The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will delay a requirement for installation of secondary cockpit barriers in favor of a full rulemaking process despite a Congressional order — a stance that has drawn the ire of U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio.
DeFazio, chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, saw a provision included in the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 that demanded the FAA order installation of secondary cockpit barriers on all newly manufactured transport-category planes. It was a response to delays in implementing security changes and addressing concerns that have been ongoing since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The deadline for implementation was set for Oct. 5, 2019, but the FAA has decided against that course.
“[Eighteen] years after the 9/11 attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has yet to address a glaring vulnerability in aviation safety and security: the potential for a terrorist to again take over the cockpit of a commercial airliner during moments of vulnerability when the cockpit door is open in flight,” DeFazio wrote in a letter to FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson. “After nearly two decades of FAA inaction, Congress stepped in and last year directed the FAA, by Oct. 5 of this year, to issue an order requiring installation of secondary cockpit barriers on all newly manufactured transport-category airplanes. The deadline came and went, and now I understand the FAA intends to conduct a full rulemaking proceeding instead of simply issuing an order, as Congress required.”
He pledged to monitor the upcoming rulemaking proceeding and spelled out in no uncertain terms that if further Congressional action were necessary to make the FAA move on the installations quickly, he would push the issue. He also called into question the agency’s timing for the new rulemaking.
“I find it inexplicable that the FAA did not determine before now that a rulemaking, instead of an order, is necessary to comply with the congressional mandate,” DeFazio said. “The agency’s failure even to initiate public action until recently suggests to me that the agency is not serious about shoring up the undeniable vulnerability associated with cockpit access in flight. Today, at most airlines, the only line of defense of the cockpit when a pilot needs to exit during flight is an improvised procedure involving flight attendants and beverage carts. This is not, and cannot be, a permanent solution.”