I've boldfaced an interesting issue - From WSJ
Boeing Accused of ‘Lack of Candor’ as House Panel Probes 737 MAX Crashes
Boeing CEO Grilled by Senators on Handling of 737 MAX Problems
U.S. senators questioned Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg on the company's internal communications related to concerns about the 737 MAX’s flight-control system and pilots’ training on the system.
By Ted Mann,
Andy Pasztor and
Andrew Tangel
Updated Oct. 30, 2019 10:53 am ET
WASHINGTON— Boeing Co. ’s actions in launching its 737 MAX passenger jet came under fire again Wednesday as the House Transportation Committee opened an inquiry into the design and development of the aircraft involved in two fatal crashes that killed 346 people.
Lawmakers hammered Boeing executives a day after a similar Senate hearing with Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, suggesting that commercial pressures and a failure to adequately inform pilots of design changes led to the doomed flights.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions that we need to get to the bottom of,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.), the chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
“There’s been a lack of candor all through this,” Mr. DeFazio said, suggesting that pressures to keep costs lower for customers and preserve market share may have led Boeing to cut corners in the development of the MAX, including by failing to require new training for the MCAS flight-control system that led to two fatal crashes, in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
“I’ve talked to a lot of pissed-off pilots,” Mr. DeFazio said, adding that they felt uninformed about the system that malfunctioned in those crashes. “How can we be the backup if we don’t know something is going to take over our plane?’”
’Mr. DeFazio said House investigators had also learned of a Boeing manager who “implored the then-vice president and general manager of the 737 program to shut down the 737 MAX production line because of safety concerns,” before the first crash, in October 2018.
A day earlier, Mr. Muilenberg acknowledged to senators that he had been briefed on internal concerns about the control system after the first MAX crash. Boeing faces an overarching question as it responds to lawmakers, regulators and lawsuits: could a more urgent response to the first crash have saved the lives of the 157 who died on the second plane?
Boeing is also playing defense against newly skeptical lawmakers who question whether federal safety regulators have ceded too much authority to plane makers to check the reliability of their own designs. Lawmakers in both parties have also questioned whether the Federal Aviation Administration has grown too cozy with Boeing, the world’s largest airplane maker and one of the nation’s most important industrial companies.
Mr. DeFazio for some two decades has been an outspoken critic of what he views as often passive air-safety regulators catering to industry pressures. Mr. DeFazio has called the FAA’s actions between the two crashes “totally inadequate,” adding “it did not express any level of urgency.”
Based on his prepared opening statement and recent remarks about the goals of the hearings, Boeing’s cost-cutting efforts are likely to be a major theme of Wednesday’s session with lawmakers confronting Mr. Muilenburg with questions about whether schedule pressure on employees resulted in hasty or ill-advised design decisions on the MAX.
The hearing also is expected to reveal that before the Lion Air crash in Indonesia, a senior manufacturing manager on Boeing’s 737 MAX assembly line expressed serious concerns to the head of the MAX program about safety concerns related to ramping up MAX production.
“We’re aware of that,” Mr. Muilenburg said in a news conference Wednesday before the House hearing. “We’ve taken on those concerns and addressed those.”
In addition to questions about specific engineering and procedural missteps in government certification of the jet, the House panel is poised to delve into Boeing’s internal safety deliberations in the wake of the Lion Air crash.
Asked about what he knew before the second 737 MAX crash about a former Boeing pilot’s 2016 messages suggesting he experienced problems with a flight-control system and misled regulators, Mr. Muilenburg said: “That was a topic I was briefed on earlier this year. I’m sure that will be a topic of discussion in today’s hearings as well.”
And a few minutes ago- 8 42 AM Oct 30 Comment was made re what happened to CEO (Demotion from Chair of Board )- and that one person had been fired- but CEO got a 15 million bonus after the first crash . . .
oooopsie