(Bloomberg) -- Steve Dickson, the newly sworn-in chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, is testifying for the first time to the House after earlier dashing in a TV interview any lingering hope that the agency might approve fixes to Boeing Co.’s grounded 737 Max this year.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will also hear at least one whistle-blower Wednesday.

Also scheduled to appear, besides Dickson and two other agency officials: a Boeing manager who raised concerns about problems in manufacturing, a former FAA engineer, an expert in human errors like those that occurred in the accidents and an aviation safety expert.

Here are the latest developments:

Pilot Actions Played Role in FAA Not Grounding Jet (11:26 a.m.)

Responding to pointed questions about why FAA didn’t ground the jet after the first 737 Max crash, Dickson said the agency also had data indicating the crash was at least partly the result of actions by Lion Air pilots and mechanics.

“If any of those had gone a different way, that accident would not have occurred and events would have manifested themselves differently,” Dickson said.

Dickson said he was trained as a pilot to address the issues caused by the emergencies in both Max crashes, but added he didn’t want to focus solely on crew actions.

“I’m not about casting blame on anyone or anything,” he said. “I’m about identifying problems, issues and developing solutions and improving the process.”

Those improvements include addressing technical aspects of aircraft, anticipating how pilots might fail and raising international pilot-training standards, he said.

Chairman Says FAA Stonewalled Crash Probe (11:11 a.m.)

The committee chairman said that prior to Dickson’s confirmation, the panel had been “stonewalled” by the FAA when investigators sought to interview career agency personnel who were involved with key decisions on the 737 Max.

That has changed, and committee staff recently interviewed Ali Bahrami, FAA’s associate administrator for aviation safety, who said that he wasn’t aware of the analysis that predicted additional 737 Max crashes without a fix when it was issued after the Lion Air crash last year, Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, said.

“I don’t know how high up this went and I think that’s one of the problems and that’s one of the things we ought to look at,” DeFazio said. “I think most of these decisions were made by captive regulator managers in the Seattle offices and no one in the national offices knew a damn thing about it.”

FAA ‘Rolled the Dice’ on Max Risks, Lawmaker Says (10:36 a.m.)

The FAA’s own safety analysis of the 737 Max after a flight-control system was implicated in the Lion Air crash last year concluded there would be 15 more fatal accidents during the lifetime of the plane if it wasn’t fixed.

DeFazio revealed the analysis during his opening statement.

“Despite its own calculations, the FAA rolled the dice on the safety of the traveling public and let the Max continue to fly until Boeing could overhaul its MCAS software,” DeFazio said in a written version of his statement.

Such analyses are normal after a crash and it looked at what would happen if nothing was done. The FAA and Boeing notified airlines around the world that pilots of the steps they needed to take to prevent accidents if a similar failure occurred in the future. Pilots on an Ethiopian Airlines flight on March 10 performed some of the suggested steps, but not all of them, and lost control.

FAA Won’t Clear 737 Max Fixes Until 2020, Dickson Says (8:09 a.m.)

The FAA won’t complete its process to re-certify the 737 Max until 2020, Dickson said on CNBC before the hearing, dashing the company’s hopes to complete key milestones this year needed to end the aircraft’s nine-month grounding.

“If you do the math, it’s going to extend into 2020,” he said. “We’re going to do it diligently because safety is absolutely our priority with this airplane.”

Boeing said Nov. 11 that it hoped the FAA would approve its fixes to the 737 Max by the end of 2019, though it acknowledged that completing new training requirements for pilots would likely slide into January.

After the FAA clearance, airlines will still need several weeks or more to get their planes back in the air after being held in storage for months. Southwest Airlines Co. and other major U.S. carriers with grounded 737 Max jets have already pulled the planes from their schedules through at least early March.

“I’ve made it very clear that Boeing’s plan is not the FAA’s plan,” Dickson said. “We’re certainly working very closely together, but we’re going to keep our heads down and support the team in getting this work done right.”

A Boeing spokesman said by email that the company continues “to work closely with the FAA and global regulators toward certification and the safe return to service of the MAX.”

Agency to Seek More Data, Dickson to Tell Lawmakers (9:58 a.m.)

In his prepared remarks submitted to the committee, Dickson said the agency --which got a black eye for not grounding the plane until after dozens of other nations acted -- wants to take the lead globally on improving safety in the wake of the 737 Max crashes.

The agency will push using more data to analyze safety hazards, ensuring that workers can raise safety issues without fear and expanding the FAA’s efforts to improve regulation in other nations, Dickson said in prepared testimony released by the committee before the hearing started.

Dickson previously has said he wants to step up how the FAA certifies aircraft after missing hazards in the 737 Max design. His comments before the committee were the first to identify how he wants the agency to act more broadly and with other nations.

“If we are to continue to raise the bar for safety across the globe, it will be important for the FAA and our international partners to foster improvements in standards and approaches, not just for how aircraft are designed and produced, but also how they are maintained and operated,” he said in the prepared remarks.

FAA Must Fix ‘Credibility Problem,’ Lawmaker to Say

Rick Larsen, the Washington Democrat who chairs the House Transportation Committee’s aviation panel, will press Dickson on missteps by the agency in its certification of the 737 Max, and say the agency’s process for approving new jets needs reform.

“The FAA must fix its credibility problem. Just like I asked Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg at the Committee’s last hearing, I expect to hear the three main mistakes the FAA made regarding the 737 Max,” Larsen said in prepared remarks released ahead of the hearing.

Larsen also said he’d focus on why “critical information was not adequately considered” by the FAA when reviewing the jet and how so-called human factors are taken into account as jets become more automated.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ryan Beene in Washington at rbeene@bloomberg.net;Alan Levin in Washington at alevin24@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.