Senator Cantwell demands answers of FAA as agency says it’s investigating Boeing

The fall­out from Alas­ka Air­lines Flight 1282 con­tin­ued today, as the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion noti­fied Boe­ing it will be prob­ing the com­pa­ny for alleged com­pli­ance with its approved 737 MAX air­craft design, while Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell (D‑Washington) demand­ed answers from the FAA con­cern­ing its over­sight of both Boe­ing and Kansas-based Spir­it AeroSystems.

“The safe­ty of the fly­ing pub­lic is our top pri­or­i­ty. We must know what caused the ter­ri­fy­ing inci­dent on an Alas­ka Air­lines flight last week and whether man­u­fac­tur­ers and FAA over­sight failed to meet safe­ty reg­u­la­tions. The Amer­i­can pub­lic deserves answers. I am ask­ing the FAA to pro­vide a full account­ing of its over­sight of man­u­fac­tur­ers’ com­pli­ance and qual­i­ty con­trol stan­dards,” Cantwell said in a news release after dis­patch­ing a let­ter to the FAA.

Cantwell, who has rep­re­sent­ed the Ever­green State in Con­gress’ upper cham­ber since 2001, is chair of the Unit­ed States Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Com­merce, Sci­ence, and Trans­porta­tion, with juris­dic­tion over the avi­a­tion sector.

“Cantwell has a decades long his­to­ry in Con­gress as a leader and staunch advo­cate for avi­a­tion safe­ty,” her news release notes. “In 2020, Sen­a­tor Cantwell authored and nego­ti­at­ed the Air­craft Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Safe­ty and Account­abil­i­ty Act (ACSAA) — com­pre­hen­sive bipar­ti­san, bicam­er­al avi­a­tion safe­ty leg­is­la­tion that imple­ment­ed new air­craft safe­ty and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion reforms in the wake of the Boe­ing 737 MAX crash­es and was signed into law on Decem­ber 27, 2020.”

Cantwell’s let­ter is below. She is request­ing a response no lat­er than Jan­u­ary 25th from Admin­is­tra­tor Mike Whitak­er, and accom­pa­ny­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion per­tain­ing to all Qual­i­ty Sys­tems Audits of Boe­ing and all Sup­pli­er Con­trol Audits of Spirit.

While Cantwell’s office was prepar­ing to put the FAA on notice, the FAA was prepar­ing to put Boe­ing on notice. “This inci­dent should have nev­er hap­pened and it can­not hap­pen again,” the FAA said in a state­ment announc­ing the trans­mis­sion of the let­ter and releas­ing its contents.

Read the let­ter here:

Boe­ing offered a one-line response to the let­ter, say­ing only: “We will coop­er­ate ful­ly and trans­par­ent­ly with the FAA and the NTSB on their investigations.”

Mean­while, six pas­sen­gers who were on board Alas­ka Air­lines Flight 1282 — the flight that lost a plug in midair after tak­ing off from PDX (Port­land Inter­na­tion­al Air­port) — filed a law­suit against Boe­ing in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court.

“Although every­one is glad that the blowout occurred while the crew could still man­age to land the air­craft safe­ly, this night­mare expe­ri­ence has caused eco­nom­ic, phys­i­cal and ongo­ing emo­tion­al con­se­quences that have under­stand­ably deeply affect­ed our clients, and is one more dis­turb­ing mark on the trou­bled 737-MAX series air­craft,” said attor­ney Daniel Lau­rence in a state­ment report­ed by The Seat­tle Times. Lau­rence is rep­re­sent­ing the plaintiffs.

Boe­ing told The Seat­tle Times it had no com­ment on the lawsuit.

After Fri­day’s episode, Alas­ka Air­lines ground­ed its entire MAX 9 fleet. It has not been able to return any of those jets to ser­vice yet, which has result­ed in a cas­cad­ing series of can­cel­la­tions that have dis­rupt­ed a lot of peo­ple’s trav­el plans. Alas­ka has put in place a flex­i­ble can­cel­la­tion pol­i­cy for its cus­tomers, but that has­n’t done much for peo­ple who were count­ing on Alas­ka to get them from one city to anoth­er and could not make alter­nate arrange­ments in time.

Unit­ed Air­lines also has a num­ber of MAX 9s, but it’s a big­ger air­line and has more assets it can deploy or reshuf­fle to com­pen­sate for its ground­ed jets.

The FAA has made it clear no MAX 9s will return to the skies until thor­ough inspec­tions have tak­en place. How­ev­er, the agency and Boe­ing appear to be at odds about the pro­to­col for those inspec­tions, so Alas­ka Air­lines may have to oper­ate in cri­sis mode for much longer than it would like to.