Boeing staff raised safety concerns
Experts had voiced fears about the Boeing Max aircraft long before two crashes killed 346 people, writes David Koenig.
Boeing documents show that company employees raised concerns about the design of a key flight-control system on the Max aircraft, and the pace of assembly-line production, long before two 737 jets crashed, killing 346 people.
Two days of hearings in the US Congress have produced internal Boeing documents showing that company employees expressed concerns about the design of a key flight-control system, and the hectic pace of production, before the two crashes, in Indonesia in October last year, and in Ethiopia in March this year.
Angry lawmakers bombarded the hearings’ star witness, Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg, with questions and lectures. They asked why he got a pay rise last year, and whether anyone was being held accountable for the crashes.
One of the revelations concerned Boeing’s design of an automated flight-control system that played a part in both accidents, pushing the planes’ noses down.
The House Transportation Committee released a redacted copy of a 2015 email in which a Boeing expert questioned making the flight system, called MCAS, dependent on just one sensor to measure the plane’s pitch – its ‘‘angle of attack’’, or AOA.
‘‘Are we vulnerable to single AOA sensor failures with the MCAS implementation, or is there some checking that occurs?’’, the employee wrote.
Boeing went ahead with the single-sensor design, with no backup to prevent MCAS from pushing the plane into a dive. Investigators believe faulty readings from a single sensor triggered nose-down commands before both crashes.
At the House hearing, and another this week in the Senate, lawmakers blasted Muilenburg over the design and marketing of the Max. Several said the company had put profits above safety.
Democrat Peter DeFazio, chairman of the House panel, said Boeing showed a ‘‘lack of candour all through this’’. He and others highlighted Boeing’s failure to tell pilots about MCAS until after the Lion Air crash in Indonesia.
They hammered Muilenburg over his pay, which rose last year to
US$23.4 million, including more than
$13m in extra incentive pay. Some called for him to step down. The Boeing board stripped him of the title of chairman last month.
Muilenburg explained changes Boeing is making to the Max, and other steps it is taking to improve safety. He conceded that the company ‘‘made some mistakes’’ in designing MCAS and telling regulators and pilots about the system.
‘‘We are learning, we still have more to learn, we have work to do to restore the public’s trust,’’ Muilenburg said.
Some members of the panel defended Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which certified the plane.
The committee’s top Republican, Sam Graves, said he wasn’t absolving Boeing of mistakes, but put some of the blame on foreign pilots. A preliminary report on the second Max crash revealed that the Ethiopian Airlines pilots were flying so fast it might have hindered their ability to overcome an MCAS malfunction.
‘‘I guess we’re going to have to start building airplanes to the lowest common denominator . . . if we’re going to export’’ planes, Graves said.
Muilenburg was accompanied at this week’s back-to-back hearings by the company’s chief engineer, John Hamilton, who fielded most of the technical questions. It was the first time that Boeing officials had testified before Congress about the crashes.
What did we learn?
■ Muilenburg acknowledged that he knew before the second crash that a senior Boeing test pilot had raised concerns after trying MCAS in a flight simulator. That surprised lawyers who are suing Boeing on behalf of families who lost relatives on the flights.
‘‘The CEO knew about this email and text after the Lion Air crash. There is no excuse for not grounding the fleet at that time,’’ said Nomaan Husain, a Houston lawyer.
Congressman Rick Larsen said he believed the test pilot was complaining about MCAS, but Muilenburg said Boeing’s ‘‘best understanding’’ is that he was actually reporting problems with the simulator. Muilenberg could not be
sure because Boeing has not been able to interview the pilot, who now works for Southwest Airlines.
The Seattle Times has reported that the pilot refused to provide documents to federal investigators, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
■ A senior Boeing manager complained that workers were being pushed too hard to churn out 52 of the 737s a month in 2018, raising safety issues at the factory near Seattle. In an email obtained by the House committee, he urged a superior to stop production, and said he was hesitant to put his own family on a Boeing plane.
Muilenburg said the manager, who has since retired, ‘‘raised some good concerns’’ that the company had since addressed. However, Boeing did not reduce the production rate until this April, when the grounding of the Max halted deliveries of new jets.
■ Boeing had money riding on making sure the FAA did not require extensive pilot retraining because of MCAS.
Boeing had promised Southwest a rebate of $1m a plane – $280m at current orders – if pilots needed extensive training for the Max. DeFazio said this put pressure on employees to make sure the Max did not trigger a requirement for that additional training.
■ Congress is likely to consider changes in how the FAA certifies new planes.
While the hearings focused on Boeing, lawmakers heaped plenty of criticism on the FAA, especially its longstanding practice of deputising employees of Boeing and other manufacturers to test and analyse the safety of aircraft components. At least one bill has already been introduced; other lawmakers pledged to make their own proposals.
■ There was no news on when the Max will fly again.
Boeing has been spending months revising MCAS, tying it to an additional sensor at all times and making it less powerful. The company hopes to win approval before year-end from the FAA to get the Max back in the air.
Regulators in other parts of the world have indicated they may take longer to review Boeing’s changes to the plane. –AP
‘‘The CEO knew about [safety fears] after the Lion Air crash. There is no excuse for not grounding the fleet at that time.’’
Lawyer Nomaan Husain