The Federal Aviation Administration’s relationship with Boeing, and its approval of the airliner whose two recent crashes killed more than 300 people, threaten to erode public trust in commercial air travel, senators warned U.S. regulators on Wednesday.
Although both 737 MAX disasters occurred overseas, the first on Oct. 29 in Indonesia and the second on March 10 in Ethiopia, the “questions that have been raised about regulatory processes strike at the very heart of aviation safety here at home,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said during a hearing convened by the chamber’s aviation panel, of which he is chairman. “We need to do better, and I firmly believe that we can.”
The hearing, one of at least three that Congress has planned, provided the first chance for lawmakers to publicly scrutinize accidents that have halted use of the best-selling plane in Boeing’s history, snarled airline schedules for the foreseeable future, and prompted Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to seek a review of the jetliner’s initial certification for commercial flights.
The 737 MAX, the latest version of a plane flown since 1967, underwent less-rigorous scrutiny beforehand that a totally new model would have, and the FAA relied heavily on inspections done by Boeing employees themselves under a system that delegates some duties to non-agency employees and organizations, including companies, that have particular expertise.
Currently, 79 organizations are authorized to handle such duties, acting administrator Randy Elwell told the panel, though the FAA retains the right to intervene directly at any time. Its personnel are always involved in level of safety determinations and establishment of rules for special situations, he added.
Evaluation of the 737 MAX, from Boeing’s first permit application to final certification in March 2017, took five years and included 297 flight tests some of which involved the anti-stall software linked to the first crash and under examination in the second, Elwell said.
In the Indonesian crash, a malfunctioning sensor on a 737 MAX 8 fed incorrect data on the airliner’s ascent vector to the computer system, which attempted to lower the angle at which it was ascending to avoid a stall, officials said. That prompted a struggle between the new computer software and the pilot, who ultimately lost control of the aircraft. All 189 people aboard were killed.
U.S. regulators have ordered airlines to update operations manuals on the handling of such issues and Boeing is installing a mandated software patch by April. The fact that the patch hadn’t been completed was part of what prompted the high level of concern after the Ethiopian crash, which occurred outside the capital of Addis Ababa, killing all of the plane’s 157 occupants.
It wasn’t until data transmitted to satellites from the flight showed climbs and descents during takeoff, similar to those before the Indonesia crash, that the FAA ordered carriers to park the planes. Regulators in the European Union, China, and Canada had already done so.
“I’ve been deeply disappointed, in fact shocked, that in grounding these aircraft, American safety officials lagged instead of led the world,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Elwell.
“As important, maybe more so, is the system that led to, in fact, outsourcing safety to the manufacturers of these aircraft,” he said. He also noted that he plans to introduce a bill to reform the system and pointing to Boeing’s urgency in developing the plane, which was needed to compete with a new, more fuel-efficient aircraft from rival Airbus.
“The fact is that the FAA decided to do safety on the cheap, which is neither cheap nor safe, and put the fox in charge of the henhouse,” Blumenthal said.
Elwell, who defended the system, noted that a similar practice is used in Europe. If the FAA couldn’t delegate any duties to companies like Boeing, it would need roughly 10,000 more employees and an additional $1.8 billion a year to do its job, he said.
