviation sector do you agree with the chairman perspective that Management Systems improve safety. I have spoken with the chairman about this and we have had a dialog on their recommendations on as a mess and im a huge proponent of estimates, believe its been very beneficial in the commercial Aviation Industry and it should be applied in this environment as well. Do you have personal experience with the system during your time a delta . Yes sir i do. Do you believe adoption of this with the faa oversight will provide similar benefits. Yes. And ways it provides the ability for systematic way for the regulator to get a higher fidelity data and realtime from the manufacturing process. It also creates more fluid communication both within the agency for folks to raise concerns and for them to be processed ahead for us to go back to the workforce but it requires the participation of labor and also the agency and the manufacture to make it work effectively. Thank you ive heard a lot of issues and suggestions raised by my colleagues today. The hot lie and that was suggested a number of other things, as a second term member of congress i always wonder when do we find out of all those items were implemented. When will you report back to us after this hearing to go over that list of issues that were discussed today to share with us when they have been implemented or will be implemented in terms of the timeframe. I will work with the chairman and the Ranking Member to put a timeline on those things. Some of what we have talked about we are already doing and weve incorporated some of the Lessons Learned from the Service Process we will apply those immediately Going Forward we are looking as an example at some of the lessons that we learned from the process and bringing them into our certification activities Going Forward so it depends on the topic that youre talking about but im happy to work with. Im out of time and i would appreciate getting that information. Yeah so to my second term colleague because after two terms you start to understand this is a lie and a promise but not necessarily delivery so that is why they put a 60day timeframe on those requests so either we will get that back in 60 days or we will get an explanation of why and ill be glad to work with you to make sure we get it done. Thank you yeah, representative stanton. Thank you administrative dixon and our last hearing boeing admitted that mcas to not meet its own design requirements and i think we have a slide that will come up now. This was taken from boeing square nations see that outlined the requirements for mcas as you can see the criteria stated quote, mcas cannot interfere with dive recovery, unquote, it also stated that it should not have any objectional interaction with the piloting of the airplane, unquote. When i showed this to boeing at our last hearing the chief engineering admitted the obvious that mcas interfered with the lion air flight 6 10 and Ethiopian Air flight number three or two, administrators diction do you agree with that assessment . They saw what i know about how the system was initially designed and how the design was changed i think thats correct. Unfortunately when i asked another obvious question about the piloting of the flight boeing did not give a street answer, in plain and simple terms failed to admit that it impacted the ability to control the plane, thats shameful, how can anyone look at what happened in the cockpit and think the pilots had any chance to counter system they knew nothing about. This coronation see that you have on the screen today is dated june 11th 2018 which is after it was certified, we have seen earlier versions of the same documents from march 2000 and see it has the exact him mcas design requirements, extended they receive a copy of this before it was certified . Im not aware that we wouldve and i believe that was around the time when the design was modified but id have to check. Should the faa have received this document . I would say so. This document is outlining what our requirements are on boeing so these are the regulatory requirements in this alliance what the requirements would be to obtain certification. Thank. You dickson did mcas interfere with the recovery on lion air flight 6 02 or Ethiopian Air flight 3 02 . Yes it did i would just point out again that there is, the pilot is part of that system and the design was relying on the pilot to be the mitigating factor and that proved to be incorrect. Boeing failed to meet its own requirements, despite the shocking reality, has the faa issued any fines are penalized boeing for that failure at this time . Not at this time but i reserve the right as i said earlier to take action in the future. Beyond the design require bits has it issued any fines for its failure is on the 737 max . Not at this point. My final question since the tragic accidents have they made any changes how it Certified Software design requirements. Certifies other manufacturer craft components or any part of the certification . Yes as i mentioned we have not delegated anything throughout this process and we are relying on resources throughout the agency and we have brought in the technical Advisory Board the air force and others and we are also working very closely with the International Authorities as well. So as of yet theres been no specific changes yes those changes are being implemented for the max project, absolutely. Dickson for me and for so Many Americans these tragic accidents have shaken our confidence and we have seen loved ones do better and we must get this right all those up ahead safety in our air system, i yield back. Thank you chairman and thank you all again for continuing to be here, administrator ticks and i want to follow up about the rudder cable on the 737 max. As you know at least half a dozen of the faa zone technical specialists as well as a Panel Established by the safety review process raises serious concerns that the cable on the 737 max could be severed if the engine fails, causing pilots to lose control of the aircraft, this concern is not just a theoretical concern at the guidance is rooted in the tragic 89 d. C. Crash in iowa and 112 people died in that crash. In your response to chairman defazio, on this issue you said we follow the faa procedures except that doesnt seem to be the case which we will get to in a second, there is a cornerstone of the procedures which is that the camo components will become safer overtime, it seems like a good rule of thumb to follow up, so when the faa reviewed and approved the angie model the faa found that the 7 37 and she had a lower risk of a sever cable than the 7 37 a classic model and the reason that the risk is lower is because the engine on the 737s classic was more powerful. So based on this. He was approved so there is a 1997 issue paper that more and that engines in the future on 7 37 models, if it increase the risk of suffering that and the additional risks would be needed. Which brings us to 7 37 max, it has a burger engine and risks for the cable. The faa didnt require any Design Changes, instead it ignored that warning, so my question is why did the faa follow the guidance from the paper and require additional protection . Thank you for the opportunity to respond and this is, i think its important to understand that these debates and discussions among subject Matter Experts are part of what gets us to a safer system. There are a couple of different approaches we that can be taken in these instances. Does that mean ignoring an issue paper. No im saying there are approaches on your prescriptive rules and they can be followed, there is also sometimes data that can be implied based on the performance of a system, in this case the team looked at, eventually when the decision was, made looked at the medications that had been put in place in terms of structure and also the casing around the sea fsb leap engines and the reliability of those engines and the reliability that they were certified essentially from their initial manufacturer capable for twin operations which is extremely high level of reliability. So taking all that into account there is actually a risk and adding complexity to an improved system that was put in the nineties to deal with the when you introduce a fleet that has additional complexity into an operation that has already got thousands of airplanes out there it doesnt have medians practices that creates a risk, thats how the decision was made and remember that the manager who is making that decision is actually at faa. Or with boeing. No ad faa. So the concern here is that first of all youre talking about increased complexity and not following the guidance that had previously been stated and not doing a new certificate, i think there are a lot of in consistencies in the way you are describing this process and the overarching concern is the process for safety reviews is becoming either inconsistent or more relax and that control is being increasingly delegated to the manufacturers. I think weve needs to be considerate interest in, this this is a whole system and crosses system we have been hearing in consistencies and places where it seems the faa has been more lax and i think thats something that we can address and need to address, i yield back. I can ensure you we will not be lacks and i believe the decisions we are making will be extreme because of the reliance on data and performance. Thank the gentlelady and the gentleman, representative lamb. Thank you mister chairman can you put the slide back up with the 15,000 number that we were looking at earlier. The report. Yes. Thanks, now mister administrator, based on everything that you know now, i understand that you were not in office at this time, but based on everything that you know now, if you saw a report like this with the 15 three seven three number on it, that day or the next day would you have been comfortable with a member of your own family flying on a 737 max . Yes i would have put that is because, i understand how the airplane operates and i understand how to deal with Flight Control issues but on the other hand there is a immediate aggressive action was being taken and again this is just one aspect of trying to put some rigor around what would otherwise be a very subjective decision. Do you think its reasonable to expect that i who am not a piloted or one of my constituents who dont know the inner workings of aircraft and how pilots are train and how they receive warning messages like this. Do you think you wouldve been reasonable for them to feel safe flying on a seven 737 max the day after this information was given to the faa. Again at this point dealing with what were the driving factors in the accident and the lion air accident and the information that was available at the time the emphasis was on the procedural aspect of accomplishing the runaway stabilizer trim and so that was the mitigation that was put in place immediately send a very aggressive frame in terms of the Software Amount of occasion. What im saying people are relying on you to protect them in an area that they dont know a whole lot about and a lot of trust is required for them to participate in feel safe the Airline Industry and i think you just said provides a reason why a person should have felt safe stepping on a 7 37 max one who is in possession of this information. Let me ask you a slightly different way there are echoes of this situation that happened where i represent in 1994 when there was a plane crash in Beaver County and we have a witness coming into the panel saying that that incident which was u. S. Air flight 12 47 brought down 5 35 three years earlier we did not learn all we could from it and as a result 132 people perished near pittsburgh. He goes on to say we did not learn all we could from lion air 6 10 before the ethiopian three or two accident as a result we lost not only all the people in the lion air crash whose family and friends are with us today but the second wave of people so what i dont understand all these years later, after the pittsburgh crash in 1980, four what is being done to make sure we learn, it doesnt take too crashes for us to fix the problem. What is changing . It does it and that is why we need to make the process more rigorous add better analytical tools so we can thrive that risk down and know that the actions and we are taking will have that effect. Who is being held accountable for the fact that pilots were not told about mcas and the reference is to mcas were removed from the manual, who is being held accountable for . That well i think that certainly thats part of the process we are all going through. So you dont know . I think we are all being held accountable for it, we all need to make sure that doesnt happen again. I think we have different opinions about being accountable. Thank the gentleman. Now thank you mister chairman, mr. Dixon earlier in the hearing you said that one of your priorities is to make sure that there is appropriate separation and the faa between Business Issues and safety issues, i was struck by that its a very important point and given that he said that taking you believe that there has not always been sufficient separation between business and safety consideration, is that fair . Well i was actually referring to the manufacturer, i was referring to boeing and the indications of pressure on the workforce to accomplish certain things and being able to make sure that that didnt impact safety decisions and i want to make sure that doesnt lead over to her workforce. Exactly im also concerned about pressure on the faa, this is something that they looked at, and it seems to be happening, a manufacturer like boeing will be good production of an aircraft, they will complete all the steps up to the finalizing production including ordering materials before getting fa permissions. Then they will say, oh my gosh, if the faa reads is a concern they will say we have to get, we are almost there, we will lose a tremendous amount of money if we dont get this plane into the marketplace and then the faa sometimes seems to take that into, into account. I mean isnt that potentially what happened for example when the faa initially said the Flight Simulator training would be required for the 737 max and then boeing said we have this agreement a Southwest Airlines, we promised, we were promised and 1 Million Dollar rebate per plane if it didnt require Flight Simulator training, then the faa says okay, you dont have that requirement. Do you think it may have blood into those Business Concerns, those Business Concerns we have blood in to the decisions there . You know have been spoken to our pilots in seattle and having read some of the ,. ,,, . ,. ,. ,,,. ,. ,. ,. , technical problem thats expected to be operational and it wasnt, in july of this year youre predecessor dan said that the regulations in a letter to this committee and i think we have a side of, this is what he wrote, wants a certified by the faa all features including on the airplane become part of the certified type design or improved type dozen these features are mandatory in each airplane produced that type of design thereafter, whether or not they are required for safety, although it was not necessary to meet the regulations lance was made part of the approve type of design who was function on all 737 Max Airplanes boeing produced. You makeover choir should be installed and functional on all their planes now you may not believe the absence but i strongly believe the boeings open this finance of faa requirements and knowingly deliver airplanes without it is both and unethical issue. Its my understanding that it is not finalized boeing in any way for this conduct or even taken any other actions to manage the company for its behavior. You have been here for months but the word accountability has been used a few times but i had the ceo of boeing, that we might have a different definition of that, word i hope you and i dont share a difference in the definition as well. Why hasnt faa done anything to hold boeing accountable . Syrian c and most important for the public for this egregious behavior. Thank you for the question and we have already taken actions as you know, obviously the airplane is grounded, we are not delegating anything to boeing we are not even delegating the individual certificates for each aircraft, we have taken action, recent enforcement action and we have additional actions under consideration both with the exist and Settlement Agreement and there may be additional actions as required and i reserve the right to take them and i will take them as appropriate any pointed out a good example here. Thank you i think where we have regulations in place, where we have purposeful evasion of them, if there is no consequences for that invasion and then the regulation doesnt matter and so i hope that we will see enforcement of this and i hope that a lot of my colleagues we are trying to determine the balance that we should strike here, you know is the process food flawed and what changes need to be made. This in my opinion is an example that is just a decision that needs to be made by the faa on how theyre going to enforce their own regulations knowing that a violation occurred. Couldnt agree with you, more received is the highest priority and. Think you, representative garcia. Thank you mister chairman, and expand, id like to ask you some questions about the faas associate administrator for aviation safety. As you know our staff had the opportunity to interview him last week and you had been provided with a copy of the transcript. They have to say that i am shocked that some of the things he didnt know, when he hadnt seen boeing flight clear operation manual following the plane crash. When he was showed a coffee of the bulletin that boeing issued followed the line aircraft he said this is the first time he had seen it, he was asked, to have you seen this document before and replied no i have not. Both of whom flight crew operations manual. He was asked you dont recall seeing this prior to today . He answered now, to he was not aware that boeing knew on if a pilot didnt react to the unanticipated mcas activation within ten seconds the results could be catastrophic, the slide that has come up on the screen shows boeings coronation sheet, when we asked him about this key documents that was released at our last hearing showing that boeing knew that if pilots did not respond to an anticipated mcas activation within ten seconds the results could be catastrophic, he said he was not aware of the document. Faas chief Safety Officer was asked, so lets take it out of the hypothetical, you are aware that this Committee Held a hearing on october 30th i which boeing testified, is that correct . He said he watched some of it, he was then asked, okay at the hearing a document was made public, according mission sheet of boeing of which contained a functional hazard assessment, a portion of what she said that if a pilot didnt react within ten seconds the result would be catastrophic, that was information made public at the hearing, were you he interrupted no i was not aware of that. The member that asked, you do not want to, werent aware of it so mr. Replied no i didnt. You know, like i said i was in montreal at the assembly and i just watched portions of the hearing and i do not know about this document. The administrator, administrator dickson, and this was the response of the faas chief officer, he seemed completely unaware of the fact that boeing believed that if pilots reacted to an anticipated mcas active by shin intense likens or more it could lead to the complete loss of the aircraft. The result, catastrophic accident like we saw in the lion air aircraft, and the Ethiopian Air crash, this seems like a reported piece of information for the head of safety of faa to be aware of and understand. The release of this document was widely reported in the press including by the New York Times Washington Post, and npr, do you believe that the associate administrators for aviation safety, chief Safety Officer should have seen at some point over the past 13 months a copy of boeings flight crew operations bulletin and that it used after the lion aircraft. You know i cant substitute my judgment for hayes, i believe this is a technical certification requirement or a assumption. Vixen yes or no . I think that, i would hope that he would be aware as to what was on is that a yes . Again i will have to talk to you about it. Thank you. Do you believe the associate administrator for aviation safety should be aware that if the pilot failed to react to an anticipated mcas activation within ten seconds the results could be catastrophic . On the clock its about seven minutes here. Do you believe the associate administrator for aviation safety should be aware that if a pilot fail to react to what happened seated mcas, the results could be catastrophic . I think he was aware of the criteria, i dont know if he had seen this exact document. I think the gentleman, the time has expired, i yield back. Representative pain. Thank you mister chairman. Mr. Dixon, and this report the technical review found that the faa had an adequate awareness of the mcas function which coupled with the limited involvement resulted in and ability of the faa to provide an independent assessment of the adequacy of the boeing proposed certification activities associated with the mcas. It appears that the trust commerce gave faa with Delegation Authority has been broken, what steps is the faa and you personally taking to ensure that a lapse such as this does not happen again . Thank you congressman, a great question, i appreciate the opportunity to respond, our whole construct here is based on trust and its important that as the regulator though we can trust manufacturers that we are delegating stern things to and its a privilege, its not a right, its not a certificate that they have, it is a privilege to have those items delegated that is why we have pulled back on this particular project, on the 737 max. So boeing doesnt have that privilege, anymore correct . At this point thats correct i would suggest that might be something that swept across the border so that there arent issues with other airlines but we are talking about boeing right now, on and so we are trying to make sure that this doesnt happen it can, also the report recommended that the faa conduct workforce reviews with the Safety Oversight Office engineers to ensure that there is a sufficient number of experienced specialists to adequately perform certification oversight duties has there been a workforce review conducted . Its in process there is a tenyear workforce plan with the Aviation Safety Organization this group is part of that and as we get the report in the other views of the process we are looking specifically at Human Factors. There are no results, yet its still in the process . Yes and we are putting those into action now. Mr. Dickinson i am the 23rd member on this side of your aisle to ask questions and i have sat here for a lengthy period of time and ive heard you respond numerous times but we are in the process. Is there anything that has been completed and done with respect to this issue . Yes as i said we have brought in experts from outside the agency, the technical Advisory Board, we have opened ourselves up to review is no regulator ever has in this process, we have the secretary special committee on aircraft certification which is coming forward with additional recommendations and with respect to the 737 max as i have said, we have not delegated any activity including issuing individual certificates hailed by this on those aircrafts, so those are some very significant actions and there are more to come. Sir i would implore you as someone is sitting here as opposed to where you are and as mr. Meadows, the gentleman from North Carolina asked if you were able to answer him specifically that you wouldve done this in a time period you should try as diligently as possible to get these things done. Sitting here, looking at these pictures is difficult, i have loved ones of my own and as i look through those pictures i have Young Children and cousins and brothers that run the myriad of those pictures. We are fortunate that we are not sitting there, so it is our obligation to make sure that no other family has to use it and that corner again, and with that. Congressman i would just say i agree with you watered percentage, that is why we are working diligently each and every day, really around the clock and that is why i support my people in these efforts and that is frankly why i am going to personally fly the airplane myself and go through the proposed training and do everything i can to literally put with that we will hear played without a second thought. Thank you, representative balderson, i believe this will be the last question. Thank you mister my very chairman, also my condolences and thank you all for being here, boeings committee and processes announced a new products and the safety organization. This organization is responsible for reviewing all of this, including investigating cases of undue pressure and anonymous safety concerns raised by employees. Is the faa satisfied with this new review process and do you believe boeing will take anonymously anonymous safety concerns reported by its employees maher seriously . Well thank you for the question, and i think that it remains to be seen, its easy to move around and to be appearing to do something. We will have to see how its implemented and how its incorporated into their Safety Culture and we are going to be to make the save they, were similar things within the agency as well. But i do think the ability to systematically bring forward to safety concerns is absolutely foundational to the Safety System now we have. Thank you i will agree with, that my next question with you is while the ongoing investigations continue to get to the bottom of these two crashes are you aware of any legislation in this committee and congress can pass now to improve deviations a 50 . I would be happy to work with the committee, i do believe that the support for moving to implementing safety Management Systems for manufacturers will be very beneficial. I also believe that support for Data Analysis and data consolidation, to making that more modern that is one of my most important strategic goals at the agency and that is another area where i think we can definitely improve on. Okay thank you very much mister chairman i yield back my remaining time. I think the gentleman. And i wanted to thank the panel for devoting so much time i think answering questions for the most part responsibly and for the commitments to continue this work and respond to suggestions raised here with that we will recess for five minutes well reassemble next panel