'How Is It Going To Change?': Maria Cantwell Presses Boeing CEO About Safety Management Standards

4/7/2025

During Wednesday's Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) pressed Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg about following the FAA's safety standards after several scandals.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Orberg, thank you for the change in tone from the top

00:05at Boeing about the safety culture and the focus that you outlined in your

00:10testimony, those four principles. I wanted to drill down on the safety

00:16management system. It has been a voluntary compliance, but our law, well

00:26really actually in the implementation of the 2015 Settlement Agreement, it was

00:33required to implement a safety management system. And then since we've

00:37passed legislation for a mandatory safety management system, you mentioned

00:42the expert panel. I think they were very critical of the SMS structure that

00:49existed at Boeing under that voluntary structure. So how is it that this is

00:54going to change and will you commit today to a fully functioning safety

01:00management system that meets the FAA standards? Senator, you're right. We've

01:05been operating under a voluntary SMS for approximately the last four years and I

01:11think the Alaska door accident was a cathartic moment for all of us to step

01:16back and look at what happened and how could this happen within the safety

01:20management system. We had the expert panel. We also brought in outside

01:26consultants. The FAA did a comprehensive audit of our systems and we found

01:31significant gaps in many of the processes that we use to implement our

01:36safety management system. Those gaps are all a part of our safety and quality

01:41plan that we're working with the FAA to improve the overall performance. I'm

01:46absolutely committed to a mandatory safety management system. I appreciate

01:51your leadership there and we're working to get that done. Actually, I'd

01:56like to have that in place by October of this year. We've submitted our draft to

02:00the FAA and we're absolutely committed to move into a mandatory SMS. Thank you.

02:06Thank you for that commitment. The expert panel couldn't have been more

02:12specific about this particular recommendation and I think the industry

02:16writ large also thinks it's the gold standard so certainly appreciate that.

02:21Now when it comes to the ODA FAA oversight and the delegation of

02:26authority, this is not, I think the person in charge of this at Boeing has

02:33recently been let go or put on leave so you can tell me how you plan to bolster

02:42this position within the company. But when you look at the issues like the

02:48max anti-icing system issue and the 737 rudder actuator and these are

02:55issues that have been, you know, the subject of, you know, much investigation.

03:02In one instance, my colleague who's not here yet, she and I joined a letter

03:06asking, you know, for this issue to to be addressed and not delayed. So I think the

03:15committee is getting a big sense that the NTSB makes recommendations, the FAA

03:19kind of ignores them and then it takes a long time for them to to be addressed.

03:24And what we're trying to understand is in the ODA process, what structure and

03:30oversight, before we hear from the FAA on this point, what do you think about these

03:36incidents not being addressed in the oversight process? You know, like like the

03:43anti-icing system and the rudder issue. Senator, we've taken a look at the the IG

03:51report which has several recommendations, a series of recommendations, the FAA. Many

03:56of those recommendations require support from the Boeing company to

04:00provide information and data. So I can assure you they'll get full support to

04:06ensure that they have access to all all the information they need. Now on a

04:11higher level, the ODA, as you know, is a delegation that the FAA provides to us

04:16to do some work that a typical FAA inspector would do. I think the ODA is

04:24an important element of the success of the aerospace industry. The people

04:31that are ODAs in our organization operate independently. They operate on

04:36behalf of the FAA. They have direct line of communication with the FAA and we've

04:43made, as a part of the the feedback, we've made changes to our ODA

04:49organization structure to ensure that they're not feeling pressure from

04:54management to do things that are not proper and I think that's been effective.

05:00We put an ombudsman in place for the ODAs so they have someone to go to if

05:05they see see something that they don't like or they're feeling any kind of

05:09pressure they can go to the ombudsman. I think that's helping and we also survey

05:14them to to look to continue ask them do they feel undue pressure from management

05:20or over or undue oversight from management to do their job. I see that my

05:26time is expiring I just want to get in this point you're committing to fix

05:29those flaws that I just mentioned and and you I we can come back to this maybe

05:36in a second round but what are you doing to fix the design and manufacturing

05:41defects so that they're not submitted to begin with to the FAA and so I think

05:45as we have to think about our oversight of FAA and the role they play we're

05:51trying to understand what isn't working in this process that both at the

05:55manufacturing level we have these defects and then yet they get you know

05:59checked off on a list oh yeah that's that's in compliance and so we're I

06:05don't know if you have a quick answer to that but. Senator we're working I

06:10mentioned the fuselage improvements where we've got over a thousand

06:14applications where we're working with our supply chain to improve the number

06:18of defects I think a main component of that is we have to get to root cause we

06:23can't just fix the defects we have to get to root cause and make sure the

06:27defects go away so we've enhanced our focus on root cause analysis and and

06:32ensuring that we're understanding where these defects are being generated and

06:37that we're stopping the defect generation so that we're not dealing

06:40with them that's the fundamental improvement that I think we'll see. And

06:45and then making sure that the attention is focused not by a business person who's

06:49saying we have to go fast. Yeah look I have I want to be clear I've not

06:54provided financial guidance to Wall Street for the performance of the

06:57company I've not provided guidance on how many aircraft we're going to deliver

07:01we I've gone and gotten financial coverage so that we can allow our

07:07production system to heal. I'm not pressuring the team to to to go fast I'm

07:13pressuring the team to do it right. Thank you. That's the most important thing we can

07:17do at this point. I agree thank you so much Mr. Chairman thank you.

'How Is It Going To Change?': Maria Cantwell Presses Boeing CEO About Safety Management Standards

Category

Transcript

Recommended