Boeing, FAA both faulted in certification of the 737 Max
Related: Boeing board strips CEO of chairman title amid 737 MAX crisis (Reuters)
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Source: Associated Press
Boeing, FAA both faulted in certification of the 737 Max
By DAVID KOENIG
October 11, 2019
A panel of international aviation regulators found that Boeing withheld key information about the 737 Max from pilots and regulators, and the Federal Aviation Administration lacked the expertise to understand an automated flight system implicated in two deadly crashes of Max jets.
In its report issued Friday, the panel made 12 recommendations for improving the FAA’s certification of new aircraft, including more emphasis on understanding how pilots will handle the increasing amount of automation driving modern planes.
The report, called a joint authorities technical review, focused on FAA approval of a new flight-control system called MCAS that automatically pushed the noses of Max jets down — based on faulty readings from a single sensor — before crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.
During the certification process, Boeing changed the design of MCAS, making it more powerful, but key people at the FAA were not always told. The review committee said it believed that if FAA technical staff knew more about how MCAS worked, they likely would have seen the possibility that it could overpower pilots’ efforts to stop the nose-down pitch.
MCAS evolved “from a relatively benign system to a not-so-benign system without adequate knowledge by the FAA,” the panel’s chief, former National Transportation Safety Board chairman Christopher Hart, told reporters. He faulted poor communication and said there was no indication of intentional wrongdoing.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/470abf326cdb4229bdc18c8ad8caa78a
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Source: Reuters
BUSINESS NEWS OCTOBER 11, 2019 / 1:56 AM / UPDATED 15 HOURS AGO
FAA failed to properly review 737 MAX jet's anti-stall system: JATR findings
David Shepardson, Jamie Freed
6 MIN READ
WASHINGTON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A panel of international air safety regulators on Friday harshly criticized the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) review of a safety system on Boeing’s (BA.N) 737 MAX airliner later tied to two crashes that killed all 346 people aboard.
The Joint Authorities Technical Review (JATR) was commissioned by the FAA in April to look into the agency’s oversight and approval of the so-called MCAS anti-stall system.
The report also faulted Boeing for assumptions it made in designing the airplane and found areas where Boeing could improve processes.
“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 69-page series of findings and recommendations said.
“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.”
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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-boeing-airplane-faa/faa-failed-to-properly-review-737-max-jets-anti-stall-system-jatr-findings-idUSKBN1WQ0H8
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