Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued the following statement on reporting by The Seattle Times that Boeing improperly installed the fuselage panel that blew off the Alaska Airlines Boeing MAX 9 jet earlier this month.
“Reporting by the Seattle Times that seems to show serious safety lapses and failures in the quality control processes at Boeing is absolutely alarming. Profits can’t come before safety—ever—and top executives at Boeing really need to get that—the workers I have spoken to over the years who are tasked with actually building these planes certainly do. Boeing has a responsibility to the public that it will always put the safety and quality of its planes first and that it will give its workers the support and resources they need to deliver on that mission.
“Just today, the FAA approved the inspection and repair protocol to bring the Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft back into service. But it is extremely important for the NTSB to conduct a full investigation to get to the bottom of exactly what happened, why, and how Boeing and the FAA will prevent it from ever happening in the future—I’ll be reviewing their findings and recommendations closely.
“As Chair of the Appropriations Committee, my staff and I are continuing to ask questions and are working to pass a Transportation Appropriations bill that invests in air safety and includes critical funding for the FAA—it should be clear to everyone that we absolutely cannot afford to shortchange passenger safety by entertaining dramatic across-the-board funding cuts like some House Republicans have been demanding.”
Congress enacted the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act (ACSAA) in December 2020 to improve the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) aircraft certification process based on numerous investigations and audits after the MAX-8 crashes. Since then, Congressional appropriators have fully met the FAA’s budget requests for the Office of Aviation Safety in every single funding package that was signed into law. As a result, the FAA’s Office of Aviation Safety now has 325 more staff than it did three years ago.
This past November, the Senate passed Murray’s Transportation-Housing and Urban Development funding bill for Fiscal Year 2024 by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 82-15. Murray’s funding bill notably would provide a critical $1.2 billion increase in funding for the FAA to hire more air traffic controllers, reduce flight delays, and improve safety—this bill would also provide an additional 125 positions for the Office of Aviation Safety to continue improvements to aircraft certification. Murray is currently working to negotiate a final, bicameral transportation funding bill, along with all other government funding bills, with her House and Senate counterparts.
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