BEFORE 2 CRASHES, REGULATORS KNEW BOEING 737 MAX’S ANTISTALL FEATURE HAD ISSUES
SINGAPORE— US and European regulators knew at least two years before a Lion Air crash in October last year that there were issues with the Boeing 737 Max’s automated antistall feature.
In its February 2016 certification document, the European Aviation and Space Agency (Easa) said there were unusual situations where pilots have to make manual adjustments rather than an electric thumb switch on the control yoke.
Further training needed
Easa certified the plane as safe in part because additional procedures and training would “clearly explain” to pilots the “unusual” situations in which they would need to manipulate a rarely used manual wheel to control the plane’s angle.
Easa and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ultimately determined that setup was safe enough for the plane to be certified, with the European agency citing training plans and the relative rarity of conditions requiring the trim wheel.
Not in the manual
Those situations, however, were not listed in the Boeing 737 Max flight manual, according to a copy from American Airlines seen by Reuters.
In both the Lion Air crash in October and the Ethiopian Air crash on March 10, the pilots lost control after the new antistall system activated because of a faulty sensor, according to a preliminary report from Indonesian and Ethiopian investigators.
The source said that training materials before the crash did not say the wheel could be required under those conditions but that Boeing advised the airline about it after the crash.
Boeing declined to comment on the Easa document or its advice to Lion Air, citing the ongoing investigation into the crash.
The survivors of a Rwandan passenger on the crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight filed a lawsuit against Boeing in US federal court in Chicago, where the Boeing Co. is based, on Thursday.
Another lawsuit
The lawsuit was filed by the family of Jackson Musoni and alleges that Boeing had defectively designed the automated flight control system.
It was the first lawsuit to arise from the Ethiopian crash, but several lawsuits have also been filed, also in Chicago, by the families of those who died in the Lion Air crash.
More than 30 relatives of the crash victims have sued Boeing, including the family of the plane’s copilot who claimed in December that the plane “was defective and unreasonably dangerous.”
The 737 Max planes were grounded worldwide following the Ethiopian Airlines disaster, which came five months after the Lion Air crash.
On Wednesday, FAA officials testified before a US Senate panel that agency delegates the work of airplane certification to its maker, such as Boeing, under a decades-old process.
USFAA under fire
Acting FAA head Daniel Elwell said it would cost $1.8 billion and take 10,000 new employees for the agency to handle all aircraft certification internally.
Elwell said the alert to pilots that Boeing was making standard on all 737 Max planes as part of a software upgrade was not “safety critical.”