The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is
quoted by the LA Times as writing:
We now know of at least one case where a Boeing manager implored the then-vice president and general manager of the 737 program to shut down the 737 Max production line because of safety concerns, several months before the Lion Air crash in October 2018,
What is that based on? In particular, what was the safety concern?
____________
Independently:
USA Today has an article titled:
FAA admin. on Boeing 737 Max: We're still deciding 'when, whether' plane will fly again
What's the original statement and context?
While I am uncertain that the "
whether" is more than rhetorical, as an (insufficiently informed) engineer, I see it as a legitimate question, given in particular uncertainties about
- the physical feasibility of manual trimming as part of a backup procedure, which remains part of the current certification reasoning/charade
- aerodynamic stability in degraded modes with the revised MCAS inop (which is more likely due to the fixes, since one of two redundant sensors fail more often than one sensor).