Several technical experts inside the FAA said October's Lion Air crash, where the MCAS has been clearly implicated by investigators in Indonesia, is only the latest indicator that the agency's delegation of airplane certification has gone too far, and that it's inappropriate for Boeing employees to have so much authority over safety analyses of Boeing jets.
because of the ongoing investigation" into the crashes, Boeing did not respond directly to the detailed description of the flaws in MCAS certification, beyond saying that "there are some significant mischaracterizations." Citing a busy week, a spokesman said the agency was "unable to delve into any detailed inquiries."īoeing responded Saturday with a statement that "the FAA considered the final configuration and operating parameters of MCAS during MAX certification, and concluded that it met all certification and regulatory requirements."Īdding that it is "unable to comment. Late Friday, the FAA said it followed its standard certification process on the MAX. The people who spoke to The Seattle Times and shared details of the safety analysis all spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs at the FAA and other aviation organizations.īoth Boeing and the FAA were informed of the specifics of this story and were asked for responses 11 days ago, before the second crash of a 737 MAX last Sunday. * Assessed a failure of the system as one level below "catastrophic." But even that "hazardous" danger level should have precluded activation of the system based on input from a single sensor - and yet that's how it was designed. * Failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded, thereby missing the potential impact of the system repeatedly pushing the airplane's nose downward. When the planes later entered service, MCAS was capable of moving the tail more than four times farther than was stated in the initial safety analysis document. * Understated the power of the new flight control system, which was designed to swivel the horizontal tail to push the nose of the plane down to avert a stall. That flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), is now under scrutiny after two crashes of the jet in less than five months resulted in Wednesday's FAA order to ground the plane.Ĭurrent and former engineers directly involved with the evaluations or familiar with the document shared details of Boeing's "System Safety Analysis" of MCAS, which The Seattle Times confirmed. Warren)Īs Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to speedily approve the resulting analysis.īut the original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA for a new flight control system on the MAX - a report used to certify the plane as safe to fly - had several crucial flaws. The fatal crash Sunday of a 737 MAX 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines was the second fatal flight for a Boeing 737 Max 8 in less than six months, and more than 40 countries, including the U.S., have now grounded the planes or refused to let them into their airspace. A worker walks next to a Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane parked at Boeing Field, Thursday, March 14, 2019, in Seattle.