Senate panel to hold hearing on airline safety after Boeing crashes

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation and Space, announced a hearing on airline safety in the wake of the deadly crashes of two Boeing 737 Max aircrafts.

The hearing, “The State of Airline Safety: Federal Oversight of Commercial Aviation,” will take place on March 27.

National Transportation Safety Board chairman Robert Sumwalt, Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin Scovel and Federal Aviation Administration acting administrator Daniel Elwell are listed as witnesses.

No one from Boeing has been included as a witness

{mosads}President Trump nominated former Delta Air Lines executive Steve Dickson to lead the FAA on Tuesday.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), the chairman of the subcommittee on Aviation, have also been in touch with Scovel, the Transportation Department Inspector General.

They sent him a letter on Tuesday requesting an investigation into the FAA’s certification of the Boeing 737 MAX.

Cruz has been one of the loudest critics of Boeing since the Ethiopian Airlines crash this month that killed 157 people, following a Lion Air crash in October that left 189 people dead.

He called for the grounding of the aircraft before Trump made the call on Wednesday.