Boeing CEO Is Questioned By Congress
Dear Friends & Neighbors,
Undelivered Boeing 737 MAX aircraft that were grounded by aviation agencies seen at parking lot at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, taken from South Park Ridge (Attribution: SounderBruce, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en, Presented at: WindermereSun.com)
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On Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019, the Boeing CEO is being questioned by Congress regarding the Boeing 737 MAX groundings. As of October 2019, the grounding cost Boeing up to $9.2 billion in revenue and compensation to airlines and bereaved families. Boeing also faced lawsuits from airline pilots and families of victims.
Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing, took questions from lawmakers on whether the company intentionally concealed defects in the MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, MCAS) system from the FAA, in the video “Boeing CEO faces Congress on anniversary of 1st 737 Max crash“, below:
Boeing’s 737 Max jets have yet to resume flying after a pair of deadly crashes in the past year sparked broad scrutiny of Boeing’s corporate practices and the FAA certification process. Now, the company’s CEO is on Capitol Hill for two days of hearings about safety and accountability. John Yang talks to David Shepardson of Reuters about the “moving” presence of bereaved family members in the room, in the video “Boeing CEO faces hard questions from Congress over safety of 737 Max, corporate priorities“, below:
The MTP Daily panel: Ruth Marcus, Kimberly Atkins and Matt Gorman react to the Boeing CEO hearing today on the 737 MAX crashes, in the video “Lawmakers Grill Boeing CEO On 737 MAX Crashes, MTP Daily, MSNBC“, below:
Regarding incidents leading up to the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX, please refer to the excerpt from wikipedia, in italics, below:
In March 2019, aviation authorities and airlines around the world grounded the Boeing 737 MAX passenger airliner after two MAX 8 aircraft crashed, killing all 346 people aboard. The accidents befell Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29, 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10, 2019. Ethiopian Airlines was the first to ground its MAX fleet, effective the day of its accident, and one day later, March 11, China’s Civil Aviation Administration ordered the first regulatory grounding. Most other agencies and airlines followed suit over the next two days. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reaffirmed airworthiness of the MAX on March 11, but grounded it on March 13. The groundings affected 387 MAX aircraft serving 8,600 weekly flights for 59 airlines.
Investigators said the MAX’s new flight control feature, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), repeatedly forced the aircraft to nose dive, causing the pilots to lose control. Pilots were unaware of MCAS, which Boeing excluded from flight crew manuals and training. In November 2018, in response to the first accident, Boeing issued a service bulletin referring pilots to an existing recovery procedure, and the FAA published an emergency airworthiness directive mandating revisions to the crew manual. After the second accident, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and Congress launched investigations into FAA type certification of the MAX and whether the process was compromised by excessive FAA delegation of authority to Boeing. In April 2019, Boeing admitted that MCAS was a factor in both accidents.
In September 2019, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) faulted Boeing’s assumptions that pilots could quickly disable MCAS. In October 2019, the Joint Authorities Technical Review (JATR), appointed by the FAA to examine its approval of MCAS, criticized the FAA and Boeing for their incomplete understanding of MCAS and how human factors interacted with automation. The final report on the Lion Air accident by the Indonesian government identified nine equally contributing factors related to airplane design flaws, inadequate certification and safety regulation, maintenance errors and actions by flight crews.
Following the grounding orders, Boeing halted deliveries and reduced production of the MAX. The airplane’s return to service depends on worldwide approval of changes to its MCAS software, flight control computer system and cockpit displays, work that Boeing started in November 2018. Airlines do not expect to resume MAX flights until early 2020
Gathered, written, and posted by Windermere Sun-Susan Sun Nunamaker More about the community at www.WindermereSun.com
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