Max memos ‘disturbing’ United States
Boeing employees raised doubts among themselves about the safety of the 737 Max, hid problems from federal regulators, and ridiculed those responsible for designing and overseeing the jetliner, according to a damning batch of emails and text messages released nearly a year after the aircraft was grounded over two catastrophic crashes.
The documents, made public by Boeing at the urging of Congress, have fuelled allegations that the company put speed and cost savings ahead of safety in rolling out the Max.
In the 117 pages of internal messages, Boeing employees talked about misleading regulators about problems with the company’s flight simulators, which are used to develop aircraft and then train pilots on the new equipment. In one exchange, an employee told a colleague he or she wouldn’t let family members ride on a Max. The colleague agreed.
In a message chain from May 2018, an employee wrote: ‘‘I still haven’t been forgiven by God for covering up (what) I did last year.’’
It was not clear exactly what the cover-up involved.
The documents contain redactions and are full of Boeing jargon. The employees’ names were removed.
Employees also groused about Boeing’s senior management, the company’s selection of low-cost suppliers, wasting money, and the Max. ‘‘This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys,’’ one employee wrote.
In response, Boeing said it was confident that the simulators worked properly, but that the conversations raised questions about the company’s dealings with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in getting the machines certified.
It said it was considering disciplinary action against some employees: ‘‘These communications do not reflect the company we are and need to be, and they are completely unacceptable.’’
An FAA spokesman said the simulator mentioned had been checked three times in the past six months, and ‘‘any potential safety deficiencies identified in the documents have been addressed’’.
The Max has been grounded worldwide since March, after two crashes five months apart – involving Indonesia’s Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines – killed 346 people. Investigators believe the crashes were caused when the jets’ new automated flight control system mistakenly pushed the planes’ noses down.
Boeing is still working to fix the flight control software and other systems on the Max, and to persuade regulators to let it fly again. The work has taken much longer than Boeing expected, and it is unclear when the plane will return to the skies.
Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the development and approval of the Max.
A lawmaker leading one of the congressional investigations into Boeing called the batch of messages ‘‘incredibly damning’’.
‘‘They paint a deeply disturbing picture of the lengths Boeing was apparently willing to go to in order to evade scrutiny from regulators, flight crews and the flying public, even as its own employees were sounding alarms internally,’’ said Oregon Democrat Congressman Peter DeFazio, chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
In one email, an employee who apparently is a test pilot wrote that he crashed the first few times he flew the Max in simulator testing.
In a 2015 message, a chief technical pilot said Boeing would push back hard against requirements that pilots undergo simulator training before flying the Max. One of the plane’s biggest selling points, as Boeing saw it, was that 737 pilots could easily switch to the new jet with only a small amount of computerbased training, saving airlines money.
Critics have said that the FAA should have required simulator training so pilots knew how to handle malfunctions with the new flight control software, known as MCAS. Initially, Boeing didn’t disclose to airlines and pilots that the software was on the planes.
The emails add to the growing body of evidence that Boeing misled the FAA and its airline customers.
Last October, Boeing turned over messages in which a former senior test pilot, Mark Forkner, told a co-worker in 2016 that the MCAS was ‘‘egregious’’ and ‘‘running rampant’’ when he tested it in a simulator. ‘‘So I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly),’’ wrote Forkner, then Boeing’s chief technical pilot for the 737.
‘‘This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.’’
Boeing employee