Boeing 737 Max Recertification Testing - Finally.

[Rocade]

Icelandair operates one 737 Max sim in Iceland. They are planning on 6 frames to be in operation in for Summer 2021 so there might be some sim slots available other airlines

[WHBM]

One wonders about the fidelity of the Max sims to replicate, accurately, the different aircraft dynamics compared to the NG that we are now doing the "additional training" on, such as the different pitch-up from the repositioned engines, especially with the recently agreed extra mods. Presumably if Boeing concealed the technical detail of some Max features from the aircraft purchasers they did the same with the sim builders.

[gums]

Outstanding points, WHBM !

I speak from several decades of flying the beasts, instructing in the suckers, and associating with those that flew the ones I did not.

Contrary to one or more contributors here, training can compensate for design deficiencies that resulted in undesireable aerodynamic characterstics. In other words, some planes worked better over most of the envelope than others, but one corner might have its problems. Other planes had great performance overall only if flown with a few things in mind.

So WHBM raises one of the best issues for discussion amongst we "professionals", huh?

The "no training required, but a 15 minute iPad check box session" for the Max was damned near criminal, in my not so humble opinion. If the MCAS was a cert requirement due to inherent and new aero characteristics of the plane I have to fly for the 0915 flight to Topeka, what was it and do I need to do something different and new ?? As good as I was, I was not a Chuck Yeager clone and only explored new aspects of the envelope a few times and they were not due to design or aero problems. One plane I flew had definite problems and the training was a key element that kept most pilots from departing the sucker ( F-101 Voodoo), Ask any Hun or Phantom driver how much aileron they used when at high AoA and the sucker was buffeting. Talk to a Mirage or Deuce or Six pilot about holding back stick and watching the rate of climb needle pegged going down while the plane seemed under control ( ditto for the crew of AF447). You can train to a great extent that compensate for the jet's aero characteristics when a blank sheet new design or harsh mod is not an option.

If they would let me do it right now, I would relish flying the real plane without MCAS enabled just to see "how it felt" if I pulled too hard in the pattern at holding speed/AoA. Would hope all 737 pilots could have that opportunity, wouldn't you? Can we demo this in the new, cosmic, realistic year 2020 sim for the Max? In other words, show me the difference that MCAS makes. Show me the trim wheel force requirements if I screw up and get going real fast with lottsa nose down trim. Show me how the normal yoke trim switches override the MCAS nose down commands. And the beat goes on. I wanna "feel" it, and I want my pilots to "feel" it. It is "touch" that separates "pilots" from mechanical technicians up there in the front of the plane.

Enuf rant, and now I have a second U.S. Thanksgiving dinner with the remains from Thursday, heh heh.

[hec7or]

You'll only feel what the elevator feel and centring unit wants you to feel

[GlobalNav]

“Contrary to one or more contributors here, training can compensate for design deficiencies that resulted in undesireable aerodynamic characterstics.”

Certainly, training can have a huge impact, but the use of training as compensation for unsafe design deficiencies is below the intended level of safety for Part 25 airplanes.

[ATC Watcher]

GlobalNav

Are you implying it is OK for a Part 23 , or any other lower category ? I know a few aircraft in that category in which the manual says not to attempt things that would be perfectly normal in a standard aircraft.

[GlobalNav]

I was not implying anything about the Part 23 level of safety, I was being specific about what I have experience with.

To compare Pt 25 with Pt 23 is like having a discussion about presidential politics at the Thanksgiving table, and would accomplish about as much.

[ATC Watcher]

That we can agree on ! :E But back to your initial sentence which still leaves me uncertain of what you meant : the use of training as compensation for unsafe design deficiencies is below the intended level of safety for Part 25 airplanes.

Is that an opinion or a fact?,(I am not familiar with the TLS of part 35 a/c) and if it is a fact then what we are about to see now is definitively below the TLS, or are they going to move the standard to fit the exception? .

[gums]

I did not mean to create a debate about specific paragraphs of Part X versus Part Y of the codes/laws/rules etc.

I read the Part 25 stuff and other cert requirements way back when the MCAS debacle started. It seemed to me that the problem that MCAS addressed was due to reduced "back stick force" required as the AoA increased in certain parts of the envelope, but primarily related to AoA and not Q or gee, but maybe mach. So let's get the vocanulary standard, huh? Mods have not allowed us to move the technical and engineering stuff to the Tech Log, so guess we can duke it out here with all the political, legal and social stuff.

Due to my background, I use "stick force" referring to a control mechanism pilots use demanding nose up or nose down or roll commands. In some planes, the "stick" does not provide a lotta feedback if any, as in the Airbus or the Viper ( Concorde pilots here that actually flew the thing can contribute). In four planes I flew there was zero roll feedback, just springs!

So if we assert "the only feedback is due to x system", then that dog won't hunt. My concept of "feel" or feedback, is what the plane is telling you! Shake, rattle and roll. Maybe increased pressure or less pressure on your butt when in coordinated flight. I am not disputing basic instrument flying rule number one, and in the only seat that had flight controls for a coupla thousand hours in bad weather, I stand as a survivor.

So my beef with the rationale for MCAS implementation to meet Part 25 or whatever was not to satisfy "dangerous" or unsafe flight characteristics, but to stay on one side or the other of some curve depicted in the cert paragraph. I even found that on a technical web site blog and am too lazy now to find it and show. It was over at the Tech Log that the mods locked.

That being said, I stand by my feeling that training could have helped a lot versus an unknown system that:
1) The pilots didn't know about
2) Was poorly implemented for a host of reasons ( my systems engineering background with armament systems)

[hec7or]

From my 20yrs flying the previous iterations of this thing, I would say co-ordinating the power - pitch couple with engine response and control force v pitch response is not intuitive because, depending where you are with respect to airspeed, engine response and stick pressure, a given amount of stick force produces wildly differing pitch response depending what the thrust is doing.

All of these are benign when used in moderation, but recovering from a low speed, high nose situation with large thrust inputs will rapidly lead to a PIO if the stick pressure is not very carefully co-ordinated with engine response, since the thrust lags considerably behind the position of the thrust levers.

[gums]

Good grief, Hector.

If the jet had all those characteristics you allude, then at least a few hours of training musta been required, huh?

[PEI_3721]

yo gums,
After your fortifying festive feasts, I wonder if recent posts in this thread have dented your 'training' armour.
Also there may be more room to manoeuvre now that the changes to 737 Max are known.

Moving from 'in principle' training should not replace a bad design (where the consequences of a MCAS event required extreme human performance), to 'in practice', training for systems with residual weaknesses after modification could be accepted

In principle the 737 Max should not have been designed as it was.
But,
In practice, after modification, training could provide sufficient safety even if not an ideal design.

The important aspect is not where the dividing line is (principle - practice), but who judges it; noting the current differences between regulators after MCAS mods.
These are judgement calls, influenced by underlying beliefs.
What safety credit can be assumed about trained crews in rare or surprising situations, noting that human performance demonstrated in training is unlikely to be what happens in real events - events which in some circumstances the industry cannot afford the experience of even one occurrence.

A distant overview is that not only did the FAA get MCAS wrong, their continuing differences with other regulators suggest their choices are not universally agreed, which in turn does little to restore their world standing.

[gums]

I agree with ya PEI. I am not advocating to train all the pilots to compensate for a really poor design. I also would have liked to have seen Boeing change a few things to satisfy the FAA cert requirements and avoid the nose up pitch characteristic I saw on the graphs.

Moving from 'in principle' training should not replace a bad design (where the consequences of a MCAS event required extreme human performance), to 'in practice', training for systems with residual weaknesses after modification could be accepted
In principle the 737 Max should not have been designed as it was.
But, In practice, after modification, training could provide sufficient safety even if not an ideal design.

I look at the data we have from the two fatal accidents and conclude that system knowledge and some training would have made a lotta difference. Folks that have flown deltas have been shown the high AoA characteristcs that they have. Concorde was the same as the F-102 or Mirage. Plane feels great, but you are going down at 10,000 feet per minute!! Folks flying the VooDoo were shown that the stick got "light" just before you departed. And so forth. Sure, make the planes foolproof and not as fuel efficient or maneuverable. Somehow I do not think that dog will hunt.

My understanding is the 727 and some British planes would never have been certified without a "pusher" or whatever to avoid the pitchup/deep stall condition. The 707 had some trim problems I recall, and was publisized by an accident with the U.S. skating team. Those planes were certified but seems that the pilots had some training to alert them of what would happen if the "systems" failed.

The MCAS and its failure modes were not part of any training or even discussion or reference material. So I maintain my position that even with a poor design that training would have made a difference.

[infrequentflyer789]

Moving from 'in principle' training should not replace a bad design (where the consequences of a MCAS event required extreme human performance), to 'in practice', training for systems with residual weaknesses after modification could be accepted

In principle the 737 Max should not have been designed as it was.
But, In practice, after modification, training could provide sufficient safety even if not an ideal design.


Even if we leave aside the "in principle" and the regs, the fundamental problem remains: "no new (sim) training" was part of the design.

Training could not have substituted for MCAS, could not ever compensate for changed / bad handling characteristics, because training was eliminated by design.
In fact, even the design of MCAS itself was limited because it had to work with "no new training" (no new warnings, no mention in the manual etc.), this is one reason why (according to e.g. this (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/a-lack-of-redundancies-on-737-max-system-has-baffled-even-those-who-worked-on-the-jet/)article) it all hung off only a single sensor. What was delivered wasn't just a bad design, it was a bad, bodged, design and no training by design.

[DaveReidUK]

Surely it's the other way round?

"No training" wasn't a design objective for MCAS.

"No training" was a commercial imperative.

[oldchina]

"No training" was a commercial imperative

Indeed, one would need to be an insider to know how much time and money the manufacturers spend refining their commonality arguments.
Fly-by-wire with its ability to tweak the aircraft's behaviour has given Airbus such an advantage that Boeing has been running
behind for 30 years.
The Max was a challenge too far.

[Peter H]

DaveReidUK

Please excuse a SLF.

But surely commercial imperatives didn't require MCAS to be such a dogs breakfast? After all it was "just" some sort of feel augmentation system, which required reasonably benign failure characteristics.

Feel augmentation could have been implemented in a straightforward manner with some sort of stick-pusher with limited authority. In which case the pilots instinctive reaction to simply apply more control column force would have saved the day.

... negative thought on what B has become ...

The chosen "aerodynamic" implementation mechanism which was found in practice not to have benign failure characteristics. With pilots failing to analyse the situation effectively (let alone intuitively). It also highlighted some skeletons in the closet: unreasonable force required for manual trim-wheel, over complex multi-warning situation to analyse, if pilots aren't told about MCAS they cannot include it in failure analysis -- and other checklists might require tweaking to compensate.

[infrequentflyer789]

oldchina

Boeing was fully caught up by 1995 with, arguably, a better FBW system having learned from Airbus's FBW launch. All they had to do was spread that 777 platform across the size range, as Airbus did, and gain all the same advantages plus having Airbus go first to mark all the potholes along the way. But they didn't, something else happened a couple of years later, turned it around and drove it off the cliff

[Longtimer]

American Airlines starts Boeing 737 Max flights to boost confidence in jets after fatal crashes American Airlines starts Boeing 737 Max flights to boost confidence in jets after fatal crashes (msn.com) (https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/news/american-airlines-starts-boeing-737-max-flights-to-boost-confidence-in-jets-after-fatal-crashes/ar-BB1bz3oA?ocid=msedgdhp)

[gums]

@ China and Peter an others......

One mo' time about FBW.

The MCAS moved the horzontal stab to keep the pitch moment of the beast within the FAA cert requirements. That is not a minor "tweak" of the plane's natural aero stability. A computer controlled movement of the elevator at the rear of the stab would have been "minor". Planes since the early 60's have had flight control "dampers" and "augmentation" to help we lowly pilots that get you there on time and maybe smooth things out a bit. The FBW Airbus and the military jets are not in the same arena with the 737 MAX.

The MAX problem was not "feel" from the longitudinal control system, it was the actual tendency of the plane to increase pitch at the same back stick or at least require less back stick when getting above a certain AoA. When I say back stick feel, what I mean is your plane wants to do something it normally does with "x" pound/ounces of pressure or movement, but now requires less or actually requires an opposite movement/pressure/force. The FAA requirement requires more "pull" as you try to get the nose up and increase the AoA. Dat's why the MCAS used the AoA probe and not body rates, Q, inertial gee, etc. Somewhere in there Boeing found that mach contributed to the pitch tendency and then increased the overall "gain" that MCAS exercised, then they had the damned thing keep pushing doen for "x" reps/seconds/whatever. Sheesh!

FBW systems vary as to the amount of "help" they can provide the "technicians" we now have flying the jets, but I cannot find any civilian commercial systems that depend upon the computers to correct for unconventional aero that we see in some military fighters requiring severe maneuverability. Those rascals have different operational requirements and most do not have 200 SLF's depending upon them to get to Detroit. The Airbus 330 aero design is so good that the crew of AF447 did not even realize they were deeply stalled ( not a "deep stall"). Go see the thousands of posts about that debacle and then you will conclude the system did exactly what it was designed to do given the air data provided to the computer and the pilot stick inputs.

FBW is not a magic bullet, and should not be used to compensate for poor aero design.

[Less Hair]

Ryanair has ordered another 75 today bringing their MAXes, pardon 737 8-200, to 210 aircraft ordered.

[tdracer]

Alaska is also planning to add to their 737-8 fleet - although via lease rather than additional purchases.
It'll be interesting to see if this is just a reaction to rock bottom pricing, or if the MAX might actually make a recovery.

[BEA 71]

American Airlines starts Boeing 737 Max flights to boost confidence in jets after fatal crashes American Airlines starts Boeing 737 Max flights to boost confidence in jets after fatal crashes (msn.com) (https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/news/american-airlines-starts-boeing-737-max-flights-to-boost-confidence-in-jets-after-fatal-crashes/ar-BB1bz3oA?ocid=msedgdhp)
Five flights will be operated with airline staff on board, to show the employees have confidence in this aircraft. There is a very good story about these flights in Flightglobal. American Airlines are doing the right thing. Apart from this, airlines should give free passes to their employees on the flights they operate. Considering, of course, the regulations which are in force. The idea is not new - my first flight to the U.S. was on a Finnair DC 8 Combi, AMS-JFK. In order to fill the seats, Finnair gave away free tickets on the new route to airlines staff. Actually I was the last staff passenger to be given such a ticket, then the loads picked up and were profitable. I am certainly aware, that some airlines offer free travel to their employees already

[Nil by mouth]

Less Hair

How many of these will be orders cancelled by other airlines?
Garage sale!

[STN Ramp Rat]

coincidentally there are about 75 "white tails" parked in various storage yards in the US. apparently Ryanair will take delivery of the first 50 aircraft from this order in 2021 and park some -800's until things pick up. seems to be very much a garage sale

[kiwi grey]

None
The Ryan Air "737-8200 (tel:737-8200)" / "737 MAX 8 200" is a unique configuration with 197 passenger seats and a different emergency exit door arrangement.
Boeing have to build and certificate the lead airframe before Ryan Air can take delivery of any.
None of the existing white tails are this model

[krismiler]

I’m sure Airbus are looking carefully at the prices that the MAX is being sold at. Anti dumping rules may come into play if Boeing are discounting too much in order to clear the logjam and get some cash flow moving.

This is the end for the B737, there won’t be a future generation of the type. Getting the MAX back in the air buys time for Boeing to develop a clean sheet replacement, something which should have been done back in the 1990s.

A fantastic deal for Ryanair, a brand new fleet of efficient aircraft with low fuel consumption and high dispatch reliability at a massive discount. Their pax don’t know or care as long as the fare is cheap. A guaranteed buy back and substantial discount may have been offered for when the replacement aircraft becomes available in 5 - 8 years time.

[tdracer]

A guaranteed buy back and substantial discount may have been offered for when the replacement aircraft becomes available in 5 - 8 years time.

It's going to be a lot longer than "5 - 8 years". IF Boeing had the resources to start again on a clean sheet design immediately, EIS would be in roughly 8 years. They don't. Right now they have three priorities - get the 400+ already built 737s delivered, get the 737 production line back on it's feet and delivering aircraft, and get the 777-9X certified and in-service (I've lost count of how many basically complete 777-9X are sitting around Paine Field but it has to be over two dozen). There is simply no money and no resources to devote to a new aircraft program right now, and that's not going to change anytime soon.
It'll be 2025 - at best - before Boeing is back on their feet sufficiently that they can even think of launching an all new aircraft

[Big Pistons Forever]

kiwi grey

If they are cheap enough I would think that Ryanair will pick up the white tails even if they are not to the Ryanair specifications.

[DaveReidUK]

kiwi grey

The 737-8200 (tel:737-8200) has been flying for nearly 2 years, albeit not yet on the TC.

[krismiler]

The B737 used to be Boeing's "cash cow" with most of the development costs covered long ago. Now they are selling again but at a steep discount, and airlines are pushing back delivery dates for the B777-X. The B787 may be the major earner for the company over the next few years as operators downgrade to smaller types.

It looks like Boeing will be competing with Airbus more on price then anything else for the medium term, and by the time a replacement type is available, Airbus will likely have something new as well.

[Nil by mouth]

With the airbus A321LR and XLR in the mix, would Boeing consider producing a B737MAX-LR version?

[oldchina]

Ryanair doesn't normally get a massive discount, just a respectable one. This is because there is no competition.
MoL made it clear years ago that he wanted an all-737 fleet. Airbus responded by saying it wouldn't bid for future business.

[Longtimer]

Interesting article re how long it will take to get pilots and aircraft flight ready once the Max is returned to service.
How Long Will Flight Crew Training Take For Boeing 737 MAX’s Return? | Aviation Week Network (https://aviationweek.com/aerospace/how-long-will-flight-crew-training-take-boeing-737-maxs-return)

[ATC Watcher]

Ryanair doesn't normally get a massive discount, just a respectable one. This is because there is no competition.
Yesterday during a webinar at Eurocontrol MOL said he got them at a discount and he also said he has 8 Max Sims to train/converts the crews rapidly and will beat Wizz with their A321. . The whole interview is on line and worth to watch/listen with a glass of Guinness. A good Irish show.
https://www.eurocontrol.int/event/eurocontrol-aviation-hardtalk-live-ryanair

[Farrell]

And so it begins...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-55243961

[DaveReidUK]

GOL have been gearing up for this for the last week or so, with several of its Max 8 fleet flying ad-hoc services from Belo Horizonte.

I wish them well.

[Less Hair]

Have those flights before been commercial flights with paying passengers? I guess not. Just management, staff and media. Today they return to commercial operations. Now the MAX is back.

[ahmetdouas]

Looks like they are back.

From FlightRadar24 twitter:

638 days after the #737MAX last carried paying passengers and the fleet was grounded worldwide,
@VoeGOLoficial
becomes the first airline to return the aircraft to commercial service with #G34104.

[India Four Two]

Canada takes first step to approve Boeing 737 Max to fly again
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-boeing-737-max-1.5845096

[Longtimer]

Transport Canada Press Release re the MAX Transport Canada validates the design changes to the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft (newswire.ca) (https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/transport-canada-validates-the-design-changes-to-the-boeing-737-max-aircraft-891311322.html)

[turbidus]

Wasnt there some deal with SW that no one will get a better discount than them?

With the airbus A321LR and XLR in the mix, would Boeing consider producing a B737MAX-LR version?
I think the MAX 10 is about as far as they can push that platform.

[LTNman]

There has been a coverup between Boeing and the FAA according to a damming Senate report just released tonight to get the aircraft re-certified and that Boeing inappropriately coached pilots during re-certification.

[Zeffy]

Boeing 'inappropriately coached' pilots in 737 MAX testing -U.S. Senate report (https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-737-max-idUKKBN28S314)

[Big Pistons Forever]

Boeing just see to digging themselves a deeper and deeper hole.......

[Chewing the crud]

Sorry if this is repeated, but my first post was stopped due to having a link to the Senate report.

Out of the seven most significant findings, only one explicitly concerned Boeing, where they had foolishly tried to influence the outcome of Human Factors reaction time testing.

Five of the findings concerned the FAA and arguably the remaining one as well, as the FAA operate under the remit of the DOT OCG. The continued obstructiveness of the FAA and persecution of whistleblowers indicates that 'Lessons have not been learned' and that a complete purge of tainted managers is well overdue. I wonder who the individual displaying 'possible lack of candor' was?

[arearadar70]

Why are Boeing sending 160 pilots, trained by them, to fly with 737 Max flights with airlines. Are they expecting problems ?

[Ancient-Mariner]

737 Max: Boeing 'inappropriately coached' pilots in test after crashes.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55372499

[PAXboy]

Since the company changed it's fundamental approach some 20 years ago - they cannot change back overnight. All those managers who got where they are by working the way they were told? Now they have to go in reverse. Until one person speaks up - no one does. So let us hope that we are seeing the cracks in their shell.

The same was true of the politicians who started out thinking that Covid was nothing much. For them to change is very difficult - but we have seen the start.

[GlobalNav]

I don’t think the corporate mindset of the Boeing company or FAA Aviation Safety is easily changed back. Managers were hired to fit it and support it.

It didn’t just happen all at once 20 years ago, it was a gradual but accelerating change over decades. There were key milestones in the 90’s and since. People fought it, raised alarms over it, were silenced, to the detriment of their careers and many left.

[PAXboy]

Correct GlobalNav The rot is now bred through the layers.

One of the certainties of life is that, when a corporate / governemnt says that something is FINE - it turns out there was a person or people, warning and telling the truth. The first big one to spring to mind was cigarettes. If I recall correctly, scientists were warning in the 1950s that they were deadly. Took decades for governments to overcome their love of money to start changing the rules.

[WillowRun 6-3]

That's quite an investigative report, from Senate Commerce Science and Transportation majority staff. Just about 100 single-spaced pages covering let's say about 18 topics and subtopics, with a heavy focus on the role of whistleblowers. Yeah, there goes much of holiday break, reading this monster doc.

But prelim, two things kind of leap out. One is the recital of how FAA gamed the Committee investigation process with regard to documents relating to or containing communications between Mr. M. Forkner and FAA employees. But from all appearances, gamed the system rather ineffectively. I've read a lot of document production timelines, and for looking bad, this one is high-altitude.... - see the report at 39-41 and especially the "sock it to me" litany at pp 40-41. Also, from again a prelim read, the DOT OGC (Office of General Counsel) looks like, well, has got some Counsel-'Splaining to do, seems like: "The failure of DOT OGC to produce documents previously requested by the Committee only to view them in media reporting and finally from FAA legislative affairs, suggests DOT OGC intentionally withheld relevant information requested by the Committee." (emphasis added)

Also, about the calling attention to the pickle switch. I'm not getting into a debate here about whether every whistleblower no matter what is completely honest and must be 100 percent believed - that's not the issue. The point is that giving the whistleblower the full credit of assumed complete veracity, nonetheless, has the process of a Committee staff investigation replaced all other pertinent fact gathering and investigation? Is there more to the facts of the particular whistle-blown "coaching" incident, such as it having been deliberate to see what the actual response time turned out to be, as one among a much larger number of tests with no "coaching"? (I'm surmising that pilots and others who actually know simulator run processes could think of many other facts which might add to and/or modify the picture painted by the scandalous tone of this section of the report.)

I'll refrain from saying much of anything about what a complicated project would be entrained in order to modify labor and employment laws at the federal and state levels to better handle the legitimate and necessary concerns of whistleblowers (not a reason to avoid tackling it, but resource the project properly or don't bother).

I hope the majority staff gets a vacation, they need it after spilling all this ink....

[Pilot DAR]

I have no comment about the FAA nor Boeing, however, I know, and have flown with one of the pilots who evaluated the changes on behalf of Transport Canada. That pilot would not let any non compliance slip past, I have entire confidence in him, and the job he would have done. If he signed off on it, it was compliant and safe. You have to place your faith in something in life, and I trust him. I'll ride in it.

[Zeffy]

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/congress-on-the-brink-of-major-faa-oversight-reform-in-wake-of-boeing-737-max-crashes/

Congress on the brink of major FAA oversight reform in wake of Boeing 737 MAX crashes
Dec. 20, 2020 at 4:22 am
By Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter

A sweeping reform of how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approves new commercial aircraft is on the brink of passage in Congress, propelled by a rare bipartisan push and public outrage over the Boeing 737 MAX crashes that killed 346.

Democrats and Republicans in U.S. House and Senate committees reached agreement in down-to-the wire negotiations last Sunday evening on a bill tailored to address the FAA’s oversight failures in its original certification of the MAX.

The legislation is expected to be incorporated into the massive $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill that Congress must pass to avoid a government shutdown. That could be voted on as early as Sunday and would make passage into law all but certain.

According to details of the bill obtained by the Seattle Times, the legislation strengthens the FAA’s direct oversight of the Boeing engineers who conduct safety assessments on behalf of the agency.

While the FAA would still delegate to Boeing a great deal of the certification work on future aircraft, new provisions aim to ensure the FAA’s safety experts keep a closer eye on how that work proceeds and that Boeing’s cost and schedule targets don’t dominate decision making.

The bill also requires greater disclosure and analysis of safety-critical systems at the outset of the certification process.

And it creates new penalties for supervisors who exert undue pressure on employees raising safety concerns, establishes new whistleblower protections, and sets up safety reporting mechanisms for FAA’s front-line technical staff.

Additionally, the bill authorizes new funding to build up technical expertise at the FAA and to conduct more human factors research into how pilots interact with automated flight control systems.

And it boosts Congressional oversight of the FAA, requiring the agency to provide Capitol Hill with reports, briefings and disclosures on how it’s meeting the goals laid out in the bill.

Rebalancing how certification work is delegated

Current FAA procedures have been criticized for delegating too much of the certification work to Boeing and for allowing the company’s managers too much control over the engineers who do the technical assessments on the FAA’s behalf — undermining their independence and giving Boeing the lead in the process while restricting how much the FAA is aware of details.

The proposed legislation, called the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act, rolls back some of the changes made in recent years that shifted the balance of oversight from the FAA toward Boeing.

The measure requires an upfront review of any critical new technology systems before any decision is made to delegate certification of those systems, including scrutiny by an independent panel of experts from other federal agencies such as NASA and the Air Force.

And the agency cannot delegate any oversight work until it has reviewed and validated the underlying assumptions related to pilot reactions to system failures.

These clauses reverse the yearslong trend of increasing delegation to the manufacturer that culminated in the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act. That law, passed just a month before the first MAX crash of a Lion Air jet in Indonesia in October 2018, mandated maximum delegation of certification work by requiring the FAA to make a case if it wanted any specific piece of the oversight work not to be delegated.

In an interview, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, who before the MAX crashes was an advocate of more delegation but aggressively pushed the new legislation in the Senate Commerce Committee, said that relentless trend toward industry self-certification is now over.

“We’re putting a big stop sign in the road right here,” Cantwell said.

The bill provides that the Boeing engineers assigned to work on behalf of the FAA must be approved or removed not by the company, as is the case now, but by the federal agency. And each will have a direct line of communication with an FAA safety inspector acting as an adviser and overseer of the work.

One damning finding of a major investigation into certification of the 737 MAX was that Boeing presented to the FAA only fragmented and partial information about the new flight control system that caused the crashes — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).

Under the new legislation, any such critical new system design must undergo a comprehensive safety analysis of how it might affect existing systems and the assumptions made about how pilots would react to system failures.

The bill also provides that an individual supervisor at Boeing or another manufacturer who exerts undue pressure on staff doing the certification work, or who fails to disclose safety critical information to the FAA, can be held personally liable and subject to heavy civil penalties.

To avoid FAA decisions on safety being compromised by Boeing’s business goals, the bill repeals existing laws allowing FAA employees to receive bonuses or other financial incentives based on meeting manufacturer-driven certification schedules.

And the bill repeals authority for industry-friendly advisory panels to set FAA performance goals that do not prioritize safety.

In response to internal FAA surveys that showed employees feared reprisal for raising safety issues, the bill provides anonymous reporting channels and whistleblower protections for front-line FAA engineers who wish to flag safety concerns.

Many of the detailed provisions in the bill follow the recommendations of various investigations into the MAX crashes and target very specific mistakes in the Boeing jet’s development and certification.

For example, one clause directly prohibits any contractual arrangement similar to the one Boeing made with Southwest Airlines, committing to refund the carrier $1 million per plane if its pilots were required to have new flight simulator training for flying the MAX.

Another detail directs the FAA to revoke the license of any pilot who fails to disclose safety critical information on behalf of a manufacturer.

The impetus for this is made plain in a summary of the legislation compiled by Senate staff, which notes in reference to this clause that former Boeing 737 Chief Technical Pilot Mark Forkner “is under federal investigation for intentionally lying to the FAA about the nature of MCAS.”

Another provision states that the FAA cannot certify an aircraft without conducting a safety review of the flight crew alerting system and assumptions about how pilots would respond to the cockpit warnings.

If that directive had been in place when the MAX was certified, the FAA might have caught the MCAS design flaws. Instead, Boeing was exempted from meeting the latest crew alerting safety standards, and the assumptions it made about pilot reactions proved catastrophically wrong.

An FAA safety engineer, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect his job, welcomed the provisions in the bill as “a good step forward.”

“The tools are here to address a lot of what’s gone wrong,” he said.

However, he cautioned that in practice much will depend upon the FAA administrator shifting the agency’s culture away from a focus on giving industry what it wants, and robustly implementing these new safety protocols.

Cantwell responded to that concern by saying she sees the bill as “a down payment.”

“We’re going to push the Biden administration to look at further reforms at the FAA beyond this legislation,” she said. “We need to make sure we have the right message coming out of the FAA … to ensure the law we are putting into place is going to be enacted and carried out.”

Cantwell said assuring aviation safety is necessary not only to protect the flying public but to protect the future of the airplane manufacturing industry and the jobs it brings to the Pacific Northwest.

She said the bill aims to do that by emphasizing that when safety decisions are made, “the engineers on the ground are in charge.”

Heading on a fast track into law

The wording of the FAA reform legislation is expected to be included in the year’s final “omnibus bill,” according to multiple sources. This is a catchall lawmaking package that’s intended to ensure passage of essential legislation before Congress adjourns.

To fast-track the process ahead of adjournment, no amendments are allowed on the omnibus bill. It is voted up or down in total and so, barring some extraordinary political upheaval, whatever makes it into the bill will become law.

The FAA reformdeal was driven by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss.; Cantwell, the committee’s ranking minority member; and House Transportation Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.

Michael Stumo, father of 26-year-old Samya Rose Stumo who died in the Ethiopian Airlines MAX crash in March 2019, followed the legislative process closely and lobbied relentlessly in person for passage of the FAA reforms.

He said the most important improvements to the certification process that he and the other families of victims had pushed for were retained in the final deal.

Stumo, who was present at the markup session at the end of September that finalized the House version of the bill, noted that DeFazio got “full Republican buy-in” for the proposed reforms from ranking minority member Sam Graves, R-Mo., and his colleagues.

“It was full agreement. There was no dissent,” Stumo said. “I stood up and clapped when they all passed it.”

Similarly, in the Senate, Cantwell said, conservative Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, worked alongside liberal Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., to suggest improvements in the bill.

On Friday, as a prelude to the new legislation, the Republican majority on the Commerce Committee published a scathing investigative report listing “significant lapses in aviation safety oversight and failed leadership in the FAA.”

The final recommendation in that report pointedly demands that the FAA “should support legislative reform by implementing law completely while fulfilling the intent of Congress.”

The rush to try to get the bill through Congress this weekend is the culmination of many months of political maneuvering that followed aggressive investigations into the MAX crashes and testy hearings last year when FAA Administrator Steve Dickson was grilled and criticized by lawmakers in both the House and the Senate.

Even though the House and Senate committees had by this month each agreed on their separate versions of the aircraft certification reforms, soon after the election the prospect of getting a bill into law seemed unlikely as time ran down for this Congress.

While the House had passed its version of the bill, the full Senate had not. The top political priorities were a defense reauthorization package, now passed, and a possible COVID relief bill.

Over the past weeks, negotiations on the details of an FAA reform bill that could be agreed between House and Senate went on late into the night, Congressional staffers said.

Since the bipartisan deal was finalized between the two committees late last Sunday, the sponsors have held back from publicly announcing it — fearing a last-minute block. However, in the political horse-trading that has held up the omnibus bill in the last few days, the FAA bill was not an issue.

If, as expected, the text of the new FAA legislation is published Sunday as part of the omnibus bill then — barring a veto by President Trump, which would trigger a government shutdown — this landmark reset of the way the FAA conducts airplane certification should become law within days.

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or [email protected]; on Twitter: @dominicgates.

[Byros]

I think it is positive that action is being taken to address the flawed Boeing / FAA relationship, but the Senate Report conveys a feeling that the plane is still unsafe due to a questionable recertification process.

From one of the articles:

“It appears, in this instance, the FAA and Boeing were attempting to cover up important information that may have contributed to the 737 Max tragedies,” the committee said.

Has Sully voiced a favorable opinion about the current state of the 737 MAX?

Until then I'm not letting any of my family members fly on that plane.

[ATC Watcher]

the bill provides anonymous reporting channels and whistleblower protections
The protection of whistleblowers is always a nice goal to put in a law, a regulation or a company code of conduct., it is unfortunately worth no more than the usual : " our people are our most important asset " . Having in my line of work seen a few times over the years what happens where a serious concern is being flagged up by operators of a system introduced by top management. It is nearly always seen as a critic of the said management or, it it becomes public , being unroyal to the company , and it most of the time it does not end too well for the whistleblower.

One Safety management guru once said : A Safety culture takes years to build , 10 minutes to destroy. and decades to restore it afterwards.
Here at Boeing , they had built a good safety culture ,and they took years of efforts to destroy it. bit by bit for profits...The trust is gone. I do not know how long it will take to get it back, but one thing is for sure , it has to come from the inside. A report from a committee will not in itself alter a corporate culture.

[Dave Therhino]

From the report quote above:
"One damning finding of a major investigation into certification of the 737 MAX was that Boeing presented to the FAA only fragmented and partial information about the new flight control system that caused the crashes — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS)."

If that's true, and if it was intentional, a felony violation of the false statements prohibition in 18 USC 1001 was committed. It specifically includes misleading statements as false statements to the government.

[WillowRun 6-3]

I awoke this morning unaware of some actually good news. A measure to turn the wrench on the FAA and its relation with airframers is reported to be near passage in the U.S. Congress. Who woulda thunk it?

I'm still holding off on banging out a few (dozen) paragraphs on what is needed to protect whistleblowers (this free-lance lawyering gig does impose some constraints, altho "self-employed" still has pizzaz, ain't it?). I'll just say that the model of litigation and pre-suit investigation process that most comes to mind is the so-called "qui tam" lawsuit, brought on behalf of Uncle Sam by a particular class of whistleblowers (who are richly rewarded for their risk-taking, where such claims are proven up).

I haven't been introduced to the former CEO of the airframer whose decisions led to such calamitous results, and which may yet become the provocation for wrenching, real reform and - dare an old SLF/atty hope - rejuvenation of the big ol' manufacturing bays that once made Scoop Jackson an impressive and unmovable character in the U.S. Senate. I will say, however, that the look on the former CEO's visage when he had to turn around at hearing and look upon the assembled survivors of the crash victims -- like the credit card advert says, priceless?---no, it was very costly, indeed, in human suffering and carnage, and in terms that cannot be expressed in legislative terms, provisions or codifications. But I climbed off my rack this morning in a free society, and its elected representatives are on a path to do the right thing. Can love be far behind?

[GlobalNav]

Byros

We, the public, don’t have the information to judge the safety of the Max. With all due respect for his professional knowledge and judgement, neither does Sully. We can wonder why Boeing wasn’t confident enough of their solution that they felt they needed a thumb on the scale. We can wonder at the established certification processes and whether they have changed enough to produce a honest result. We have heard of one certification test pilot that believes the solution is satisfactory, and that’s good news. I think we can hope that Congress has uncovered important lapses in the processes and will mandate effective changes. Personally, I hope that somehow real leaders with integrity move into the most influential positions in both Boeing and FAA. The real solution will take time, it will be painful and it is essential.

[horizon flyer]

But we are not the public we are pilots on this forum so I think we can judge. Even a humble PPL like myself can see why it all went wrong.
The engines are to far forward due to their diameter so at high AoA they generate lift so the centre of lift moves in front of the centre of gravity so the nose will keep pitching up.
So the real solution is to fit longer undercarriage legs and move the engines back no MCAS needed. But at unimproved airports without special high lift support vehicles
would make it difficult to service. The MCAS could have worked with a little more thought into failure modes, should have been more fault tolerant and customers should have not have been able to delete multi channel AoA sensors just to save a few dollars and better pilot training for trim runaway on all 737s because manual trim loads can be so high it can be impossible to manual trim.

My humble thoughts.

[GlobalNav]

I should clarify. Yes, you, other pilots, including Sully have professional knowledge, experience and judgement. But you don’t have certification data, have not personally tested a conformed aircraft or reviewed the test results. You have all you need to form informed opinions, one per pilot, and we have read several conflicting opinions, no surprise. But you don’t have the data needed to make a certification decision. We do have a Senate investigative report that gives reason to suspect the FAA certification.

[Andrewgr2]

So says the BBC. Today (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/55366320)

[esscee]

We are all saved then. EASA is not that much better than some other regulators.

[gmrwiz]

I have read that US Senate has recently issued a report on the B737 Max. I tried to download it but the access to the Senate site is unauthorized. Can anybody post the report?

[Longtimer]

Link to the 101 page document
FFDA35FA-0442-465D-AC63-5634D9D3CEF6 (senate.gov) (https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/FFDA35FA-0442-465D-AC63-5634D9D3CEF6)

[gmrwiz]

Thanks, but still I am not authorized to enter the site and download the report. Can you, please, put the report in this forum?
Tany thanks

[GlobalNav]

Is there a way to send .pdf attachments via message or email?

[GlobalNav]

gmrwiz First try at including an attachment.

[Peter H]

gmrwiz

As a SLF brit with no credentials I can see and download the report using that url. Perhaps there is a problem at your end?

[osborne]

If there's no fishy business going on between Boeing and the FAA why not invite Airbus test pilots to fly the MAX ?

[Less Hair]

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/FFDA35FA-0442-465D-AC63-5634D9D3CEF6

Public address for you as well hopefully. (Like #565)

[Longtimer]

Alaska Airlines Announces Restructured Agreement With Boeing To Acquire A Total Of 68 737-9 MAX Aircraft With Options For Another 52 New agreement in principle adds 23 orders plus 15 options to airline's overall order
NEWS PROVIDED BY
Alaska Airlines (https://www.prnewswire.com/news/alaska-airlines/)Dec 22, 2020, 08:55 ET Alaska Airlines Announces Restructured Agreement With Boeing To Acquire A Total Of 68 737-9 MAX Aircraft With Options For Another 52 (prnewswire.com) (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alaska-airlines-announces-restructured-agreement-with-boeing-to-acquire-a-total-of-68-737-9-max-aircraft-with-options-for-another-52-301197543.html)

[PAXboy]

A report I see:
The Boeing 737 Max will fly paying passengers in the US for the first time in 21 months next week as American Airlines is set to fly the first scheduled flight from Miami to New York on December 29.

Flyers can tell if they're on a Max by looking at markings on the plane, the size of the engines and other identifying features.

A passenger's reservation details will also say which aircraft they're booked on and US airlines will let passengers change their flights free of charge if they don't want to fly on a Max.

[JLWSanDiego]

If there's no fishy business going on between Boeing and the FAA why not invite Airbus test pilots to fly the MAX ?
They wouldn'd know what to do with that big stick and wheel between their legs

[gums]

Thanks, San Diego! Go see the AF447 tragedy and ask if you wanted one of those two in the front seats ( A/C was taking a break) to evalute a hydraulic/cable/pushrod/torque tube system with no "protections" or "gains" to smooth things out.

Not that one cannot fly a basic plane like a 1937 Cub, which I have, after 4 years in the FBW Viper. So it could be a mindset, but I'll take "good hands" any day.

[Mr @ Spotty M]

I see that it has not taken long before a max ends up with a Pan Pan, Air Canada provisioning flight from Pinal Airpark Marana,AZ to Montreal,QC, diverted to Tucson,AZ with one engine shut down.
Before anyone gets on their high horse, l know these things happen to every type of aircraft flying, but its not going help with public confidence in this aircraft.
Every tiny mishap or issue is going to make its way into the press however minor or stupid.
Remember most or a majority of press reporters have no clue about what they are reporting on.

[Longtimer]

Link to the report:
Air Canada Boeing 737-8 MAX suffers left-hand engine failure on return to service flight – Canadian Aviation News (wordpress.com) (https://canadianaviationnews.wordpress.com/2020/12/25/air-canada-boeing-737-8-max-suffers-left-hand-engine-failure-on-return-to-service-flight/)
I wonder what the check list contained for the OK to return the stored aircraft to service. All checked OK with this being an unexpected anomaly or ?

[Anti Skid On]

Surprised this isn't already on here https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/26/boeing-737-max-air-canada-jet-shuts-down-an-engine-and-diverts-after-mechanical-issue

[DaveReidUK]

There is a passing reference to it (which, frankly, is more than it warranted) in the main Max Recertification thread.

An IFSD is rarely newsworthy, and this one wasn't either.

[Fonsini]

Unfortunately a blocked toilet on a Max will be considered newsworthy for quite some time to come.

[Bend alot]

DaveReidUK

It certainly puts a spotlight on the RTS program.

This is the most reviewed aircraft in modern history - yet before it "returns to service" a reputable country has a serious issue.

Should another or 3 have a similar (same but LH or RH Engine) issue will be interesting, but a dual failure even indication will be possible.

That will be interesting on a revenue flight.

Never has such a fleet been stored and returned in such a manner.

[Australopithecus]

Return to service issues are certainly not confined to the Max, or any particular aircraft type. None of them are trouble-free out of storage. There is already an AD on 737 NG engine bleed valves for example. My own airline has been reactivating aircraft the past few weeks and finding runs of odd (benign, no dispatch issues) failures. I have flown three different aircraft over Christmas with the same odd retractable landing light issue, for example. I have never before seen that defect in my previous 25 years on type.

BTW...That Air Canada IFSD was apparently called for by the fuel IMBAL. non-normal checklist which directs that action. ie: it was a discretionary shut down and not an engine malfunction per se. It is a feature of non-normal checklists that they can sometimes be triggered by faulty sensors which then lead to an action that reads as prudent and considered within the context of the checklist but which may not seem so wise on Monday morning.

[WillowRun 6-3]

".....Monday morning."

When the press and related environs of the mass-media culture in which most of the world lives today learns to check themselves for such Monday morning signal-calling, well, it could be a long time off. (Also environs of the mass-hysteria culture...)

[WHBM]

I see that it has not taken long before a max ends up with a Pan Pan, Air Canada provisioning flight from Pinal Airpark Marana,AZ to Montreal,QC, diverted to Tucson,AZ with one engine shut down.
Before anyone gets on their high horse, l know these things happen to every type of aircraft flying, but its not going help with public confidence in this aircraft.

The whole US Air BAe146 fleet was retired to Mojave for a couple of years from 1991, before being progressively reinstated to a range of secondary and start-up European operators, out of London City and elsewhere. Although doubtless checked over, they all brought a considerable range of oddball tech niggles with them that lasted for quite some time until everything that had deteriorated was replaced. Sort of compensated by the low purchase price for them, which of course doesn't apply to those bringing the Max back.

[FlightlessParrot]

The merest Self-Loading F-wit knows that this incident has nothing to do with MCAS. On the other hand, it is surely likely that it has something to do with aircraft being out of service for a long time; and this means that similar events will probably happen again. That makes for a real PR problem. When mechanical problems occur on a Max, the media will of course cross-refer to the two crashes; it's not hysteria, it seems to be an algorithm in modern news-gathering systems, such that when an aircraft type is in the news, there's an automatic search for other stories covering that type.

The issue is that on the one hand it would control the bad effects, and be honest, to say that problems are to be expected when a lot of aircraft are returned to service, and it doesn't have implications for the certification. On the other hand, it's unlikely that a manufacturer or airline would be really happy to say "They're going to be a bit buggy at first." At the least, it would make it clear that even a good, safety conscious, manufacturer or airline can't really have safety as its first priority; over the long term, commercial viability has to rule.

BTW, it may just be that I hope once more to fly between Auckland and the West Coast of the USA, but I don't believe that an IFSD on a twin is entirely without interest, now that engines are so reliable. It is reassuring that it seems not to have been a problem with the engine itself.

[jimjim1]

"Boeing 737 Max to Resume Flying U.S. Passengers on Tuesday

American Airlines will use the plane, which has been grounded for nearly two years, on a flight from Miami to New York."

That's today, Tue 29 Dec.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/business/boeing-737-max-return.html

[ATC Watcher]

The load factors will be watched like hawks by many for some time I am sure. If they are the same as when other types were used on those routes then the discussion is over. But the next major incident / accident involving one , even if not specifically technically related to the Max type will reopen the Pandora box.
But was the same after the 787 fires, people forget quickly if you give them the time .
2 years and a pandemic afterwards might be sufficient time , especially if the ticket prices are right...

[DaveReidUK]

But was the same after the 787 fires, people forget quickly if you give them the time.

Except that the 787 fires didn't kill anyone.

I suspect that giving people time to quickly forget the Max accidents will take a tad longer ...

[WillowRun 6-3]

It's only from an SLF...and validity points will be subtracted because it's actually SLF/attorney...but the acceptability ultimately regained by the 737 MAX is going to involve a different combination of factors than the industry has seen previously.

One big difference is that the two accidents have prompted what, by all accounts, is a serious reworking of FAA processes and various types of rules (the legislation was part of the great big omnibus "Covid relief" bill finally signed by the president). These reforms will generate ongoing publicity which, while not completely unique, does appear more intense and focused than in aftermaths of prior accidents. (And compared to aftermath of 787 grounding, the ongoing publicity (IIRC) was...what ongoing publicity?).

Then there are the several continuing lawsuits. One of them is in limbo, in federal court in Chicago, brought as a potential class action on behalf of a few thousand pilots around the globe whose careers have been quite negatively impacted by the grounding. If and when it proceeds forward, the attorneys of record for the pilots very probably will be quite adept at efforts to shape impressions in the court of public opinion. And the liability suits on behalf of the accident victims; the suits by Norwegian, by flight attendants, by SWAPA....this appears a heavier dose of litigation-focusing-the-mind reality upon the flying and traveling public than has been the case in anything before.

There are also further Dep't of Transportation Inspector General reports said to be in the works, and regardless of whether the nominee for Sec'y of DoT is confirmed or if someone else must be put forward, these investigatory efforts by the extremely careful and accurate IG will add PR fuel, if not accelerant.

Your loyal SLF/atty loudmouth doesn't wish ill upon the company, or upon the airplane type itself, of course. But this aftermath situation isn't enough like anything before, at least commenting from the cheap seats.

[GlobalNav]

The “the reworking of FAA processes” will give comfort to some, but it’s only when they are actually borne out out in practice that they can make an impact. The attitudes and motivations behind decades of decline in the integrity and independence and the corresponding selection and advancement of managers and executives will not change as quickly as a law can be passed. The industry pressures that fostered this decline will not fade away quickly either. Extremely strong leadership and dismissal of failed managers is necessary and much less likely to occur. It’s just plain human nature.

[WillowRun 6-3]

GlobalNav

Agree completely; the reform legislation while laudable I think will keep a negative spotlight focused on the MAX debacle and its underlying causes for a good long time. Just to cite one item of a concrete nature in support: both the House and Senate Committees issued quite hotly scathing investigation reports (both as noted up-thread). Careerist pressures being what they are, incentives exist for the negative spotlight to continue. And as legislative changes are moved into implementation or at least attempts are made to implement, again attention on the accidents and their underlying causes will persist. Apologies for ambiguity about impact of the legislation (especially because whether actual implementation will occur, and if it does how much it will matter, are pretty big what-ifs).

Certainly the ongoing courtroom action and pending, additional damning IG reports will not have any positive PR impact.

Maybe, and it's mostly just speculative now, but maybe pilots who operate the 737 MAX in commercial service (and other flights for repositioning and so on), after a bunch of flights have been accumulated without anything out of the ordinary occurring, will get interviewed in the media and provide a bit of positive PR. Maybe.

[Mr Optimistic]

Speaking as a 'merest Self-Loading F-wit', this aircraft has had an unprecedented amount of scrutiny and if you are prepared to fly it I would happily fly on it ( ticket price notwithstanding), with the right operator of course 😊

[FlightlessParrot]

Sorry for giving the wrong impression, I was characterising myself as a 'merest SLF'; meaning, anyone who knows what type they are flying on will know an engine shutdown has nil to do with the previous problems, but that incidents of this type are pretty much inevitable for aircraft returning from storage, and the handling of this spate of events, inevitably tricky, will require a degree of trust in the manufacturer that Boeing seems to have squandered.

[Mr Optimistic]

No worries, was only using it as an introduction! Understood the issues of a rapid roll out of a/c from storage. Problem is the media which will exploit any incident and conflate issues, not helpful at all. In truth, is the culture at Boeing so much different from that at other prominent manufacturers ( eg Rolls), they all live in the same homogenised world.

[Less Hair]

an engine shutdown has nil to do with the previous problems

An engine shutdown and single engine flight will affect the attitude of the airplane and the way the AoA vanes are positioned in the air stream. This might very well increase the chance of differing measurements on both sides bringing the airplane at least closer to certain AoA disagree scenarios and maybe even the new MCAS off routine?

[safetypee]

Less Hair, by all means think 'what if', but do not invent issues (although technically correct) which could confuse an unwary pilot at the time of a surprising event.
Aspects such as this will (should) have been considered in design, test, and certification.

The following notes are from FAA NPRM; https://www.faa.gov/news/media/attachments/19_035n-R3-8-3-20.pdf
"The calculated threshold would be a function of the magnitude of the disagreement and the rate of change of the AOA sensor position values."
"More than 10 degrees difference for more than 10 seconds."

There would be greater safety value in questioning crew actions in the event of an alert:-
"AOA DISAGREE alert, that the airplane’s left and right AOA vanes disagree. The checklist informs the flightcrew to accomplish the Airspeed Unreliable checklist."

The memory items for this require 'Pitch Power settings', before evaluating the actual speed indications, i.e before checking standby instrument, or any other alerts.
Also, considering a practical situation of an alert at max cruise altitude - would a pilot pitch up by rote recall of drills? (cf AF 447).

[DaveReidUK]

Is there a reason why an AoA Disagree would be more or less likely at different points in the normal vs OEI range ?

[safetypee]

'… AoA Disagree would be more or less likely …'
Effects of yaw rate and/or sideslip; less so for pitch attitude although all are interrelated.
Similar effect on other sensors, eg pitot static, where alerts may also use time/magnitude comparison.
(Older 'steam' driven systems may be cross connected with a balance pipe / damping reservoir.)

[alf5071h]

Willow, #591, although the US is reforming regulation, the dominant issue is with the application of existing processes; i.e. the triple layered safety processes of design, checking, and certification - all 'failed' - within Boeing and specifically the FAA.
With that, what confidence (trust) is there that processes will be correctly followed now, and how is this to be checked. Regulations 'require', but who acts.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? "Who will watch the watchmen?"; government has a role, but would not be expected to understand the detail. Thus at some point the FAA / Boeing management has to understand the detail or accept the views of those who do, but where is the dividing line, who draws it, who judges; will there be change. (https://www.smart-jokes.org/everybody-somebody-anybody-and-nobody.html)

Deep rooted beliefs are difficult to change. One aspect is the FAA and Boeings' view of human contribution in aircraft operation.
At some point before the second Max accident it was concluded that the type remained "safe"; both FAA and Boeing being 'data driven' organisations, statistics, computer assessment, attempting to define human behaviour as a numerical value. Thus safety was misjudged, based on inappropriate models of the human, and influenced by flawed analysis of a previous successful outcome where a Max crew switched the trim off.
The FAA concluded that this 'average crew' would be representative of all crews; except that the event had three people vice the normal certified two crew (FAA apparently did appreciate this !), and that the concept of 'an average crew' is meaningless, a conundrum which other areas of certification avoid.

FAA and Boeing need a fundamental change in their view of human contribution in safety; a very difficult task; and who would check that.

[WillowRun 6-3]

alf5071h, any post with a title in Latin, and which at least implies an invite for this SLF/atty to comment further, deserves an effort at something thoughtful, or trying to be.

1) Context for referring to the Congressional legislation (in the nearby posts) was about the changes being a factor in keeping the accident losses in the minds of the traveling public. Wasn't trying to forecast ultimate impact of reform of parts of the FAA process most directly related to safety, or of the overall reform effort in total. But it's a very central question, no doubt. Especially -- besides the reasons you've noted -- because Congress had only quite recently given more latitude to the FAA-Boeing partnership, only to find it necessary now to reverse course.

2) Besides the reforms most directly affecting the certification and safety assurance components of the FAA process, the legislation has other provisions that will contribute (in my view) to improvement. Whistleblower protection is given a boost. Safety audit will be conducted. Disclaiming a thorough study and review of the entire new law - but Committee summaries do note other reforms not so threatened by the Who Guards the Guardians dilemmas.

3) But who does guard them? A cheap and easy answer is, FAA is within Dep't of Transportation, which is headed by a political appointee, and so the recourse for calamitous acts and omissions is the political process (maybe, worse than only cheap, easy). Perhaps a better answer is, the marketplace such as it is - isn't Boeing taking quite a drubbing over its lion's share of the responsibility for this debacle? And maybe the least bad answer is, despite it being an old standby, serious attention to upgrading the educational programs and systems in this and other like-minded and similarly organized countries. Why aren't there more qualified engineers and technical people available to FAA, for example? Same for airframe, propulsion, avionics and so on, in the manufacturing sector. (I was a higher ed lawyer in my most prior legal employment, so apologies for thinking in that frame, if it's too trite or mundane to be tolerated.) Not at all least, and very unfortunately, the unhappy prospect of criminal charges and prosecutions still looms darkly ahead.

(Why does the society emphasize and allow to be glorified materialism, pleasure-seeking, and trampling on (not just disrespect of) nominal, ordinary values of respect? I think plenty of professional aviators of the era of Vern Demerest and Anson Harris, knew plenty about fun and pleasure, but without ignoring, or even mocking very much, the old-school sense that when the No Smoking sign is lit...metaphorically of course. (Apologies to Airport by Arthur Hailey))

4) After the first 737 MAX accident.... There is a discussion of this decision-making, IIRC, in the first of the expected several Inspector General reports - this is just from recollection though, hoping to see the theme. The calculation of FAA and Boeing was a particular and possibly unique kind of bloodless, wasn't it? As I took in a good measure of the Congressional hearings, I noticed that many of the separate communications and decisions in the whole entire sordid mess seemed, in isolation one at a time, not so terribly egregious (many, I said, certainly not all). But the calculation after the first crash? Have Mercy.

5) So none of this really grapples with the Somebody etc. challenge (and being an old ex-hippie, looking for a link to the Airplane, that is Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane, and Somebody to Love, won't help, either). But a good possibility, I think: in the aftermath, a pretty broad variety and good number of groups all became involved with and focused on the "what happened" of the accidents and their causes upstream. (Causes, in the FAA process, by itself and too cozy with Boeing, and in Boeing as a company and the rise and dominance of beancounting.) And many if not all of these groups also have become involved and some are staying involved in the "what to do" part of the aftermath. For reasons not interesting to this thread, I happen to be a fan of "group communication" - the idea that when groups of qualified individuals assemble to address a problem or design a path forward, the social dynamics of being in a group to begin with sharpens everyone's attention, dampens down and out ulterior motives and agendas, and improves creativity and seriousness. It's anecdotal though over a lot of years and not predominantly within the legal profession. That's where I think improvement will find its source.

2020, in less than 10 hours where I'm situated, will be hindsight. To everyone who has posted on this - sincerely - unbelievably elucidating thread, WillowRun 6-3 says Thank You for allowing an SLF/atty to expiate the ghosts of Aviation Enthusiast New Year's Day in O'Hare Airport Past.

[Easy Street]

A good time to bury bad news? Or avoiding harsher treatment under the incoming administration?

Boeing agrees to pay $2.5B+ to settle criminal fraud charges over 737 MAX (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-agrees-to-pay-2-5b-to-settle-criminal-fraud-charges-over-737-max/)

[GlobalNav]

Yes, to both I’m afraid.

Reminds of a quote from Sen Dirksen (Rep, Illinois) (many years ago) concerning the federal budget. “ A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

[WillowRun 6-3]

So the subject matter of another of the several sub-threads takes a turn for resolution. Here is the statement issued by the U.S. Department of Justice, without any further elaboration or additional comment from this SLF/attorney....for now.

Boeing Charged with 737 Max Fraud Conspiracy and Agrees to Pay over $2.5 Billion | OPA | Department of Justice (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-conspiracy-and-agrees-pay-over-25-billion)

Added: Ahem..... with a nod to the courtly custom of saying, "I pass the witness", as well as the assertion (evidentiary or not) that the document speaks for itself, I can say only that, this is one marvelously fine and outstanding piece of legal writing. Because it tells the story, across many issues and events, succinctly, yet with walloping punches that pummel the legal issues into....well, into a deferred prosecution outcome.
Nothing further.

[etudiant]

Easy Street

Think the civil suits will remain, this is just the DoJ on behalf of the US government. Sadly the USG obviously does not have the stomach to put down the hammer, despite real crimes of misleading and omission.
I compare this very unfavorably to the Chinese response to Jack Ma's effort to upend their banking system, they smacked it down hard.

[India Four Two]

... this is one marvelously fine and outstanding piece of legal writing.

I have to agree. A stunning document.

This should change Boeing's culture, as long as they don't just pay lip service to the requirements:
In addition, Boeing has agreed to strengthen its compliance program and to enhanced compliance program reporting requirements, which require Boeing to meet with the Fraud Section at least quarterly and to submit yearly reports to the Fraud Section regarding the status of its remediation efforts, the results of its testing of its compliance program, and its proposals to ensure that its compliance program is reasonably designed, implemented, and enforced so that it is effective at deterring and detecting violations of U.S. fraud laws in connection with interactions with any domestic or foreign government agency (including the FAA), regulator, or any of its airline customers.

[WillowRun 6-3]

There are a number of civil suits and no, this deferred prosecution agreement does not in any way terminate, defer, or otherwise call a halt to those actions. Having been a very little bit involved in one of the civil suits (not as counsel of record) I wish I could add some vehemence, but my NDA would not be something I should like to chance testing. (There could be one possible exception to a slight extent -- I haven't kept tabs recently on the document disclosure suit, that is the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, brought against the FAA by the Flyers' Rights group in which Capt. Sullenberger is a participant. I think it's still going strong but I can't say for sure.) Actually, evidentiary questions on a more detailed level omitted here, the contents and tone of the DPA will very likely boost the civil cases.

The criminal information, in other words the charging document, filed in federal district court is linked in the press release from Dept of Justice. Likewise, the Deferred Prosecution Agreement itself.

I'm not going to assert anything (for now anyway) about how the recently enacted FAA re-reauthorization legislation (reform legislation, to be fair) might result in holding Boeing's feet to the proverbial fire. Too much uncertainty in official Washington at the moment.....

Yet something isn't uncertain. The individuals who were at least subjects of interest for the criminal investigation are not saved from potential charges by the agreement Boeing struck. Whether it would make better sense to assault the corporate entity to inflict much greater scope and depth of financial, reputational and organizational (and even operational) pain is something I'm skeptical about. What the PRC does to Jack Ma doesn't weigh into the equation as I see it, but then I took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and that of the specific state which granted my license, so no surprise.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Willow Run

Is 2.5B an exceptional amount with respect to other deferred prosecution agreements for similar circumstances ?

Also what happens if Boeing doesn't shape up and fly right ?

[2Planks]

To put this fine into context the US fined VW $2.8b for the emissions fixing thing and senior execs were arrested. Nobody died directly as a result of that scandal, yes extra pollution will have contributed to deaths, but Boeing appear to have got off lightly.

[PiggyBack]

The significant difference is that VW are not a US company.
It may just be my cynicism but US courts seem to treat US companies completely differently to non-US companies.
For a US companies this is a large fine. If it had been Airbus. We would have been looking fines at least two orders of magnitude more, serious jail time and attempts to ban the sale of airbus products in the US.

[infrequentflyer789]

Thinking along similar lines, I note also that the deaths caused by Boeing were not in the US and (vast majority) not US citizens.

BP (via US subcontractors) killed 11 on DeepWater Horizon, fine was quite a bit larger (along with criminal convictions as well I think) - but that was US nationals in US waters. In both cases, civil and compensation settlements will dwarf the fines of course (and this Boeing settlement doesn't appear to close off criminal prosecutions of individuals).

[FlightlessParrot]

,,,and this Boeing settlement doesn't appear to close off criminal prosecutions of individuals....

The statement focuses on the actions of two individuals, as though this whole mess were the result of rogue employees, and not the consequence of corporate culture and policy.

[WillowRun 6-3]

Noting in advance, this will be a lengthy post, because there are several quite significant parts of the DPA. And besides those items there also are some related questions about the money Boeing has agreed to pay and its overall potential criminal liability. And, because as SLF/atty it's an obligation to post only content I can be confident is the best professional assessment or description of legal (and sometimes, policy) aspects of which I am capable...... a few caveats follow, because no one who reads these threads routinely should be misled by a wordy lawyer (even one who seems to think he is an airport, or named for one).

A) WR is not a criminal defense attorney, or prosecutor, and has not done any legal work in the field of criminal law in my entire legal career, and this exclusion emphatically reaches federal criminal matters. Nothing in this post should be construed, relied upon, or otherwise seen, interpreted, understood, or read back, as legal advice to any individual, person, entity, or other callsign-poster. (C'mon, for a mix of the mandatory with the attempt at humor, that was halfway decent.)

B) I have not and don't plan to delve or drill deeply into the finer points of terms and provisions of the DPA or its many elements. It might be entirely routine, in its structure and language, in the courts where these lawyers practice, but it's, how to say this neutrally?...very detailed.

C) Boeing is represented in the matter in which the DPA was agreed to and filed by two of the biggest and best law firms in the country, both with three attorneys listed by name (Kirkland & Ellis, and McGuire Woods). My comments in what follows are, in comparison, entirely from the cheap seats. And intended for the enlightenment if not also reading enjoyment of the community on R&N and any others who may have had a look now and again at this thread.

Here is the DPA as posted on a United States, Department of Justice, website yesterday:
U.S. v. The Boeing Company - Final DPA Package (1.6.21).pdf (justice.gov) (https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1351336/download)

1) The press announcement does an excellent job of explaining the agreement and what the company is obligated to do, although obviously it does not drill into much, let alone all, the pertinent details.
For the best overall summary of the misdeeds (and that's probably an overly nice term) involved in the criminal case particularly, go to the Statement of Facts. It is Attachment A, on pages 28-43 of the pdf. It's some 54 paragraphs. It tells quite a detailed story, factually. Each poster and thread-visitor ought to reach his or her own determinations about just how serious the problems which obviously existed in the company actually were.
Recall, though -- the criminal law complaint here is for acts and omissions in the nature of fraud -- and conspiracy. It is not an overall assessment and allegation of criminal culpability for everything that was done improperly. It is limited. And limited factually - it is only based (insofar as I have understood it) on the conduct of the two unnamed technical pilots.

2) About the fine and its amount. It turns out, the monetary amounts are calculated according the the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. The $243.6 million amount is based on the company's own calculation, internally, of its intended cost savings. (Para. 9(b)).
The $500 million in compensation to crash-victim beneficiaries is to be administered by a highly structured, and very highly neutrally structured, escrow fund arrangement. These payments, when ultimately made, will not be offset against other claims by crash-victim beneficiaries (Para. 19). How exactly this term might interact with damages provisions in the liability lawsuits, or under the Montreal treaty system in general, is a question for another place and time (or, I'm not sure how that plays out, candidly).
The $1.77 million for airline financial penalties can be offset by payments already made by Boeing to its airline customers (para. 12).

2(a) - how do these amounts compare to other DPAs, per the question of a recent post? I don't know. The DPA process for negotiation, for manipulation of the Guidelines as a tactical matter as well as intellectual exercise - way out of my league here. My own view is that some account must be taken of the role Boeing plays, sorry make that roles, plural,...the multiple roles Boeing plays in the national aviation sector, the international aviation sector, aerospace, and as a defense contractor. There is prosecutorial discretion, and then there are other, even larger matters of discretion. This should not be a saga akin to, "it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."

3) Notice that the court of public opinion can be a much easier place to win a sensational case than a court of law especially the United States District Court in any District in the country. This is not to say the prosecution had a big uphill fight, but just because respected and credible writers, journalists and armchair expert/authorities view liability issues in the criminal law one way, does not mean that your pre-trial order and proffers of trial exhibits are going to be good enough.

4) About the comparisons to other companies based in other sovereign Member States (ICAO reference, in case anybody needs the note), this is apples and golf balls. No one has ever said that the United States legal system and its courts are set up as a kind of "all comers" system, any litigant, any place of existence, any claim. (Reference to a U.S. Supreme Court case a few years back about a university having an "all comers" policy for acceptance of students into campus organizations.) Whether a terribly botched blowout of a drilling rig or a screwed up way of gaming anti-air pollution rules can be compared to the elaborately articulated civil air transport safety and certification system, its legal and regulatory regime, I think is not as simple as just measuring who received superficially harsher sentences.

4(a) Note the recitation in the DPA of remedial measures instituted by the company (para. 4(d)). Skeptics may scoff and surely will, yet these actions by the company would not end up in the DPA itself unless some pretty hardheaded federal prosecutors believed in good faith and on the basis of evidence likely admissible in a court of law that these steps are for real. Does that alter anyone's calculus for comparing the VW or BP cases? Up to you.

5) About what happens if Boeing does not comply? The DPA term can be extended. Further about company performance, there is an extensive template for its Corporate Compliance Program in Attachment C. And Reporting obligations are set forth in Attachment D. They're both apparently heavy programs and obligations, reaching for an escape-proof burden for the company to fulfill. In this context, a look at Paragraph 5, Future Cooperation and Disclosure Requirements, likely would be instructive.

6) With no doubt at all, individuals are not released whatsoever from potential criminal prosecution. It's stated in Para.20(b).

** ** **
On some thread or another, discussion has occurred over the likely, or even only possible, legal fate to befall one or both of the named technical pilots. Certainly a good number of others must share the culpability in some arena or another. At the same time, the admissions by the company which it made as part of this outcome of this specific federal criminal inquiry would seem not good for the prospects for those individuals...not at all good. I wish unfavorable outcomes on no one, having experienced enough lean times to appreciate that for your friendly neighborhood SLF/attorney-poster, the rule of law being the determining factor must be all that we can ask for, and all that we really need.
With apologies to Gums, WR sends.....

[tdracer]

Those of you who want a much large financial penalty against Boeing, you need to ask what's your end-game? Boeing is already in a financially precarious state - between the MAX fiasco and Covid, their current and long term losses are in the tens of $Billions, and tens of thousands of Boeing employees have already lost their jobs (add in the impact on suppliers, and you're well into the six figure range for job losses), with more to come.
All that would happen if the feds applied a 10 figure fine on Boeing is they'd have to turn around and bail them out again to prevent the company from completely collapsing.
Unless the goal is to put Boeing Commercial out of business and give Airbus a complete monopoly on large passenger aircraft, assessing a huge fine against Boeing would end up being counter productive...

[Longtimer]

Only to save US jobs is a bail out needed, not because of a lack of suitable aircraft from other companies

[GlobalNav]

tdracer "Those of you who want a much large financial penalty against Boeing, you need to ask what's your end-game?"

A large financial penalty is about the only way the government has (other than incarceration) to make the company accountable. The sad thing is the immense consequences this has on people who are in no way responsible. In my judgment, the desirable end-game is change. Change in the corporate culture, change in the motivations that governed bad decisions made by management and those who needed to satisfy management, change in the business goals and measures of performance in business plans that gave priority to share price, schedule and sales numbers. No fine will bring back lost lives.

But it seems you are much closer to the company than the rest of us. What do you think will result in real change, so that the fundamental values that led to these disasters don't lead to the next one?

[FlightlessParrot]

There is a capitalist answer to the problems of Boeing, summed up in the slogan "Creative destruction." Over two decades or so, Boeing has abandoned the things that made it truly respected and trusted by everyone who ever set foot in an aeroplane, all in pursuit of financial success. The consequences of this management policy is that it is now vulnerable to the external shock of the pandemic. The company Boeing is, perhaps, no longer the best entity to manage its productive assets, both plant and skilled workers. As the company was moving more and more to an outsourcing model, with shared risk, there would be the less disruption in breaking it up into manageable, more nimble, and more ethical productive units.

[tdracer]

Longtimer

Fixed that for you.
Seriously, who currently builds a viable, 200 passenger or larger commercial aircraft besides Airbus and Boeing? If Boeing was shuttered tomorrow, you're looking at ten years before anyone else could even think of bringing a competitive aircraft to market (likely requiring many, many billions of tax payer dollars to make it viable). And of you think Boeing got arrogant - just imagine what it would be like dealing with a company that has a guaranteed 10 year monopoly on the business...

Global, the reported $244 million dollar fine is chump change compared to the many billions that the MAX fiasco has already cost (and will continue to cost) Boeing. If the impact to Boeing's finances and reputation are not enough to bring about change, I honestly don't know what would. Something I mentioned way back when the MAX was first grounded was that sometimes it takes a wake up call. I'm pretty much out of the loop (nearly everyone I knew at Boeing has left - either retired or laid off), so I don't know what's going on there currently to change the culture, but I was there in 1991 when three Boeing aircraft crashed due to design errors (Lauda 767 T/R deployment in flight, and the two 747F crashes due to fuse pin failures). The reaction was swift and powerful. I was drafted onto the Propulsion Safety Board a few years later (which reported directly to the Aircraft level Safety Review Board) - our missions statement was simple - there is not going to be another Boeing crash due to a design error. However, over the years, memories fade, people leave/retire, and those in charge forget what the consequences of failure can be.

[Commander Taco]

However, over the years, memories fade, people leave/retire, and those in charge forget what the consequences of failure can be.

A most useful observation, TD, for the non-industry forum participants. It also needs to be said that the situation Boeing finds itself in is not unique at all to Boeing or other manufacturers. At the airline level, I saw several declines and renaissances in “The Standard” over my 40+ year airline career.

[568]

tdracer

Quote" just imagine what it would be like dealing with a company that has a guaranteed 10 year monopoly on the business".

Are you meaning "Airbus"?
If so, what about the defense contracts Boeing has had over the years?

[568]

Boeing have never respected their employees.
Time to drink a different cool aid as times have changed!

[WillowRun 6-3]

Accountability is the proper term to use here, without any question. Yet it is necessary also to define the most sensible (effective, achievable) combination of the ends sought to be achieved, and the state of affairs after the action steps have been taken fully or as fully as it turns out actually is attainable.

A benefit of some time spent in unionized steelmaking work is that when pressed for big answers to big problems in the productive realm of the U.S. economy, I don't hesitate, I reach for remembrance of my union card. No claim that I subscribe to the main run of current union sector political views, at all. But for a plan to shake things up and get sensible results, and I posted along these lines in a related thread about a year ago (as the Boeing board was going through changes and Dennis was headed out), make it happen that Son of Wimpy Rides Again. I mean, never having met the man I recognize some up-on-a-pedestal effect might be involved. But he was one son-of-a-gun effective, wasn't he?

So rather than measure change by the ordinary unit of account in an economy (one of the three functions of money, in standard Economics teaching) go instead for qualitative change. Convene whatever federal agency and authority proceedings are needed but get the manufacturing of the 787 back to the Pac Northwest. Undo the bust of the union. Yeah, it'll be criticized as the dread "industrial policy"....but technology has spread, and become more diffuse reaching into countries and sectors of countries' economies so rapidly and bringing so much erosion to U.S. as well as European manufacturing prowess. Having that label slapped onto this action step would not deter advocacy for its pursuit and fulfillment. It's a choice to shake things up in a big way, or become passive in the onslaught of global effects like...let me think for a moment, ... how about a strange new virus which emanates from the major economic competitor to the U.S. and spreads and devastates major segments of national and regional economies all around the world? Might even hurt the civil aviation sector internationally, you never know until it happens.

The other major change I think is needed is to de-glorify boards of directors - the progressive platform for what is called stakeholder capitalism is, well, I see it as little better than vapid. We don't have capitalism, we have a free enterprise system. Big and important differences. And the least well-moneyed relatively young person with a strong sense of holding a good idea and the gumption to bring it into the marketplace and stay with it, that young person just plain *ought* to be able to get a good "fam flight" observing and interacting with the actual directors of any major company. I don't mean to embarrass him but a certain relatively young person broke away from the Wall Street Journal and founded The Air Current and ... the example illustrates the point.

A board can be as stuffy as a hot humid summer day when the air isn't moving at all but open it up to qualified and interested people who want to participate in the line of business somehow, and you'll get improvement. If this is too Up With People-ish, okay, fair point. But a few years ago, I attended a client's board meeting to present a brief item on legal work I was doing on an academic accreditation issue. A person entered the boardroom a little bit after the meeting had started, sat down next to me. A director. On the next break, in ice-breaker conversation, turns out we both had lived in a certain midwestern city close to Chicago. Turns out also her husband was an attorney at a firm in Chicago I knew well. Turned out also he had been CEO of a major defense and aerospace contractor. If you have to think any further about whether this little bit of plain old business world conversation was a kind of kick-start to pursue a re-engineering of my legal career so that it could include aviation and space....well, WR sends.

[ozaub]

Further to Easy Street at #601, this is not first time that Boeing (in collusion with US government agencies) has announced unpalatable news when media attention is elsewhere.

Immediately before Christmas 2015 Boeing and FAA jointly announced that Boeing would pay a civil penalty of $12 million mainly for tardiness in fixing the underlying cause of TWA 800 accident. Which happened 20 years earlier! See https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=19875 and https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-long-saga-of-twa-flight-800-20160108-gm27r0.html Boeing supposedly faced $24 million in extra penalties if it failed to implement improvements in the effectiveness of regulatory compliance activities. Agreement didn't expire until 1 January 2021, so I reckon Boeing owes that extra $24 million.

Likewise, Boeing announced ouster of its CEO Dennis Muilenburg immediately before Christmas 2019.

[tdracer]

tdracer

Quote" just imagine what it would be like dealing with a company that has a guaranteed 10 year monopoly on the business".

Are you meaning "Airbus"?
If so, what about the defense contracts Boeing has had over the years?
Do you honestly believe that giving any company a 100% worldwide monopoly in large commercial aircraft is a good idea?

[Blackfriar]

For those that say if Boeing went bust there would be a monopoly for Airbus, let's look at what might happen if they went bust.
Their assets would be sold, including Intellectual Property such as the aircraft designs. A "new Boeing" could emerge from the ashes funded by some Venture Capital funds and private investment. Divested of its problems it could downsize, ride out the Covid issues and emerge when people start buying aeroplanes again. With Boeing's outsourcing strategy there would be plenty of suppliers willing to pick up work on the manufacture of "new Boeing" aeroplanes.
Contracts with the military would be picked up by other US companies that supply the military, probably picking up the Intellectual Property of the designs as well en-route.

The bigger issue is whether any manufacturer can be trusted to guarantee safety. As one of the earlier posters notes, there was a significant move to safety after previous crashes but this withered away as people retired and the memory of the "pain" of these accidents and deaths at the hands of Boeing design was forgotten. The safety regulation of the FAA, CAA, EASA etc. needs to be beefed up, not devolved into the modern process of expecting everyone to do their job right with no-one checking. (The same kind of nonsense with no oversight has led to deaths due to unsafe building cladding for example).

Clearly the people at the top of these huge corporates don't care enough about safety, to the point were the average interested party (like me) who is not a pilot or even involved in aviation anymore could see that an MCAS system that took information from a single input was always a disaster waiting to happen. We forget the lessons of triple redundancy at our peril. No doubt though we will go round this loop again in 20 years. Maybe very top executives of any industry related to safety need to go through a compulsory course showing them the horrors of the past and the lessons learned. If they make the same mistakes again after this education, they go to jail. I don't know what else will focus their attention.

[WillowRun 6-3]

On timing of bad news getting announced (ozaub #622)

Former CEO Dennis Muilenburg's ouster was announced as you say but the board had been resisting forcing his ouster until it became untenable for him to continue. Plus there was the need to arrange what the c-suite would look like after he'd gone -- in that stage of the crisis likely not a quick task. Recalling the atmosphere of events in those months leading up to the end of 2019, if the decision to oust him had been made a significant time earlier but was just held until the holiday season, then the company and its flacks did an admirable job, for its effectiveness not its ethics, in faking out a lot of astute people.

This isn't to ascribe any excess of public-interest minded ethics to the company or its senior or top management. Boeing named its General Counsel at the time of the crashes, T. Michael Luttig, to a newly-created position of Counselor and Senior Advisor to Muilenburg and to the Board on May 1, 2019 - at the time Dennis Muilenburg still wore all three hats, CEO, Chairman and President of the company. Per a Boeing press release issued at that time, Luttig "will manage all legal matters associated with" the two crashes as well as "other special matters." Former Judge Luttig has a beyond-illustrious legal resume and career . . . but if one already holds a measure of cynicism about Boeing in recent years, taking the GC and in effect boosting him above what was then emerging as a firestorm of legal difficulties could be seen as a way to insulate the obvious involvement the GC role had during the MAX development and the time immediately after the crashes. Luttig became GC in 2006. (News reports, seen when I looked up these details, indicate that Mr. Luttig's illustrious legal career has now extended just days ago to the title Counselor and Special Advisor at Coca-Cola - congratulations.)

As for the timing of the fine announced in 2015 relative to a 20-years earlier crash, part of the timing appears to be the convenience of tying the duration of the agreement to the start of a calendar year. And given the lapse of time after TWA 800 crashed and the resulting investigation and FAA inquiry which led to the fine, what amount of added attention could be logically and realistically thought to have obtained had the announcement been made in January, February, June or July? Not denying the flacks and others try to minimize bad pr but in this example, there wasn't all that much attention even to be minimized in the first place, was there?

[etudiant]

Ianal, but does the government not have any recourse against the senior corporate types at Boeing's for the corporate failure to cooperate during the initial investigation?
Martha Stewart went to jail for much less iirc. It might perhaps help if the C suite had visible skin in the game.

[WillowRun 6-3]

I didn't follow the Martha Stewart case closely so I'll have little to add on that. I did garner the impression at the time, though, that Ms. Stewart got roughed up - legally speaking of course - for one essential reason. That reason, I can only describe it as a combination of two aspects of who she was at that time. She was very high-minded, arrogant we might say, toward the enforcement people at the federal gov't agency, who she seemed to think were, compared to the high and mighty fashion goddess, lowly salaried peons. So besides this attitude, she also had, not to clobber myself over the head with understatement or anything, a lot of business savvy and acumen, as well as, you know, finance, cash baby cash. So for her to screw around for relatively speaking spare change with the securities laws? .... I'm not sourcing anyone by saying this and I won't, but when you dare and double-dare Uncle Sam to make an example of yourself, well, guess what.

On Boeing, etudiant, I'll give you my forecast. In the continuing legal dramas in several courts in the U.S. as well as the closely related legal - and policy - show playing out in and around the structure and operation of the FAA, Boeing's failure and refusal to cooperate at the start of the investigations after the first crash and then the second also, these failures will play pretty significant roles, maybe even prominent one. Even if not technically admissible in evidence in, say, the class action suit that may be certified to proceed in Chicago, it is a safe forecast I think that the sorry, sordid record put together by Boeing will have a role in how that case resolves. And other cases too.

I happen to think that throwing execs into jail for being part of the big "playing of the game" of the corporate world is not the best way to deter others. Instead, consign them to having a lower disposable income life for a long time, and make it much lower and for a good long time. No more caddies deters more than a stint in a 'Club Fed'.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Sadly the US model for "capitalism" is capitalization of the profits and socialization of the losses. Plus it doesn't matter how badly the C suites guys screw up they always walk away with a big pot of cash. Former CEO Dennis Muilenburg got 65 Million dollars to preside over the destruction of what was a aerospace giant. In a perfect world he should have had to pay back every penny of every bonus he ever got on the job.

Sadly Boeing is just a symptom of the bigger problem. A business environment that prioritizes short term stock price appreciation over all else. Maybe OK if your business is making pillows or burgers but a recipe for disaster technology heavy, safety sensitive industries like aerospace. In that environment what happened at Boing was inevitable.

[kiwi grey]

WillowRun 6-3

I agree.
Very large fines for each Director and relevant members of the C-suite, plus court orders for each disqualifying them from holding any office as a Director or a Manager in any registered corporate entity would be a good start. No point burdening the US taxpayer with "Club Fed" membership fees. Unless deliberate acts of malfeasance can be demonstrated Beyond Reasonable Doubt, of course.

[ozaub]

Thanks Willow for #625. Perhaps you are right and timing of Boeing announcements was purely fortuitous. Forgive my cynicism. I wasn’t born a cynic; it’s the product of 50 years in an industry which claims that “safety is paramount”.

More importantly the 2015 agreement between Boeing and FAA is referenced in DPA as “prior history” presumably because Boeing undertook to improve “effectiveness of regulatory compliance activities” and did not do so. Which meant Boeing could not escape blame for misbehaviour of employees 1 and 2.

[Organfreak]

kiwi grey

I think that malfeasance has already been amply demonstrated in the testimony so far.

[568]

WillowRun 6-3

I disagree with not placing these so called "execs" in prison. Many people have gone to prison for less! The judicial system is already weak and beyond repair IMHO.

[WillowRun 6-3]

'68, it's not that I would object to actual prison sentences, upon proper proof and due process in a court of law, a court of competent jurisdiction, and those kinds of..... "lawyer points".

For reasons not worth the time of anyone here to read about, I just happen to be strongly inclined to avoid pre-judging outcomes of properly conducted court proceedings. Of course there is, on the other hand, much to deride about the state of affairs in the U.S. court system.

I lack the type, let alone the depth, of insight that I think is needed to evaluate whether, in the reconfiguring or reorganizing or re-something of the Boeing enterprise, incarcerating former senior execs would be a hindrance or a benefit. Reasonable minds can traverse this terra incognita in different directions.

[GlobalNav]

I’m not a lawyer. There are provisions in the U.S. Code that make false statements to a federal official illegal. There are well understood requirements for those signing and submitting official statements of compliance to certification rules that there are penalties if these are falsely made. When such violations are discovered, the FAA can take enforcement actions and, if deemed necessary, refer the matter for federal prosecution. All this is probably obvious.

It gets complicated when trying to determine and prove intent. Visibility of what really happened gets difficult when the delegation process reaches the “advanced” stage of ODA, where practically all technical details are within the company and FAA oversight is relegated to a clerical level. It should also be no surprise that the application of “executive judgement” further attenuates or, dare I say, distorts/defeats the process.

[Longtimer]

So has there been any / much action from the airlines to retrieve the aircraft stored prior to delivery at Boeing or indeed return their own (owned) aircraft back to service ?
I am aware that Southwest says they will resume flying them again in March.

[GlobalNav]

Yes, That’s how American is now flying them. It’s a big job.

[etudiant]

WillowRun 6-3

Exactly.
I've not the competence to assess what the the appropriate remedy should look like, but I do feel strongly that the Board holds ultimate responsibility for the performance of the corporation.
If that performance is shown to be woefully inadequate, the Board members need to be tagged with that responsibility.
To do otherwise is really to make a mockery of our whole concept of corporate governance.

[568]

Do you honestly believe that giving any company a 100% worldwide monopoly in large commercial aircraft is a good idea?

Don't think I stated or suggested in my comment that "giving any company a 100% worldwide monopoly in large commercial aircraft is a good idea?"

[alf5071h]

A surprisingly public, necessary, and to the point reminder for Boeing management.
The FAA also gets a comment.
$50B sales vs $2.5B penalty !!
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-737max-emirates-idUSKBN29I32E

[Less Hair]

The owners install the board that installs the CEO. It's some owner's (shareholders) issue then not only the CEO's.

It's still a very capable company and will recover but I see a need to bring back more long term engineering thinking to the board level again and less stock exchange tuning. Boeing performed most impressive during it's NG and 777-300ER years. Now several programs wasted a lot of what could have been earned just because they were kept too tight early on. Other programs have been milked forever so big investments will be needed. However it sometimes feels like not products but fighting unions is top on their agenda right now. So they need more diplomacy and a clear product strategy again moving forward.

[WillowRun 6-3]

Whether the departure of Caroline Kennedy from the Boeing Board of Directors will lead to a greater focus on engineering over bean-counting might not be a question that can be answered just by assessing or commenting on the qualifications and experience of the new director taking that Board seat. Announcement from Boeing:

Boeing Elects Lynne Doughtie to Board of Directors, Following Resignation of Director Caroline Kennedy - Jan 15, 2021 (mediaroom.com) (https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2021-01-15-Boeing-Elects-Lynne-Doughtie-to-Board-of-Directors-Following-Resignation-of-Director-Caroline-Kennedy)

[Big Pistons Forever]

So here is what Ms Doughtie doesn't bring to the board

1) Any experience in any facet of air transportation

2) Any engineering or technical experience in any field

3) Any education or experience or even exposure to safety systems in technologically complex enterprises

Another bean counter, that's just what Boeing needs since the last round of bean counters did such a good job......

[Less Hair]

They will need to save and free money now that the main problems hopefully lay behind them. Without money they couldn't move forward. From this perspective it makes sense to hire some senior audit and finance specialist like her.
I agree that they'd need senior aerospace engineering guys (or girls) up there as well to get longer term strategic projects going for their commercial airplanes division. NMA, NSA or whatever they call it.
And if too many experienced people are now early retired or leaving or similar they'd loose a lot of the knowledge that made them great. Both in engineering and manufacturing. This will be demanding to save the know how over some more quiet years.

[EPHD75]

WillowRun 6-3

Is this THE Caroline Kennedy? She was on the board at Boeing? I am simply aghast. She attempted to run for elective office and failed miserably. Something about IQ as I recall...

[Captain Boycott]

Fundamentally the decision to flog the 737 further rather than look to commence a modern design to compete in the market place for the next 30-40 years is the death knell.

No amount of changes at board level can change the impact of this decision.

You could realistically see Airbus introduce the next generation to their fly by wire family, competitors from the Far East start up and bring ultra modern jets to the market and Boeing will still go on stretching the 737 and fitting even bigger more forward engines. At what point do Boeing see sense with this? It’s all a bit bizarre.

The Max issue seemed sciences way of saying “enough already”. So it does raise the question of how long are Boeing going to continue with what was a pretty good project upto the 1980s maybe even the 90s.

[Less Hair]

Boeing has pretty good fly by wire since the 777. The 787 is even better.

[WillowRun 6-3]

EPHD75

Yes of course it is the same individual. Ms. Kennedy served for a little more than three years as the United States Ambassador to Japan. She has a law degree from Columbia University in New York, is an editor of several books and co-author or author of others. I don't know what her political acumen might be, or in what political calculus Ms. Kennedy might have been way off course.

As a public figure, I would guess she possesses a pretty thick skin against cheap shots, as those come with the territory.

I don't say any of this because I think her board service at Boeing was beneficial - no one thinks that. It's just that I don't want my callsign associated with a personal attack on anybody's intellect which is completely unfounded as far as I know -- even if you might happen to have closer, and unfavorable, information.

Maybe the daughter of the late president has some other career move in mind. Maybe the incoming White House administration, and its altogether unconventional nominee for Sec. of Transportation, have some real "shake-'em-up" moves in mind to kick Boeing into a higher, and better, gear. I don't know.

[WHBM]

I really cannot believe that Boeing are so head-in-the-sand as to now appoint Lynne Doughtie to the board. After all the informed commentary about beancounters over aviation, they go and appoint the Chairman/CEO of KPMG, one of the finance world's centres of manage-by-spreadsheet. It's completely one in the eye for those who spoke about the need to understand what these things that Boeing builds actually are. KPMG, among other Wall Street allies, are at the centre of all the Stock Buy Back stuff, and using major corporates as a financial plaything. The very last thing they wanted is yet another high-roller beancounter.

[Captain Boycott]

Less Hair

They don’t have anything for the “now” ageing FBW generation as a short/medium haul offering though. The FBW was introduced in the 1980s thats 40 years ago. The 737 remains sat in the generation before this one. Clearly time to move on.

[Less Hair]

I am well aware and didn't claim anything different.

[nyt]

https://www.avgeekery.com/pilot-report-my-737-max-simulator-ride/
"Manual trim at this speed took some effort, but was easily achieved. Slowing to 210 kts allowed the flying pilot to easily fly and trim without assistance from the non-flying pilot."
Easily with assistance ?

[MikeSnow]

nyt

withOUT assistance

[568]

WHBM

Agree.
Boeing=total useless board only interested in profits, not safety. Boeing has obviously learnt nothing about these two tragic MAX accidents, terrible!

[568]

Willow,

With respect, this is exactly the response that "typical lawyers" make in response such as mine.
I have no faith in the legal, justice or governmental departments that have covered up the inadequacies of these terrible accidents.
You do not have the experience as a pilot dealing with these pricks at any level.

[FlightlessParrot]

MikeSnow

"Without" assistance refers to after slowing to 210 knots. This implies (truly, it does) that at speeds above that, assistance was required, but the statement says manual trim was "easily" acquired, presumably meaning it was easy for two people.

[WillowRun 6-3]

568
Couple of points.
Eventually after spending time on threads here, it seemed to be clear that pilots, first of all, generally aren't in the business of conversing with people who don't know what the pilots are talking about (and worse, often bring misconceptions to the aviators' conversations). And second, when pilots are in a discussion amongst themselves, it is a wise course to keep one's SLF mouth shut, and keyboard idle.

Except rule of law is too fundamental a principle for these niceties of professional boundaries.

I have not contended and do not contend that there aren't any Boeing senior or top management people whose conduct could be prosecuted and lead to a conviction. What I have said is that I am not willing to prejudge the legal process. If that makes me a typical lawyer, well, look up the oath of adherence to rule of law principles lawyers swear to in the United States, and you'll see that such adherence is a requirement, not an option.

I think the question of what deters future bad screw-ups by corporate leaders and officials is a topic where, certainly, different types of professional or occupational experience (different individual backgrounds, also) will lead people to different viewpoints. It might be the case, in the 737 MAX debacle, that the slamming of the prison cell door is the right result, but only after due process of law. And you might be pleased, on reading some of the legal work I did in one of the pending cases against Boeing, that in my advocacy role I take no prisoners and rather than a voice of reason, I go for killer instinct. That too is in the professional conduct rules, though politely called zealous advocacy. And thanks for the note of respect, I am trying here to acknowledge it, among all else.

[BDAttitude]

WR, as I am not so knowledgeable in anglo saxon style law:
Does it mean Forkner and his successor are off the hook now, or will they still be prosecuted as natural persons?
When that DPA talks about fraud would it include any financial / stock coproration law issues arisen during the course of actions detailed in that Annex A?
Is BA not off the hook for involuntary manslaughter by negligent design of MCAS or have all investigations by public prosecution finished now?

[WillowRun 6-3]

First answer is easy to give: the DPA itself states that the government and Boeing's agreement applies only to Boeing and goes on to state expressly that the individuals who were involved remain subject to prosecution. However, whether these two individuals actually will be prosecuted, the avoidance response is to say it's still too soon to forecast . . . but my inclination is to anticipate that despite trenchant efforts by their defense counsel, they will face charges.

Second, the DPA Statement of Facts struck this SLF/attorney as so infuriating that I couldn't even read it sentence-for-sentence. That said, it is striking in that it serves as a predicate for fraud and conspiracy charges. But: the charges involved in the DPA are only those against Boeing relating specifically to the conduct (or misconduct, as the situation may be) spelled out in the Facts. Do I think those Facts could provide part of the basis for prosecution for securities law violations? - possibly a substantial part of such a basis? I do think so (and an anecdote about why, at the end). It's not my area so I won't try to predict any precise claims; but doesn't it sound like the stuff of securities fraud for Boeing to have said, repeatedly, that the return to service was just around the corner? And for FAA to have felt the need, repeatedly, to assure the public that the timetable was going to be set by FAA and not by the planemaker?

Last answer, also mostly straightforward - the DPA is a limited deal, releasing the company just from the charges against it arising from the specific acts and omissions alleged to have been taken by the two individuals. The rest of potential criminal responsibility is left available.
** ** **
A few years ago a major U.S. university became immersed in intense publicity and public outrage over a serious, and sickening, scandal arising from a sports team doctor (and faculty member) having engaged in a long-term pattern and series of sexual assaults against young women and girls on various sports teams, including an Olympic team. The victim impact (should be, Survivor impact, but the other term is what is used in court) statements in a courtroom where the jail-jumpsuited doctor had been convicted gripped a nationwide television audience. Having practiced in higher ed, I watched much of this court proceeding.
It seemed odd that the person who was president of the university attended one of the court sessions. She appeared frozen by a sense of impending catastrophe, though laboring mightily to mask it. Confronted by a survivor in the hallway - on t.v. - she only deepened this impression (admittedly subjective though it is).
My point is, when I saw Dennis Muilenburg appear before committees of the United States Congress, both in the House and the Senate, the look on his face, his general demeanor, flashed right back to those courtroom scenes.
It ain't over 'til it's over.

[BDAttitude]

Thank's WR - mostly as I would have expected.
Not quite the coup as it was sold by some of the media. Probably more to come.

[WillowRun 6-3]

Transport Canada - news reports:
Canada clears Boeing 737 Max for flight nearly 2 years after global grounding | CBC News (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/boeing-737-max-fly-again-1.5877356)

[nyt]

FlightlessParrot

My point exactly. I thought two people were not to be required ? Also, how would they have done in a high G load environment, nobody can tell. And it got certified somehow, beyond me. Time will tell if they were right.

[Less Hair]

EASA will unground the MAX by next week according to a statement of Patrick Ky as of today. Ky expects Ryanair to be able to use theirs this summer.

[GlobalNav]

So, the experts have determined that the flaws of the 737 MAX that lay behind the two fatal accidents have been remedied. I certainly hope so.

Of course, there are also institutional flaws that permitted the original design and approvals of the 737 MAX. Perhaps such institutional flaws have permitted other flawed type designs and approvals we are not aware of, and hopefully do not lead to catastrophic consequences. But it is these same flawed institutions that have determined the redesigned 737 MAX now complies with safety standards.

The work has only begun. Is anyone at work to diagnose the institutional flaws and resolve them? The infection runs deep.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Boeing has pushed all their chips to the center of the table and all the cards have now been dealt. One more MAX accident that has any nexus to a system or design/manufacture failure and Boeing is done.

[WillowRun 6-3]

Realizing that too much commentary on legal developments in any of the various lawsuits (or legislative initiatives) which are ongoing in the wake of the 737 MAX debacle can rapidly become unwelcome here, this post reports some relevant (and, to this SLF/attorney very interesting) changes in status of some pending lawsuits. Realizing too that even any legal commentary can be rapidly criticized, this post might be questionable. But on the other hand, there have been several exhortations to impose harsher punishments on the corporation, its officials and leaders as well as for stricter scrutiny of the regulatory authorities, and surely no responsible aviator would condone so-called rough barnyard justice, replacing rule of law.

One change in legal status is that the U.S. District Court in Chicago has dismissed a proposed class action lawsuit that was filed on behalf of a (proposed) class of Southwest flight attendants. I'm not attaching the court ruling here (but it's easy to find on Pacer). It's the Christensen case.

The gist of the dismissal by the District Court is there were insufficient allegations that the problems with the aircraft (as already admitted by Boeing as well as still in controversy), even if all true and valid, add up to legal claims that these specific litigants can make in court against Boeing. (known as "failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted", technically).

But the case has relevance beyond its short life on the court docket. In the proposed class action against Boeing by a large group of pilots from a good number of different countries and airlines, Boeing filed a motion seeking to consolidate the SW flight attendants' proposed class action along with the lawsuit by the pilots. That has become a moot issue now, since the flight attendants' action has been dismissed. Here's a link to a reliable legal news outlet article on this case:
Southwest flight attendants' lawsuit over Boeing 737 MAX grounding tossed | Business Information & News | FE | Westlaw Today (https://today.westlaw.com/Document/Idfd1cae0547f11eb9c11dc0a1ae40037/View/FullText.html?transitionType=SearchItem&contextData=(sc.Default))

There was another lawsuit centered on Southwest but it too has been dismissed. It was filed by the SWAPA, the labor organization of Southwest pilots, and ended up with a dismissal in Texas state court in early November. From a lawyer's viewpoint there is a lot more to discuss about the legal claims, and factual allegations and context, of the pilots' suit. Anyway, here it'll just be noted as having been dismissed.

(No comments in this post or otherwise should be taken as any opinion or legal advice about the appellate prospects in either case.)

[WillowRun 6-3]

Probably of more interest here - and especially to folks who advocate stronger measures against Boeing and its officials and leaders - are a couple of court filings in the proposed class action on behalf of a large number of pilots qualified on the 737 MAX in various countries around the world. The case was briefed on Boeing's motion to dismiss some months ago. There were some skirmishes procedurally prior to this defense motion. Like the dismissal motion in the Christensen lawsuit, this one argues that even if all the allegations of fact made by the proposed class of pilots are true, Boeing owed the pilots no legal duties whatsoever in these matters. In other words, everything alleged is assumed to be true, but - or so Boeing argues - the allegations do not add up to a valid legal claim (and in a few aspects, are not stated with the necessary degree of detail or particulars required by federal court procedural rules).

Enter the Federal Aviation Administration and also, the United States Department of Justice. Or, at least their work-product. To explain...

Courts can take "judicial notice" of facts that are more or less indisputable. The score of the Bucs-Saints game in the playoffs could be judicially noticed. It's got to be something that is truly a matter of fact.

A few weeks ago attorneys on behalf of the proposed class filed a motion asking the court to take judicial notice of four documents - each centrally and critically important (in my view) - relating to the return of the aircraft to service. These are: 1) Recission of Emergency Order of Prohibition; 2) Airworthiness Directive, 14 CFR Part 39, 2020-24-02; 3) Continued Airworthiness Notification to International Community; and 4) Flight Standardization Board Report (revision 17). Familiarity with these documents, issued by FAA and on its website as of or about 18 November of last year, is presumed - at least enough to realize quite quickly that they certainly do weigh heavily on the basic legal issues in the pilots' proposed class action - and taken collectively?....well, this post is seeking some measure of objectivity.

Surprisingly or not, the District Court judge ruled these FAA documents not relevant. (I haven't had time or a bill-paying client sufficient to read and study the various court decisions about who is correct on the legal point of what can be "judicially noticed" when a defense motion like the pending one is at issue. Still, on basic legal-thinking first impression, I cannot imagine what legal reasoning conceivably could support a ruling that FAA's administrative action as reflected in these documents is not sufficiently relevant to be judicially noticed in context of the pending motion.)

Then, the attorneys for the proposed class of pilots filed a second motion - I'd venture a nice wager people following this thread already have guessed what it covers - seeking judicial notice of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement and the Criminal charges filed in Texas federal court. You know, the court documents in which Boeing formally admits that information provided to FAA and for pilots was materially false, inaccurate and incomplete. By which Boeing evades, escapes and otherwise is unfettered by criminal prosecution for fraud and conspiracy. This second motion seeks notice by the judge of the DPA and specifically the lengthy Statement of Facts which is part of it.

Only what little measure of lawyerly discretion I sometimes think I may have left, keeps me from spouting off about how obviously relevant these Department of Justice, federal court filing documents are to the issues in the motion to dismiss.

(Again, no legal advice or opinion should be or can be taken as part of this post, with regard to any appellate prospects of any ruling or otherwise.)

[Longtimer]

In an attempt to deal with a possible desire of passengers to avoid the MAX AirCanada has developed a policy to allow bookings changes. I wonder if other carriers will follow suit?
https://canadianaviationnews.wordpress.com/2021/01/19/air-canada-adopts-policies-to-let-guests-avoid-the-737-max/

[etudiant]

Willow Run,

Thank you for this update. I do not think that many of those who post here have your level of overview and understanding of the legal dimensions of this disaster. Your inputs are real value.
Clearly the old Boeing we knew from the Seattle days is dead, with the Max as its tombstone.
The challenge now is whether there is a possibility of setting a legal basis for honest dealing. Clearly the District Court has a different view, but hope springs eternal.

[GlobalNav]

The “old Boeing is dead”! Oh really? Hundreds of passengers and crew are, yes. But Boeing is alive and kicking, building and selling airplanes. People trade Boeing stock daily.

I don’t want to see Boeing dead, either, but Boeing and it’s regulators need a heart transplant. The well-being of so many people, employees, suppliers, etc., desperately need a healthy Boeing. But today’s Boeing is not good enough. Perhaps, some positive changes are underway, I hope so, but there needs to be a corporate personality transformation.

[568]

WillowRun

With respect,
I consider your response quite obtuse, so say what you want, lawyers/solicitors are all the same IMHO.
Regarding your comment quote," it seemed to be clear that pilots, first of all, generally aren't in the business of conversing with people who don't know what the pilots are talking about" unquote.
There have been several posts that I have responded to in various forums over the years to SLF and "spotters" (look that up) to try and answer their questions.

This isn't a "lawyers forum" it is a professional pilots forum so please take your "legalese" speak" and be more respectful of every professional pilots on this board who has respected you and tolerated your points of view in your posts.

You may uphold the "oath of adherence" which I am reasonably familiar with, but certainly that isn't reflected in the lawyers representing Boeings position with regard to the MAX accidents in wanting "to move the court cases to another country" as stated when asked by the committee during the congressional hearings!

IOW, the judicial system is broken in the US, period dot. Nuff said!

[alf5071h]

Willow. A simple question (without page sapping repetitive quotes and re-quotes).

The 737Max crashes involved an assumption, by Boeing, that crew would be able to detect and manage the failure.

Within Boeing there was prior evidence that this assumption was incorrect (sim tests - reaction time) and should have been reconsidered, vetted and checked (safety oversight - process failure). Also, that the assumption should not have been justified based on Boeings knowledge and experience of building aircraft, a policy for automation to keep the pilot in the loop, and previous accidents. (Examples of flawed assumptions - crew's perceptions from THY and Asiana accidents - Boeing failed to learn).

Would the above be a foundation for a claim against Boeing for the wide ranging consequences?

[WillowRun 6-3]

alf5071h . . . yes.
IIRC the Federal Air Regs or one of the related although less authoritative other types of FAA regulatory items referred to "the average pilot". I don't recall whether that regulatory item, in turn, defined the reaction time as 4 seconds. Regardless, what you describe about what Boeing people knew and when they knew it, and to what extent the corporate entity is legally accountable for the acts and omissions of its people, does provide a basis for liability actions in my view. I've avoided commenting here on the main liability lawsuits against Boeing brought on behalf of the surviving family members or other representatives of the individuals who died in the two crashes, for reasons .... for lawyer-type reasons. But it could very well be the case that in those lawsuits, the very point you raise is receiving major play. (I know, were I involved as attorney of record for those people in those kinds of actions, I would certainly have a modest regiment of attorneys getting ready to present, in terms a jury will understand, the flight testing process, the role of the two technical pilots whose conduct led to the DPA, and much more.)

To 568, I am very apologetic for continuing to give offense. It was in no sense the intent. If it is possible to tolerate one further comment, though....
The defense motion to transfer a case from a court in the U.S. where juries are likely to award large damages amount, to a court in a different country, is indeed a very cynical move when viewed from many perspectives. Yet it is stock in trade for the defense bar, which -- I agree -- is a reflection on the sad state of much of the legal profession.

One last point I'd suggest for your consideration, is that there isn't any other forum where lawyers interact with professional aviators. In fact the state of legal education in the field of public and private international air law is in many senses anemic, quite ineffective, and overall proceeding with barely more modernity than tail fins on large Caddys from 1965. And in the world of practice, well, it's all about the equivalent of Show Me The Money, as you know.

But the issues presented by the 737 MAX debacle aren't going to be addressed successfully without participation by attorneys. The Inspector General of the Dep't of Transportation is an attorney; that report was a major positive factor in the DOJ reaching the Deferred Prosecution Agreement - yes with largely unsatisfactory penalties but with significant binding admissions of very, very damaging facts by Boeing. Same with the attorneys who staff the House and Senate Committees whose reports have done a lot to advance the reining in of a degenerated Boeing corporate entity. And a similar case can be made about a large portion, maybe a majority, of the contemporary issues in civil aviation. The courtroom system is flawed but until there is a better system ready to launch, is there an alternative? I don't think you would say the lawsuits against Boeing should just be dropped because one lawyer on some internet site offended one pilot.
It's fine (not that anyone needs permission in a free speech environment) to loathe the status of the legal system, attorneys in general, and particular individual legal counsel. The question becomes, however, what will improve the situation? That's the only reason this post and the rest I've posted exist here at all.

[etudiant]

GlobalNav

The old Boeing was founded on the explicit strategy of 'Let no advance in aviation pass us by', so an engineering culture, with hard nosed management and marketing to keep that in check.
That was replaced by a more 'shareholder value' oriented approach starting with Phil Condit. The consequences were apparent very early, seen in the wretched performance of the company on the 767 tankers for Japan and Italy.
No course corrections were ever made, just more Power Point engineering fixes.
Now we are facing the logical outcome of this change of course, a firm staffed with two decades or more of hires who have been indoctrinated with the 'shareholder value' mantra.
It will take a long time to rebuild the lost competences, especially as there is no obvious center of excellence from which a restoration could begin.

[WillowRun 6-3]

Seattle Times reporting that attorneys advising Ethiopian Airlines with regard to the company's claims against Boeing have advised the company that it should reject a reported settlement offer by Boeing. Among other things the article states that the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, in which Boeing made admissions of fraud and conspiracy by its employees, would provide a basis for an award of punitive damages by a jury. As well, the article states the value of the settlement offer is far below what would be projected as recovery by trial.

Also discussed are various settlement factors as seen by the airline, such as the amount of its attorneys' fees, the risks of trial, its need for cash, and others. Some of the prominent attorneys who are involved in suing Boeing are quoted in the article (by the aviation writer at Seattle Times, Dominic Gates).

[Big Pistons Forever]

What ever happened to the allegations that the MAX simulator re-certification tests were gamed by Boeing by having the regular line pilot test subjects get coaching on what was to happen and how to react, before the simulator event ?

[DaveReidUK]

Big Pistons Forever

"What ever happened to the allegations that the MAX simulator re-certification tests were gamed by Boeing by having the regular line pilot test subjects get coaching on what was to happen and how to react, before the simulator event ?"

I'd have thought that any pilot involved in MAX simulator re-certification tests would have a pretty good idea of what might be thrown at them in the sim, without needing coaching.

Unless they have been living on another planet for the last year-and-a-half.

[WHBM]

Big Pistons Forever

My understanding was that the pilots were divided into two groups, one who received the coaching and one who didn't, to determine the difference between them. Seemed reasonable. Of course, this approach then lends itself to claims that "the pilots were coached", when it was just the control group.

[alf5071h]

Willow. Thanks, #672 . Re 'average pilot'.
Although there are some documents which refer to an average pilot, the term is meaningless in safety regulation.
There should be no statistically below average pilots flying an aircraft assessed as suitable for 'an average' pilot.
Children of Lake Wobegon; https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon_effect

The regulations relating to flight crew action are based on qualitative assessment - expert judgement; i.e.
"… a potential failure condition can be alleviated or overcome during the time available without jeopardizing other safety-related flightcrew tasks and without requiring exceptional pilot skill or strength," AC 25.1309

"… provided overall flight crew workload during the time available to perform them is not excessive and they do not require exceptional pilot skill or strength. Unless flight crew actions are accepted as normal airmanship, they should be described in the approved Aeroplane Flight Manual. ' CS AC 25.1309

Boeing's certification failures were in the issues above; misjudging human capability, task, and nature of malfunction without any safety margin.

The FAA's failures similarly misjudged the human aspects, also with limited oversight of Boeing tacitly agreeing with their view..

The differences now required by EASA and Canada highlight this; whilst their changes are a polite, public view, the regulatory view is more 'a judgement too close to the limit - OK now, but not a precedent'; which in non-regulatory terms; you've still got it (judgement) wrong.

[WillowRun 6-3]

alf5071h - Thanks for the clarifying explanations.

It was somewhat early in the aftermath of the two accidents that the regrettable "average" term cropped up - and though my understanding of it (as just SLF/attorney) doesn't matter at all, I should have used more precise description instead.

There's an interesting and quite active thread over on Tech Log about whether MCAS was needed actually, in the first place. (For purposes of understanding how the FAA reform legislation is going to be implemented, and also for several different purposes relating directly to various court actions currently in progress, the reasons for Canada and EASA to have taken somewhat divergent positions compared to FAA, is a subject deserving close study.)

[WillowRun 6-3]

If there were to be a rite of passage for any old SLF/attorney poster in these parts, I'd say being addressed directly by the eminent gums (saluting, here) would be qualified as it.

It might reactivate the sense of being angered, if the real aviators consider the argument being advanced by Boeing's high-priced big law firm attorneys in federal district court in Chicago. In that case, Boeing is arguing that everything that Boeing has done wrongly, illegally and unlawfully, improperly - and this now includes the admittedly criminal conduct by its two technical pilots - is entirely beside the point. Boeing argues the court must rule that it had no legal obligation whatsoever NOT to lie, defraud, hide the ball from, any pilots anywhere. It's true. Boeing has argued that the amount or degree of legal responsibility owed to pilots who qualified to fly the 737 MAX, with regard to telling them or NOT telling them about the existence and operation of MCAS, is NO greater than the legal responsibility Boeing owed to baristas who work in airports. You can read it in their briefs. Too bad for you fly-boys and -girls, sayeth the once-mighty planemaker.

It's an outrageous argument. It hurts my mind even to read it. All the discussion about stick gradients in certain corners of the flight envelope, but if the planemaker lied and committed fraud and conspiracy about how the systems worked, and this led to the aviators suffering harms to their careers because the two crashes and then the grounding occurred, well too bad. So the stick gradient is supposed to convey certain feel, or some other system effect is supposed to occur so that the variant is perceived, comprehended and anticipated (3 phases of SA) just like the NG, but if it all is a fraud, well too bad. [correction: stick force gradient]

I don't know much about mods. I don't even recall always all the fast-movers my informal advisor flew in the era of the nasty Southeast Asia mess, though I do recall the mil career he had ended up in some Thuderous type stuff.

[GlobalNav]

If Boeing’s argument is that they do not owe the truth to regulators and they put that in writing, then such a statement should be the first item considered when reviewing their Organizational Delegation Authority. This would disqualify a DER, and should likewise disqualify any OEM who seeks such authority.

[WillowRun 6-3]

GlobalNav - what Boeing has admitted is, at this point, only what is in the Statement of Facts which is part of the DPA (Deferred Prosecution Agreement). I don't think they admitted that they could lie with impunity to any regulator - they did admit that the two technical pilots for whose actions and omissions the company was legally accountable committed misconduct that amounted to fraud and conspiracy. (I'll reread the disheartening Statement of Facts and if I've over-stated or misstated at all, correction will follow.)

The proposed class action in Chicago is a different matter, though. The claim is that pilots in a number of airlines around the world did the things necessary to qualify on the 737 MAX. Then, the crashes, and the grounding, and as a result, their careers are damaged. Approval of the class action procedural level of court action has not been given yet. Instead, Boeing hit back at the lawsuit by arguing that it owed no legal duty to the pilots, even if the company did all the wrongful things claimed in the lawsuit - which have now been expanded by the admissions in the DPA Statement of Facts. It's a technical or procedural type of defense motion.

What burns about the defense motion is that the company is saying, no matter that we screwed over (pardon my lingo) the regulator in point of fact, and too bad that we cut corners so bloodlessly that 346 people perished in aircraft crash disasters. These outrageous and sordid acts which we caused still do not make us legally liable for the harmful effects upon the careers of the pilots whose careers were derailed or otherwise hurt by the grounding. It's not a matter of saying they "didn't really suffer any damages" - instead Boeing is saying "we're not responsible at all - throw the case out before it ever really gets going."

So in other words, if designing a control system, failing to be forthright with the regulators, failing to put the info in the training and FCOMs, and the rest, if all that leads to disaster which in turn leads to a grounding which in turn hurts the careers of aviators? Boeing says, So What? Careers of airport baristas were hurt too by the grounding. Literally, the once-mighty bailiwick of the late and much-missed Wimpy made this argument in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, City of Chicago, County of Cook, State of Illinois. No, I'm not counsel of record. If only.

[etudiant]

Is there not a point where someone senior in a corporation recognizes that this kind of argument is not one you want to win?
Getting legal cover for obviously sleazy behavior may save some dimes, but will cost mega bucks going forward. Does anyone remember 'If it ain't Boeing, I'm not going'? Is it in the corporate interest to change that?

[568]

"Stick gradients" isn't the correct terminology for flight control tests pertaining to FAR part 25. It is referred to as "stick force gradient' when we conduct flight tests!
Please ensure that you do due diligence in research so as not to relay incorrect information to other people reading these forums since this may lead to confusion!

[WHBM]

Is there somewhere a, succinct, well-worded statement of just what changes Boeing have actually made to the aircraft and/or its software, which have given the ability for it to be re-certified.

I presume Boeing themselves are not capable of writing this without their lawyers making a nonsense of it, but has some independent organisation done so ? Just a couple of pages, maybe just one, is presumably enough, not something the size of War and Peace.

[CaptainSandL]

WHBM try this: 737 MAX - MCAS (b737.org.uk) (http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm#fix)

[WHBM]

Thank you.

[FlyingStone]

European aviation agency clears Boeing 737 Max to fly again (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/european-aviation-agency-clears-boeing-737-max-to-fly-again-boeing-737-max-planes-aircraft-european-europe-b1793403.html)

[jmmoric]

Glad to hear.

Now we just need the passengers back.

[Less Hair]

Is there any info on China and how they think about some return to service?

[tdracer]

The article in the Seattle Times states that - now that they have the major regulators on-board (FAA, Canada, EASA, Brazil), they expect to have the others by mid-year.
China could be interesting...

[WillowRun 6-3]

Dated Jan. 27, 2021, by EASA (from its website):

EASA declares Boeing 737 MAX safe to return to service in Europe | EASA (europa.eu) (https://www.easa.europa.eu/newsroom-and-events/press-releases/easa-declares-boeing-737-max-safe-return-service-europe)

[568]

tdracer

Internal Chinese flights use a variety of equipment types depending on where the ultimate destination is.
Arguably, the 737 is used by many airlines for internal flights as compared with the A320 for example.

[fdr]

There is a capitalist answer to the problems of Boeing, summed up in the slogan "Creative destruction." Over two decades or so, Boeing has abandoned the things that made it truly respected and trusted by everyone who ever set foot in an aeroplane, all in pursuit of financial success. The consequences of this management policy is that it is now vulnerable to the external shock of the pandemic. The company Boeing is, perhaps, no longer the best entity to manage its productive assets, both plant and skilled workers. As the company was moving more and more to an outsourcing model, with shared risk, there would be the less disruption in breaking it up into manageable, more nimble, and more ethical productive units.

Some time ago, (Sept 3rd 1976) John Boyd wrote his paper on Destruction and Creation, which predates computer games of a similar name. The gist of Boyd's concepts are stated in the closing paragraph on page 7 as:

Paradoxically, then, an entropy increase permits both the destruction or unstructuring of a closed system and the creation of a new system to nullify the march toward randomness and death. Taken together, the entropy notion associated with the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the basic goal of individuals and societies seem to work in dialectic harmony driving and regulating the destructive/creative, or deductive/inductive, action—that we have described herein as a dialectic engine. The result is a changing and expanding universe of mental concepts matched to a changing and expanding universe of observed reality. Boyd, John R., "Destruction and Creation"

Out of entropy arise the seeds of creation.

JB was mainly referring to entrenched ideology, institutionalized thinking and practices, and as a blue suiter, he sure had enough examples for his theories. Growing mushrooms out of the necrotic corporate body of TBC is probably not a great solution but it is always an option. TBC may well be better off showing some humility and soul searching and take substantive action to contemplate their navel, and own the problem and use that to start anew with... gosh, maybe a real, meaningful corporate ethics that starts at the top with some moral conviction. The last effort was a cynical expedient and was as effective as would be expected, and in the end, the shareholders get what they wished for.

It was people with moral fortitude such as Boyd, Spinney, Christie, Spray, Riccioni and Co that resulted in the Viper, the A-10, exposed the BFV misleading survivability trials, and who developed E-M theory, the aerial attack study, Patterns of Conflict, and the OODA Loop. He was hated by the airforce bosses, the people who turned up to his funeral were marines, which says about all that needs to be said about integrity and institutions.

Boeings management will be remembered too, but not in a good way, nor will TBCs responses to the failures in their processes be forgotten easily without renewal.

[esa-aardvark]

I remember from a course back when I worked:-
'Expecting tomorrow to be a variation on today is a bad idea'
Don't remember the presenter, well respected in the day.
A number of companies (UK) have found the combination
Covid & Brexit & online shopping made their tomorrow un-survivable.
I hope someone in Boeing is pondering the conundrum,
Covid + crashes + changed travel patterns, may make survival
as they are now very difficult.

[ozaub]

Further to posts #622 and #630, on 25 Feb FAA assessed $5.4m in deferred penalties under terms of 2015 agreement whereby Boeing pledged to improve regulatory compliance. See Press Release – Boeing to Pay $6.6 Million in Penalties to FAA (https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=25740)

Didn’t happen. Two MAXs crashed. DPA found criminal culpability and levied penalties totalling almost $3 billion

The 2015 agreement refers back to TWA 800 accident 25 years ago, and Boeing’s tardiness in fixing risk of fuel tank explosions. See https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-long-saga-of-twa-flight-800-20160108-gm27r0.html.

[568]

Interesting reading the article in your last link.
I was under the impression that the Nitrogen Generation system for center tanks had been installed in some types, for example B737/747/767.
Maybe TD can give us some more information.

[tdracer]

Not much...
I know that Boeing developed Nitrogen Gen Systems (NGS) to inert the center wing tanks (and, IIRC, the wing tanks for the 787 since the carbon composite construction tends to insulate the fuel and keep it at a higher (combustible) temp longer than metal wing tanks). Further, somewhere around 2010 all new production aircraft had NGS systems installed, and retrofit kits were made available for in-service aircraft.
My limited understanding of the original FAA fines was related to Boeing rather seriously underestimating the difficulty of developing commercially viable NGS systems and missing the originally agreed to dates for production and retrofit availablity (apparently the NGS hardware proved rather unreliable in the service demonstrator tests and it took a lot of time and money to get them up to the reliability necessary for commercial airlines operating 8-12 hours/day for over 20 years).

[568]

TD,
Appreciate the information.

[trickii1]

It seems the political race of deniel of the complete terminatin of the max family or the bankruptcy of boeing and sale to the chineese. Bankruptcy chapter 11 only buys time but it wont buy the radical restructurin required to save the company which is stuck together by a failed culture and politics.

[sunnySA]

CASA's suspension on Boeing 737 MAX aircraft lifted 26 February 2021Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has lifted the temporary suspension on Boeing 737 MAX aircraft operating to or from Australia.

While no Australian airlines currently operate the Boeing 737 MAX, two foreign airlines flew these aircraft types to Australia before the COVID-19 pandemic – Singapore-based SilkAir (now Singapore Airlines) and Fiji Airways.

Both the FAA and EASA recently issued return to service airworthiness directives for the Boeing 737 MAX.

CASA’s Acting CEO and Director of Aviation Safety, Graeme Crawford said the initial suspension had been in the best interests of aviation safety.

“CASA was one of the first civil aviation regulators in the world to suspend Boeing 737 MAX operations. We took early action based on the information we had to ensure our skies remained safe while the cause of the accidents was investigated,” Mr Crawford said.

“We have accepted the comprehensive return-to-service requirements specified by the FAA as State of Design for the 737 MAX and are confident that the aircraft are safe.

“Our airworthiness and engineering team has assessed there are no additional return to service requirements for operation in Australia.

“With COVID-19 continuing to disrupt international air travel, there is currently no indication when Singapore airlines and Fiji Airways will resume their operations to Australia.”

[etudiant]

Has China given any additional indication of when they expect to decide on the airworthiness of the Max?

[Avionista]

Not yet, if this report is accurate:

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/regulator-china-read-boeing-737-max-fly-76178897

[DaveReidUK]

If the report is correct, it implies that the Chinese are waiting for the ET302 final report before allowing the Max to fly again. That could take some time.

[krismiler]

CAAC recertification of the MAX involves issues other than the aircraft. The South China Sea dispute, Huawei, trade tariffs, criticism of China’s human rights record etc come into play.

They can find enough still wrong with the MAX to justify grounding it if they want to.

[osborne]

"They can find enough still wrong with the MAX to justify grounding it if they want to"

A serious question: is there an international agreement which obliges the Chinese to say if it's ok with the FAA / Europeans it's ok with us?
They have their own A320 lookalike coming along. Unlike the MAX they can't certify a basically1960s design as good enough in 2021.

[turbidus]

No, there is not. Each CAA is responsible for certification, most were agreeing with the FAA cert. There are Bilateral agreements that recognize and reciprocate the other agencies certifications.

So we now have 2 variants of the MAX..the FAA cert and the EASA cert. (the EASA allows for the bus pull among other things with special covers to id)
Will there be a CAAC variant?
What happens if the CAAC requirements find something the FAA , EASA, or NavCanada missed? We gonna be back at square 1?

[tdracer]

Oh come on - do you really think the Chinese are going to come up with a legitimate problem that everyone else missed - or that they even need to? This is all politics - pure and simple.

OTOH, if the Chinese ever expect to be able to export their COMAC aircraft, they better watch their step...

[WillowRun 6-3]

Insofar as the effectiveness of FAA's issuance of airworthiness certification again to the 737 MAX type, Article 33 of the Chicago Convention of 1944, and Annex 8 to the Convention, are relevant. (SLF/atty, plus trying to avoid the pedantic, so not much explanation follows.)

"Under Article 33, such certificates of airworthiness must be recognized by other States, provided that the requirements under which they were issued met or exceeded ICAO SARPs." (Dempsey, Public Int'l Air Law at 118 (2008)). The certificates referred to are those under Article 31, "which requires that every aircraft flown internationally must carry a certificate of airworthiness by the State in which it is registered."

After the DC-10 accident in 1979 in Chicago, and the FAA Administrator acted to ground the type, soon after certain foreign airlines instituted litigation challenging the refusal of the U.S. to honor the airworthiness certificates their States had reinstated. The federal appellate court ruled in their favor (the British Caledonian case). My contention here isn't that the other CAAs, in the case of the 737 MAX return to service, are inconsistent with either the Convention or Annex 8 - but any suggestion there isn't "law" on the point is, well, just plain incorrect.

Of course, an argument can be made - personally I think it's a winning one - that the court didn't see the forest for the trees, because at the time of the decision by the other countries' airlines to reinstate DC-10 flight operations, the factors involved in that tragic accident were far from fully known. (The echoes of the DC-10 accident in Chicago in 1979 have reverberated throughout the 737 MAX debacle, in this SLF/atty anyway, although pedantic perhaps even to note that.)

[krismiler]

Europe banned the Antonov AN12 on safety grounds. China could use a similar argument, insisting that the MAX meet modern safety standards rather than those it was certified under back in the 1960s. This would be impractical as major redesign work would be needed.

The COMAC C919 is a modern design with considerable western content, unless significant safety issues come to light after it enters service, it would be difficult to find a legitimate reason to ban the type. Even if it was banned from US airspace, most of its customers wouldn’t be flying it there anyway. Having the long haul C929 banned would be a different matter.

[tdracer]

That would mean retroactively abandoning Change Product Rule - something they had previously agreed to. That could have far reaching implications - including the A320 NEO and A330 NEO.
Besides, all the US would need to do to effectively destroy COMAC would be to deny export of all that western content using an ITAR ruling.
As soon as aircraft cert because a political pawn, it leads down a very steep, very slippery slope.

[Chewing the crud]

We shouldn't forget that ITAR/EAR are US Nationally mandated regulations, and hence can't control 'western' content unless there is a specific US connection.

If ITAR/EAR becomes overtly used for commercial reasons, beyond its laudable aim of controlling military technology usage, there will be more push back against it, as many folks already suspect it is being used as disguised protective measures to commercially favour US products.

[nyt]

I missed the "autothrottle not responding" part of the story. Interesting read.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faa-safety-engineer-goes-public-to-slam-the-agencys-oversight-of-boeings-737-max/

[DieselOx]

Also the first time I've heard from an engineer I trust that the stick forces just get lighter in certain situations. That was the main question I had from the start.

Even if they removed MCAS like he suggested, I still won't fly on a MAX ever. Not due to MCAS, but the design culture. No idea what else got buried and ignored.

[WillowRun 6-3]

The final report on ET 302 now will be even more scrutinized for what it states with regard to the autothrottle role in the sequence of events.

If the interaction of the failed AOA sensor and the autothrottle was noted in some of the several prior reports, it has not been emphasized in this manner, ... has it?

[DaveReidUK]

WillowRun 6-3

"If the interaction of the failed AOA sensor and the autothrottle was noted in some of the several prior reports, it has not been emphasized in this manner, ... has it?"

What sort of interaction do you mean ?

[MikeSnow]

He's talking about a failed AOA sensor potentially causing the autothrottle to fail silently, as it apparently happened on the ET 302 accident flight.

[BDAttitude]

Having followed most of the threads ... no, I don't think it was discussed at any time that the ATs would neither react to a speed intervention nor disconnect but instead continue full power due to the AOA failure.

[Icarus2001]

He's talking about a failed AOA sensor potentially causing the autothrottle to fail silently, as it apparently happened on the ET 302 accident flight. Did it really?

[WillowRun 6-3]

My post re: autothrottle interaction was directly in context and solely in reference to the article in the Seattle Times as reported by D. Gates and reporting on very recent statements by a retiring FAA engineer (and former Boeing employee). That's the entirety of the reference. (And, as SLF/attorney I didn't make any statement at all about what that specific interaction was, could have been, or otherwise - just noting the reliable reporter's news article . . . although this context seems to have been not stated specifically....)

[568]

Simply put:
Even though there should/could be a way to reduce takeoff thrust in the event of unreliable airspeed, or low altitude level off, leading to full thrust at altitude capture, this isn't part of the autothrottle logic. Take off thrust will still be the AT mode unless SPD (speed) has been selected on the MCP panel in the event of a "low altitude" capture or for other reasons as stated in the initial report. The takeoff situation with ET and the AT at full thrust with all the other caution/warnings and MCAS activation were the precursor to this tragic accident.

Boeing has "memory items" for flight with unreliable airspeed which is covered during transition and UPRT training.
A difference of 5 knots between Captain and First Officer airspeed tape on the PFD (primary flight display) triggers "IAS disagree" on both PFD's!

Autopilot (if engaged).......................................Disengage
Autothrottle (if engaged)....................................Disengage
F/D switches (both)................................................OFF

Set the following gear up pitch attitude and thrust:
Flaps extended.................................... 10° and 80% N1
Flaps up........................................... 4° and 75% N1

[BlankBox]

https://theaircurrent.com/industry-strategy/emirates-tim-clark-says-boeing-not-getting-it-on-737-max-787/


...didn't watch...but seems he's sticking his nose into a prickly pear...

[FlyingRoland]

568

The Airspeed Unreliable procedure is not necessarily the first thing you do when you get an IAS Disagree alert.

The condition for the procedure is: Airspeed or Mach indications are suspected to be unreliable.
The objective of the procedure is: To identify a reliable airspeed indication, if possible, or to use the Flight With Unreliable Airspeed table in the Performance Inflight chapter for the remainder of the flight.

According Boeing items which might indicate unreliable airspeed are:
•Difference between captain and first officer airspeed indications
•Speed/altitude information not consistent with pitch attitude and thrust setting
•Blank or fluctuating airspeed indication
•Continuous or intermittent stick shaker
•IAS DISAGREE alert
•ALT DISAGREE alert
•AOA DISAGREE alert
•SPD failure flag
•SPD LIM failure flag
•Erroneous minimum speed bars
•Erroneous maximum speed bars
•Airspeed low aural
•Airspeed low PFD indications on one side
•Overspeed warning
•Erroneous Flight Director (FD) pitch command bar
•Radome damage or loss

If the AOA DISAGREE alert is shown, one or more of the following flight deck effects can occur:
•Erroneous Pitch Limit Indicator (PLI)
•Windshear alerts
•Autoslat operation

[568]

Agreed, but I wrote that an IAS Disagree triggers when a 5 knot difference is suspected between Captain and FO PFD's but didn't imply that the airspeed unreliable QRH should be used first.
But, if you read the QRH for IAS disagree, the next step is to read the airspeed unreliable QRH!

[Nil by mouth]

China is now hinting at testing the B737 Max
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/china-open-to-boeing-737-max-test-flights-report-15184706

[fdr]

As suggested previously, when encountering the longitudinal stability issue, Boeing could have completed aerodynamic mods to the design to remove the anomaly, which resulted from the nacelle adding lift to the wing/nacelle structure that was more than anticipated. That alone would have suggested that an angle grinder should be taken to the strakes to trim their nose hair a shade. Instead, they came up with a neat trick to change a high speed design that had questionable redundancy on trigger events to being low speed too by removing one of the two trigger conditions which gave a single point of failure as a matter of certainty. As AOA probes have a fairly modest MTBF in use, that wasn't a great concept.

Here is a set of charts that show the effect of having strakes or not, which would have been a relatively minor change to the aircraft. As the engines are inboard, it is a matter of certainty that reducing the section CLmax proximate to the nacelle would have ended up in an improvement in the stick force/g. Being judicious, the effect to Vs1g would have been quite modest, and surely, please surely the OEM noted that the stall speed was curiously lower with their design than expected, otherwise, they need a serious boot in the bottom of their trousers for being myopic.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/2000x889/screen_shot_2022_09_21_at_12_46_48_pm_f500ad5dba6921606e7de7 f75d0ae27c26ff606a.png

[EDLB]

So why got the Boeing decision making process into a complicated and questionable complex/ unreliable software solution, instead of an aerodynamic solution?

[WillowRun 6-3]

Is there a source you can identify here for the information in your post, fdr??

[fdr]

Is there a source you can identify here for the information in your post, fdr??

Hi WR.

PM me and I can send you that research paper, it is recent, but it shows what I previously commented on 2 years ago. It isn't from TBC, but it should have been obvious to anyone who had more than a passing knowledge in aerodynamics. Heck, had anyone bothered to sit down with a cup of coffee and have a cogitation on the subject that should have been obvious. I alluded to this when MCAS became publicly disclosed, you may recall; it would have been a few quick test flights to optimize, and corrections to the performance to remove the surprise benefit that the nacelles would have certainly given to Vs1g, at the apparent surprise cost of non-linear longitudinal stability. That's what I would have recommended, but that opportunity was lost through the way things work in external certification in August 2016. Anyway, long stab in this case was a simple fix had anyone bothered to ask outside of the cloistered workshop. Institutions become parodies of themselves, with diminishing returns over time; it is the nature of systems without external input and reviews. Sucks to be us, I guess.

P.S.: While the image and graphs show CL and CD, it should be clear to anyone involved in the art that lowering the CLmax at high alpha for an inboard section of a swept wing will increase the nose down pitching moment of the full wing directly, and will result in a reduced down wash in the affected area proximate to the nacelle/wing flow field that will result in a reduction in the CL of the tail plane for part span in the wake of the wing, which would directly have improved the stick force/g of the aircraft. Quick guess, the effect on stall speed would be less than 1.5% change, and that would have been able to be optimised. Thats about a ~2kt Vs1g change, which is... about... maybe 100' of TODR, or 200lbs of payload loss, rough order.

FWIW, the guys that did the CFD did a nice job, seems to be void of artifacts, and shows some flow structures that are pleasing to see properly modeled.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I am guessing that the nacelle strakes would have added drag and thus marginally reduced the fuel savings of the MAX over the NG. Since everything at Boeing is about the money that alone would be enough for senior management to tell staff to find some software cludge that would allow them to smoke it past the FAA...

[MechEngr]

It would be a confidence builder if that included a drag-polar comparison to show the amount of fuel penalty and, of course, the reason for the investigation, the Cm vs Alpha chart. Edit: that Cm vs Alpha chart should also be transposed to Alpha vs Stick force.

[MechEngr]

So why got the Boeing decision making process into a complicated and questionable complex/ unreliable software solution, instead of an aerodynamic solution?

This is nearly identical to the solution that the Speed Trim System (STS) provides with no notable problems. The first crew to encounter the adverse behavior commented that they thought STS was running backwards. Notable is that MCAS operated exactly as it was specified to operate - the ADIRU did not. To my way of thinking MCAS exposed a number of really bad decisions that should have been corrected decades earlier, including suppliers who were able to supply mis-calibrated AoA sensors due to a single switch on a multifunction test box (crash 1.)

[fdr]

I am guessing that the nacelle strakes would have added drag and thus marginally reduced the fuel savings of the MAX over the NG. Since everything at Boeing is about the money that alone would be enough for senior management to tell staff to find some software cludge that would allow them to smoke it past the FAA...

A B37Max 8... as produced. Note large vane on inboard of nacelle.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/794x475/screen_shot_2022_09_22_at_6_23_18_am_d4b1dd87a978f83b6f74abb 2b6d910c2b4426fd5.png

Note similarity of vane on the nacelle on the B737NG below:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/1701x692/screen_shot_2022_09_22_at_6_30_30_am_307a6fa786df6e64399e8dc 5d347a91c62c4d930.png

Instead of curing an aerodynamic problem with common sense and using aerodynamics, the operators got Heath Robinson's repurposed "all things to all people" speed trim system.

The manufacturer is a collective of individually competent and dedicated professionals, working within the lines of communications that unfortunately appear to act to inhibit cross discipline questioning, resulting in lost opportunities. The lack of inquisitive input to issues gives inevitable results; to a carpenter, every problem is cured with a hammer, etc. Our regulatory requirements lead towards the current structure as a natural consequence, not just in aviation, IMHO.

Given the problem that was encountered, as I stated over 2 years ago on the public disclosure of MCAS as a system, the suggested solution would have been to reduce the size of the nacelle vane; the fundamental issue being the nacelles generating excessive Cm component from excessive CL at high AOA. That the nacelles would be causing excessive CL compared to the earlier design was stated by me in an appropriate forum in Aug 2016, but what had been done to fix that was never disclosed. It is improbable that the system architecture would ever have been disclosed which would have been necessary to ask what on earth they were smoking in Renton with the system architecture.

Would urge that the OEM implement specialist team(s) of generalists to assess systems and designs unfettered by discipline divisions. FWIW, QA per sew is not the solution, they have their place, in assessing system integrity (of course, victimizing your QA Inspectors is hardly reasonable and comes with it's own set of inevitable, forseeable consequences) But QA itself doesn't evaluate assumptions against common sense. What "Critical Design Reviews" are essentially supposed to be but are not.

[fdr]

This is nearly identical to the solution that the Speed Trim System (STS) provides with no notable problems. The first crew to encounter the adverse behavior commented that they thought STS was running backwards. Notable is that MCAS operated exactly as it was specified to operate - the ADIRU did not. To my way of thinking MCAS exposed a number of really bad decisions that should have been corrected decades earlier, including suppliers who were able to supply mis-calibrated AoA sensors due to a single switch on a multifunction test box (crash 1.)

Yup, the operation was a success, but the patient died. There was little in the whole sorry mess that didn't result in rolling of the eyes in shock. It waas not pretty, yet it was was result of the system that the industry has developed into. Placing band-aids on band-aids gets untidy. Being dismissive of QA systems reviews has consequences that can bite.

[llagonne66]

Surprise, surprise :E
With 2 MAX models at risk, Congress moves to give Boeing a break (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/with-two-max-models-at-risk-congress-moves-to-give-boeing-a-break/)

[Big Pistons Forever]

Surprise, surprise :E
With 2 MAX models at risk, Congress moves to give Boeing a break (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/with-two-max-models-at-risk-congress-moves-to-give-boeing-a-break/)

Boeing launched the 777 in 1990 and the type entered commercial service with United airlines in 1995. So zero to fully certified in 5 years, yet Boeing is not able to design a system meeting modern cockpit alerting standards in an airplane already in commercial service with 2 years warning. Really ?

[WillowRun 6-3]

"Scathing letter" - phrasing that invites a question: does anyone here have a copy of that letter?

[Less Hair]

So the FAA wrote a letter to Boeing that Boeing needs to provide certain materials. It's not Boeing waiting for the FAA. It's the FAA waiting for Boeing.

[fdr]

It would be a confidence builder if that included a drag-polar comparison to show the amount of fuel penalty and, of course, the reason for the investigation, the Cm vs Alpha chart. Edit: that Cm vs Alpha chart should also be transposed to Alpha vs Stick force.

That is proprietary information, not sure TBC would be dishing that out, but there is reasonableness that comes from renting a MAX sim and doing a QTG flyout. The margins permitted for an approved simulator are quite large but will give some semblance of the polar, at least within normal envelope, and will give a fair answer on control loads, and derivatives. Getting hands on the QTG cards themselves is probably going to be frowned on, they are still proprietary information. The sims aren't the M-CAB or the real thing. The airline operators have accurate information from the parameters that are being pulled for the QAR data for monitoring, W/delta is a pain from line data, you need a stack of it to get a statistically significant performance set unless you have some exact data points from the OPM and digital performance DB.

[fdr]

I am guessing that the nacelle strakes would have added drag and thus marginally reduced the fuel savings of the MAX over the NG. Since everything at Boeing is about the money that alone would be enough for senior management to tell staff to find some software cludge that would allow them to smoke it past the FAA...

Hey BPF, the aero modification would have been to reduce the nacelle strakes, as the cowling was giving more lift than desirable, complementing what the strakes/chines/big VG's are doing at high AOA. In the cruise, there in no significant impact from the chine, nor from the nacelle, (...although there probably is a slight inboard/forward shift of Cp in the cruise from the nacelles, which would have had a slight trim drag impact, not affected by the chines).

[safetypee]

Different viewpoints:-

Does the FAA ‘dig-in’, holding the line for the required level of safety - for the future without political pressure; flexing their new found independence.
Perhaps aided by Canada and EASA who do not have to agree with either FAA or Congress; thus Boeing would have to modify the design or forego sales in those areas.

Congress are seen to be aiding US industry, but may have a hidden win-win agenda.

or

Have Boeing already decided to ‘pull the plug’ on the MAX variants. They lobby Congress for help, anticipating or generating failure (FAA stance) to avoid blame; where the balance of their certification cost and lost sales is offset by selling more of the basic MAX, is the best commercial option for the future.

FAA seen in a positive light - worldwide, which other views in Congress require.
Special aid for Boeing with Congressional support - the hidden cost of war.

[fdr]

Different viewpoints:-

Does the FAA ‘dig-in’, holding the line for the required level of safety - for the future without political pressure; flexing their new found independence.
Perhaps aided by Canada and EASA who do not have to agree with either FAA or Congress; thus Boeing would have to modify the design or forego sales in those areas.

Congress are seen to be aiding US industry, but may have a hidden win-win agenda.

or

Have Boeing already decided to ‘pull the plug’ on the MAX variants. They lobby Congress for help, anticipating or generating failure (FAA stance) to avoid blame; where the balance of their certification cost and lost sales is offset by selling more of the basic MAX, is the best commercial option for the future.

FAA seen in a positive light - worldwide, which other views in Congress require.
Special aid for Boeing with Congressional support - the hidden cost of war.


The saga is good for an afternoon soapie, replace "days of our lives".

At some point TBC needs to bring their product into the 21st century. The argument based on crew commonality didn't pass muster when first made, SWA went on to buy other carriers and maintain multiple types, and that was apparently considered to be beneficial. That desire to grandfather was a factor in the actions and inaction's that led to the Max debacle.

I doubt that the wing has much more development left in it to permit it to keep up with the developmental potential that the Airbus has. Tying an extension of the time to conclude the 7 and the 10 with a termination of any further grandfathering of that aircraft would be a win in the short term, and a win long term, as TBC needs to be producing a replacement airframe that can compete with the Airbus.

Changing the alerting functions right now would be a stressed program, and the potential to have a latent failure introduced is a higher risk than accepting the conclusion of a final series of aircraft in this program.

TBC has misbehaved and in normal times should be rapped over the knuckles, but the industry and country needs them to get on and sort out their litter box. senior management separately needs to be held accountable for the 27 years of degradation of the company, the ethics, production shambles and nonsense that have occurred.

IMHO...

[Big Pistons Forever]

Hey BPF, the aero modification would have been to reduce the nacelle strakes, as the cowling was giving more lift than desirable, complementing what the strakes/chines/big VG's are doing at high AOA. In the cruise, there in no significant impact from the chine, nor from the nacelle, (...although there probably is a slight inboard/forward shift of Cp in the cruise from the nacelles, which would have had a slight trim drag impact, not affected by the chines).

I do not have enough knowledge of aerodynamics to provide an informed opinion. I was going by what I have read by what I thought were knowledgeable observers who surmised that using an aerodynamic fix to reduce the nacelle lift which was the root of the low speed pitch force issue, would have had a cruise flight drag penalty and therefore was almost immediately rejected by Boeing management.

[Commander Taco]

senior management separately needs to be held accountable for the 27 years of degradation of the company, the ethics, production shambles and nonsense that have occurred.

IMHO...

Where is Alan Mulally just when he’s most needed?

[MechEngr]

That is proprietary information, not sure TBC would be dishing that out, but there is reasonableness that comes from renting a MAX sim and doing a QTG flyout. The margins permitted for an approved simulator are quite large but will give some semblance of the polar, at least within normal envelope, and will give a fair answer on control loads, and derivatives. Getting hands on the QTG cards themselves is probably going to be frowned on, they are still proprietary information. The sims aren't the M-CAB or the real thing. The airline operators have accurate information from the parameters that are being pulled for the QAR data for monitoring, W/delta is a pain from line data, you need a stack of it to get a statistically significant performance set unless you have some exact data points from the OPM and digital performance DB.

I was referring to the ones who wrote a report on their fix. It's not proprietary to them and no information from TBC required.

[MechEngr]

When did SWA fly something besides the 737? If you mean when they bought AirTran - they kept the AirTran 737s and transferred their 717s to Delta.

[WHBM]

When did SWA fly something besides the 737?
Here's one of their 727 fleet, which of course meant they needed flight engineers :

Boeing 727-227/Adv - Southwest Airlines | Aviation Photo #0805643 | Airliners.net (https://www.airliners.net/photo/Southwest-Airlines/Boeing-727-227-Adv/805643)

[MechEngr]

It seems the 727s were leased between 1978 and 1985 from other airlines which provided support. That caption though. Passed around a bunch of airlines. Still, they have moved to an all 737 fleet; maybe the 727 experience taught them about mixed operations. Too bad about losing flight engineers.

[fdr]

When did SWA fly something besides the 737? If you mean when they bought AirTran - they kept the AirTran 737s and transferred their 717s to Delta.

I stand humbly corrected; MechEngr, I was not aware of the divestment. The prior purchases of Transtar by SWA did end up shedding all of their MD-82's & - 83's.

[Tango and Cash]

...

I doubt that the wing has much more development left in it to permit it to keep up with the developmental potential that the Airbus has. Tying an extension of the time to conclude the 7 and the 10 with a termination of any further grandfathering of that aircraft would be a win in the short term, and a win long term, as TBC needs to be producing a replacement airframe that can compete with the Airbus.
...


IMHO this is the most likely outcome. Give Boeing an extension to finish the Max7 and Max10 as-is, and that's the end of the line.