Democratic senator: FAA’s proposed Boeing fine is inadequate

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, is demanding answers from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about what he says is the agency’s inadequate fine of the Boeing Company for “hundreds” of quality-control violations.

Blumenthal, in a Tuesday letter to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, called the FAA’s proposed $3.1 million fine “little more than a rounding error for Boeing” given that the company generated nearly $39 billion in revenue over the two quarters in which the violations allegedly occurred.

“For Boeing, such fines are easily absorbed as the cost of doing business, not a meaningful deterrent to dangerous behavior. Unless penalties rise to the level that forces the company to invest in real safety reforms, the risks to the flying public will persist,” Blumenthal wrote.

Blumenthal was the chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation when Democrats controlled the Senate and has investigated Boeing safety issues, including the midair blowout of a door plug on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX in January 2024.

The FAA says it applied the “maximum statutory penalty” against Boeing, but Blumenthal says that “only underscores the inadequacy of current law” and wants to know if there was any discretion in how the proposed penalty was calculated.

He has asked the FAA to provide a list of each violation by Boeing that the agency penalized and an explanation for why certain violations did not receive penalties and why some penalties were below the statutory maximum.

He also wants to know whether the FAA anticipates reducing the proposed penalties if Boeing requests it to do so, and he wants a description of any investigation may be conducting into Boeings safety violations.

Blumenthal has asked the agency to provide all correspondence between the FAA and Boeing related to the proposed fine and a staff briefing on the subject.

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