Part of Boeing 737 MAX safety assessment may have been delegated back to the planemaker by FAA

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The US Transportation Department is probing the Federal Aviation Administration's approval of the jumbo jet after it was involved in two crashes

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US prosecutors are looking into the certification process of the Boeing 737 MAX 8

Employees of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) warned as early as seven years ago that Boeing had too much sway over safety approvals of new aircraft. That prompted an investigation by the US Department of Transportation auditors who confirmed the agency hadn’t done enough to “hold Boeing accountable”.

The 2012 investigation also found that discord over Boeing’s treatment had created a “negative work environment” among FAA employees who approve new and modified aircraft designs. Their concerns predated the 737 MAX development.

Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg and FAA officials on Sunday were forced to defend the quality testing of the new aircraft after a Seattle Times investigation found that the US regulator delegated much of the safety assessment to Boeing and that the planemaker in turn delivered an analysis with crucial flaws.

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In recent years, the FAA has shifted more authority over the approval of new aircraft to the manufacturer itself, even allowing Boeing to choose many of the personnel who oversee tests and vouch for safety. US President Donald Trump signed into law a change last October. It allows manufacturers to request that the FAA eliminate limitations on how company representatives certify “low and medium risk” items, giving them even more authority over their own products.

“It raises for me the question of whether the agency is properly funded, properly staffed and whether there has been enough independent oversight,” said Jim Hall, who was chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001 and is now an aviation-safety consultant.

In one of the most detailed descriptions yet of the relationship between Boeing and the FAA during the 737 MAX’s certification, The Seattle Times quoted unnamed engineers who said the planemaker had understated the power of the flight-control software in a System Safety Analysis submitted to the FAA. The newspaper said the analysis also failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded – in essence, gradually ratcheting the horizontal stabiliser into a dive position.

Boeing told the newspaper that the FAA had reviewed the company’s data and concluded the aircraft “met all certification and regulatory requirements”. The company, which is based in Chicago but designs and builds commercial jets in the Seattle area, said there are “some significant mischaracterisations” in the engineers’ comments.

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The newspaper also quoted unnamed FAA technical experts who said managers prodded them to speed up the certification process as development of the MAX was nine months behind that of the rival Airbus A320 Neo.

The FAA has let technical experts at aircraft makers act as its representatives to perform certain tests and approve some parts for decades. The FAA expanded the scope of that programme in 2005 to address concerns about adequately keeping pace with its workload.

In 2012, a special investigator of the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Transportation sent a memo to the FAA’s audit chief warning him of concerns voiced by agency employees about the new process. Despite those concerns, as well as others raised in a subsequent report by the inspector general, the US Congress has embraced the programme as a way to improve the FAA’s efficiency.

Edited by Doris Wai

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