Whistle-Blowers Slam Planemaker, FAA Over Max: Boeing Update
Pilot Missteps Considered by FAA in Not Grounding: Boeing Update
(Bloomberg) -- The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is holding a hearing on the Federal Aviation Administration’s performance in the wake of a pair of Boeing Co. 737 Max crashes.
Steve Dickson, the newly sworn-in chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, testified this morning.
A Boeing manager who raised concerns about problems in manufacturing, and a former FAA engineer as well as an expert in human errors and an aviation safety expert, delivered opening remarks before the panel recessed for 30 minutes.
Here are the latest developments:
Whistle-Blowers Slam Boeing, FAA Over Max (2:30 p.m.)
A pair of former insiders testified about what they saw as shortcomings at Boeing and the FAA.
Edward Pierson, a Boeing production manager who retired in August 2018, said he repeatedly warned senior Boeing officials about what he described as “chaos” at Boeing’s 737 factory near Seattle that made the planes that crashed. He said company leadership, including CEO Dennis Muilenburg, didn’t adequately address concerns he raised.
He also criticized the FAA and other federal agencies for not doing more to examine the potential role that production issues may have played in the two 737 Max crashes, despite having provided them detailed information about conditions on Boeing’s assembly line.
“The U.S. regulators’ investigation of these crashes has been as disappointing as Boeing’s insistence that it had no systemic quality or safety issues,” Pierson said.
Specifically, he called attention to the failure of so-called angle-of-attack sensors in both accidents that triggered nose-down movements that ultimately overwhelmed pilots in both cases. He said the failure of the original Boeing-installed sensor on the doomed Lion Air 737 Max aircraft that was replaced prior to the accident was “clearly a production issue because the airplane was brand new.”
He stopped short of blaming the crashes on production issues.
G. Michael Collins, a former FAA certification engineer, told the lawmakers the agency’s safety culture has become overly deferential to industry.
“Over the last 15 years or so, the FAA management culture has shifted to where the wants of applicants now often take precedent over the safety of the traveling public,” Collins said.
Max Warning Signs Missed, Consultant Testifies (1:55 p.m.)
The world’s aviation regulators and accident investigators missed warning signs hidden in the complexity of last year’s Lion Air crash, the first of two 737 Max accidents, an aviation safety consultant told the hearing.
John Cox, a former airline pilot who is president of Safety Operating Systems, stopped short of saying in his testimony that authorities should have grounded the plane after the Oct. 29, 2018, crash off the coast of Indonesia that killed 189 people.
“In my 50 years in aviation, and 33 as an aircraft accident investigator, I have not seen a more complex accident than Lion Air flight 610,” Cox said. “Sadly, it was a forewarning of unanticipated conditions that existed, which could lead to another accident.”
The crashes occurred because of multiple factors -- including Boeing’s design, FAA’s oversight, maintenance failures and pilot actions -- and all of them need to be assessed to help prevent future crashes, Cox said.
New FAA Chief Says He Would Have Grounded Max Earlier (1:15 p.m.)
Dickson said he would have grounded the troubled jetliner after its first crash had he been FAA administrator at the time.
Dickson, who was sworn in to his post in August, initially said it was difficult to put himself in the role of his predecessor at the FAA.
A former U.S. Air Force pilot and senior vice president of flight operations for Delta Air Lines Inc., he also said employees had acted in good faith by not grounding the plane until after a second fatal accident March 10.
But under questioning by California Democrat Julia Brownley, Dickson replied: “With what I know now, yes,” he would have grounded the jet.
FAA Pressed on Failure to Tell Pilots About MCAS (12:30 p.m.)
Lawmakers quizzed the FAA on its decision to not name Boeing’s faulty automation system in its emergency directive, issued days after the first 737 Max crash.
Earl Lawrence, the FAA’s executive director of aircraft certification, said the agency didn’t mention the system because it wasn’t included in Boeing’s own pilot manuals and adding it to the directive would confuse pilots.
The system, Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS, pushed the nose of the planes down until they crashed. The FAA issued the emergency airworthiness directive after the Lion Air crash on Oct. 29, 2018.
DeFazio criticized the FAA for not mentioning MCAS in the directive, which instructed pilots how to respond when the system malfunctioned. He cited messages by former Boeing chief technical pilot Mark Forkner, which showed that Boeing pushed the FAA to drop references to MCAS in the directive.
“Folkner went on to boast that he was ‘Jedi-mind tricking’ other civil aviation regulators around the world to adopt FAA’s faulty decision,” DeFazio said.
Boeing has been criticized by pilot unions and others for not including mention of the system in pilot manuals.
Boeing said Wednesday that the company and the FAA decided to “reinforce existing pilot procedures,” in line with existing policies.
FAA Eyes Enforcement Action Against Boeing (12:06 a.m.)
Dickson said the FAA may take enforcement action against Boeing for actions related to the 737 Max accidents and grounding.
“I reserve the right to take further action and we very well may do that,” he said, responding to a question from Representative Stephen Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat.
Dickson didn’t provide details, saying only that he has expressed displeasure to high-ranking Boeing executives. He added that his chief concern at the moment is ensuring the safety of the plane as it’s returned to service.
“I am not at this point interested in casting blame,” Dickson said.
Dickson said the FAA is also evaluating allegations of manufacturing errors on the 737 Max line levied by a former Boeing manager who will appear on a second panel before the committee later in the day.
“We do have open investigations,” Lawrence said, responding to questions about the whistle-blower’s complaint.
Pilot Missteps Considered by FAA in Not Grounding (11:26 a.m.)
Responding to pointed questions about why FAA didn’t ground the jet after the first 737 Max crash, Dickson said the agency also had data indicating the crash was at least partly the result of actions by Lion Air pilots and mechanics.
“If any of those had gone a different way, that accident would not have occurred and events would have manifested themselves differently,” Dickson said.
Dickson said he was trained as a pilot to address the issues caused by the emergencies in both Max crashes, but added he didn’t want to focus solely on crew actions.
“I’m not about casting blame on anyone or anything,” he said. “I’m about identifying problems, issues and developing solutions and improving the process.”
Those improvements include addressing technical aspects of aircraft, anticipating how pilots might fail and raising international pilot-training standards, he said.
Chairman Says FAA Stonewalled Crash Probe (11:11 a.m.)
The committee chairman said that prior to Dickson’s confirmation, the panel had been “stonewalled” by the FAA when investigators sought to interview career agency personnel who were involved with key decisions on the 737 Max.
That has changed, and committee staff recently interviewed Ali Bahrami, FAA’s associate administrator for aviation safety, who said that he wasn’t aware of the analysis that predicted additional 737 Max crashes without a fix when it was issued after the Lion Air crash last year, Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, said.
“I don’t know how high up this went and I think that’s one of the problems and that’s one of the things we ought to look at,” DeFazio said. “I think most of these decisions were made by captive regulator managers in the Seattle offices and no one in the national offices knew a damn thing about it.”
FAA ‘Rolled the Dice’ on Max Risks, Lawmaker Says (10:36 a.m.)
The FAA’s own safety analysis of the 737 Max after a flight-control system was implicated in the Lion Air crash last year concluded there would be 15 more fatal accidents during the lifetime of the plane if it wasn’t fixed.
DeFazio revealed the analysis during his opening statement.
Short FAA Delay Won’t Dent Boeing 2020 Profit and Cash: Bloomberg Intelligence
“Despite its own calculations, the FAA rolled the dice on the safety of the traveling public and let the Max continue to fly until Boeing could overhaul its MCAS software,” DeFazio said in a written version of his statement.
Such reviews are normal after a crash and it looked at what would happen if nothing was done. The FAA and Boeing notified airlines around the world that pilots of the steps they needed to take to prevent accidents if a similar failure occurred in the future. Pilots on an Ethiopian Airlines flight on March 10 performed some of the suggested steps, but not all of them, and lost control.
FAA Won’t Clear 737 Max Fixes Until 2020, Dickson Says (10:06 a.m.)
The FAA won’t complete its process to re-certify the 737 Max until 2020, Dickson said on CNBC before the hearing, dashing the company’s hopes to complete key milestones this year needed to end the aircraft’s nine-month grounding.
“If you do the math, it’s going to extend into 2020,” he said. “We’re going to do it diligently because safety is absolutely our priority with this airplane.”
Boeing said Nov. 11 that it hoped the FAA would approve its fixes to the 737 Max by the end of 2019, though it acknowledged that completing new training requirements for pilots would likely slide into January.
FAA Won’t Clear 737 Max Fixes Until 2020, Agency Chief Says
After the FAA clearance, airlines will still need several weeks or more to get their planes back in the air after being held in storage for months. Southwest Airlines Co. and other major U.S. carriers with grounded 737 Max jets have already pulled the planes from their schedules through at least early March.
“I’ve made it very clear that Boeing’s plan is not the FAA’s plan,” Dickson said. “We’re certainly working very closely together, but we’re going to keep our heads down and support the team in getting this work done right.”
A Boeing spokesman said by email that the company continues “to work closely with the FAA and global regulators toward certification and the safe return to service of the MAX.”
Agency to Seek More Data, Dickson to Tell Lawmakers (9:58 a.m.)
In his prepared remarks submitted to the committee, Dickson said the agency --which got a black eye for not grounding the plane until after dozens of other nations acted -- wants to take the lead globally on improving safety in the wake of the 737 Max crashes.
The agency will push using more data to analyze safety hazards, ensuring that workers can raise safety issues without fear and expanding the FAA’s efforts to improve regulation in other nations, Dickson said in prepared testimony released by the committee before the hearing started.
Dickson previously has said he wants to step up how the FAA certifies aircraft after missing hazards in the 737 Max design. His comments before the committee were the first to identify how he wants the agency to act more broadly and with other nations.
“If we are to continue to raise the bar for safety across the globe, it will be important for the FAA and our international partners to foster improvements in standards and approaches, not just for how aircraft are designed and produced, but also how they are maintained and operated,” he said in the prepared remarks.
FAA Must Fix ‘Credibility Problem,’ Lawmaker to Say
Rick Larsen, the Washington Democrat who chairs the House Transportation Committee’s aviation panel, will press Dickson on missteps by the agency in its certification of the 737 Max, and say the agency’s process for approving new jets needs reform.
“The FAA must fix its credibility problem. Just like I asked Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg at the Committee’s last hearing, I expect to hear the three main mistakes the FAA made regarding the 737 Max,” Larsen said in prepared remarks released ahead of the hearing.
Larsen also said he’d focus on why “critical information was not adequately considered” by the FAA when reviewing the jet and how so-called human factors are taken into account as jets become more automated.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ryan Beene in Washington at rbeene@bloomberg.net;Alan Levin in Washington at alevin24@bloomberg.net;Courtney Rozen in Arlington at crozen4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman
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