FAA clears Boeing 747Max for flight
Agency’s decision made nearly 2 years after deadly crashes
The air safety agency says it completed a“comprehensive and methodical”20-month review process.
After nearly two years and a pair of deadly crashes, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has cleared Boeing’s 737Max for flight.
The nation’s air safety agency announced the move Wednesday, saying it was done after a “comprehensive and methodical” 20-month review process.
Regulators around the world grounded theMax in March 2019, after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet. That happened less than five months after another Max flown by Indonesia’s Lion Air plunged into the Java Sea. A total of 346 passengers and crew members on both planes were killed.
Federal Aviation Administration chief Stephen Dickson signed an order Wednesday rescinding the grounding. U.S. airlines will fly the Max once Boeing updates critical software and computers and pilots receive training in flight simulators.
The FAA says the order was made in cooperation with air safety regulators worldwide.
The move follows congressional hearings on the crashes that led to criticism of the FAA for lax oversight and Boeing for rushing to implement a new software system that put profits over safety and ultimately led to the firing of its CEO.
Investigators focused on anti-stall software that Boeing had devised to counter the plane’s tendency to tilt nose-up because of the size and placement of the engines. That softwarepushed
the nose down repeatedly on both planes that crashed, overcoming the pilots’ struggles to regain control. In each case, a single faulty sensor triggered the nosedown pitch.
The new software now requires inputs from two sensors to activate the software, which Boeing says does not override pilot controls like it did in the past.
The Chicago-based company changed the software so it doesn’t repeatedly point the nose of the plane downto counteract possible aerodynamic stalling.
On a conference call, Dickson said the Max is now the most scrutinized transport aircraft in history,
with over 40 FAA employees working tens of thousands of hours on the plane.
“The design changes we have overseen make it impossible for these accident scenarios to reoccur,” he said.
He said that if FAA knew after Lion Air what it learned during this review of the plane, it should have grounded the plane after the first crash.
“These events and the lessonswe have learned as a result have reshaped our company and further focused our attention on our core values of safety, quality and integrity,” Boeing CEO David Calhoun said in a statement.
The aircraft maker’s redemptioncomesin the middle of a pandemic that has scared away passengers and decimated the aviation industry, limiting its ability to make a comeback. Air travel in the U.S. alone is down about 65% from a year ago.
Boeing sales of new planes have plunged because of the Max and the coronavirus pandemic. Orders for more than 1,000 Max jets have been canceled or removed fromBoeing’s backlog this year. Each plane has a sticker price of $99 million to $135 million, although airlines routinely pay less.
Boeing shares fell nearly 3.2%, to close at $203.30
Wednesday. That’s less than half of the all-time high of $440.62 reached March 1, 2019, just days before the Ethiopian crash, but well above the $95 in March, when the pandemic caused massive disruptions to travel and the global economy.
John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at MIT, said people typically avoid airplanes for a few months after there are problems. But theMaxcase is unusual, andwere it not for the novel coronavirus, Hansman said he would feel safe flying on aMax.
“It’s probably the safest airplane to be on,” he said.
Relatives of people who died in the crashes aren’t convinced. They accused Boeing of hiding critical design features from the FAA.
“The flying public should avoid the Max,” said Michael Stumo, whose 24year-old daughter died in the second crash. “Change your flight. This is still a more dangerous aircraft than othermodern planes.”
American is the only U.S. airline to put theMax in its schedule so far, starting with one round trip daily between New York and Miami beginning Dec. 29. United expects to start using the plane early next year, while Southwest said itsMax jetswon’t fly before the second quarter of 2021.
Some consumer groups urged airlines to fully disclose when Max flights are planned. That’s usually on an airline’s website, although passengers have to knowwhere to click.
Nearly 400 Max jets were in service worldwide when they were grounded, and Boeing has built and storedabout450more since then. All have to undergo maintenance before they can fly.
Boeing’s reputation has taken a beating since the crashes. Its then-CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, initially suggested that the foreign pilots were to blame. However, congressional investigators discovered an FAA analysis — conducted after the first Max crash — that predicted therewould be 15 more crashes during the plane’s life span if the flightcontrol software were not fixed.
Boeing was repeatedly wrong about how quickly it could fix the plane. When those predictions continued to be wrong, and Boeing was perceived as putting undue pressure on the FAA, Muilenburg was fired in December 2019.