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The US Federal Aviation Administration issued an order Wednesday to allow Boeing’s 737 Max to return to the skies, clearing the way for other regulators to follow and airlines to restore the plane to its schedules.
The move by US regulators, which was expected, marks the beginning of the end of the worst crisis in Boeing’s century of history. Two 737 Max accidents killed 346 people and later destroyed billions in Boeing’s market value, led to the departure of former CEO Dennis Muilenburg and tarnished the reputation of one of America’s most storied manufacturers.
Still, the aerospace company can no longer hope to get cash from quick deliveries to eager customers. The Covid-19 pandemic has devastated the airline industry and slowed demand for aircraft, slowing sales of Boeing’s massive inventory of 450 aircraft parked at Washington state airfields.
The FAA requires Boeing to change the flight control software, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, which was a critical factor in the two fatal accidents that occurred in five months. The software will not be able to be triggered repeatedly and can only be triggered by the input of two sensors, rather than just one. The agency is also demanding changes to the plane’s wiring.
The FAA also requires pilots to train to fly the Max in flight simulators, something Boeing avoided before the two crashes, before reversing its opposition in January, and the regulator also plans to inspect the planes for foreign objects like rags. or tools after some were found among planes on the ground.
“The road to this point was long and exhausting,” said Steve Dickson, FAA administrator. “We are never guided by a schedule, but rather we follow a deliberate and methodical security process. . . I can tell you now that I feel 100% comfortable with my family flying [the aircraft]. “
But the families of the victims who died in the crashes in 2018 and 2019 say aviation regulators have done little to ensure the plane’s safety and urged potential passengers to stay away. A lawsuit against Boeing filed by many of the families from the second accident is ongoing.
“The flying public should avoid the Max when flying in the future,” said Michael Stumo, whose daughter Samya Stumo, 24, died last year when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed six minutes after takeoff. “It is still a more dangerous aircraft than other modern aircraft.”
Aviation regulators around the world grounded the Max in March 2019 after the crash in Ethiopia, five months after Lion Air Flight 610 crashed off the coast of Indonesia.
Boeing engineers had designed a flight control system that could counter a stall if the Max’s bulkier engines forced the plane’s nose up. Instead, on doomed flights, a reading from a single angle-of-attack sensor erroneously pointed to a stall. The flight control system repeatedly forced the nose of each aircraft downward until it crashed.
The Max flight crew manual did not include any mention of the new system because Boeing wanted to avoid changes to the aircraft that would lead the FAA to impose training requirements. Pilot training is expensive for airlines and would discourage them from buying the Max.
In January, US lawmakers posted more than 100 pages of damaging internal messages that showed Boeing employees mocking regulators and the Max. One said the plane was “designed by clowns who are themselves supervised by monkeys.”
A congressional subcommittee released a report in September condemning both the manufacturer and the FAA, which the subcommittee said had discharged much of its regulatory authority to Boeing.
According to the report, the accidents “were the terrible culmination of a series of flawed technical assumptions by Boeing engineers, a lack of transparency by Boeing management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA, the pernicious result of regulatory capture on the part of the FAA regarding its responsibilities to conduct robust oversight of Boeing and ensure the safety of the flying public ”.
Dickson acknowledged Wednesday that the original certification process for MCAS had failed, but also said it had been “absolutely essential to reestablish the FAA’s relationship with Boeing, and we have.”
The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that would strengthen the FAA’s ability to oversee aerospace manufacturers, and the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee passed a similar bill on Wednesday. , although less strict.
Regulators in Europe, Canada and Brazil have indicated that they are also likely to lift grounding orders for the plane. China, which was the first to land the Max, has yet to offer a plan to do so. The country’s airlines are important customers for Boeing, but China is also trying to strengthen the global position of its own commercial aircraft manufacturing industry.
Even if US regulators give airlines the go-ahead to start flying the Max, it will slowly make a comeback. American Airlines has said it will use the plane on flights between Miami and New York beginning late next month. Other airlines have said they won’t fly the plane until 2021.
Ed Bastian, Delta’s CEO, said in an interview that while his airline does not fly the 737 Max, he is confident in the FAA’s determination and believes the public will gradually regain confidence in the aircraft as long as it continues to fly without incident. “I’m sure Max will be a good product over time,” he said.
David Calhoun, Boeing chief executive, said in a memo to employees Wednesday that “we will never forget the 346 victims. . . We will honor them by closely keeping the hard lessons learned from this chapter in our history to ensure accidents like these never happen again. ”
