Call for Boeing chiefs to testify at Senate hearing
BOEING faced growing pressure in Washington this week, with US lawmakers calling for executives to testify about two crashed 737 MAX jets even as the world’s biggest plane-maker works to overcome obstacles to returning the grounded fleet to the skies.
The Senate hearing, at an unspecified date, would be the first time that a US congressional committee has called Boeing executives to appear for questioning about 737 MAX passenger plane crashes in October in Indonesia and March 10 in Ethiopia.
The same panel, the senate commerce subcommittee on aviation and space, will also question US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials. They are likely to be asked why the regulator agreed to certify the MAX planes in March 2017 without requiring extensive extra training.
On Wednesday the FAA sent a notification to global aviation authorities, saying the installation of Boeing’s new automatic flight software in the grounded jets and related training was a priority for the agency.
The Ethiopian Airlines crash has shaken the global aviation industry and cast a shadow over the flagship Boeing model intended to be a standard for decades to come, given parallels with the Lion Air calamity off Jakarta in October.
Boeing was sued on Wednesday in federal court in Chicago by the estate of one of the Lion Air crash victims in which the plaintiffs referred to the Ethiopian crash to support a wrongful death claim against the company. A Boeing spokesman said the company did not respond to, or comment on, questions concerning legal matters.
Also on Wednesday, the Seattle Times, citing unidentified sources, reported the FBI was joining the criminal investigation into the MAX’s certification. The US Justice Department is looking at the FAA’s oversight of Boeing.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon Inspector General said it would investigate a complaint that Acting US Secretary of Defence, Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, violated ethical rules by allegedly promoting Boeing while in office.
Chicago-headquartered Boeing has promised a swift update of software, but regulators in Europe and Canada are shifting away from previous reliance on FAA vetting, saying they will now seek their own guarantees of the MAX planes’ safety.
Aviation experts suspect an automated system, meant to stop stalling by dipping the nose, may be involved in both cases, with pilots struggling to override it as their jets plunged downwards.
As Ethiopian investigators pored over black box data from their crash, sources with knowledge of the doomed Lion Air cockpit voice recorder revealed how pilots scoured a manual in a losing battle to figure out why they were hurtling down to sea.
Communications showed that in the final moments, the captain tried in vain to find the right procedure in the handbook, while the first officer was unable to control the plane.