Tehran 07 March_Boeing made missteps and withheld information about the 737 MAX while federal regulators failed to provide proper oversight, leading to a “fundamentally flawed” aircraft that demands tighter rules, a US congressional committee said Friday.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club(YJC)_The preliminary report from the House Transportation Committee blasts Boeing management and the Federal Aviation Administration and calls for reforms.
“The fact that multiple technical design missteps or certification blunders were deemed ‘compliant’ by the FAA points to a critical need for legislative and regulatory reforms,” the report said, calling the aircraft “fundamentally flawed and unsafe.”
The Democratic committee chair plans to introduce legislation to address the failings in coming weeks, according to a statement from the committee.
Released days before the anniversary of the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines MAX, the second involving the model, the report cited a list of failings, including Boeing management brushing off concerns of engineers, and FAA officials ignoring warnings from its own experts.
The congressional investigation aimed “to better understand how the system failed so horribly,” committee Chair Peter DeFazio said in a statement.
And he said the committee intends to continue its investigation “to bring into focus the multiple factors that allowed an unairworthy airplane to be put into service, leading to the tragic and avoidable deaths of 346 people.”
The MAX has been grounded worldwide since the accident, which happened a few months after the Lion Air tragedy in Indonesia in October 2018.
“Both Boeing and the FAA gambled with the public’s safety in the aftermath of the Lion Air crash,” the report said.
‘Grossly insufficient’ oversight’
Many of the flaws in design and oversight had been revealed over the months since the second crash, but the damning report lays them out one after the other.
The report describes Boeing’s “fundamentally flawed assumptions” about technology in the plane, including the flight software at the epicenter of both tragedies: the MCAS.
And the company as a “culture of concealment” that meant “it withheld crucial information” including from pilots, customers and the FAA.
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