New York (AFP)

Contempt for regulators, airlines and their own colleagues: a series of embarrassing messages from Boeing employees unveiled on Thursday delivers an unflattering portrait of the aircraft manufacturer and portrays an internal culture marked by "arrogance" and the desire to reduce costs at all costs.

These communications, often in an acerbic and cavalier tone, show that the current difficulties of Boeing go beyond the 737 MAX, by shining the spotlight on unimaginable malfunctions in a company which manufactures the plane of the American president Air Force One or which has democratized air transport.

We learn that Boeing has minimized the importance of the MCAS anti-stall system to avoid pilot training on a simulator deemed more expensive and likely to extend MAX approval times.

However, it is this software that is involved in the two accidents of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines which killed 346 people and resulted in the grounding of the MAX.

"We must remain firm on the point that there will be no training on simulator. (...) We will fight against any regulator who will try to make it a prerequisite", writes an employee to his colleague in March 2017, shortly before the MAX homologation.

A few months later, the same employee, test pilot, boasts of having "saved (Boeing) lots of dollars".

His messages are contained in more than a hundred pages of documents, dating from 2013 to 2018, transmitted to American parliamentarians by Boeing and consulted by AFP. With few exceptions, most of the employees' names have been deleted.

- Low-cost -

In 2018, several employees working on MAX simulators worried about many technical difficulties encountered and their origin.

"Would you put your family in a MAX simulator? I would not do it," wrote one of them in February, eight months before the first tragedy. "No," replied a colleague.

Two other employees fear the consequences for the image of Boeing, while their managers seem obsessed, according to them, with the idea of ​​catching up on the Airbus A320Neo.

"All their messages only talk about meeting deadlines and make little mention of quality," laments one of them.

"We got into this mess all by ourselves, choosing a low cost subcontractor and imposing untenable deadlines. Why did the least experienced low cost subcontractor win the contract? Simply because it was a question of dollars, "continues his colleague.

"Apologizing will not be enough," said Robert Clifford, a lawyer for families of victims of Ethiopian Airlines.

- "Ridiculous" -

The documents also show Boeing employees doubting the skills of the company's engineers.

"This is a joke," wrote an employee in September 2016, referring to the 737 MAX. "This plane is ridiculous".

"Lousy design", criticized another in April 2017.

Yet Boeing has for decades been the ultimate in engineering. We owe him the 747, nicknamed "Queen of the Skies", as well as a participation in the Apollo program that sent the first man to the Moon.

The giant of Seattle and its network of subcontractors are behemoths of the American economy.

"It is a cultural problem. It will take 5 to 12 years at least to change culture," wrote an employee in May 2018.

"It's systemic," said another a month later. "We have a team of managers who understand very little about the industry but impose" unrealistic "objectives on us, he added while criticizing the fact that some" are not accountable ".

Michel Merluzeau, expert at Air Insight Research, believes that "Boeing needs to re-examine an operational culture from another era".

"These documents do not reflect the best of Boeing. The tone and language of the messages are inappropriate, especially when it comes to such important issues," said Greg Smith, the acting managing director, in a letter to employees on Friday. and consulted by AFP.

Communications are also scratching air regulators, starting with the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), which approved the MAX.

"There is no certainty that the FAA understands what it approves" or not, quips an employee in February 2016.

The airlines' requests are considered unreasonable at best.

"Now these Lion Air bastards may need a simulator to test the MAX, and this because of their stupidity," wrote an employee in June 2017. What "Idiots!".

Lucide, another concludes in February 2018: "Our arrogance will lose us".

© 2020 AFP