Boeing, FAA both faulted in certification of the 737 Max
Panel: Company withheld vital information; agency lacked necessary expertise
A panel of international aviation regulators found that Boeing withheld key information about the 737 Max from pilots and regulators, and the Federal Aviation Administration lacked the expertise to understand an automated flight system implicated in two deadly overseas crashes of Max jets.
In its report issued Friday, the panel made 12 recommendations for improving the FAA’s certification of new aircraft, including more emphasis on understanding how pilots will handle the increasing amount of automation driving modern planes.
The report, called a joint authorities technical review, focused on FAA approval of a new flight-control system called MCAS that automatically pushed down the noses of Max jets — based on faulty readings from a single sensor — before crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed a total of 346 people.
During the certification process, Boeing changed the design of MCAS, making it more powerful, but key people at the FAA were not always told. The review committee said it believed that if FAA technical staff members knew more about how MCAS worked, they likely would have seen the possibility that it could overpower pilots’ efforts to stop the nose-down pitch.
MCAS evolved “from a relatively benign system to a not-so-benign system without adequate knowledge by the FAA,” the panel’s chief, former National Transportation Safety Board chairman Christopher Hart, told reporters. Hart faulted poor communication and said there was no indication of intentional wrongdoing.
The 737 Max model has been grounded since March. The five-month international review was separate from the FAA’s consideration of whether to recertify the jets once Boeing finishes updates to software and computers on them. Boeing hopes to win FAA approval before year’s end, although several previous Boeing forecasts have turned out to be wrong.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said in a news release that the agency would review all recommendations from the panel and take appropriate action.
Chicago-based Boeing said it would work with the FAA to review the panel’s recommendations and “continuously improve the process and approach used to validate and certify airplanes going forward.”
The international panel included members from U.S. agencies, and aviation regulators from Europe, Canada, China and six other countries.
Hart, the former NTSB chairman, said the American aviation-safety system “has worked very well for decades” — he noted there has been just one accident-related death on a U.S. airliner in the past 10 years — “but this is a system that has room for improvement.”
The panel’s report is likely to increase questions about the FAA’s use of aircraft manufacturers’ own employees in the certification of parts and systems. The report found signs that Boeing put “undue pressures” on employees who worked on Max certification, “which further erodes the level of assurance” in the cooperative approach.
Congressional committees are already looking into the FAA’s use of designated company employees. An FAA critic — Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. — called the report an indictment of “a failed, broken system of aviation safety scrutiny” that will add pressure to reform the program.
The report could also prompt a re-examination of automation, which experts say has led to an erosion of flying skills among many pilots.