Boeing 737 MAX: the damning conclusions of the US Congress
A Boeing 737 MAX in the skies of Seattle, June 29, 2020. Karen Ducey / Reuters
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3 min
After 18 months of investigation, the US Congress issued its conclusions on Wednesday, September 16, on the crashes of the Lion Air Boeing 737 Max in October 2018 and that of the Ethiopan Airlines Boeing 737 Max in March 2019.
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This is the "
horrible culmination
" of a series of engineering flaws, mismanagement and lack of oversight, to use the expression used by the US Congressional Transport Committee, which issued its conclusions Wednesday September 16.
Over the course of 18 months, she studied about 20 hearings and read some 600,000 pages of documents.
Its objective: to understand the fatal accidents of the Boeing 737 Max that have occurred over the past two years.
A
Lion Air
plane crash
in October 2018
and an
Ethiopian Airlines
plane crash
in March 2019
claimed the lives of a total of 346 people.
According to the commission, the responsibility is shared between the American manufacturer and the American regulator of the aviation, the FAA.
Bad evaluations, errors, concealment, complacency ...
The more than 230-page report reveals that Boeing erred by "
the worrying repetition of poor technical evaluations and disturbing errors of judgment on the part of management
", particularly concerning the MCAS anti-stall software involved in the two accidents.
It also concerns sharing information with pilots many of whom were unaware of.
A culpable error, which the rapporteurs, failing to obtain clear explanations, put on the account of a “
culture of concealment
” within the group.
The report also blames the financial pressure on Boeing, which has pushed it to speed up the production schedule at all costs to catch up with competitor Airbus.
But this could not have been done on the influence of the aviation giant on the American regulator.
Boeing employees were doing the work of the FAA, or asking it to make complacent reports.
Like Boeing, the FAA has promised reforms are underway to change the house's processes and culture.
It's a necessity, because the future of the 737 Max lies in the hands of the FAA and other regulators around the world.
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