FAA saw 737 Max flight-control system as non-critical risk
Conclusion is part of internal agency review of jetliner certification process
An internal Federal Aviation Administration review has tentatively determined that senior agency officials didn’t participate in or monitor crucial safety assessments of a Boeing Co. 737 MAX flight-control system later implicated in two fatal crashes, according to industry and government officials.
The preliminary conclusion, which hasn’t been reported before, may be discussed at a House Transportation subcommittee hearing Wednesday. It is part of the first official investigative findings suggesting how the potentially hazardous design of the MCAS system, which misfired and led to the pair of accidents costing 346 lives, ended up in the Chicago company’s now-grounded MAX fleet.
The results, these officials said, also indicate that during the certification process, Boeing didn’t flag the automated stall-prevention feature as a system whose malfunction or failure could cause a catastrophic event. Such a designation would have led to more intense scrutiny. FAA engineers and midlevel managers deferred to Boeing’s early safety classification, the inquiry determined, allowing company experts to conduct subsequent analyses of potential hazards with limited agency oversight. Boeing employees who served as designated agency representatives signed off on the final design, according to people familiar with the findings.
The people who described the report didn’t specify what information and safety data Boeing shared with the FAA during the approval process, a topic that is a major focus of various ongoing investigations. Also at issue is whether agency officials performed any assessment on their own about the system’s initial safety classification, according to aviation industry officials, pilot unions and others tracking the investigations.
The FAA’s administrative review, launched in March in the wake of the second fatal crash, didn’t uncover efforts by Boeing to flout certification rules or intentionally provide faulty data to the FAA, according to people familiar with the findings. But it remains unclear what formal processes the FAA had in place to conduct an assessment independent of the initial determination by Boeing—that MCAS wasn’t critical to safety and therefore didn’t warrant close FAA scrutiny.
Topics covered by the internal review are likely to come up during acting FAA chief Daniel Elwell’s testimony to the House subcommittee.
The hearing comes as a Justice Department probe into the model’s initial approval, previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, has broadened to include subpoenas issued to pilot unions as well as airlines. Some unions have complained about what they call Boeing’s lack of transparency as well as its shifting safety explanations regarding MCAS-related matters.
Boeing originally designed the system to rely on a single sensor rather than two to verify data about the angle of a plane’s nose. Investigators have said that in both accidents, errant data from a single sensor caused the MCAS system to strongly push down the jet’s nose, eventually causing a steep and fatal dive.
In its own analysis of MCAS, Boeing considered the potential for erroneous data from a single sensor, according to a person familiar with the matter.
But in the end, company officials have said, Boeing determined that dual sensors weren’t required because trained pilots could turn off MCAS using established cockpit procedures, if the system malfunctioned.
That reasoning is one of the matters investigators are examining, according to people with knowledge of the probes.
In describing the approval process, a Boeing spokesman has said, “The FAA considered the final configuration and operating parameters of MCAS during MAX certification and concluded that it met all certification and regulatory requirements.”
Previously, an FAA spokesman said the agency is determined to unravel the precise actions and sequence of events that resulted in the troubled plane’s approval in 2017. “There are several independent reviews of both Boeing and FAA processes regarding the certification of MAX and, specifically, the aircraft’s automated flight system,” the spokesman said.
In testimony to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee two months ago, Mr. Elwell said detailed safety assessment and approval of the suspect system was “delegated,” or handed over, to Boeing relatively early in the approval process under standard procedures. But he didn’t tell senators how that initial decision was reached or exactly what role FAA officials played in subsequent safety assessments.
The FAA’s tentative conclusions won’t be the definitive word on the approval process for the beleaguered MAX fleet. The U.S. Department of Transportation, federal prosecutors and the staff of the full House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee are all looking into details of the certification, including whether Boeing misled or provided incomplete information to the FAA.
Several outside advisory groups, including one composed of eight foreign regulators, also are examining related issues surrounding certification of the 737 MAX. None of those other inquiries has yielded preliminary findings.
In recent days, pilot unions for the three U.S. operators of the 737 MAX—Southwest Airlines Co., American Airlines Group Inc., and United Continental Holdings Inc.—said they received subpoenas. Former Boeing employees, including some who worked on the MAX, have also received broad subpoenas for documents related to the aircraft.
Southwest and American have also received subpoenas, representatives for the airlines said. A spokesman for United declined to comment.
American and Southwest’s pilot unions have criticized Boeing for not including details about MCAS or its potential hazards in pilot manuals or training. Southwest has said the carrier learned—only after the Oct. 29 Lion Air crash—that cockpit warnings related to sensors that trigger MCAS were installed on the MAX but not working. United has said it learned after the March10 Ethiopian Airlines crash.