'System is not broken' after 737 MAX crashes: review panel chair

The US FAA process for certifying new airplanes is not broken but needs to be improved, the chair of an international panel of air-safety regulators, tasked to review Boeing’s 737 Max, said Friday. Christopher Hart, chair of the multi-agency panel, said there was no need to question the agency’s overall way of certifying airplanes. “The US aviation system each day transports millions of people safely, so it’s not like we have to completely overhaul the entire system, it’s not broken. But these incidents have shown us that there are ways to improve the existing system,” Hart said. Some in Congress and in aviation have criticised the FAA’s longstanding practice of delegating certification tasks to manufacturers. Michael Perrone, who heads the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said at a House hearing in July that external entities designated by the FAA “are now performing more than 90 percent of FAA’s certification activities despite serious concerns that oversight is lacking.” Hart, former chairman of the NTSB and a licensed pilot, heads the Joint Authorities Technical Review, a panel including air-safety regulators from the United States, Canada, China, Indonesia, European Union and Brazil. Reuters reported on Sept. 17 the review’s recommendations will include citing regulations that need to be harmonized internationally and where communications can be improved at the FAA and among international regulators, citing a person briefed on the matter. Hart on Friday said the panel would release its recommendations to the FAA “shortly,” but declined to provide more details on the timeline. <br/>