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Senate confirms Dickson for FAA


With help from Tanya Snyder and Brianna Gurciullo

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The Senate confirmed former Delta Air Lines executive Steve Dickson for FAA administrator and allowed Dan Elwell to remain deputy on Wednesday.

The NTSB is planning to issue safety recommendations on the topic of FAA’s aircraft certification in the wake of two Boeing 737 MAX crashes.

Todd Rokita, the nominee for Amtrak’s board of directors who voted while in Congress to defund Amtrak several times, defended those votes at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

IT’S THURSDAY: Thanks for tuning in to POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on all things trains, planes, automobiles and ports. Get in touch with tips, feedback and song lyric suggestions at smintz@politico.com or @samjmintz.

“Two missed connections in the Amtrak station / Still days away from my final destination / When I see the city lights / I’ll know I’ll made the finish line.”

LISTEN HERE: Follow MT’s playlist on Spotify. What better way to start your day than with songs (picked by us and readers) about roads, rails, rivers and runways?

DICKSON CONFIRMED: The Senate gave Dickson the green light to be administrator of the FAA on Wednesday in a 52-40 party-line vote, with seven presidential candidates and Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) not voting. (Isakson is in Georgia recovering after a fall left him with several broken ribs, but he cheered Dickson’s confirmation in a statement.) Dickson prevailed despite Democrats’ concerns that he may have had a part in alleged retaliation against a whistleblowing Delta pilot. He will take over an agency dealing with the fallout from the Boeing 737 MAX crashes.

The Senate also quickly passed a bill that would allow Elwell to remain at the FAA as deputy administrator even though both he and Dickson are former military officers.

SAFETY AGENCY PLANNING FAA RECOMMENDATIONS: NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said his agency is working on a package of recommendations to issue to the FAA on aircraft certification after the Boeing 737 MAX crashes, your host reported. The NTSB’s recommendations aren’t binding, but they’ll carry significant weight even though there are several other reviews and probes of the MAX crashes that are expected to produce proposals for how the FAA should change its process for approving new planes, as NTSB is the authoritative voice on transportation safety issues.

BOEING BUST? Boeing announced its biggest quarterly loss ever on Wednesday, as The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported. Boeing has estimated that the 737 MAX will start to return to service around the world in the early part of the fourth quarter of this year. But if that changes, CEO Dennis Muilenburg said on an earnings call that the company “might need to consider possible further rate reductions or other options including a temporary shutdown of the MAX production.”

Boeing is also facing a new lawsuit from the wife of Antoine Lewis, an Army captain who was killed in the Ethiopia crash. Yalena Lewis called on U.S. airlines to ban the MAX. “They owe it to every passenger so that no one else has to know the pain of losing their loved one to corporate greed and negligence like I do,” she said in a statement. It’s one of a number of lawsuits against the company.

DON’T TAKE ME TOO LITERALLY: Rokita, the Amtrak board nominee, defended his votes to defund Amtrak while in Congress during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. He said the prior votes were meant to “send a message” about fiscal responsibility and don’t mean he’s “hostile” towards Amtrak, as your host reported. Rokita was pressed by two Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee on whether he would be an advocate for rail transportation if confirmed. “I’ll be an advocate for following the law,” he said.

The committee also heard from Sumwalt and two other NTSB nominees, and approved a handful of bills that would make changes to air traffic control hiring standards and TSA’s Precheck program.

SECURITY HOLES AT UNION STATION: Amtrak’s inspector general released a report Wednesday that found the company has not yet fixed long-standing security weaknesses at Union Station in Washington, our Stephanie Beasley writes. She wrote: “One of the top issues the redacted report cited involves an entrance to the station that hasn’t had functional barriers since 2015 and often is left unmonitored. As a result, trespassers could ‘use the entrance to access the station, platform, and tracks,’ the inspector general said.”

FINANCE COMMITTEE NOT YET STARTING SURFACE WORK: The Senate Finance Committee has not yet started working on its portion of the surface transportation bill, the all-important pay-for title. “I understand that the chairman of [the Environment and Public Works Committee] is going to talk to me about financing his bill, but I don’t even know what that is and he hasn’t talked to me yet,” Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told our Tanya Snyder. EPW is planning to release and mark up its version of the legislation, which focuses on highway programs, next week.

For what it’s worth, EPW Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) shrugged off a similar question posed to him by MT. “You’ll have to talk to the chairman of the Finance Committee,” he said.

ON THE HOUSE SIDE: House Transportation Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) is considering narrowing the criteria for some DOT grant programs in his version of the surface transportation reauthorization after criticism from the GAO. As he told Tanya, “We need two things. We need more money so that we can fund more of the 500 applications that are meritorious. But secondly, I think narrowing the criteria for these specific grant programs so that there’s less discretion and more merit would be good.” Another priority of the bill, he said, is bringing back earmarks.

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL: President Donald Trump has signaled that he still wants to work with Democrats on an infrastructure deal, DeFazio also told Tanya. But don’t count DeFazio as exactly optimistic, after talks fell apart spectacularly earlier this year: “It just got lost and now it’s too late,” he said. “Perhaps in the fall it might come back. I don’t know.”

At a hearing on auto safety Wednesday, Democrats made the case that legislation is needed to press NHTSA to act on everything from impaired driving (three new bills were announced at the hearing) to heatstroke deaths. The risk of carbon monoxide deaths after cars with keyless ignition were left running in a garage was a focus of the hearing, with witness Susan Livingston giving emotional testimony about the death of her parents in May. “This was a flawed vehicle, a murder weapon, missing a basic safety feature,” Livingston said. “With an inexpensive and readily available ignition autostop, the car would have stopped 30 minutes after it arrived in the garage. And Jim and Sherry would still be alive.”

She said GM and Ford support a new bill to mandate autostop and she “cannot get my head around” why NHTSA and Congress have not required it. Two new bills to address impaired driving — including with opioids and pot — were introduced before the hearing, and another one was announced during the hearing.

BACK IN THE GAME: Bill Shuster, former chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has registered as as lobbyist, according to POLITICO Influence. It’s a development that was expected since he joined Squire Patton Boggs. He’s not allowed to lobby Congress until next year, but he is allowed to work with the executive branch. PI reports that his first official clients are the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and TerreStar, a wireless company.

GREENER PASTURES: Second-term congressman and House Transportation member Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.) announced this week that he won’t run for reelection. Mitchell was the vice chair of the Aviation Subcommittee in the last Congress and played a sizable role in pushing through the FAA reauthorization bill that passed in 2018.

NEW GIGS: Danny Harris has been named the new executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a New York City nonprofit that advocates for better bicycling, walking and public transit. Also, Kevin Riddett, the CEO of Railworks, has been named to the board of the Railway Supply Institute, which also hired John Hebert as director of communications.

— “House passes 2-year Coast Guard authorization.” POLITICO Pro.

— “They said you could leave electric scooters anywhere — then the repo men struck back.” The Verge.

— “Jet fuel contamination subject of NTSB safety alert.” National Transportation Safety Board.

— “American Airlines flight attendant bitten by emotional support dog, requires five stitches.” USA Today.

— “GM’s Cruise delays rollout of AVs.” Automotive News.

DOT appropriations run out in 67 days. The FAA reauthorization expires in 1,528 days. Highway and transit policy is up for renewal in 436 days.





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