


Michael Whitaker, administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration, appeared before Congress on Thursday to admit his department has been “too hands off” about inspecting its planes.
Whitaker testified to the Senate Commerce Committee about a renewed commitment from the FAA to more thoroughly inspect planes during the manufacturing process. This comes after an Alaska Airlines Boeing flight was forced to make an emergency landing when its door plug blew out midflight in January. Additionally, there was an incident of a tire falling off of a Boeing plane. There were no reported injuries in either incident.
“FAA’s approach was too hands off, too focused on paperwork audits, and not focused enough on inspections,” Whitaker told the committee. “We have changed that approach over the last several months, and those changes are permanent. We have now moved to a more active, comprehensive oversight model, the audit plus inspection model, which allows the FAA to have much better insight into Boeing’s operations.”
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Whitaker’s testimony followed the appearances of NASA’s Tracy Dillinger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology aeronautics expert Javier de Luis, and University of Southern California professor Najmedin Meshkati, who collaborated to write a report back in February offering their critiques of Boeing in particular. The company’s engineer and whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, also testified to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations around the same time.
Boeing is fresh from the receiving end of an audit from the FAA. The administration found that the company had “failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements” in more than one instance.