Fed Watchdog: Boeing Crashes Have 'Shaken' Confidence in FAA
CAMEROTA: An internal federal watchdog raising concerns about the FAA's safety oversight, following two deadly crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft.</s>CALVIN SCOVEL, DOT INSPECTOR GENERAL: Clearly confidence in FAA is a gold standard for aviation safety has been shaken.</s>ELAINE CHAO, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: I am, of course, concerned about any allegations.</s>CAMEROTA: Joining us now is Randy Babbitt. He led the FAA under President Obama from 2009 to 2011. He's also a former airline pilot. Mr. Babbitt, thank you so much for being here. We're looking forward to getting your expertise on this. Should the FAA have been more vigorous in its oversight of Boeing?</s>RANDY BABBITT, FORMER FAA ADMINISTRATOR: Well, I think in retrospect, you know, there's a lot of second guessing going on. I think the big failure was recognizing or failing to recognize the training that would be required to transition to a different safety system. How they get to -- you know, into manuals and so forth is going to be scrutinized. And I think there were some bad assumptions made, which I'm certain a lot of people regret now.</s>CAMEROTA: When you talk about there being a lack of training. I mean, let me just put a finer point on that for everyone, because this comes from "The Washington Post" having looked at the flight manual. Here's what it says: "Despite substantial changes to the plane's engine size and placement and the addition of the MCAS flight control system, training for the 737 Max had consisted primarily of a roughly hour-long computer-based course." Mr. Babbitt, how is that possible that pilots would only have had an hour on a computer after all of these substantial changes to that aircraft?</s>BABBITT: Yes. And that's -- that's going to come under scrutiny. The -- the differences between, you know, if you bought a car, you know, one year newer than your last year, it might have a few things different. They might just have to explain those to you. And that's the assumption made here, was that -- decisions were made that this airplane is not substantially different than the previous models; and, therefore, all you needed to understand was the differences. I think the failure here, the failure to recognize that this one particular system was substantially different. You basically had a single source of data that was allowed to have control input to the aircraft, and I don't think that was made clear to a lot of people.</s>CAMEROTA: Apparently not. And so I mean, I think the big question is what's going wrong at the FAA?</s>BABBITT: Well, I think the assumption -- the aircraft, I think the fix that will come out, it will be a safe fix. I think the failure was to not alert pilots that this system was kicking in. In other words, there should have been warning light. Common sense would tell me that any, any device, any data input that's given control authority to the airplane should at least have another comparison of another data source. A good example the two compasses in the airplane.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>BABBITT: Every aircraft, every major airplane that flies an airline service has a comparative. It says these two compasses don't agree. And a light comes on.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes. I mean -- yes.</s>BABBIE: I understand it's going to be put in now.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes, right? Woefully late. So yes, it sounds like they have figured out that there was a problem with the technology on this plane, and they're going to fix it. But that's specific to the 737 Max. I'm talking about the larger issue of it sounds like the FAA was letting Boeing police itself on some level. Is that true?</s>BABBITT: Yes, and I mean we do that in a lot of places. I mean, think about it. The banking industry, the securities, lots of these places, you audit. And people come in and inspect to see that you are doing these audits correctly. And that's -- it would take -- the FAA would have to tire tens of thousands of inspectors to actually, you know, do all of the work that we entrust to Boeing. And it's been, you know, truly when you think about the hundreds of millions of hours that have been flown safely -- we haven't had a major accident in this country in almost a decade. So the system works. Can it be improved? Yes. And I think that's going to be the focus of what can we do to make this system better so that we don't have -- you know, this is an industry that cannot suffer a hairline crack of oversight; and we need to make certain that that oversight is there, it's effective, and it's doing what we want it to do.</s>CAMEROTA: So you think that it's a manpower problem. And should the FAA have more, I guess, it should have a bigger budget and more people to be able to do this. Is that the solution?</s>BABBITT: Well, I think the -- part of it. If you're going to have -- I mean, we do a lot of oversight where we depend -- airlines themselves, for example, the pilots are checked by pilots who work for that airline. How are they checked? They occasionally get inspected by federal flight inspectors. They ride or they watch them give them check rides and so forth. The FAA certainly couldn't hire enough pilots to check all of the airline pilots in this country. We entrust the airlines to do that. And so finding the balance, what is the right amount of balance that we need to find? Do we need more people to audit the work that Boeing is doing and confirm that Boeing, when Boeing says, "This system works perfectly and we put it through rigorous testing," how far do we go with that? What do we need to do? Do we need more manpower? Do we need a better system? And let's face it. We're in an age of new technology. These aircraft are becoming, you know, far more digital, all glass cockpits.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>BABBITT: It's a different environment today, and you train differently. And I think we need to recognize that and train pilots to better understand some of the changes that have been made in these aircraft.</s>CAMEROTA: For sure. Very quickly, you're a pilot. Would you today fly the 737 Max 8 plane?</s>BABBITT: Absolutely. The sad part of this, every -- every pilot who has Boeing experience, there's a very large trim wheel in that aircraft. And if that trim wheel is moving and you're hand flying the aircraft, the answer is turn it off. Every pilot -- every pilot who has a rating in this aircraft has had a runaway trim situation. It's part of your training, part of your testing. That trim wheel begins to move, and you're flying the airplane, and you're not commanding that input, you turn the switches off. They're right there, right in front of you. So it's not like they have to dramatically redesign the airplane. They simply have to let people know that you're getting a control input that you may not want, and your option here is to understand it and turn it off, if it's -- if it's putting a bad control input in for you.</s>CAMEROTA: All right. Randy Babbitt, former FAA administrator, thank you very much for being on</s>NEW DAY. BABBITT: Well, thank you very much, Alisyn. Good morning.</s>CAMEROTA: John.</s>BERMAN: A huge controversy surrounding the Trump administration after it moves to slash funding from the Special Olympics. Congressman Joe Kennedy joins us to discuss next.