The Federal Aviation Administration recently adopted a new aircraft certification policy that requires key flight control design changes to be considered as “major,” similar to the MCAS flight control system deployed in two Boeing 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
Congress in 2020 passed legislation directing reforms in how the FAA certifies new planes. The changes require manufacturers like Boeing to disclose some safety information such as MCAS and related systems that automate flight controls without direct pilot input or commands.
On Nov. 30, the FAA said it issued more guidance, dated Nov. 20, to airplane manufacturers to identify safety critical information to improve aircraft certification safety. Boeing had not disclosed all the details of MCAS to FAA, which investigators had said was linked to both fatal crashes and had been designed to counter a tendency of the MAX planes to pitch upward.
In response to the new FAA guidance, Boeing told Reuters it continues to work “transparently with the FAA to ensure we continue to meet all requirements in the certification process.” Boeing has paid more than $20 billion in compensation, productions costs and fines as a result of the crashes, which also led to a 20-month grounding of the MAX planes.
The FAA said via email to Fierce Electronics it had taken two additional steps to improve aircraft certification safety to address requirements in the Aircraft Certification Safety and Accountability Act of 2020. They are addressed in two separate documents, including a new policy and additional guidance.
“The latest steps building on extensive work the FAA has undertaken in recent years to improve our certification and safety-oversight processes,” FAA said in a statement to Fierce, referring to a reform effort web page.
737 Max history
The FAA’s handling of oversight of Boeing following the two crashes has been scrutinized by members of Congress and the public, including FlyersRights, which sued under freedom of information provisions to release documents related to FAA’s handling of the aftermath of the crashes.
In March, US Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, asked the FAA for transparency in oversight of aircraft manufacturers and their suppliers. “For us, it’s making in the certification process…that another MCAS isn’t projected as a part of the system and people don’t understand it,” she said at a Senate hearing on the matter.
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FlyersRights lost an appeal on June 30 before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (cased number 21-5257) seeking redacted communications between the FAA and Boeing over recertification of 737 MAX planes. Following that loss, FlyersRights said it would appeal to the Supreme Court but later decided not to appeal to the highest court, according to Paul Hudson, president of FlyersRights.org.
In a September email to Fierce, Hudson said an appeal to the Supreme Court “would not be useful,” since the Appeals Court had decided in 2019 in the Argus Leader case making possible “blanket secrecy” by the FAA regarding Boeing.
The FAA had redacted 9500 pages of documents used to recertify in 2020 the 737 MAX after it was grounded, which FlyersRights was seeking to be made public. He suspected, he told Fierce, that the redacted documents might reveal that flight test protocols for the recertification that Boeing proposed and the FAA approved did not included test conditions likely to cause the MCAS to fail “or were considered too dangerous to even attempt.” Such conditions included testing the aircraft as it would fly on one engine over long distances, such as over oceans.
Despite Hudson’s concerns, The FAA, the Air Line Pilots Association, Boeing and several airlines deem the 737 MAX safe. Many 737 MAX planes are in production.