Boeing plane in Ethiopian Airlines crash ‘not safe’says US investigation
A report released by US investigators into two deadly Boeing 737 MAX crashes, including the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, said that Boeing and the US aviation regulator were responsible for developing and certifying an aircraft that was not safe to fly, writes Shoshana Kedem.
Following the Ethiopian Airlines accident on 10 March 2019 that killed 157 people, and the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia five months earlier, both Boeing and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) blamed “foreigntrained pilots” for “not following procedures” and discounted technical design flaws in the 737 Max.
But the report from the US Congress’s House Committee on Transport and Infrastructure said that the 737 Max aircraft used in both accidents was unsafe for pilots regardless of their level of training.
“While both Boeing and the FAA have pointed to pilot performance as a factor in the MAX crashes and while pilot performance is often a contributing factor in any aircraft accident, neither Boeing nor the FAA can shirk their responsibility for developing and certifying an aircraft that was not safe to fly for all pilots,” congressional Democrats Peter DeFazio and Rick Larson said in the report.
Safety system at fault
The 18-month investigation found the 737 MAX was unsafe because the FAA had approved a faulty safety system called MCAS due to what investigators said was an overly close relationship between Boeing and the regulator.
MCAS, which is designed to automatically counter a tendency in the 737 Max to turn upwards, was not mentioned in crew manuals. Boeing also sought to convince regulators not to mandate simulator training as a requirement for Max pilots, as it would incur extra costs.
The report issued by the US House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure also found that Boeing had withheld testing data from the FAA.
“Boeing had information from its own test data suggesting that some pilots, even US-trained Boeing test pilots, would need more training on the MAX, particularly to respond to an erroneous activation of MCAS effectively. However, Boeing appears to have discounted this test data and ignored this evidence, assuming that all pilots would respond quickly and effectively to uncommanded MCAS activation. Those assumptions were drastically wrong.”
The report noted that allegations made by an Ethiopian Airlines former chief engineer could not be proven.
“A whistleblower with knowledge of Ethiopian Airlines’ actions in the aftermath of the March
2019 crash alleged that staff of the carrier accessed the airplane’s maintenance records the day after the accident. Such action is contrary to protocols that call for records to be immediately sealed following a crash. However, while it is not known how, if at all, the records were altered, the whistleblower contends that this action was part of a pattern of faulty repairs and erroneous records that call into question the reliability of Ethiopian Airlines’ maintenance practices,” the investigators said.
Ethiopian Airlines did not respond to requests for comment. Boeing said it had improved its safety culture and incorporated many of the report’s recommendations. Ethiopia’s Civil Aviation Authority is preparing its own accident report on Flight 302.