The head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Steve Dickson, told a Senate committee on Wednesday that Boeing has “more work to do” years after two of its 737 Max planes fatally crashed due to design flaws in the model.
Speaking to the Senate Commerce Committee, Dickson said, “Boeing is not the same as it was two years ago, but they have more to work to do.”
The FAA official said that the voluntary Safety Management System (SMS) that Boeing has put into place has allowed it to transfer information about issues it is facing to the FAA more quickly. Dickson also said the FAA has put more engineers and inspectors in Boeing’s factories and overall devoted more “rigorous” oversight to the company.
“It will take some time, but we are on the path that we need to be. But it requires continuous vigilance and attention,” he said.
In 2018 and 2019, Boeing 737 Max jetliners in both Indonesia and Ethiopia crashed shortly after takeoff, killing nearly 350 people total. Indonesian investigators determined that the first crash was the result of multiple failures, including on the part of the FAA.
In January of this year, the Department of Justice fined Boeing $2.5 billion and filed a criminal charge of “conspiracy to defraud the United States” against the company.
“The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers,” the DOJ said at the time.
A former Boeing pilot was indicted last month on charges that he deceived federal safety regulators about the 737 in order to save Boeing million of dollars.