again, we are waiting to hear from house republican leaders as the house just voted a short time ago. members voted to approve the rules for the investigation. following this briefing, we are also expecting to hear from house democrat leaders here on c-span 3. as we wait, though, a discussion on the boeing 737 max airliner. this is mary schiavo.

good morning to you. >> good morning. >> remind people about the hearings yesterday. what was the purpose of specifically looking at boeing? >> the purpose of the hearing, there's many folds to it, but in particular the senate needs to be looking at whether the delegation of the authority to boeing to oversee a large portion of its operations and for safety certification should continue or whether they need to make changes. there were a lot of questions aimed at that. >> how much oversight power does the faa give? >> unfortunately, almost entirely. there have been many studies. in fact, back when i was inspector general we did a review of the boeing certification of the boeing 777. it's now a 25-year-old plane. we found that boeing had 95-98%

self-certification. congress endorsed it to turn over to boeing and other manufacturers and certain processes of airlines the ability to self-certify, to inspect itself, to certify that it has met the parameters of the faa, that it has met the requirements and certify to the faa that it should have its certification, it's done its work. congress approved that. that's how the 737 max 8 was approved. >> you serve as a lawyer in this process. could you describe your role? >> i'm an aviation attorney. since i left government, i went back to practicing law. i represent several family who is lost loved ones on ethiopian airlines flight 302. >> did the questioners do it right? >> the questioners -- it was pretty much a consensus in the

room. the senators did a good job, bipartisan good job. both sides pressed them on it and people were very dissatisfied with the answers. some people wrote it off to he wasn't seemingly prepared for the grilling he received. how you could not expect to be grilled after two plane loads of people were lost and all the information that was known but was not disclosed to the faa or to the hill was very disturbing. a couple of senators were very pointed and were disturbed when they did not get the answers. a couple senators said, look, there's a lot of dodging going on in here. and in particular, a very pointed question i thought was very important to be asked in washington, d.c. was, at this juncture, given what has happened, do we think it's time that the faa take back its power, that this was a mistake to give boeing this almost full authority to inspect and certify its own planes.

following that testimony, which didn't get a lot of emphasis but i thought was quite stunning and quite interesting there was a panel with the ntsb and the senators asked them, isn't it time the faa took back its power and did its job? and the testimony was, we can't. the faa isn't capable of doing that. there's a long road back if that's what we decide what to do. >> we'll continue our conversation with mary schiavo. it was yesterday that senator ron johnson questioned the boeing coo, specifically why they waited to ground the 737 max. here's the response. >> the fact that it took another

tragedy to ground the airplane so i could have a true fix that worked, is i think really what's on the table here. the diagnosis is why didn't we react? why didn't we ground that aircraft a lot sooner so the tragedy wouldn't happen? >> senator, we have asked that question over and over. you know, if we knew everything back then that we know now, we would have made a different decision. the decision that was made at that point with the data we have, we quickly convened a review board and the faa came out and issued the air worthiness of the airplane. that was the safety case that was built. we've learned from the second accident. if we could go back, we would have made a different decision. we have learned. we are making those improvements and that's where our focus is

going forward. >> boeing is an important company. it's important for the economy. i want to see you get this right but you have to properly diagnose this, you have to accept responsibility for what happened so we actually can make those changes both within boeing, also within the faa. >> what did you think of the question and the response? >> i mean, very important line of question and response. again, they said we've made some mistakes, we'd do things differently but we don't want to go back and give up the power back to the faa. to get the credibility back not only in the united states for the faa but around the world, the faa despite its many faults over the years -- i could explain how we got to the situation. we got to this situation over decades, not in a couple years. around the world the reputation of the faa where the nations of the world could trust it has been seriously impaired.

i don't think people realize the importance of that because the faa evaluated the airports, the airlines, the regulatory oversight literally of nations around the world and the world relied on that. now that everyone's having second thoughts, we can't expect that the world will just accept what the united states says. that's unfortunate. >> what was the value of the faa ceding so much power to the airlines? >> they want to work in partnership with the industry. they said many times, look, the faa isn't in the business of building airplanes. for a certain amount of delegation that might make sense if the faa is working with them. but for the levels of delegation that they had, at this point they're going to need congressional legislation.

they're going to need some laws to take it back. over time they just continually deferred more and more and more to boeing and now they're to the point where they say, look, we don't have the expertise, we don't have the personnel. we literally don't have the ability to do that role anymore. that's not only just sad and unfortunate, but in the case of this aircraft it turned out to be very dangerous because no one sounded the alarm bell. you know, the testimony yesterday as well, we learned this before lion air crash, we learned this after lion air. there were all these things that they learned but as senator cruz said, why did someone not run in with their hair on fire and say, oh my gosh, we have to do something about this? if you like the government or don't like the government, you know the government is supposed to run in with its hair on fire.

i think someone would have had the government been in there side by side doing it. there's federal regulation for everything. i actually love federal regulations. there's a federal regulation that says the plane has to fly balanced, straight and level. it has to be able to balance up. i think if someone in the faa had been fully apprised and realized they needed the mcat system to keep that plane in certain flight situations. now, it wasn't supposed to be an ordinary straight and level flight. it was supposed to be in the extreme situations, high altitude curve for example turn. but i think someone in the faa probably would have said because as former government person myself, we know the regs and we like the regs. we are supposed to apply the reg. someone would have said this doesn't meet the reg.

>> dale in arlington virginia, go ahead. >> caller: when i used to work in the government in the construction industry 20-30 years ago we went to contractor quality control. so the contractors were inspecting themselves and we just monitored their inspectors. sounds to me an awful lot like what's going on with the faa now. and i never did like that, the inspectors were working for the contractor. it seemed like they decided to use alternative dispute resolution to be the judge if there's a problem with the construction. is that in the same realm of what's going on with the faa? >> yes. particularly back in the early '90s there was a huge push to go to the contractor workforce for the faa.

a lot of that was cost savings. there was a big push to say we were reinventing government. we were trying to lower the costs of government and we were reducing the number of federal employees. however, we looked at the actual cost of that and there wasn't a lot of cost savings. the government employee worked on the government pay scale. when you move them offline into a contractor, then you had to pay the contractor fees and the overhead and whatever. so there wasn't really a great savings. it started out twofold. we could get greater expertise from the private sector and we could maybe save some money for the government, voila. except it didn't pan out just it didn't save money and the faa tended to lose the control, the ability, the knowledge and the oversight of those contracted out functions. >> there is a term, organization

designation authorization. why is it important in this realm? >> oda as it's known by, what that was approved by congress that the faa could designate boeing and others with almost full authority to inspect and certify its own products. an oda authorization means you certify to the faa that you followed their processes and procedures and you say they met it. they even have the authority under an oda to decide what gets raised up to the level of additional scrutiny. >> if i'm the airline, i report back the planes are fine. the faa just leaves it at that without any questions? >> right. the faa says if they have inspected and done everything fine, the faa looks to see if they've followed their processes and procedures. sounds like they're looking at

the paperwork and saying the paper is good to go but it's supposed to be more than that. really yes, they're looking at the processes and procedures and seeing if the faa does what they were supposed to do. >> caller: after listening to the testimony yesterday, how in the world could he not know some of the information that the engineers and other key people at boeing knew? his staff and lawyers should have prepared him for yesterday's testimony. even more importantly, i think he should have been aware of his engineers. those are the people on the front line. oftentimes the ceos don't listen to the little people who do the work, work with the planes on a daily basis. after hearing him, i think he should step down. >> you know, paul, that was the consensus. i was personally very surprised

at his presentation. i'll call it that. and then checking with 100 or so people in the room. you know, we gathered at breaks to talk and that was pretty much the consensus. it was the consensus regardless of party. this is not a partisan issue. you know, the fact that he knew he was going to be grilled and he came in there and he said -- well, there were a couple surprises. he said he personally knew some of these facts after the first crash, after the lion air crash one year ago yesterday. that was rather surprising to people in the room because people assumed that folks within boeing -- and this was probably an assumption -- but that folks in boeing kept their own information in their own little silos and it didn't go all the way to the top. but when he said yes, yes, he knew some of these things after lion air and we knew after lion air that boeing was aware of the

aoa disagree light, the angle of attack indicator disagree light didn't work. so that was known before ethiopia 302. all the families in the room were from ethiopia 302, so that was a very sore point. i was trying to think of reasons he didn't know the answers to many questions or couldn't answer the questions. you know, there is a criminal investigation out there. i was a federal prosecutor for a number of years too. and if someone has received -- and i'm the not saying this happened in this case. if someone has received a criminal subpoena and they're a grand jury witness, you can't go talk to them, ask them what they're going to say to the grand jury at peril of being called witness tampering or attempting to suppress evidence. it's possible some of these people have received grand jury subpoenas or have been questioned by the fbi or the

office of the inspector general and that's the case, it's ill-advised to try to debrief these people, make them tell you everything they're going to tell the grand jury because you don't want to witness tamper or suppress any of the evidence. i have no knowledge if that's happening. but having been a former federal prosecutor for a while, that could be some of the reasons they couldn't answer all the questions. >> this is david in santa fe, new mexico. >> caller: good morning. thank you very much for taking my call. it's a foggy wet day here in new mexico. i'm a civilian pilot but i'm an airport transport pilot and mei. i respect you deeply because of your background in aviation and i believe you're a pilot. from your perspective what could have been done in the cockpit to have avoided this incident? what actual auto pilotof shutof

were in the cockpit? also i've not heard how many hours of safe flying from the 737 maxes have in the hand of capable pilots. i hate to imply the other pilots were incapable. >> to answer the first question in the cockpit what do they have to do, well, they have to turn off the electric trim. there was a flight the day before the lion air crash and they managed to turn it offhand they got the plane on the ground and they saved that flight. there was a lot of criticism for not writing that up in the logbook or properly recording how serious that event was. there was a very serious flight control problem. also the real criticism in the lion air report was that the maintenance crew that worked on the aoa and put the plane back

out on the line really did not do a good job. so the answer is and the instructions in the manual were that you shut off the electric trim, fly it manually. however, there's going to be more coming out when the second report comes out on ethiopia 302. you can see twice they tried to put the nose up and the mcast pushed the nose down. then they shut it off as they were supposed to, but they still couldn't get the nose up fast enough with auto trim. there's a line right under it on the fdr. as a pilot, you know how to read them. you can see that the mcast still tried to push the nose down even once they turned the electric trim off. that's going to be another glitch they have to look at now in the second report. the third thing i think is very

important is criticizing the pilots, you know, that helps because you want them fully trained. you want them to know everything about the plane so he or she can fly that plane and save the plane if the plane malfunctions. we're at a cross roads where it might not be possible for the pilots to save the planes because they are so computerizecomputerized that it may not be fair anymore to say look if the plane is broken, the pilot ought to be able to fly out of it. sometimes the pilot just can't. >> is flying in planes safe? generally? >> well generally if you look at the statistics -- we will leave this conversation to hear from house republican leaders on the vote to approve the impeachment investigation of president trump.