On March 10, 2019, an Ethiopian Air plane crashed in Ethiopia, killing all 157 people on board, including eight American citizens.

The aircraft was a Boeing 737 MAX. Evidence suggested that a new automated system could have contributed to the crash. Later in the month, the Aviation and Space Subcommittee of the U. S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the state of airline safety.

A focus of the hearing was the way in which aviation safety remains a paramount concern even as technology has advanced and changed. Daniel K. Elwell, Act­ing Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), said:

“Some version of our certification process has been in place and served us well for over 60 years. This does not mean the process has remained static. To the contrary, since 1964, the regulations covering certification processes have been under constant review. As a result, the general regulations have been modified over 90 times, and the rules applicable to large transport aircraft, like the Boeing 737 MAX, have been amended over 130 times. The regulations and our policies have evolved in order to adapt to an ever-changing industry that uses global partnerships to develop new, more efficient, and safer aviation products and technologies.

Robert L. Sumwalt, III, Chairman of the Na­tional Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said that in February, his agency announced a “Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements for 2019–2020.”  The NTSB is interested in unmanned air­craft systems (UASs), he said.

The NTSB investigates accidents that involve UASs and is working to regulate them as they become increas­ingly common, but also uses them as investigative tools. UASs can be deployed quickly, which means that they can be used at crash sites right away. That also allows investigations to proceed expeditiously. Sumwalt also addressed the topic of air crashes:

“Our work in commercial transportation supports our broader mission of improving transportation safety through investigating accidents and serious incidents … and developing and disseminating accident investigation techniques in commercial space within the international community.”

For more background, see the June 2013 issue of Congres­sional Digest on “Aviation Safety.”