Kerry Lynch stepped into the role of editor of the&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;monthly magazine in May 2022 after serving with&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;for eight years. She joined&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;in December 2014 as a senior editor covering Washington and business aviation news. She has also served on Convention News teams, including as editor of&nbsp;HAI Convention News. Lynch previously spent 25 years with Aviation Week. During her time there, she reported for and later steered&nbsp;The Weekly of Business Aviation, oversaw business aviation content on the&nbsp;Aviation Week Intelligence Network, served on the&nbsp;Show News&nbsp;staff, and held roles as the Washington columnist for&nbsp;Business &amp; Commercial Aviation&nbsp;and&nbsp;Overhaul &amp; Maintenance&nbsp;monthly magazines. In 2021 she was honored with the National Business Aviation Association Platinum Wing Award for lifetime achievement in journalism and was the 2004 recipient of the National Air Transportation Association’s Aviation Journalism Excellence Award. She also has been a recipient of an Aerospace Media Award for business aviation (2022) and NBAA Gold Wing Award (2003, 2024). Lynch graduated from The Ohio State University with a bachelor of arts in journalism.

Editor, AIN monthly magazine

Kerry Lynch

Six months after Congress passed legislation that encouraged the strengthening and full use of the Federal Aviation Administration's designee system, some lawmakers have turned a critical eye toward the use of organization designation authorization (ODA) and at least one has promised new legislation to overhaul the system.

 


During a Senate aviation subcommittee hearing on Wednesday that delved into issues surrounding the two Boeing 737 Max crashes, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) questioned “the system that led to outsourcing safety" to manufacturers.&nbsp;“The fact is the FAA decided to do safety on the cheap…put the fox in charge of the hen house,” he said.

 


Blumenthal expressed the belief that in the case of the 737 Max, regulators cooperated with Boeing to rush some safety systems to certification, perhaps in the face of competition with Airbus. He said he plans to introduce legislation that would rigorously reform the system, which&nbsp;he called “riddled with flaws,” and put the FAA back in charge of safety.

 


Sen. Krysten Sinema (D-Arizona) called for a new approach to ensure aircraft undergo safety evaluation in an independent manner. "Is there more we need to do?” she asked.

 


“There may be,” answered transportation inspector general Calvin Scovel, who added that he couldn't render such an assessment at this early stage, however. At the request of lawmakers, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) agreed to conduct an in-depth review of certification activities surrounding the 737 Max, including key decisions made by the FAA when certifying the airplane and the timeline, among other areas. He estimated the new audit would take about 10 months to complete.

 


In his testimony, Sovel acknowledged that delegation stands as an essential part of meeting the FAA’s certification goals. He added, however, that the OIG’s studies of the ODA program over the years have identified management weaknesses with a number of the FAA’s oversight processes.

 


“Clearly confidence in FAA as the gold standard on aviation safety has been shaken,” he conceded in reference to the most recent accidents.

 


<h2>Longstanding Program</h2>

 


Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran, however, expressed his belief in the importance of the system, as did&nbsp;acting FAA administrator Dan Elwell. “The concept of ODA has been around for 60 years," said Elwell. "It is part of the fabric of what we use to become as safe as we are today.” While stressing that the FAA maintains strict oversight of every ODA program, Elwell conceded that, without ODA, the FAA would require roughly 10,000 more employees and an additional $1.8 billion to cover the costs. EASA, he added, relies on&nbsp;ODA “much more than we do” and said authorities around the world use the method.

 


The FAA has taken steps to increase oversight as a result of the reauthorization act passed last year, including the establishment of an office designed to strengthen the review of ODA activities. That office opened on March 5, Elwell said.

 


The FAA’s involvement in the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which Boeing designed to enhance pitch stability, has become a point of contention given its suspected role in both the October 29 Lion Air and the March 10 Ethiopian Airlines crashes.

 


Elwell explained that the FAA granted the Max approval under an amended type certificate to the original 737. The certification process took five years and involved 297 certification flight tests, some of which encompassed tests of the MCAS functions, he said, noting FAA engineers and flight-test pilots participated in the MCAS operational evaluation flight test. “Originally we retained it as a new system and then released it to the ODA to the designation,” he said.&nbsp;

 


A number of questions at Wednesday's hearing surrounded training and awareness of pilots on handling qualities surrounding the MCAS. Elwell said he believed training protocols for the system were adequate because the handling qualities of the MCAS-equipped Max mimic those of the 737NG, and pilots would follow the same procedures for runaway stabilizer trim. "The system presents as a scenario that all pilots are trained on: runaway stabilizer trim,” he asserted, referring to a scenario in which&nbsp;an angle-of-attack sensor gives the&nbsp;MCAS wrong information causing it to pitch the nose down.&nbsp;

 


Further questioned on the lack of information provided to pilots about the MCAS, he added that the Flight Standardization Board—which included pilot testing—found the 737 Max handled similarly to the NG.

 


The FAA came under further criticism for waiting so long to ground the fleet. “I’ve been deeply disappointed and if fact shocked in grounding the aircraft that our safety officials lagged instead of led the world,” Blumenthal said.

 


When asked about the timing, Elwell responded that the FAA waited for appropriate data that suggested a potential link between the two crashes.&nbsp;“We may have been the last country to ground the aircraft, but the FAA and Canada were the first countries to ground the fleet with data with cause and purpose,” he said.

 


When the FAA reached out to agencies making decisions to ground their fleets, he said they did not have data to share.&nbsp;In fact, Elwell added that some of those international agencies later sought that data from the FAA.&nbsp;

 


When asked who decided to ground the Max fleet in the U.S., Elwell said he did.

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Lawmakers Critical of ODA, Question Training in Max Hearing

Elwell conceded that without ODA, the FAA would require roughly 10,000 more employees and an addition $1.8 billion to cover the costs.

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