US FAA chief boosting oversight of Boeing after MAX 9 emergency

The head of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Tuesday the agency would post inspectors at Boeing and meet with top airline executives as it heightens scrutiny of the U.S. planemaker, following a 737 MAX 9 mid-air emergency.

The head of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Tuesday the agency would post inspectors at Boeing and meet with top airline executives as it heightens scrutiny of the U.S. planemaker, following a 737 MAX 9 mid-air emergency. FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker told lawmakers he would discuss safety issues with airline CEOs on Wednesday and repeated the need for more surveillance of Boeing and its key supplier Spirit AeroSystems which makes the 737 fuselage.

The FAA has about 20 inspectors at Boeing's 737 factory in Renton, Washington, and six at Spirit in Wichita, Kansas, conducting a six-week audit. Whitaker told the House Transportation and Infrastructure aviation subcommittee he anticipates keeping inspectors on the ground at the facilities after the audit for regular surveillance. "Going forward we will have more boots on the ground, closely scrutinizing and monitoring production and manufacturing activities," Whitaker said.

The FAA, acting after a cabin panel blew out during flight on a new Alaska Airlines MAX 9, took the unprecedented action of barring Boeing from expanding production of its 737 MAX until it addresses quality issues. Whitaker said the mid-air MAX 9 emergency raised two issues: what is wrong with the airplane and "what is wrong with the production at Boeing. There have been issues in the past. They don't seem to be getting resolved so we feel like we need to have a heightened level of oversight."

Whitaker said the airline CEO meeting will focus on "how we can share information more transparently and improve our safety management systems." Whitaker declined to put a time frame on lifting the restriction, saying in an interview with CNBC that the FAA will lift it "when we've got our arms around the situation ... and we're convinced that this is a safe production system."

The FAA grounded 171 MAX 9 jets on Jan. 6, resulting in thousands of flight cancellations by Alaska Airlines and United Airlines. The grounding was lifted on Jan. 24 and the agency said on Monday that 94% of the jets have returned to service. Lawmakers on the U.S. House committee last week asked Whitaker to answer whether the agency has found "any evidence of persistent quality control lapses in any of Boeing's production lines."

The FAA, which did not have a permanent administrator for 18 months until Whitaker's 98-0 confirmation, has come under scrutiny after a series of potentially catastrophic near-miss aviation safety incidents, persistent air traffic control staffing shortages and a January 2023 pilot messaging database outage that disrupted 11,000 flights. The agency says it is conducting a six-week audit of all elements of production at Boeing and fuselage production at Spirit and will re-examine the long-standing practice of delegating some critical safety tasks to Boeing.

The FAA has scrutinized Boeing's quality and other issues in recent years as it faced harsh criticism for its actions in the run-up to the MAX certification. In March, the FAA said it had boosted staff providing regulatory oversight of Boeing to 107 from 82 in previous years.

In 2021, Boeing agreed to pay $6.6 million in penalties after failing to comply with a 2015 safety agreement. Boeing last week said it was withdrawing a safety exemption request for the MAX 7 awaiting certification. Whitaker said Tuesday Boeing "did the right thing to pull back on their requests."