The Federal Aviation Administration on Monday took a potentially important step toward rebuilding confidence not only in the Boeing 737 Max but also in the agency that approved it as safe to fly by convening a week-long summit of civil aviation regulators from Brussels to Beijing.
Led by former National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Christopher Hart, delegates from eight overseas nations and the European Union are meeting in Seattle to examine the FAAs original certification of the 737 Max, including the automated flight control system linked to two crashes by the jet since October that killed a combined 346 people.
The point of this body is to attempt to instil confidence globally in the 737 Max and the agency that certified it, said Jeffrey Guzzetti, the former director of the FAAs Accident Investigation Division, who is not on the panel. Boeing and its regulator have been subjected to withering scrutiny from lawmakers, government watchdogs and prosecutors amid the 737 Maxs worldwide grounding, now entering its seventh week. Much of that has been focused on how much was known about the 737 Maxs anti-stall countermeasure and how much sway Boeing had in the jets certification by the FAA.
Last month, more than 40 nations from the U.K. to Australia rejected public reassurances from the FAA after the second crash and grounded Boeing Co’s 737 Max jet before the FAA followed suit. It was a remarkable rebuke of an American agency that has been a leader since the dawn of the jet age. That defiance may not be over. Whatever the FAA decides, South Korean authorities plan to determine independently whether the Max should be cleared to fly again in the country’s airspace, according to an official at the country’s transport ministry. The person wasn’t allowed to speak publicly and declined to be identified.
South Korea also plans to closely monitor the steps taken by aviation regulators in Europe and in particular, China, since it was the first country to ground the 737 Max, the person said. Lawsuits against Boeing filed on Monday by two Canadians whose family members died in the March 10 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 also called the FAA equally culpable in the accidents for approving the Max despite its substantial flaws.
The relationship between Boeing and the FAA left a lot of questions, said Michael Barr, an aviation safety expert at the University of Southern California. They need a third party, a neutral party with a lot of respect in the industry to evaluate that relationship and see whether or not there needs to be a change. The panel aims to do so quickly. The so-called Joint Authorities Technical Review has been asked to complete its findings within 90 days, far faster than the ongoing inquiries and audits by accident investigators, government watchdogs, prosecutors and lawmakers.
The review panel was asked by FAA to conduct a comprehensive review of the certification of the automated flight control system on the Boeing 737 Max aircraft, the agency said in a statement on April 3 announcing the effort. It can also make recommendations for improvements on the plane, according to FAA. Those findings, however, were overshadowed by the NTSBs final findings years later that uncovered a failure mode in the 737 that could cause the planes rudder to move in the opposite direction commanded by pilots that led to costly changes to the planes, said Guzzetti, who participated in that review while at the NTSB.
In the end, it didn’t really move the needle, he said of the FAAs review. It was really the final NTSB investigation and recommendations and how Boeing and the industry responded.