The confirmation hearing for Bryan Bedford, a commercial airline executive, comes as the agency confronts critical staffing shortages and questions about passenger safety.
Bryan Bedford, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration, told senators on Wednesday that he would make air travel safety his top priority if confirmed as the agency’s next administrator.
Mr. Bedford, who spent decades running and revamping regional commercial airlines, pressed his credentials before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in a confirmation hearing that comes at a critical juncture for the agency. In recent months, it has scrambled to address staffing shortages among air traffic controllers, modernize outdated technology that has cause significant outages and delays, and quell mounting concerns about passenger safety in the wake of a fatal crash outside Ronald Reagan National Airport on Jan. 29.
“If confirmed, my top priority will be public safety and restoring the public’s confidence in flying,” Mr. Bedford told senators, pointing to his tenure as the president, chief executive and director of Republic Airways as the experience necessary to aggressively carry out changes at the agency.
But leaders of the panel were split along party lines over whether they believed Mr. Bedford — who as an airline executive openly criticized certain federal aviation safety standards — was the right man for the job.
“I do have concerns about the long opposition to the F.A.A.’s 1,500-hour rule,” Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, the panel’s top Democrat, said to Mr. Bedford, referring to a requirement that commercial airline pilots have logged 1,500 flight training hours.
Mr. Bedford has been outspoken about his disdain for the rule, which was established by Congress after a deadly 2009 regional airline crash in Buffalo, and went into effect in 2013. Family members of those killed in the crash, Colgan Air Flight 3407, attended Wednesday’s hearing.