The Joint Authorities Technical Review (JATR) has criticised the US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) review of a safety system on Boeing's 737 MAX jets - linked to the two crashes which killed nearly 350 people.
Gaining an advanced copy of the report, Reuters is reporting that JATR, which was commissioned by the FAA in April, looked into the agency's approval of the MCAS anti-stall system on Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.
Commenting on the 69-page series of findings and recommendations, a statement from JATR said: “The JATR team found that the MCAS was not evaluated as a complete and integrated function in the certification documents that were submitted to the FAA.
“The lack of a unified top-down development and evaluation of the system function and its safety analyses, combined with the extensive and fragmented documentation, made it difficult to assess whether compliance was fully demonstrated.”
Boeing's 737 MAX jets have been grounded since March and have come under heavy criticism from regulators across the world. Despite Boeing attempting software changes and training revisions in an attempt to get the aircraft back in the skies.
It was announced earlier this week that American Airlines will push back the expected resumption of flights until January.
The JATR draft recommendations, obtained by Reuters ahead of its release, also said the FAA’s long-standing practice of delegating “a high level” of certification tasks to manufacturers like Boeing needs significant reform to ensure adequate safety oversight.
The report also found that the MCAS “was not evaluated as a complete and integrated function” and that the certification process also suffered from “the lack of a unified top-down development and evaluation” and “extensive and fragmented documentation.”
Boeing has decided not to comment ahead of the report's official release later this week.