FAA’s safety culture hasn’t changed, either

By now everyone is familiar with the accident on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, where a panel from the sidewall of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 explosively separated from the aircraft at 16,000 feet shortly after takeoff. It is fortunate that this didn’t happen just a few short minutes later when the plane was at twice the altitude, turning a calamity into a catastrophe.

We now know the panel was actually a plug replacing an unneeded exit, and that the bolts holding the plug in place may have failed or had simply been missing. Other MAX 9 aircraft have now been discovered with loose bolts and/or hardware. The piece that blew off has since been found to have been reinstalled improperly by Boeing mechanics in Renton.

While both Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration have issued words of assurance that they will use what investigators find to correct flaws in the manufacturing, safety regulation and quality assurance sectors of the industry, recent history is not encouraging.

In 2018 and 2019, two relatively new 737 MAX 8 airliners crashed under circumstances similar to each other in Africa and Asia, killing all 346 people aboard both planes. The investigations revealed that a new Boeing-developed and -installed flight control software played a major role in the crashes. The MAX 8 and MAX 9 are later generations of a 1960s-era airliner, the B-737, and over the years, Boeing did everything it could to modify this vintage design to circumvent an expensive and time-consuming new aircraft model-certification process. 

Boeing believed that the new software was needed to compensate for the effects that an extended fuselage and larger engines had on the controllability of the aircraft. Further, in a marketing ploy, Boeing said that pilots would not need simulator training to transition from earlier models of the 737, despite the new model having incorporated significant design changes.

The investigation also revealed that the FAA permitted Boeing to review its own work in certifying these new planes. After the understandable uproar that followed, this cozy relationship was purportedly rectified by increased FAA oversight of the certification process. In fact, the agency said that its newly announced initiatives were “focused on advancing overall aviation safety by improving our organization, processes and culture.” And yet, here we are.

Following this month’s accident, the FAA announced several actions. First, it would initiate an audit involving the production line and its suppliers to evaluate Boeing’s compliance with its approved quality procedures, something I assumed the FAA was doing as a part of its safety oversight responsibilities.

Second, it would assess the safety risks around delegated authority, something we all thought had been accomplished following the two MAX 8 crashes.

And third, it would consider moving these functions under an independent, third party entity. I always thought the FAA was that independent entity already charged by Congress with ultimate oversight responsibility, but events over the last five years cast doubt on that, apparently even to the FAA itself.

All of this reveals that neither Boeing nor the FAA learned the proper lessons from the earlier crashes. All the pronouncements we heard about changing their safety cultures appear to have been lip service to assuage Congress and all of us.

Boeing dismissed its CEO following the MAX 8 crashes. Promises by its new leadership have so far borne little fruit. I hope Michael Whitaker, the newly installed administrator of the FAA, will exercise his authority to finally change the culture of his 45,000-person agency and provide the robust safety oversight needed to make sure that Boeing finally changes as well.

Boeing moved its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, then to the Washington, D.C., area to be “closer to the government.” Being “closer to the government” is not the solution. Instead, maybe Boeing ought to consider moving their executives back to Seattle to be closer to their workers and their products.

When allowing the 737 MAX 8 to return to service in 2020, the FAA assured all of us that it will “conduct the same rigorous, continued operational safety oversight of the MAX that we provide for the entire commercial aviation fleet.” Heaven help us.