Boeing Pilot Expressed Worries About 737 Max Safety in 2016
FAA alerted the Transportation Department late Thursday of instant messages between the pilot and another employee of Boeing.
(Bloomberg) -- A high-ranking Boeing Co. pilot working on the 737 Max three years ago during its certification expressed misgivings about a feature since implicated in two fatal crashes, calling its handling performance “egregious,” according to 2016 instant messages.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Boeing alerted the Transportation Department late Thursday of instant messages between the pilot and another employee of the planemaker. The regulator said Boeing was aware of the communications for months.
“The FAA finds the substance of the document concerning,” the agency said in a statement. “The FAA is also disappointed that Boeing did not bring this document to our attention immediately upon its discovery.”
The messages are a stunning turn in the saga of Boeing’s best-selling jet, which has been grounded worldwide since March 13. While the planemaker has said repeatedly that it followed proper procedures to certify the jet, the communications show that senior pilots at the company were concerned about a critical aspect of its design and were worried that regulators had been misled.
The revelations also raise questions about Boeing’s embattled Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg. They surfaced less than two weeks before Muilenburg is scheduled to appear before lawmakers in Washington to address questions on the plane. Boeing directors stripped Muilenburg of his chairman role on Oct. 11 in the wake of a damaging report from a multinational review of the plane’s certification.
Boeing tumbled 6.8% to $344 at the close, the biggest drop since February 2016.
The November 2016 instant messages, which were reviewed by Bloomberg News, were exchanges between between Mark Forkner, then Boeing’s chief technical pilot for the 737, and another 737 technical pilot, Patrik Gustavsson.
In the messages, Forkner and Gustavsson raised multiple concerns about the automated flight control system implicated in the two fatal crashes, including not being given data by the company’s test pilots and Forkner describing his alarm at simulator tests in which he encountered troubling behavior in the system.
Boeing had earlier assured the aviation regulator that the feature known as Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System was benign and didn’t need to be included in the plane’s flight manuals, according to a person familiar with the issue. Earlier in 2016, FAA had approved the company’s request, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the issue and asked not to be named.
Unknowingly Lied
Forkner told Gustavsson that MCAS was “running rampant in the sim on me,” referring to simulator tests of the aircraft. “Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious.”
Forkner expressed concern that he may have unknowingly misled the FAA. “So I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly),” he wrote.
“It wasn’t a lie, no one told us this was the case,” Gustavsson replied.
MCAS automatically pushes down the plane’s nose if it senses it’s in danger of an aerodynamic stall.
Two crashes within less than five months -- Lion Air Flight 610 on Oct. 29 off the coast of Indonesia and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10 outside Addis Ababa -- killed 346 people and led to the global grounding of the 737 Max jets. Similar malfunctions triggered MCAS to repeatedly push the planes’ noses down until pilots lost control and dove.
“I’m levelling [sic] off at like 4000 ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like craxy [sic],” Forkner said in the messages. “I’m like, WHAT?”
The communications between the pilots suggest MCAS was performing in simulator tests in ways they hadn’t expected.
“I don’t know, the test pilots have kept us out of the loop,” Gustavsson said.
Forkner replied, “they’re all so damn busy, and getting pressure from the program.”
Forkner is now a pilot at Southwest Airlines Co., the airline said in a statement.
“If you read the whole chat, it is obvious that there was no ‘lie,’” David Gerger, a lawyer for Forkner, said in an email. “The simulator was not reading right and had to be fixed to fly like the real plane. Mark’s career -- at Air Force, at FAA, and at Boeing -- was about safety. And based on everything he knew, he absolutely thought this plane was safe.”
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent a terse letter to Muilenburg on Friday demanding more information.
“I understand that Boeing discovered the document in its files months ago,” Dickson said. “I expect your explanation immediately regarding the content of this document and Boeing’s delay in disclosing the document to its safety regulator.”
Boeing gave the text messages to the Justice Department in February -- the month before the second 737 Max crash -- but didn’t inform the FAA because the exchange is sensitive to a criminal investigation being conducted, said a person familiar with the matter.
Knowing it would need to disclose the document to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which is conducting an investigation of the plane’s certification, the planemaker shared the document Thursday night with the Department of Transportation’s general counsel.
‘More Evidence’
“This is more evidence that Boeing misled pilots, government regulators and other aviation experts about the safety of the 737 Max,” Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said in a statement Friday. “It is clear that the company’s negligence and fraud put the flying public at risk.”
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon, said the exchange “essentially constitutes a smoking gun” of the pressure exerted by Boeing executives to get the 737 Max into service quickly. He said Muilenburg, who is scheduled to speak before the committee on Oct. 30, should resign.
The committee’s investigation into FAA’s original certification of the 737 Max has returned hundreds of thousands of documents, including emails he called disturbing that, in addition to interviews and whistle-blower reports, point to a pattern of “massive production pressure exerted from on high on Boeing employees to get this plane out, and apparently it was ‘get it out no matter what.”’
Boeing said it has been cooperating with the committee’s investigation.
“As part of that cooperation, today we brought to the committee’s attention a document containing statements by a former Boeing employee,” company spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in an email.. “We will continue to cooperate with the Committee as it continues its investigation. And we will continue to follow the direction of the FAA and other global regulators, as we work to safely return the 737 MAX to service.”
A lawyer representing Boeing in the matter, McGuireWoods LLC’s Richard Cullen, said in a statement that: “The Boeing Company timely produced the Mark Forkner IM document to the appropriate authorities.”
Reuters previously reported on the FAA’s statement.
Aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia said, “This doesn’t look good.”
While the revelation may not slow Boeing and FAA’s attempts to get the plane back in service, it further roils the company, said Aboulafia, vice president with Fairfax, Virginia-based Teal Group.
“To what degree was the board aware of this when it recommended changes?” he said. “Because this would appear to be exactly the oversight and governance issue that they should pay attention to.”
--With assistance from Mary Schlangenstein.
To contact the reporters on this story: Alan Levin in Washington at alevin24@bloomberg.net;Ryan Beene in Washington at rbeene@bloomberg.net;Julie Johnsson in Chicago at jjohnsson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman
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