VIDEO

WASHINGTON, D.C. – During a hearing today with senior FAA safety leaders, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, pushed for answers on effectiveness of the FAA Air Traffic Organization’s safety management system (SMS).

Today’s hearing follows days of cancelled and delayed flights at Newark-Liberty International Airport due to technological failures and a shortage of air traffic controllers. It also comes after an Army Black Hawk helicopter disrupted commercial air traffic at DCA on May 1, forcing two flights to abort landings. Following a January 29 mid-air collision of an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people, the FAA imposed permanent restrictions on non-essential helicopter operations around the airport.

Sen. Cantwell expressed frustration that FAA Acting Administrator Rocheleau did not appear before the committee to answer questions, including about the Air Traffic Organization’s SMS. 

“I'm not sure why he's not here. I think having somebody who's in charge of the operations and answering to that is very important,” Sen. Cantwell said, directing questions instead to Deputy Chief Operating Officer Franklin McIntosh. “The NTSB report [on DCA mid-air crash] obviously was quite damning with a lot of information about close calls beyond the accident that happened.  And so it begs the question about the ATO process that's in place, the safety risk management system that is supposed to be there.  And now, post the [DCA] accident, we’ve had this other incident. So why is your system not working? Why is the FAA oversight of this not working?”

“We have independent reviews from different levels of the organization to ensure that we don't have any human biases,” McIntosh responded. “And what I mean by that is, we are required to review all events…at all of our FAA facilities, so any significant event is required to be entered into a mandatory occurrence report and then a subsequent investigation.”

“So are you saying nobody's investigating this?” Sen. Cantwell said. “All I'm saying is, if you had all those alarms going off, if you had all of that oversight, and you had a safety risk management system -- but nobody read the data and nobody said anything.  …[W]hat is your process for then saying this is a problem and we're going to put a stop to it?  I think the answer right now is, ‘oh no, no, I'm going to call air traffic controllers.’ That is not the answer. The answer is, this is too big of a risk, and we're not going to continue to do this, and we're going to set up better separations and more standards.  And you haven't done that.”

Sen. Cantwell also pressed McIntosh on reports there were as few as three air traffic controllers per hour in the Philadelphia TRACON managing Newark’s airspace Monday night, far fewer than recommended, underscoring the severe shortage of certified controllers. The bipartisan FAA Reauthorization Act, which Sen. Cantwell led, overhauls controller staffing, requiring FAA to hire and train as many controllers as possible each year and provided critical funding to upgrade the FAA air traffic control system.

“Did you think you only had three people in that tower, controlling that airspace?” Sen. Cantwell asked.

“In that TRACON, for one hour, we did go down to that number, and we put in the appropriate traffic management initiative to keep things safe,” McIntosh said.

Cantwell added: “Well, I definitely would not have been firing the safety oversight team… These are people who help us at a very big picture level. And I certainly wouldn’t have cut back on staffing in general at the FAA. I think it's a time when we need people to be doing their job.”

Boeing's Organization Designation Authorization (ODA), which allows certain Boeing employees to make compliance decisions on behalf of FAA, is set to expire in mid-2025. In 2022 the FAA granted Boeing only a three-year extension instead of the typical five years due to concerns about ODA independence and safety culture following the 737 MAX crashes.  Sen. Cantwell wrote the FAA requesting the criteria the agency has in place to return delegated authority to Boeing and whether the company has satisfied the conditions imposed by FAA in May 2022 to have its ODA renewed.  

“I finally got a response last night,” Sen. Cantwell stated.  “I don't really think it's satisfactory.”

The Senator asked Jodi Baker, Deputy Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety to provide, in writing, the exact criteria FAA is using for Boeing’s ODA, including a mandatory SMS, and employee feedback system.

“Because part of the issue here was intimidation [of] employees speaking up and the FAA not backing them up,” Cantwell told Baker. “What is it you want to see in the ODA that would say, ‘yes, I understand now that the company is listening to the input from the employees.’  When we asked former Administrator Whitaker if, in fact, the FAA should have some [insight] into that, he said, ‘yes.’  So we want to see an employee feedback system that the FAA has some access to.”

The full transcript is available HERE.

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