US House to vote on FAA’s aircraft certification process reform legislation

The US House of Representatives is set to vote on the bill to reform the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) aircraft certification process.

The bipartisan legislation voting came after two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes, which killed 346 people.

The House bill calls for an expert panel to assess the aircraft manufacturer safety culture and recommend improvements.

It also requires Boeing to perform an assessment on the entire system safety and develop safety management systems. Risk assessments should be shared with regulators while risk calculations should be based on pilot response time.

In September, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the measure.

However, Representative Peter DeFazio, the panel’s chairman reportedly said that the measure is ‘a strong bill that has support from both sides of the aisle and addresses something we all agree on — keeping people safe. There’s no reason to wait until the next Congress to get this done’.

Both Boeing and the FAA refused to comment on the legislation.

According to Reuters, the FAA is currently in the final stages of reviewing proposed changes to MAX, which is grounded since March 2019.

The ban grounding order could be revoked as early as Wednesday, the report added.

Airlines are mandated to complete software updates and fresh pilot training before they redeploy the aircraft into service, which is expected to take at least one month.

The aircraft will continue to have the ‘MAX’ name in place. However, the name could be removed over time as airlines favour to retain formal names assigned to each variant, such as ‘737-7’ or ‘737-8’, Reuters reported added.

Last month, US carrier American Airlines reportedly planned to bring the Boeing 737 MAX back to service for passenger service by the end of this year with daily 737 Max flights between Miami and New York from 29 December to 4 January.