The US Department of Transportation (DOT) is investigating FAA’s certification process for Boeing 737 MAX family aircraft, adding to mounting pressure on the agency and the manufacturer following the March 10 crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302.
The DOT inspector general inquiry, first reported March 17 by the Wall Street Journal, is centered on a Seattle-area FAA office responsible for certifying new aircraft, as well as a second Seattle-area office that sets training requirements and approves fleetwide training programs.
FAA employees in those offices have reportedly been instructed to preserve all emails, reports and internal messages related to the 737 MAX certification process, as well as FAA’s decision to forego additional flight-simulator training requirements for pilots transitioning from older models of the aircraft.
An FAA representative directed requests for comment about the probe to the DOT. A DOT spokesperson declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that a grand jury in Washington, DC, issued a subpoena the day after the Ethiopian Airlines crash to at least one person involved in the development of the MAX. That subpoena reportedly lists as a contact a prosecutor with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) criminal division. The DOJ did not respond to a request from ATW for comment.
US House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) has said he intends to hold hearings to answer questions about how the aircraft were certified as safe, as well as why additional pilot training for the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS) was deemed unnecessary by Boeing and FAA. MCAS, which automatically trims the MAX’s horizontal stabilizers nose-down when it detects the angle of attack is too high, is the focus of the investigation into Lion Air flight JT610, a 737 MAX 8 that crashed in the Java Sea Oct. 29, 2018.
Rep. Sam Graves (R-Missouri), the committee’s ranking member, is focused on training standards for foreign pilots, telling ATW that “the airplane is very safe” and he is “comfortable with the FAA’s certification process.” Graves said he believes the pilots of the Ethiopian Airlines Lion Air flights lacked sufficient training to disable the MCAS and operate the plane manually.