Dem Senate leader plans new FAA safety requirements

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said Wednesday that she plans to introduce new legislation requiring the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to abide by new safety requirements after a series of issues with Boeing aircraft.

"We really think the FAA needs to have its own process," Cantwell said of safety management systems (SMS), which are sets of policies and procedures used to proactively identify and address potential operational hazards.

She plans to introduce legislation on Thursday that would require the FAA to have an SMS it uses as it conducts oversight over the aviation industry. The move comes amid scrutiny of the regulator's oversight of Boeing, which has been under pressure since a January incident in which a door plug panel blew off a new Boeing 737 Max 9 and caused a midair emergency.

Cantwell said the FAA disclosed in April that it conducted a combined total of 298 audits of Boeing and supplier Spirit AeroSystems over the past two years that "did not result in any enforcement actions."

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"Clearly, they were doing an audit that meant nothing, because it didn't detect any problems, and they said everything was fine," she said. "Now we have to turn our attention to the FAA's processes and understand what problems existed in their oversight."

The FAA's potential adoption of SMS oversight standards would follow in the wake of U.S.-based airlines, which have been required to have SMS since 2018, while some aerospace companies like Boeing already have SMS programs in place voluntarily.

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FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said last month that the agency was "too hands-off" in its oversight of Boeing before the door plug incident in January and faulted the regulator's prior audits.

Cantwell has also asked the FAA to conduct a thorough review of its oversight of Boeing and expressed concern about whether Boeing's newly appointed CEO, Kelly Ortberg, would be based in Washington state.

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The senator, who represents the Evergreen State, said Ortberg should be based in Seattle, where much of the aerospace giant's manufacturing base is located: "I think the notion that somebody thinks they can run the company from anywhere other than Seattle is a big mistake."

Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago in 2001 after it merged with McDonnell Douglas and then relocated its HQ again to Arlington, Virginia, in 2023.

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Reuters reported that one of its sources confirmed that Ortberg plans to be based in Seattle.

Reuters contributed to this report.