MAX oppdatering - Curt Lewis

China has 'important concerns' about Boeing 737 MAX design changes: regulator BEIJING/SYDNEY (Reuters) - China has raised "important concerns" with Boeing Co (BA.N) regarding design changes proposed to end the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX airliner, Beijing's aviation regulator said on Thursday, declining to say when it might fly in China again. FILE PHOTO: Aerial photos showing Boeing 737 Max airplanes parked at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, U.S. October 20, 2019. REUTERS/Gary He The remarks broke months of public silence from China, the first country to ground the 737 MAX in March following the second deadly crash involving the model in less than five months. "Boeing is currently upgrading its software to the 737 MAX, and it is still a work in progress. The CAAC has raised our important concerns on areas such as system reliability and safety assessment," Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) spokesman Liu Lusong told reporters at a monthly briefing. The 737 MAX would need to be re-certified and pilots given comprehensive and effective training before it could fly in China, he reiterated. He said the causes of two crashes that killed 346 people needed to be investigated with effective measures put in place to prevent another one. China in April said it had set up a task force to review design changes submitted by Boeing. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will not allow the 737 MAX to resume flying before the end of 2019, its chief, Steve Dickson, said on Wednesday. "We continue to work with the FAA, CAAC and global regulators on addressing their concerns in order to safely return the MAX to service," Boeing said in a statement on Thursday. FAA approval would allow the 737 MAX to resume flights in the United States, but individual national regulators could keep the planes grounded pending completion of their own reviews. "Due to the trade war, the jury is still out on when China would reintroduce the aircraft," said Rob Morris, global head of consultancy at Ascend by Cirium. Chinese airlines had 97 737 MAX jets in operation before the model was grounded, the most of any country, according to Cirium Fleets Analyzer. Li Xiaojin, a Chinese aviation expert, said the country's airlines and passengers were taking a hit from the grounding alongside Boeing because it had crimped aviation growth.

FAA's Oversight of Boeing 737 Max Jet Slammed by Lawmakers By Ryan Beene, Alan Levin, and Courtney Rozen FAA chief says planemaker may still face 'enforcement action' Two crashes of the Boeing jet in five months claimed 346 lives FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson speaks during a hearing on the Boeing Co. 737 Max aircraft in Washington on Dec. 11. Lawmakers peppered Federal Aviation Administration officials with questions about how the agency approved the now-grounded Boeing Co. 737 Max jet and kept it flying after the first of two deadly crashes despite doubts about its safety. An internal FAA risk assessment conducted after a Lion Air flight crashed off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018, predicted another 15 of the jets would crash over the next 45 years without a fix, according to documents released by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, appearing for the first time before the committee, had refrained from criticizing the agency's actions before his swearing in in August, saying officials acted in good faith by not grounding the plane until after a second fatal accident March 10. "The FAA failed to ask the right questions, failed to adequately question the answers they received from Boeing," Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat and chairman of the committee said as he opened the hearing. The committee's months-long investigation "has uncovered a broken safety culture within Boeing and an FAA that was unknowing, unable, or unwilling to step up, regulate and provide appropriate oversight of Boeing," DeFazio said. But under questioning by California Democrat Julia Brownley, Dickson said he would have grounded the jetliner after its first crash had he been FAA administrator at the time. "With what I know now, yes," he said. In the nearly six-hour hearing, the agency received some of the strongest criticism it has faced over the 737 Max crisis that grounded Boeing's best selling jetliner and has sullied the once-sterling reputation of U.S. aviation regulators. Dickson acknowledged that improvements were needed and revealed that the agency was considering unspecified enforcement action against Boeing. Another FAA official told lawmakers that an investigation is underway of a whistle-blower's complaints about Boeing manufacturing practices. But the agency decided a warning to pilots was sufficient to keep the plane flying. In March, an Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed after a similar failure involving its flight-control system. A total of 346 people died in the two disasters. Boeing said Wednesday that the company and the FAA decided to "reinforce existing pilot procedures" and that releasing the warning to pilots after the Lion Air crash was sufficient to allow flights to continue until changes to the 737 Max's flight control system could be made. The FAA's own analysis showed the plane had unacceptable safety risks and shouldn't have been allowed to continue flying without a broader fix, DeFazio told reporters after the hearing. "That should have rung alarm bells and it apparently didn't," he said. "We're going to be getting into that." The risk analysis performed last December, known as Transport Aircraft Risk Assessment Methodology, was done to validate the agency's decision almost a month earlier to alert pilots to the issue while allowing the plane to continue flying, the agency said in a statement. The analysis predicted there would be 15 fatal accidents killing 2,921 people over a 45-year period with a fleet of 4,800 of the aircraft. The results were based on what would happen if the agency had taken no action -- and at that point the FAA had not only alerted pilots but was working with Boeing to redesign the plane, according to an agency official briefed on the matter who wasn't authorized to speak about it. A committee staffer disputed the FAA's characterization. FAA technical experts who briefed the committee last week said that the analysis had taken the initial FAA actions into account, and still predicted additional crashes over the plane's lifetime. The staffer wasn't authorized to speak to reporters and asked not to be named. The agency also came under fire from a pair of whistle-blowers. G. Michael Collins, a former FAA certification engineer, told the committee that the agency's safety culture has become overly deferential to industry, saying it has shifted over the last 15 years "to where the wants of applicants now often take precedent over the safety of the traveling public." Edward Pierson, a Boeing production manager who retired in August 2018, criticized the FAA and other federal agencies for not doing more to examine the potential role that production issues may have played in the two 737 Max crashes, despite having provided them detailed information about conditions on Boeing's assembly line. He had also reported his concerns to Boeing management which he said weren't adequately addressed. "The U.S. regulators' investigation of these crashes has been as disappointing as Boeing's insistence that it had no systemic quality or safety issues," Pierson said. After several lawmakers cited Pierson's concerns, Earl Lawrence, the FAA's executive director of aircraft certification, said "we do have open investigations." Enforcement Action In addition, Dickson said the FAA may take enforcement action against Boeing for actions related to the 737 Max accidents and grounding. Dickson didn't provide details, saying only that he has expressed displeasure to high-ranking Boeing executives. He added that his chief concern at the moment is ensuring the safety of the plane as it's returned to service. "I reserve the right to take further action and we very well may do that," he said, responding to a question from Representative Stephen Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat. DeFazio said that committee staff recently completed a seven-hour interview with Ali Bahrami, the FAA's associate administrator for aviation safety, who said that he wasn't aware of the analysis issued after the Lion Air crash that predicted the additional 737 Max crashes without a fix. Lawmakers quizzed the FAA on its decision to not name Boeing's faulty automation system in its emergency directive, issued days after the first 737 Max crash. The system, Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS, pushed the nose of the planes down until they crashed. Pilot Manuals Lawrence said the agency didn't mention MCAS because it wasn't included in Boeing's own pilot manuals and adding it to the directive would confuse pilots. The FAA issued the emergency airworthiness directive after the Lion Air plane crashed. "In addition to failing to include MCAS in the flight manuals, training that provided actual experience in detecting, diagnosing and responding to failure conditions was not provided," said Mica Endsley, a former chief Air Force scientist called as an expert witness. DeFazio plans to introduce legislation to address the shortcomings at the FAA that have come to light since the two 737 Max crashes. He suggested during the hearing break that the legislation would increase the number of personnel assigned to scrutinize manufacturers, though he didn't provide additional details on how a bill would do that. "We don't just fine them for noncompliance, we say, by the way, we're going to put a lot more people on you," DeFazio said.

FAA analysis predicted many more Max crashes without a fix After the first crash of a Boeing 737 Max last year, federal safety officials estimated that there could be 15 more fatal crashes of the Max over the next few decades if Boeing didn't fix a critical automated flight-control system. Yet the Federal Aviation Administration did not ground the plane until a second deadly crash five months later. The FAA analysis was disclosed Wednesday during a hearing of the House Transportation Committee, which is investigating the FAA's oversight of Boeing and the Max. "Despite its own calculations, the FAA rolled the dice on the safety of the traveling public and let the Max continue to fly until Boeing could overhaul its MCAS software," said Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the committee. MCAS is the name of Boeing's flight-control system that automatically pushed the noses of the doomed planes down in response to faulty readings from a sensor. FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson declined to call the agency's decision not to immediately ground the plane a mistake. Instead, the FAA and Boeing issued notices reminding pilots how to handle a nose-down pitch of their plane. "Obviously the result is not satisfactory," Dickson said. "The decision did not achieve the result that it needed to achieve." The FAA concluded that more than 2,900 people could die in Max crashes over 45 years without the software fix. It assumed the fleet would eventually grow to 4,800 planes. Fewer than 400 were flying before they were grounded in March, after the second crash. And it estimated Boeing could fix MCAS software in about seven months. The analysis was completed several weeks after the FAA had already issued the emergency notice to pilots - the agency took no additional steps after estimating 15 future crashes. An FAA spokesman said the analysis is one of several tools the agency uses to analyze safety issues. A Boeing spokesman said the company's response to the first crash was "fully consistent with the FAA's analysis and established process." Dickson said that as Boeing seeks to return the Max to flying, his agency is controlling the process and won't delegate any of that authority to Boeing. Dickson defended the safety record of U.S. aviation while saying "what we have done in the past and what we are doing now will not be good enough in the future." A retired Boeing production manager told the lawmakers about "alarming" conditions at Boeing's 737 factory in Renton, Washington, where two Max planes that crashed were built. The manager, Edward Pierson, said the assembly line fell far behind schedule by mid-2018 because of cascading problems that began with late delivery of key parts. There weren't enough mechanics and other workers, he said. Yet Boeing went ahead with its plan to boost production from 47 to 52 planes a month. "By June 2018, I had grown gravely concerned that Boeing was prioritizing production speed over quality and safety," Pierson said in prepared remarks. "I witnessed a factory in chaos and reported serious concerns about production quality to senior Boeing leadership months before the first crash" and again before the second crash. Pierson said he told his bosses at Boeing that they should shut down the assembly line to deal with safety and quality-control issues, but no action was taken. Executives didn't mention the problems in financial reports. Pierson, who retired last year, said he wrote to Dickson and other officials. He said he has been interviewed by the Justice Department - it is conducting a criminal investigation of Boeing - but the FAA never responded. Earl Lawrence, the FAA's executive director of aircraft certification, said the agency is investigating and has interviewed Renton production workers. Boeing hopes airlines will be able to use the plane again early next year after the company completes fixes to flight-control software and computers. Dickson has insisted that the FAA has no timetable for granting that approval. DeFazio praised Dickson's recent comments but was harshly critical of the agency and Boeing. The FAA "failed to do its job. It failed to provide the regulatory oversight necessary to ensure the safety of the flying public," DeFazio said. Published reports indicate that FAA officials knew very little about MCAS, which has been implicated in the October 2018 crash of a Max off the coast of Indonesia and the March 2019 crash of another Max in Ethiopia. In both crashes, investigators say, a faulty sensor caused MCAS to push the nose of the plane down and pilots were unable to regain control. In all, 346 people died. Regulators around the world grounded the plane after the second crash. Several relatives of passengers who died in the crashes attended Wednesday's hearing. Dickson suggested that FAA will not delegate key review work to Boeing this time. "The FAA fully controls the approvals process for the flight control systems and is not delegating anything to Boeing," Dickson said in his written testimony. "The FAA will retain authority to issue airworthiness certificates and export certificates of airworthiness for all new 737 Max airplanes manufactured since the grounding." He said the plane will only return to flying after all safety issues have been addressed and pilots have received enough training to fly the plane safely. DeFazio and other lawmakers have indicated they may offer legislation to overhaul the way the FAA certifies new aircraft. Dickson said that the FAA can do better, but the safety record of U.S. aviation - no deadly crashes of a U.S. airliner since 2009 - shows that the FAA's oversight is working. "The system is not broken," he said.