Nearly four years after two Boeing 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia, criticism is still being leveled at the aerospace giant for lack of complete public transparency concerning what happened.
“What is still needed is for Boeing to demonstrate complete and total humble transparency,” said independent expert Gregory Travis in an email to Fierce Electronics. “Not transparency inside the corporation as they say they are now going to do… but external transparency.”
Travis said Boeing “continues to refuse to divulge details of what it found [after the crashes] and what is has done to correct things. It is not being transparent and there is only one reason I can think of for it to not be transparent: it has things it wants to hide.”
Travis and a group of aviation safety experts have followed the multiple government investigations into the crashes since they occurred in late 2018 and early 2019. As a veteran instrument-rated pilot and career software engineer, Travis has focused primarily on deficiencies in a flight control software fix known as MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) used in the Boeing 737 MAX planes.
MCAS was “unbelievably deficient,” he said in 2020, “but it was the culture at Boeing that allowed this to happen.”
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Culture concerns
And in late 2022, Travis still believes the management and engineering culture at Boeing faces serious problems that the company has yet to address.
His comments, made Monday, came in response to an article published in November in the company’s Innovation Quarterly magazine which was repurposed in an updated form for distribution and released to Fierce Electronics and other publications on Monday.
The repurposed information was based on a Commercial Aviation Safety Report issued in May that specifically includes MCAS improvements, a spokesman told Fierce Electronics.
Boeing says its MCAS now operates in “unusual flight conditions only and now relies on two sensors, activates only once and never overrides pilots’ ability to control the airplane.” Investigators had found MCAS had indeed relied on just one of two Angle of Attack sensors located on either side of the plane in the crashes. Also, the system did not allow for a pilot override capability.
In the two deadly crashes before the MCAS enhancements, Boeing noted that a “single AOA sensors gave incorrect information to MCAS, which caused it to activate. In both cases, MCAS engaged repeatedly when the sensor continued to incorrectly report a high AOA.”
After many of Boeing’s MCAS updates were initiated, the US Federal Aviation Administration on Nov. 18, 2020, lifted the order suspending MAX 737-8 and 737-9 operations for airlines under its jurisdiction. Boeing has worked with other global regulators and airlines to safely return the airplane to service in their jurisdictions.
RELATED: Boeing 737 MAX still faces questions over MCAS flight control update before flying again
Nearly 1,000 of the 737 MAX planes have been built, with more than 945 delivered to airlines after the FAA first certified the MAX series in March 2017. Primary users in the US include Southwest, United, American and Ryanair. The planes had been grounded globally from March 2019 to November 2020. The Department of Justice brought a fraud conspiracy case against Boeing in the matter, which was settled when Boeing paid $2.5 billion in penalties in January 2021
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Monday’s report from Mike Delaney, Boeing Chief Aerospace Safety Officer, discusses a range of ways Boeing has enhanced management oversight for greater safety, including the 2019 creation of an Aerospace Safety Committee and the January 2021 creation of Delaney’s position and Chief Aerospace Safety Office.
“That’s nice,” Travis said in reaction. “There’s no guarantee the company will have any incentive to listen to the Chief Aerospace Safety Office or that the office will have any teeth.”
The Boeing report also provides for Safety Management System that says Boeing is “fostering a positive safety culture is grounded in humility, inclusion and transparency” to mitigate risks and “prevent accidents, injuries or loss of life.” A confidential reporting channel called Speak Up is designed to provide a platform for workers to voice safety concerns and be protected from retaliation. To date, hundreds of inquiries have been investigated and resolved, Boeing said.
One improvement Boeing outlined calls for strengthening the Organization Designation Authorization, which allows Boeing personnel to act as representatives of the FAA for aircraft certification and safety assurance. With coordination from the FAA, Boeing “is working to improve the ODA oversight, its administration and to further improve the unit member appointment process and skills development.”
Travis said the ODA will rely on a system of assigning Boeing mentors with regulatory knowledge to less senior workers. He is concerned over that approach because ODA members will continue to be Boeing employees “and thus their allegiance will to Boeing and not the FAA.”
He added, “What I would have liked to hear is that Boeing will fund however many positions at the FAA to perform the regulatory oversight function. Those individuals would be FAA employees, but their funding would come from Boeing.”
Travis said he has worked with a group of aviation safety experts to pressure the FAA and Boeing to transparent about the software changes they made to MCAS. In response to a freedom of information request to the FAA filed by the group, the FAA responded with redacted documents to preserve commercial secrets, and the group has asked federal courts to require the FAA to justify the redactions. The case, 21-5257, Flyers Rights Education Fund vs. FAA, is before the US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia.
He listed several questions being asked of Boeing and the FAA, including if MCAS fails in flight, does that constitute an emergency that requires the aircraft be landed at the nearest opportunity.
Travis said Boeing needs to heed the lesson when reports emerged of possible structural problems with the Piper Malibu in the 1990s. “Piper undertook an extensive engineering flight test program and not only published the results, but they invited journalists to go along on some of the flights. Why? It was the right thing to do for everybody. Piper knew it had nothing to hide and it wanted to make sure that everyone knew it had nothing to hide.
“Boeing is behaving in a completely opposite manner,” Travis said.