Title: House report blasts Boeing, FAA over 737 MAX crashes
Headings: House report blasts Boeing, FAA for ‘serious failures’ before 737 MAX crashes
House report blasts Boeing, FAA for ‘serious failures’ before 737 MAX crashes
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Debris from the crashed Ethiopia Airlines 737 MAX plane in 2019 Michael Tewelde/AFP via Getty Images
The plane maker said it “learned many hard lessons as a company from the accidents … and from the mistakes we have made.” Boeing said it had cooperated fully with the House committee and that revised design work on the plane had received intensive internal and external review that included 1,300 test flights, Reuters reported. The FAA said in a statement it would work with lawmakers “to implement improvements identified in its report,” adding that the agency was “focused on advancing overall aviation safety by improving our organization, processes, and culture.” The report said Boeing made “faulty design and performance assumptions,” particularly about a key safety system — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS — that was linked to both crashes. MCAS, which was designed to help counter a tendency of the airliner to pitch up, could be activated after data from only a single sensor. The FAA is requiring new safeguards to MCAS, including requiring that it receive data from two sensors. According to the report, Boeing wanted to keep details about MCAS from the FAA so it wouldn’t require additional pilot training. That would ruin the company’s sales pitch for the MAX — that pilots of older 737s wouldn’t have to go through extensive simulator training to fly the new models. The report also slammed Boeing for withholding “crucial information from the FAA, its customers, and 737 MAX pilots” including “concealing the very existence of MCAS from 737 MAX pilots.” The FAA “failed to ensure the safety of the traveling public,” the report said.