A scathing preliminary report issued by the House of Congress’ Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure heavily criticised both the Federal Aviation Authority and Boeing for multiple failures that led to the deaths of 346 people and the subsequent grounding of the 737 MAX aircraft
The preliminary report described the crashing of two brand-new aircraft, of a brand-new derivative model, within five months of each other as “extraordinary and unprecedented in modern times” and outlined five key failures that led up to the tragedies, most damningly of all this included the suggestion of collusion between the FAA and Boeing.
“Multiple career FAA officials have documented examples to the Committee where FAA management overruled the determination of the FAA’s own technical experts at the behest of Boeing. In these cases, FAA technical and safety experts determined that certain Boeing design approaches on its transport category aircraft were potentially unsafe and failed to comply with FAA regulation, only to have FAA management overrule them and side with Boeing instead”, said the report.
The committee, chaired by Oregon House representative, Pete DeFazio, didn’t outline specific actions but it did state, it “hoped these preliminary findings will help pave the way for legislative reforms.”
The other four themes picked out in the report included, production pressures, specifically Boeing’s need to compete with Airbus’s A230neo, “this… resulted in extensive efforts to cut costs, maintain the 737 MAX program schedule, and not slow down the 737 MAX production line. The Committee’s investigation has identified several instances where the desire to meet these goals and expectations jeopardized the safety of the flying public.”
The committee cited “faulty assumptions’ by Boeing with regard to its MCAS and AOS systems, one which it said, “violated Boeing’s own internal design guidelines established during development.”
The report also described a culture of concealment at Boeing, this included hiding the very existence of MCAS from 737 MAX pilots13 and failing to disclose that the AOA disagree alert was inoperable on the majority of the 737 MAX fleet, despite having been certified as a standard cockpit feature.
It also identified conflicted representation in the FAA’s current oversight structure, saying it has documented several instances where Boeing authorized representatives (ARs)—Boeing employees who are granted special permission to represent the interests of the FAA and to act on the agency’s behalf in validating aircraft systems and designs’ compliance with FAA requirements—failed to take appropriate actions to represent the interests of the FAA and to protect the flying public.
“These five recurring themes paint a disturbing picture of Boeing’s development and production of the 737 MAX and the FAA’s ability to provide appropriate oversight of Boeing’s 737 MAX program. These issues must be addressed by both Boeing and the FAA in order to correct poor certification practices that have emerged, faulty analytical assumptions that have surfaced, notably insufficient transparency by Boeing, and inadequate oversight of Boeing by the FAA,” said the report.
“The FAA failed in its oversight responsibilities to ensure the safety of the traveling public,” it added.
However, Steve Dickson Federal Aviation Authority’s administrator speaking at the UK Aviation Club luncheon in London at the start of the February, suggested that responsibility for MAX’s failing went beyond simply Boeing and the US regulator.
“These accidents also put a spotlight on global pilot training standards as well as maintenance practices and we’ll continue to advocate for improvements in those areas as well because the operational processes are a critical part of our aviation safety system.”