1/4/2024 0 Comments 737 max flight control systemThe company’s website pitched the jet to airlines with a promise that “as you build your 737 MAX fleet, millions of dollars will be saved because of its commonality with the Next-Generation 737.” The crashes raise difficult questions about the Boeing-FAA relationship Minimizing MAX pilot transition training was an important cost saving for Boeing’s airline customers, a key selling point for the jet, which has racked up more than 5,000 orders. The decision not to fully train pilots on MCAS was made partly as a cost-saving measure, the Times reported: Pilots were only told about the system after the Lion Air crash in October, according to the Times, while an unnamed FAA safety engineer told Gates that the lack of knowledge about the MCAS system might have factored into the Indonesian crash. This included the crucial decision not to train pilots on the new flight control system or mention it in flight manuals because it was only supposed to take control in extreme circumstances. The Seattle Times investigation offers an extremely detailed and technical review of the expansive role Boeing was allowed to take in certifying the safety of its own aircraft and getting the 737 MAX in the air. Boeing wanted to keep costs down and get its plane in the air All this is playing out as the FAA is without a permanent leader - a post Trump reportedly once wanted filled by his personal pilot. But scrutiny over what went wrong with the 737 MAX is only just beginning: The Department of Transportation is investigating the FAA, and a grand jury in DC is issuing subpoenas. The FAA and Boeing have pledged to implement a “software enhancement” for the flight control system by April. As the New York Times reported recently, the agency created a program in 2005 that allowed manufacturers like Boeing to choose their own employees for critical work in certifying new planes were safe to fly. The Seattle Times’s investigation by Dominic Gates reveals how the FAA increasingly delegated inspections and other safety checks to the company itself and pushed inspectors to hand off even more of those tasks as the process continued, a practice that became more common because of FAA budget cuts and that has been formalized by Congress in the appropriations bills lawmakers have passed. The 737 MAX has been grounded across the globe since last week - a decision the FAA was slow to make even as other countries blocked the plane from their airspace. The flight control system has now been implicated in two fatal plane crashes: the Ethiopian Airlines crash last week that killed 157 people and the Lion Air crash in October that killed 189. After the first crash, the FAA learned the plane’s flight control system could adjust the plane’s horizontal tail, pushing down the plane’s nose, to a much greater degree than the initial documents stated. The result, according to a lengthy and damning Seattle Times investigation, was that the company’s safety analysis understated how much control the system could exert in flight and failed to account for how a pilot’s actions might influence the system’s behavior. In a hurry to finish design and manufacture of the Boeing 737 MAX, the new plane that has crashed twice in the past six months, and get the plane to the runway, both Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration appear to have rushed and cut corners - including not mentioning to pilots they had installed a new flight control system on the updated aircraft.
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