The Federal Aviation Administration said on Tuesday that it had issued Boeing a shorter extension than the company had sought to conduct some of its own regulatory checks, as the agency works to reform the practice of outsourcing regulatory authority.
Under a program known as Organization Designation Authorization, corporate employees are allowed to determine regulatory compliance on some matters on the F.A.A.’s behalf. Boeing had sought a five-year renewal of that authority, but the F.A.A. agreed to only three years.
The congressionally approved program drew sharp criticism after two crashes of Boeing’s 737 Max in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people, leading to a ban of the plane globally for nearly two years. A federal law passed in 2020 made a number of aviation safety changes, including some focused on the Organization Designation Authorization program.
The F.A.A. said it had approved only a three-year renewal because it wanted to ensure that Boeing was carrying out certain changes to the program.
“There are multiple in work improvements that the F.A.A. would like to assess within the Boeing organization over the next three years,” Ian Won, an agency official, said in a letter to the company.
The agency, for example, would like to see Boeing better shield employees in the program from interference by company officials, update the company’s manual for the program and conduct audits to make sure a safety management system is effectively in place. The F.A.A. said it also planned to track Boeing’s progress.
Boeing said it would cooperate with the changes. “As always, we are committed to working transparently with the F.A.A. through their detailed and rigorous oversight processes,” the company said in a statement.
The F.A.A. has made several changes to the program since passage of the 2020 law, but the Democratic staff of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation released a report in December arguing that the agency needs to do more to oversee Boeing, including by improving oversight of the Organization Designation Authorization program.
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