Shortly after takeoff. All 189 people aboard perished. Five months later, Ethiopian Air trio to departed out of ethiopia. Just like lie in flight 610, Ethiopian Airlines flight rio to experienced problems shortly after takeoff and crashed. All 157 persons on board died. Both of these accidents were entirely preventable. We cannot fathom the pain experienced by the families of those 346 human beings who were lost. Family members are here today and we appreciate their ascendance. I appreciate many of them meeting with membersrs of the committee over time. As chairman ofma this committeei promise their loved ones that we are working to obtain a full answer as to how to prevent future tragedies. These families deserve answers, accountability and action. And the public deserves no less. The type of aircraft involved in both accidents is a 737 max eight manufactured by boeing. Safety regulators began grounding the max the day after the ethiopian crash. On march 13, federal Aviation Administration grounded the aircraft in the United States. Contingent on boeings work with the faa to test and certify to the mcas control system. In order for the max to return to Service International regulators also need to be satisfied that it is safe to fly as the certification process continues, many questions remain about boeings actions. The faa action during the Design Development and certification processes. As well as the operation of the max. Todays hearing is divided into two panels. The committee will follow regular order recognition of both panels, a five minute rule will be observed strictly because we have so many people that wish to participate. On the first panel, testifying on behalf of of the manufacturer accompanied by John Hamilton chief engineer for Boeing Commercial Airplanes who will provide Technical Expertise. Our second panel will examine these issues from the governments perspective. The way this is today includes National Transportation safety Board Chairman robert and chairman of the joint authorities technical review. Chairman, overseeing the ntsb which recently released a report and recommendations regarding the certification. Chairman hart, faa commission that included the faa, nasa and foreign safety authorities which are reviewing the Flight Control systems. Submitting a broad range of recommendations to the faa. Chairman hartar has extensive pt Government Service in aviation safety. He is a private citizen today who agreed to meet. We have many concerns that boeing should address today. We need to know if boeing and the faa rushed to certify the max, in particular, critics have focused on the development and testing. Criticizing the communication with the faa on the development. Particularly after the system was modified to activate at lower air speeds. Also criticized for relying on outdated regulations, guidance and certificationon procedures. Failing to incorporate realistic Human Behavior factors into its assumptions. The ntsb also called into question boeing and faa assumptions about pilot reaction during the activation. These questions were especially important for stressful information with multiple alerts going off in the cockpit. The old system called organization designed authorization. In this case boeing. The lda has been used to certify many aircraft over the years. Some have criticized the system emfor committing an inappropriae close relationship between companies and their safety regulator. The correspondence dating from as early as 2015 the former chief technical pilot and faa personnel released on october 18 reflect a disturbing level of casualness and flippancy that seemed to cooperate these systems. I was disappointed to learn of a november 2016 instant messenger conversation. In which he acknowledge misinforming the faa. Should have notified the faa about the conversation immediately upon its discovery. Although with the agencies lack of responsiveness to my request dating back to april of this year. For documents relevant to the pex as part of the investigation i opened as chairman based on whistleblower disclosures. Regulating agencies and organizations they regulate is important. So are the internal reforms that boeing is implementing. I invite them to describe the straps boeing is taken to include aviation safety and to ensure that technical experts never experience undue pressure to put profits and relationships ahead of safety. The Committee Oversight is not admitted to past actions. They note that future Aircraft Systems are likely to be even more complex and interdependent than current models. Managing interfaces will become even more important as automation increases. Continuing expanding around the globe. Flying in countries without the same training requirements and Safety Standards that we have in the United States. We welcome the witnesses thoughts and certification in the future to account for these major changes. This hearing will by no means and our inquiry. Additional oversight hearings will be held. Carefully review the final report which was released on friday as well is the Ethiopian Airlines report which is forthcoming. The committee will also consider the findings and recommendations and all other investigations and reviews. I now recognize the distinguished Ranking Member for her Opening Statement. Thank you. Thank you for this important hearing. I want to take a moment and recognize the families that have lost loved ones in the Ethiopian Airlines and lion air tragedies. Some of whom who are here with us today. I cannot imagine the loss and the enduring pain that you must feel. I thank you for your vigilance on this issue just as we have seen the families vigilant help us improve safety for the future. Right now these families, millions of Airline Passengers and 150,000 Aerospace Workers want to know what we are doing to fix what went wrong and what did go wrong. To date, we have not gotten all of those answers. Hopefully todays hearing will help provide some. One thingng is crystal clear. You have to be the leader in aviation safety. Aviation demand especially 4737 and single planes is exploding 101 growth over the next 10 years. Something like 35,000 planes and planes and 3 trillion. We cannot have a race for commercial airplanes become a race to the bottom when it comes to safety. The company, thety board, cannot prioritize profits over safety. Safety always has to be job one. It is troubling to hear that they may have asserted the application process over a desire by airlines to have more fuel efficient planes but without Pilot Training. This issue of lowering standards is permeating through all of aviation. My democratic colleagues have led the charge to try to stop o companies coming here to say they dont want to have the same training for copilots on the regional jets because they dont have enough pilots. Rest requirements for cargo pilots having the same as passenger planes. Thank god captain sullenberger made it clear. When you are in an emergency, the pilot and copilot do not have a lot of time to communicate. That is why today we need answers to how the first 737 mac certification mac certification process was done and especially need transparency on this process of review before the 737 max is included in the air again. The public needs to know and fully understand what i testing, what review, what processes were conducted both by boeing and the faa before this plane is put back in the air. We also want to know today about boeing Safety Culture. Whether the employees raised safety concerns that were not listened to. Whether there was enough testing and complex system into a cockpit alert system that we now all know was flawed. Whether there was even enough data presented to the faa. These are all questions that are important. There are many questions about software and cockpit automation and overload. I guarantee you, the faa codes and log are clear when it comes to the standards for certification. Requirements for pilots have all led to 10 years between 2009 2018. More software and more automation without robust thirdparty testing and validation will lead us to where we are today. The last aviation accidents have all involved this issue of automation and pilot response to automation whether it is lion air, ethiopian, the french or 330 accident. They were all in response to an automation and command response to the pilot. That is why last week i introduced legislation with my colleagues to implement the recommendations of the ntsb safety board and the Inspector General report on Better Safety management systems, better cockpit prioritization and a new center of excellence on automation and human factors. The faa needs the best engineers to understand the engineering challenges of the future and stay ahead from this Human Behavior response to new automation. Ive seen people on the transportation automobile side. It isit the same issue in advand vehicles. I look forward to hearing from the chairman about their findings on improving the safety review process that we have included in this legislation. I would just say again, our sorrows are nothing like the families who are with us today. I do want to know the 737 max have struck at the heart of everyone in the northwest. Soon after the ethiopian crash the seattle fire fired approach me and asked if i thought he could get a job at boeing. He said i just want to go there and make sure we get the safety right. Everyone feels that way. Generation of workers in the Pacific Northwest have dedicate their lives to aviation excellence and safety. That spirit lives on. This is a question about a corporate view from chicago whether there is enough attention to manufacturing and certification. Taking offense to the fact that people say it is a Great Company not being ran correctly. For the 346 people that trusted boeing without a second thought, we need to get this right. These families are counting on us. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you,u, senator. You have submitted an extensive written statement. Will be entered in full at this point. I understand mr. Hamilton will not be making a formal statement at this point to summarize your Opening Statement for five minutes. Thank you for being here. Chairman. Committee members, thank you for the opportunity to join you today. We share your commitment to aviation safety. Directly to the families of the victims that are here with us. On behalf of myself in the boeing company, we are sorry, deeply and truly sorry. As a husband and father myself, i am heartbroken by your losses. I think about you and your loved ones every day. Ti know our entire team does as well. I know that probably does not offer much comfort and healing at this point. I want you to know we carry those moments with us every day. Every day that drives us to improve the safety of our airplanes and our industry. That will never stop. I am grateful and humbled to be here today. To be able to say these words to the families directly. I want to convey our absolute commitment to safety. Our commitment to learning. Our commitment to rebuilding the publics confidence in what we do. Dod to preventing accidents from like this from ever happening again. We will never forget. That is our commitment going forward. Mr. Chairman, i know this committee has many questions about the max. Wean will do our best today to answer all of those questions. One of the accidents is still underr investigation. We know both evolve the repeated activation of a flight system which responded to erroneous signals which measures the airplane angle. Based on that we have enhanced in three ways. First, it will now compare information from both sensors instead of w one before activatg only activate a single time. Mcas will never provide more input than a pilot can counteract using the control column alone. Pilots will also continue to have theve ability to override mcas at any time. We have brought the best of boeing. We have spent over 100,000 engineering and test hours. Flown more than 800 test flights hundred test flights. Conducted similar sessions for 99 customers and 4141 global regulators. Il flown on a couple couple of flights myself. This has taken longer than expected, but we are committed to getting it right. During this process we have work closer with the faa and other regulators. Provided themor documentation. Answered their questions. Regulators around the world should rigorously scrutinize the max and only approve its return to fight when they are completely satisfied with the safety. The public deserves nothing less today in every day overy, 5 Million People will board a boeing airplane and fly safely to their destination. Decades of cooperation and innovation by industry and regulators and the oversight of this committee have reduced accidents by more than 95 over the last 25 years. No number other than zero accidents is ever acceptable. We can and must do better. We have been challenged and changed by these accidents. We have made mistakes and we have gotten things wrong. We are improving and we are learning and we are continuing to learn. We establish a permanent Airspace Committee of our board which was a new Safety Organization tiered all engineers now report up through the chief engineer. We are also helping to rebuild the families and communities impacted by these. We have pledged a Million Dollars to this effort. Experts in this area entering families can access these funds as quickly as possible. No amount of money can bring back what was lost, but we can help the families meet their financial needs. Mr. Chairman, i started at boeing more than 30 years ago as a summer intern in seattle. I was a junior at Iowa State University studying engineering. Awestruck to work at the company that brought the jet age to the world and help land a person on the moon. Today i am still inspired by what towing does it by the remarkable men and women who are committed to its outstanding legacy. These heartbreaking accidents and the memories that the 346 lives lost are now part of that legacy. Solemn duty to learn from them and we will. Recently, there has been much criticism of boeing and our culture. We understand and deserve thiss scrutiny. More than 150,000 of the thousand of the most dedicated honest hardworking men and women in the world. Their commitment to safety, quality and integrity is unparallel. We will stay true to those values because we know our work demands the utmost excellence. Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, mr. Mullen berg. I mentioned an instant message conversation and a series of emails. Between the 737 max and a colleague. It expresses concerns about the operation. Boeing knew about this for months but failed to share it with the faa until recently. With regard to the emails, the former max chief technical pilot , calling for removing any mention from the flight crew operating manual. Talking about jedi mind tricking of regulators. With at least one person that works for the faa. With regard to the instant message conversation, when were you made aware of the existence of the november 2016 messages. Mr. Chairman, as i recall, i was made aware of that message earlier this year. Discovered as a document gathering process in response to a government investigation. So it was after the crashes. As i recall, i believe it was prior to the second crash. Was that your decision to wait months before disclosing it to the faa . It had been identified as a document as part of an ongoing investigation. I relied on our counsel to provide that to the appropriate authorities. What did the council telll u . Im going to supply it to the Justice Department . I will get it to appropriate authorities. I dont recall having a specific conversation about which authorities, again, as part part of this process, our intent to cooperate fully and provide it to the appropriate authorities. I think over this time we provided half a million pages of documents and supported it for various requests. Do you agree this should have been provided to the faa in retrospect. Senator, as i became familiar with the details of the document over the last few weeks, as i expressed our disappointment and concern with how this came to the faa, i think you heard the same from the administrator. I called him and apologize for how this came through the process. Involved in the document process counted on our team to make sure all the great authorities were provided. Turning over all such safetyrelated communications to the faa related to the 737 max. Our Team Continues to cooperate with request for documentation. I am sure additional documents will be provided over time as they are discovered. We will cooperate fully with the requests. It seems to me that a request should not have been made with regard to that conversation. When did you become aware of the emails that i referred to in the second part of my question about jedi mind tricking regulators. Just recently it have been informed of the details of those emails. Give us an idea of how recently. Over the last couple of weeks when it became public news. You did not know about it until then. I dont recall being briefed on the details of those documents any time prior to that. Can you see that this raises much concern about the level of coziness between boeing personnel and faa regulators. Mr. Chairman, i understand the concern there. We are doing our best to lean forward and provide information as part of this process. I can tell you, the comments, comments, the values, the approaches described in those emails are counter to our values. I i understand the concern. Share the