During a Senate hearing Wednesday prompted by the crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX planes, Daniel Elwell, the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, fiercely defended the integrity of his agency’s practice of delegating large parts of the process of certification of aircraft and their components to the companies that make them, but he gave senators an estimate of what the FAA would need to do the job completely itself.
“It would require roughly 10,000 more employees and another $1.8 billion for our certification office,” Elwell told the Senate subcommittee on aviation and space.
The FAA Aircraft Certification Service had a budget of $239 million for fiscal 2019 and about 1,300 employees, 745 of whom are pilots, engineers and technical staff who oversee design approvals and production.
When it was established by Congress in 1958, the FAA was given a mandate to deputize employees of the companies it oversees to help with safety monitoring and product certification. To speed up the process, in 2005, Congress gave the FAA the power to let companies choose the employees who will approve designs on the FAA’s behalf.
Lawmakers and safety experts have questioned whether the system broke down in the case of the 737 MAX, which Boeing was in a hurry to bring to market to counter Airbus' fast-selling A320neo. Design flaws in an automated pitch trim system are suspected of having played a role in the crashes of 737 MAX jets operated by Indonesia's Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, killing 346 people.
“It would require roughly 10,000 more employees and another $1.8 billion for our certification office,” Elwell told the Senate subcommittee on aviation and space.
The FAA Aircraft Certification Service had a budget of $239 million for fiscal 2019 and about 1,300 employees, 745 of whom are pilots, engineers and technical staff who oversee design approvals and production.
When it was established by Congress in 1958, the FAA was given a mandate to deputize employees of the companies it oversees to help with safety monitoring and product certification. To speed up the process, in 2005, Congress gave the FAA the power to let companies choose the employees who will approve designs on the FAA’s behalf.
Lawmakers and safety experts have questioned whether the system broke down in the case of the 737 MAX, which Boeing was in a hurry to bring to market to counter Airbus' fast-selling A320neo. Design flaws in an automated pitch trim system are suspected of having played a role in the crashes of 737 MAX jets operated by Indonesia's Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, killing 346 people.
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