Boeing, FAA share blame in Max report

Aircraft maker strips CEO of chairman title

A panel of international aviation regulators found that Boeing withheld key information about the 737 Max from pilots and regulators, and the Federal Aviation Administration lacked the expertise to understand an automated flight system implicated in two deadly crashes of Max jets.

In its report issued Friday, the panel made 12 recommendations for improving the FAA’S certification of new aircraft, including more emphasis on understanding how pilots will handle the increasing amount of automation driving modern planes.

The report, called a joint authorities technical review, focused on FAA approval of a new flight-control system called MCAS that automatically pushed the noses of Max jets down — based on faulty readings from a single sensor — before crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.

During the certification process, Boeing changed the design of MCAS, making it more powerful, but key people at the FAA were not always told. The review committee said it believed that if FAA technical staff knew more about how MCAS worked, they likely would have seen the possibility that it could overpower pilots’ efforts to stop the nosedown pitch.

MCAS evolved “from a relatively benign system to a not-so-benign system without adequate knowledge by the FAA,” the panel’s chief, former National Transportation Safety Board chairman Christopher Hart, told reporters. He faulted poor communication and said there was no indication of intentional wrongdoing.

Within hours after the release of the report, Boeing announced that CEO Dennis Muilenburg would lose his title as chairman of the aircraft maker. The move will allow Muilenburg to better focus on running the company, according to Boeing’s board of directors, which named David L. Calhoun to serve as non-executive chairman.

The five-month international review was separate from the FAA’S consideration of whether to recertify the plane once Boeing finishes updates to software and computers on the plane.

FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said in a prepared statement that the agency would review all recommendations from the panel and take appropriate action.