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The European Union Aviation Safety Agency is expected to allow the Boeing 737 Max to begin flying again before the end of the year. The US Federal Aviation Administration has yet to give its go-ahead, but American Airlines has tentatively scheduled the plane’s return for December 29.
American realizes that passengers may be nervous. Boeing 737 Max planes were grounded around the world last year after two accidents killed 346 people. To provide peace of mind, American has developed plans for corporate customers to tour the plane and listen to the experts. The airline says passengers will be able to see if they have a reservation on a 737 Max and can switch to another flight if they wish. “If a customer doesn’t want to fly the 737 Max, they won’t have to,” American said.
The two accidents – a Lion Air flight in 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max in 2019 – were not due to pilot error. Nor were they the result of carelessness, such as runway debris that blew up a tire and a fuel tank, as happened in the Air France Concorde crash in 2000. Instead, in the words of the Chamber’s transportation and infrastructure committee of US Representatives The 737 Max disasters were “the horrible culmination of a series of technical flawed assumptions by Boeing engineers, a lack of transparency by Boeing management, and grossly insufficient oversight by part of the FAA ”.
In both cases, a faulty sensor caused the onboard software to force the aircraft’s nose down despite attempts by pilots to correct them. The transportation committee report, released in September, is rife with Boeing errors. Let’s consider just three.
First, Boeing dismissed efforts to make simulator training mandatory for pilots flying the 737 Max because it wanted to reduce the cost of the plane. This was despite the 737 Max’s tendency to tilt upward, requiring the introduction of new software to force the nose down. After some questions, the FAA agreed with Boeing’s insistence that no simulator training was needed. When asked by some non-US carriers, Boeing’s chief technical pilot did everything he could to dissuade them, writing to a colleague: “I am saving this company a sick amount of $$$$.”
Second, after the accidents, Boeing and the FAA tried to blame the pilots. But in 2012, a Boeing test pilot in a 737 Max simulator took 10 seconds to deal with the unexpected activation of the software, an interval the pilot described as “catastrophic.” The committee said it “found no evidence that Boeing shared this information with the FAA, its customers, or the 737 Max pilots.”
Third, before the accidents, a supervisor at the factory where the 737 Max was being assembled warned the plant manager that the pressure from the company to produce the planes was exhausting workers and potentially damaging safety. “For the first time in my life, I regret to say that I hesitate to put my family on a Boeing plane,” he wrote. The supervisor, a former naval flight officer, told the plant chief that, in the military, concerns like his would lead to the suspension of production. “The military is not a for-profit organization,” his boss allegedly replied.
For years, I told people who were afraid of flying that they were in more danger going to the airport. I had visited airplane factories, interviewed managers, and felt that in the unlikely event that they risked their companies’ reputations by taking shortcuts, regulators would stop them. The aftermath of the 737 Max has shattered that complacency. As it goes airborne once again, Boeing and the FAA must prove they deserve the trust of the flying public.
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