The chairman of the House Transportation Committee said Wednesday that an FAA analysis of the Boeing 737 MAX jetliner performed after a fatal crash last year predicted “as many as 15 future fatal crashes within the life of the fleet.”

The chilling forecast was based on the assumption that 99 out of 100 crews could handle the erroneous activation of an automated anti-stall system on the plane, according to The Washington Post.

Committee Chairman Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said the Federal Aviation Administration had “failed.”

The agency “didn’t provide the regulatory oversight necessary to ensure the safety of the flying public,” he said.

Meanwhile, FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson told the committee, “We are humbled when our best efforts fail.” But, he added, “The system is not broken.”

“To prevent the next accident from happening, we have to look at the overall aviation system and how all the pieces interact,” Dickson said in prepared testimony.

“Focus on a single factor will lead us to miss opportunities to improve safety that come from regulators and industry raising the bar not just in certification, but in maintenance and training procedures,” he added.

Dickson also confirmed that the agency will not allow the grounded jetliners – which were involved in two fatal crashes — to resume flights before the end of the year.

The process for approving the MAX’s return to the skies still has 10 or 11 milestones left to complete, including a certification flight and a public comment period on pilot training requirements, he told CNBC before the hearing.

“If you just do the math, it’s going to extend into 2020,” he said.

The DC hearing began with a discussion of a November 2018 internal FAA review which, following the first crash, found that the plane had a high likelihood of future crashes.

However, despite finding a likelihood for as many as 15 future crashes caused by the plane’s design, the agency allowed the plane to continue flying. The global fleet of about 400 MAX planes was grounded after the second fatal crash, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March 2019.

The two fatal nose-dives were triggered by the misfiring of the automated anti-stall Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, in a Lion Air plane in October 2018 and in the Ethiopian Airlines one five months later.

All 346 people aboard both new planes were killed after the pilots lost control.

Rather than grounding the plane after the first crash, the FAA determined that it would require Boeing to revise the MCAS flight handling system in a process overseen by the agency.

“I don’t know why this airplane wasn’t grounded after the analysis was done,” DeFazio said.

“Over a 45-year period, we’d have an unacceptable level of risk. So we’d have to take action to reduce that risk,” said Dickson, who did not join the agency until this summer following the two crashes.

Dickson said he did not know who saw the internal analysis but that the FAA’s decisions after the Lion Air crash were “data driven.”

“We really didn’t know what the causes were” of the Lion Air crash, Dickson said, adding that issues with plane maintenance and pilot performance also were factors besides the MCAS.

“Obviously the result is not satisfactory,” Dickson said when pressed if the agency had made a mistake. “The decision did not achieve the result it was intended to achieve.”

DeFazio said the FAA’s response was “way less than not satisfactory… it was catastrophic,” adding that it was unclear how widely the internal FAA risk analysis had been distributed in the agency and whether officials on a key air worthiness panel saw the document.

“We may have a captive regulatory problem in the field offices,” DeFazio said, referring to agency officials in Seattle who on major decisions deferred to Boeing during the MAX certification.

A Boeing rep said the company agreed with the FAA’s response to the Lion Air crash.

“The actions that Boeing and the FAA took, including the issuance of the Operations Manual Bulletin and Airworthiness Directive and the timeline for implementing the MCAS enhancements, were fully consistent with the FAA’s analysis and established process,” the spokesman said.

Dickson said he was intent on improving the FAA’s operations to prevent future crashes.

He said the crashed showed problems with “fragmented and inadequate” communications at the agency that inhibited its ability to properly assess safety during certification.

The House Transportation Committee also was expected to hear from Edward Pierson, a former senior manager at Boeing who told company officials he feared production problems put aircraft safety at risk.

Michael Collins, a former FAA safety engineer who has criticized the agency’s move to delegate some decisions to Boeing, also planned to testify.

With Post wires