FAA lag lost time to rectify 737 MAX

Safety fixes after the first Boeing Co. 737 MAX crash became snarled in Federal Aviation Administration delays and repetitive analyses.

Indonesian rescue personnel recover the wreckage of an engine from the Lion Air flight JT 610 at Tanjung port in Jakarta. Picture: Getty Images

Safety fixes after the first Boeing Co. 737 MAX crash became snarled in Federal Aviation Administration delays and repetitive analyses, wasting any chance US regulators had to prevent the second fatal accident, according to an investigation by the Transportation Department’s internal watchdog.

The 52-page report released Wednesday reiterated previously known lapses by the FAA and Boeing during initial safety approval of the MAX, but it also raised additional questions about the seeming lack of urgency both sides displayed during the five months between the two crashes to develop and implement a safety fix covering the fleet.

Following the first MAX crash, in October 2018, it took the FAA four months just to agree on a timetable for implementing fixes once they were devised, according to the report by the DOT inspector general.

The narrative also revealed FAA officials spent months conducting an inconclusive internal review of problems with the plane’s original certification.

Launched in January 2019, the review got bogged down in bureaucratic procedures, never got finished and was abandoned when a second MAX went down that March, according to the inspector general.

The report provides fresh ammunition for FAA critics in Congress, who argue agency officials wasted their chance to act swiftly and decisively to prevent the second, similar MAX crash.

An FAA spokesman declined to comment.

The document offers new insights about precisely how long it took the FAA to chart a course to deal with safety problems after Lion Air Flight 610 nosedived into the Java Sea. The inspector general also lays out, in more detail than previous reports, the agency’s subsequent halting progress coming to grips with the MAX fleet’s hazards in the period that ended with the fatal crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.

A Boeing spokesman said that, since the accidents, “we have made substantial changes within our company to further enhance our commitment to safety.” Boeing, the spokesman continued, has pledged “transparency with the FAA during all aspects of the aeroplane certification process”.

The latest scrutiny adds yet more voices to the extensive chorus of US politicians and global safety experts who have pinpointed Boeing’s failures, extending back to the development of the MAX, to provide timely and accurate information about an automated flight-control feature known as MCAS. Misfires of that system led to both crashes, which took 346 lives and plunged Boeing into what was then the worst crisis in its 100-plus year history, until the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report doesn’t offer recommendations. In a formal response to the report, Steven Bradbury, the DOT’s general counsel, wrote that it revealed “some strengths in FAA’s aircraft certification process, as well as areas for improvement”.

Safety vetting of the MAX before its 2017 introduction into service, according to Mr. Bradbury’s memo, which was attached to the report, “was hampered by a lack of effective communication, both between Boeing and FAA and within FAA”. resulting in the agency receiving incomplete information about MCAS hazards before approving the plane for passenger service.

Wednesday’s report chronicles how, over the four years leading up to the FAA’s green light for the MAX to carry passengers, the agency increasingly delegated safety approvals to Boeing experts authorised to act on the agency’s behalf. In the end, Boeing took the lead on all of the 91 designated certification projects for the MAX. The document also indicates that throughout the process, the Seattle plane maker sought to play down the importance of MCAS. During one early technical meeting with the FAA, the inspector general determined, only two lines of text referred to MCAS as part of a two-day, 482-slide Boeing presentation highlighting new features on the jet.

The report also indicates that after changing the design of MCAS in 2016 to make it substantially more powerful, Boeing didn’t provide information outlining the change to FAA engineers.

The report indicates the FAA didn’t finish its official assessment of safety hazards posed by the MAX fleet until December 12, 2018, almost two months after the Lion Air crash. But according to the inspector general, it wasn’t until the second week in January that the agency “performed its own detailed analysis of MCAS”.

That January date, several FAA engineers told the inspector general’s staff, also was the “first time that they were presented with a full picture of how MCAS worked.”

Then it took another month for the FAA and Boeing to agree on a schedule for implementing fixes to MCAS’s software.