FAAchief tests changes to Boeing’s 737Max jet
The head of the Federal Aviation Administration, a former military and airline pilot, said Wednesday that he likedwhat he sawduring a two-hour test flight of Boeing’s revamped 737Max jetliner, a key step as the agency considers whether to let the plane return to flight after two deadly crashes.
Administrator Stephen Dickson said the FAA is “in the home stretch” of its review of the plane, but he vowed not to take short cuts and declined to set a deadline for a decision.
The FAA said Dickson sat in the captain’s seat during the flight, which took off from the former Boeing Field near Seattle with Boeing pilots also on board.
The crew put the jet through repeated changes in direction, speed and altitude as it headed east over the Cascade Range into central Washington state, according to data from tracking site Flightradar24.com. Dickson said he landed the plane twice and also did “some air work maneuvers.”
The Max has been grounded sinceMarch 2019, after the second crash. Both times, an automated antistall system pushed the nose of the plane down based on faulty readings from sensors. Boeing hopes to win FAA approval later this year for changes it has made to flight-control software and computers, including tamping down the anti-stall system’s power and adding redundancies.
“I liked what I saw on the flight this morning, but we are not to the point yet
where we have completed the process” of certifying Boeing’s changes, said Dickson, who had vowed to fly the plane himself before the FAA cleared it to carry passengers again.
Zipporah Kuria, a British citizen whose father died in the second Max crash, called Dickson’s flight “a gimmick” to reassure the public.
“Just because Dickson flies in a 737 Max 8 doesn’t make it safe,” she said. “It’s clearly a PR stunt for the FAA and a free endorsement for Boeing.”
Dickson said the FAA is working closely with other global regulators and being transparent in its review of the plane.
Shortly before Dickson’s flight, the House Transportation Committee approved legislation to change the way the FAA certifies new planes, including the agency’s reliance on employees of Boeing and other aircraft makers to perform key safety analysis.
The bill would not eliminate the FAA’s use of private-sector employees to review their own compa
nies’ planes — lawmakers believe it would be too expensive for FAA to do the work, and that the aerospace companies have more technical expertise. Instead, the bill would give FAA approval over picking private-sector employees who perform safety analysis and allow civil penalties for companies that interfere with theirwork. Boeing whistleblowers complained of pressure to approve systems on the Max.
The bill would also require plane manufacturers to tell the FAA, airlines and pilots about automated systems that can alter a plane’s path. Top FAA officials and most pilots did not know about the anti-stall system on the Max, called MCAS, until after the first crash, in October 2018 in Indonesia. Less than five months later, another Max crashed in Ethiopia. In all, 346 people died.
“Those crashes were the inevitable culmination of stunning acts of omissions within Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration,” said committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.