US aviation regulator boosting Boeing oversight

The US FAA is ramping up oversight of Boeing and plans to add nearly 300 employees to its safety office following two fatal 737 MAX crashes in recent years, the agency's acting head said on Wednesday. Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen told the Senate Commerce Committee that the aviation safety office, which currently has 7,489 employees, plans to have 7,775 by the end of September. The committee held a hearing on FAA safety reforms that Congress directed in 2020 after the 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. The FAA currently has 107 full-time staff members providing regulatory oversight on Boeing, up from 82 just a couple of years ago, Nolen said. Additionally, he said the FAA has augmented its Boeing oversight team with the equivalent of 35 full-time employees from across the agency to support oversight activities. A 2020 House of Representatives report said the two fatal 737 MAX crashes "were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA."<br/>