The Seattle Times is reporting that Boeing asked the FAA to cut out the need to comply with regulations stipulating the design for the warning displays in the cockpit designed to avoid any possible confusion. The article states that Boeing asked for an "exception", rather than an "exemption";
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A Boeing request for an official exemption from the regulations would have required a public notice in the Federal Register and an opportunity for interested parties or the general public to comment. Instead, Boeing followed a standard procedure for being granted such a waiver that was not public.Instead of an “exemption,” Boeing asked for an “exception” granted under a special FAA procedure called the “Changed Product Rule,” which lays out the conditions under which a new, changed version of an older model can be granted exceptions during certification.An official FAA advisory circular stipulates that exceptions will be granted if the applicant, in this case Boeing, can demonstrate that compliance is “impractical.” The design must come close to meeting safety requirements, and then demonstrate that “full compliance would require a substantial increase in the outlay or expenditure of resources with a very small increase in the level of safety.”
The article goes on to say;
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Boeing said a “significant design change” would be required if it had to comply with the complete set of federal crew alerting regulations.“Compliance would also require revision to the entire system of training and documentation that supports the alerting methodology, as used by 75,000 pilots and a large number of airline mechanics and engineers,” the document states.Boeing estimated the cost of the design, training and documentation changes to achieve full compliance for the 737 MAX would be “greater than $10 billion” in 2013 dollars."
This follows last week's NTSB report on the 737 MAX crashes that highlighted the importance of clear, unambiguous crew alerting systems in an in-flight emergency and brings the whole human factors issue into the spotlight, and the news of Boeing engineer whistle-blower Curtis Ewbank's ethics complaint about additional safety measures being rejected, as reported in the New York Times.
Without wanting to read too much into all this incrementally, it's starting to look like alot more changes, modifications and additional safeguards...and training...are going to be required before the MAX flies again.
The full article can be found here;
https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...r-crew-alerts/