Boeing, FAA faulted in 737 Max certification
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 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 the noses of Max jets down — based on faulty readings from a single sensor — before crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.
During the certification process, Boeing changed the design of MCAS, making it more powerful, but key people at FAA were not always told.
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. He faulted poor communication, and said there was no indication of intentional wrongdoing.
The Max has been grounded since March. The five-month international review was separate from the FAA’s consideration of whether to recertify the plane once Boeing finishes updates to software and computers on the plane. Boeing hopes to win FAA approval before year end, although several previous Boeing forecasts have turned out to be wrong.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said in a prepared statement that the agency would review all recommendations from the panel and take appropriate action.
“We welcome this scrutiny and are confident that our openness to these efforts will further bolster aviation safety worldwide,” Dickson said.
Boeing said it would work with 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 and eight foreign countries including Canada and China.
Hart, the chairman, said the U.S. 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 around the FAA’s program of delegating some safetyrelated work to employees of the companies that it regulates.
The international panel found signs that Boeing put “undue pressures” on employees who worked on certification of the plane, “which further erodes the level of assurance” in the cooperative approach. Hart said he had no further details about the pressure.
Congressional committees are taking another look at the FAA policy of farming out much review work to designated employees of the manufacturers, whose work is supposed to be monitored by FAA inspectors.
FAA officials have pointed to the safety record of American aviation as evidence that the system is working. They add that it would require vast new staffing and cost billions for FAA to perform the work itself.