Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) head Mike Whitaker admitted to a U.S. Senate committee that his agency had been too lax with Boeing in the lead-up to the blowout of a door plug aboard a 737 Max 9. 

Whitaker told the Senate Commerce Committee on June 13 that the FAA "should have had much better visibility" into Boeing's operations prior to the door plug incident, CNN reports. 

“The FAA’s approach was too hands off, too focused on paperwork audits and not focused enough on inspections," he said, adding that the FAA has since made permanent changes to that approach over the last several months.

Read More: Boeing ‘Missed’ 787 Inspections, May Have ‘Falsified Records’

Part of that new includes having more inspectors monitoring Boeing and the planemaker's supplier, Spirit AeroSystems. The FAA previously had 24 inspectors at Boeing and Spirit, but now has more than 30, with a goal to increase that number to 55 sometime down the line. 

In the weeks that followed the 737 Max 9 blowout, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) discovered that crucial bolts had not been installed in the door plug on the plane before it left Boeing's Washington state factory in September 2023. Whitaker noted that the FAA also did not have any inspectors at the plant at that time. 

“We clearly did not have enough folks to see what was going on in that factory,” he said.

Boeing submitted a safety plan to the FAA on June 3, outlining the company's strategy to improve quality control issues and avert future incidents. The specifics of the plan were not made public, but The New York Times reports that it entails weekly meetings with FAA leaders to monitor performance metrics, progress and potential roadblocks.