Boeing 737 Max warnings ignored
Plane maker knew about the misgivings for months but alerted regulators only this week, FAA says.
A company pilot expressed worries three years ago, but government investigators were informed only recently.
A high-ranking Boeing Co. pilot working on the 737 Max three years ago during its certification expressed misgivings about a feature since implicated in two fatal crashes, calling its handling performance “egregious,” according to 2016 instant messages.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Boeing alerted the Transportation Department late Thursday of instant messages between the pilot and another employee of the plane maker. The regulator said Boeing was aware of the communications for months.
“The FAA finds the substance of the document concerning,” the agency said in a statement. “The FAA is also disappointed that Boeing did not bring this document to our attention immediately upon its discovery.”
The messages are a stunning turn in the saga of Boeing’s top-selling jet, which has been grounded worldwide since March 13. Although the plane maker has said repeatedly that it followed proper procedures to certify the jet, the communications show that senior pilots at the company were concerned about a key aspect of its design and were worried that regulators had been misled.
The revelations also raise questions about Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, who in less than two weeks is scheduled to appear in Washington to testify about the plane. Boeing directors stripped Muilenburg of his chairman role Oct. 11 after a damaging report from a review of the plane’s certification.
Boeing stock tumbled 6.8% on Friday to $344 a share, its biggest drop since February 2016.
The November 2016 instant messages, which were reviewed by Bloomberg News, were exchanges between Mark Forkner, then Boeing ’s chief technical pilot for the 737, and another 737 technical pilot, Patrik Gustavsson. In the messages, Forkner and Gustavsson raised multiple concerns about the automated flight control system that has since been implicated in the two fatal crashes, including not being given data by the company’s test pilots.
Forkner described his alarm at simulator tests in which he encountered troubling behavior in the system.
Boeing had earlier assured the aviation regulator that the feature known as Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, was benign and didn’t need to be included in the plane’s flight manuals, said a person familiar with the issue.
Earlier in 2016, the FAA had approved the company’s request, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the matter and asked not to be named.
Forkner told Gustavsson that MCAS was “running rampant in the sim on me,” referring to simulator tests of the aircraft. “Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious.”
Forkner expressed concern that he may have unknowingly misled the FAA. “So I basically lied to the regulators” he wrote.
“It wasn’t a lie, no one told us this was the case,” Gustavsson replied.
Forkner is now a pilot at Southwest Airlines Co., the airline said in a statement
MCAS automatically pushes down the plane’s nose if it senses the craft is in danger of an aerodynamic stall.
In two crashes of 737 Max planes within less than five months — one off Indonesia last October and one in Ethiopia in March — similar malfunctions triggered MCAS to repeatedly push the planes’ noses down until pilots lost control and the planes dived. The crashes killed everyone aboard, a total of 346 people. After the second crash, the 737 Max was grounded worldwide.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent a terse letter to Muilenburg on Friday demanding more information.
“I understand that Boeing discovered the document in its files months ago,” Dickson said. “I expect your explanation immediately regarding the content of this document and Boeing’s delay in disclosing the document to its safety regulator.” inadvertently,