https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/boe...is-concerned-it-was-misled-about-737-max.html
Boeing lead pilot warned about flight-control system tied to 737 Max crashes, then told regulators to delete it from manuals
Published Fri, Oct 18 201912:23 PM EDTUpdated Fri, Oct 18 20197:39 PM EDT
Leslie Josephs@lesliejosephs
Phil LeBeau@Lebeaucarnews
Key Points
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VIDEO03:35
FAA: Substance of Boeing documents is ‘concerning’
A Boeing pilot warned about problems with the flight-control program on the 737 Max that was implicated in two fatal crashes, said he “unknowingly” lied to regulators, and told the Federal Aviation Administration not to include the system in pilot manuals before regulators deemed the plane safe for the public in 2017, according to messages released Friday.
The messages deepened the manufacturer’s crisis over the bestselling jets, which have been grounded worldwide since March in the wake of the crashes, sending the stock to an eight-week low.
The Boeing lead pilot complained in one of the messages that a flight-control system, known as MCAS, was difficult to control, according to the messages, which were obtained by NBC News.
That system and pilots’ ability to recover from its failure in flight are at the heart of investigations into the crashes. Investigators have implicated the system in both crashes — a Lion Air 737 Max that went down in Indonesia in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines plane of the same model that crashed in March.
MCAS malfunctioned on both flights, repeatedly pushing the planes’ noses down until their final, fatal dives. All 346 people on both flights were killed.
“Oh shocker alerT! MCAS is now active down to M .2. It’s running rampant in the sim on me,” Mark Forkner, Boeing’s former chief technical pilot for the 737, said in 2016 to a colleague, Patrik Gustavsson, referring to the simulator, according to the transcript. “Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious.”
His colleague replied that they would have to update the description of the system.
“So I basically lied to regulators (unknowingly),” read Forkner’s reply. Gustavsson responded: “It wasn’t a lie, no one told us that was the case.”
Forkner’s attorney, David Gerger, said in a statement, “If you read the whole chat, it is obvious that there was no ‘lie.’”
“The simulator was not reading right and had to be fixed to fly like the real plane,” he said. “Mark’s career — at Air Force, at FAA, and at Boeing — was about safety. He would never put anyone in an unsafe plane.”
‘Jedi mind-tricking regulators’
Forkner in January 2017 instructed an FAA employee to remove MCAS from pilot manuals and training, according to an email between the two that was obtained by NBC News.
“Delete MCAS, recall we decided we weren’t going to cover it in the FCOM or the CBT, since it’s way outside the normal operating envelope,” Forkner wrote.
He said in an earlier email to an FAA official that he was “jedi mind-tricking regulators into accepting training the training that I got accepted by FAA etc.”
The FAA on Friday said Boeing withheld these “concerning” messages for months from regulators.
The agency, which first certified the planes in 2017, said it is “disappointed that Boeing did not bring this document to our attention immediately upon its discovery,” adding it is “reviewing this information to determine what action is appropriate.”
Pilots at airlines, including American, complained after the crashes that they did not know about the MCAS system until after the first crash.
Boeing shares fell sharply Friday after the news broke, shedding nearly 7% and shaving about 170 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The stock ended at $344, the lowest close since Aug. 21.
CEO under fire
The messages add to pressure already piling up on Boeing and CEO Dennis Muilenburg. The company and the FAA are facing several investigations into the plane’s design and software.
The company’s board removed Muilenburg as chairman last week, saying the division of the two roles will help him focus on bringing the plane back to service. Muilenburg is set to testify at two congressional hearings for the first time since the crashes: a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Oct. 29 and a House Transportation Committee panel scheduled for Oct. 30.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, called the instant messages “shocking, but disturbingly consistent with what we’ve seen so far in our ongoing investigation of the 737 MAX, especially with regard to production pressures and a lack of candor with regulators and customers.”
He said the incident “is not about one employee; this is about a failure of a safety culture at Boeing in which undue pressure is placed on employees to meet deadlines and ensure profitability at the expense of safety. Boeing will have to answer for this and other questions at our hearing on October 30th.”
watch now
VIDEO03:18
If Boeing did mislead the FAA, CEO Dennis Muilenburg is done: Jim Lebenthal
The FAA turned over the instant messages to U.S. lawmakers and the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General, the agency said.
“Over the past several months, Boeing has been voluntarily cooperating with the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s investigation into the 737 MAX. As part of that cooperation, today we brought to the Committee’s attention a document containing statements by a former Boeing employee,” Boeing said in a statement.
Boeing has developed a fix for the software that misfired on the crashes but regulators haven’t yet signed off.
Airlines have missed out on hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue because of the grounding, which forced them to cancel flights and reduce their growth plans. Carriers repeatedly pulled the planes out of ischedules with no end in sight to the grounding. Southwest this week canceled 737 Max flights through Feb. 8, later than any U.S. carrier.
“We want to know more details and we stand with [FAA] administrator [Steve] Dickson in his demand for more information and an explanation on why this information were withheld,” said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for American Airlines pilots’ union.
Pilots at Southwest, the largest Max customer in the U.S., earlier this month sued Boeing for allegedly rushing the plane to market and said the grounding has meant its pilots have lost out on about $100 million in pay.
“The FAA’s announcement echoes the very serious concerns at the center of SWAPA’s lawsuit, and this is more evidence that Boeing misled pilots, government regulators and other aviation experts about the safety of the 737 MAX,” Southwest pilots’ union said in a statement. “It is clear that the company’s negligence and fraud put the flying public at risk.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/busine...ew-of-mcas-aggression-in-2016-and-misled-faa/
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Stunning messages from 2016 deepen Boeing’s 737 MAX crisis
Oct. 18, 2019 at 12:19 pm Updated Oct. 18, 2019 at 8:48 pm
1 of 3 | Grounded 737 MAX passenger planes are parked across East Marginal Way near the south end of Boeing Field. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)
By
Dominic Gates
and
Steve Miletich
Seattle Times staff reporters
Boeing’s MAX crisis deepened Friday with new controversy around an exchange of bantering texts between senior pilots that suggested Boeing knew as early as 2016 about the perils of a new flight-control system later implicated in two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.
The exchange of messages in 2016 between the two lead technical pilots on the Boeing 737 MAX program was released Friday after regulators blew up at the company for belatedly disclosing the matter. The messages reveal that the flight-control system, which two years later went haywire on the crashed flights, was behaving aggressively and strangely in the pilots’ simulator sessions.
In the exchange, one of the pilots states that given the behavior of the system, known as a Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), he had unknowingly lied to the FAA about its capabilities.
“It’s running rampant in the sim on me,” 737 Chief Technical Pilot Mark Forkner wrote to Patrik Gustavsson, who would succeed him as chief technical pilot. “I’m levelling off at like 4000 ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like craxy. I’m like, WHAT?” (Spelling errors in the original.)
“Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious,” Fo
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ng-was-tardy-in-turning-over-737-max-evidence
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Boeing Pilot Expressed Worries About 737 Max Safety in 2016
By
Alan Levin
,
Ryan Beene
, and
Julie Johnsson
October 19, 2019, 12:37 AM GMT+8 Updated on October 19, 2019, 4:22 AM GMT+8
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A high-ranking Boeing Co. pilot working on the 737 Max three years ago during its certification expressed misgivings about a feature since implicated in two fatal crashes, calling its handling performance “egregious,” according to 2016 instant messages.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Boeing alerted the Transportation Department late Thursday of instant messages between the pilot and another employee of the planemaker. The regulator said Boeing was aware of the communications for months.
“The FAA finds the substance of the document concerning,” the agency said in a statement. “The FAA is also disappointed that Boeing did not bring this document to our attention immediately upon its discovery.”
The messages are a stunning turn in the saga of Boeing’s best-selling jet, which has been grounded worldwide since March 13. While the planemaker has said repeatedly that it followed proper procedures to certify the jet, the communications show that senior pilots at the company were concerned about a critical aspect of its design and were worried that regulators had been misled.
When Will Boeing 737 Max Fly Again and More Questions: QuickTake
The revelations also raise questions about Boeing’s embattled Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg. They surfaced less than two weeks before Muilenburg is scheduled to appear before lawmakers in Washington to address questions on the plane. Boeing directors stripped Muilenburg of his chairman role on Oct. 11 in the wake of a damaging report from a multinational review of the plane’s certification.
Boeing tumbled 6.8% to $344 at the close, the biggest drop since February 2016.
The November 2016 instant messages, which were reviewed by Bloomberg News, were exchanges between between Mark Forkner, then Boeing’s chief technical pilot for the 737, and another 737 technical pilot, Patrik Gustavsson.
In the messages, Forkner and Gustavsson raised multiple concerns about the automated flight control system implicated in the two fatal crashes, including not being given data by the company’s test pilots and Forkner describing his alarm at simulator tests in which he encountered troubling behavior in the system.
Boeing had earlier assured the aviation regulator that the feature known as Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System was benign and didn’t need to be included in the plane’s flight manuals, according to a person familiar with the issue. Earlier in 2016, FAA had approved the company’s request, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the issue and asked not to be named.
Unknowingly Lied
Forkner told Gustavsson that MCAS was “running rampant in the sim on me,” referring to simulator tests of the aircraft. “Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious.”
Forkner expressed concern that he may have unknowingly misled the FAA. “So I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly),” he wrote.
“It wasn’t a lie, no one told us this was the case,” Gustavsson replied.
MCAS automatically pushes down the plane’s nose if it senses it’s in danger of an aerodynamic stall.
Two crashes within less than five months -- Lion Air Flight 610 on Oct. 29 off the coast of Indonesia and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10 outside Addis Ababa -- killed 346 people and led to the global grounding of the 737 Max jets. Similar malfunctions triggered MCAS to repeatedly push the planes’ noses down until pilots lost control and dove.
Related: Boeing CEO’s Fate Intertwines With 737 Max as Key Tests Loom
“I’m levelling [sic] off at like 4000 ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like craxy [sic],” Forkner said in the messages. “I’m like, WHAT?”
The communications between the pilots suggest MCAS was performing in simulator tests in ways they hadn’t expected.
“I don’t know, the test pilots have kept us out of the loop,” Gustavsson said.
Forkner replied, “they’re all so damn busy, and getting pressure from the program.”
Forkner is now a pilot at Southwest Airlines Co., the airline said in a statement.
“If you read the whole chat, it is obvious that there was no ‘lie,’” David Gerger, a lawyer for Forkner, said in an email. “The simulator was not reading right and had to be fixed to fly like the real plane. Mark’s career -- at Air Force, at FAA, and at Boeing -- was about safety. And based on everything he knew, he absolutely thought this plane was safe.”
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent a terse letter to Muilenburg on Friday demanding more information.
Earlier: Regulators Were in Dark Over Design Changes on Boeing’s 737 Max
“I understand that Boeing discovered the document in its files months ago,” Dickson said. “I expect your explanation immediately regarding the content of this document and Boeing’s delay in disclosing the document to its safety regulator.”
Boeing gave the text messages to the Justice Department in February -- the month before the second 737 Max crash -- but didn’t inform the FAA because the exchange is sensitive to a criminal investigation being conducted, said a person familiar with the matter.
Knowing it would need to disclose the document to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which is conducting an investigation of the plane’s certification, the planemaker shared the document Thursday night with the Department of Transportation’s general counsel.
‘More Evidence’
“This is more evidence that Boeing misled pilots, government regulators and other aviation experts about the safety of the 737 Max,” Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said in a statement Friday. “It is clear that the company’s negligence and fraud put the flying public at risk.”
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon, said the exchange “essentially constitutes a smoking gun” of the pressure exerted by Boeing executives to get the 737 Max into service quickly. He said Muilenburg, who is scheduled to speak before the committee on Oct. 30, should resign.
The committee’s investigation into FAA’s original certification of the 737 Max has returned hundreds of thousands of documents, including emails he called disturbing that, in addition to interviews and whistle-blower reports, point to a pattern of “massive production pressure exerted from on high on Boeing employees to get this plane out, and apparently it was ‘get it out no matter what.”’
Boeing said it has been cooperating with the committee’s investigation.
“As part of that cooperation, today we brought to the committee’s attention a document containing statements by a former Boeing employee,” company spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in an email.. “We will continue to cooperate with the Committee as it continues its investigation. And we will continue to follow the direction of the FAA and other global regulators, as we work to safely return the 737 MAX to service.”
A lawyer representing Boeing in the matter, McGuireWoods LLC’s Richard Cullen, said in a statement that: “The Boeing Company timely produced the Mark Forkner IM document to the appropriate authorities.”
Reuters previously reported on the FAA’s statement.
Aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia said, “This doesn’t look good.”
While the revelation may not slow Boeing and FAA’s attempts to get the plane back in service, it further roils the company, said Aboulafia, vice president with Fairfax, Virginia-based Teal Group.
“To what degree was the board aware of this when it recommended changes?” he said. “Because this would appear to be exactly the oversight and governance issue that they should pay attention to.”
— With assistance by Mary Schlangenstein
(Updates shares in sixth paragraph.)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...about-dangers-737-max-officials-said-n1068821
Boeing knew for 'some months' about the dangers of the 737 Max, officials said
Company employees mentioned instabilities in the craft during a 2016 instant message chat.
Boeing test pilots warned of problems years before deadly 737 Max crashes
Oct. 19, 201901:43
Oct. 19, 2019, 3:09 AM +08 / Updated Oct. 19, 2019, 4:46 AM +08
By Jay Blackman and David K. Li
Boeing Co., the maker of the grounded 737 Max jet, knew for "some months" about messages between two employees in which one of them expressed serious concerns about the troubled craft, officials said.
But the company delayed handing over the communications to federal regulators investigating the key flight-control system on its jet following two deadly crashes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The communication was an instant message chat between two employees in 2016, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
Mark Forkner, the Max's chief technical pilot, told a colleague there were problems with the jet and that, "I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)."
He went on to describe his own difficulty in handling the craft.
"I'm leveling off at like 4000 ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like crazy (sic)," Forkner wrote, using the flight term for adjusting aerodynamic forces so that the plane maintains a set altitude. "I'm like WHAT?"
The conversation came before two fatal crashes in 2018-19, that killed more than 300 people.
FAA chief Steve Dickson bluntly demanded an explanation from Boeing.
"I expect your explanation immediately regarding the content of this document and Boeing's delay in disclosing the document to its safety regulator," Dickson wrote in a letter Friday to Boeing President and CEO Dennis Muilenburg.
Late Friday afternoon, Boeing Vice President Gordon Johndroe said in a statement that Muilenburg called Dickson directly "to respond to the concerns raised in his letter."
"Mr. Muilenburg assured the Administrator that we are taking every step possible to safely return the MAX to service," Johndroe added.
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Boeing has said it's cooperating with regulators in hopes of getting the 737 Max back in the air someday.
“Over the past several months, Boeing has been voluntarily cooperating with the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee’s investigation into the 737 MAX," the company said in a statement.
"As part of that cooperation, today we brought to the Committee’s attention a document containing statements by a former Boeing employee. We will continue to cooperate with the Committee as it continues its investigation."
Reuters was the first to report on the existence of the messages.
"Boeing alerted the Department of Transportation to the existence of instant messages between two Boeing employees, characterizing certain communications with the FAA during the original certification of the 737 MAX in 2016," according to a statement by the FAA.
"Boeing explained to the Department that it had discovered this document some months ago. The Department immediately brought this document to the attention of both FAA leadership and the Department’s Inspector General. The FAA finds the substance of the document concerning. The FAA is also disappointed that Boeing did not bring this document to our attention immediately upon its discovery. The FAA is reviewing this information to determine what action is appropriate."
Two fatal crashes of 737 Max jets have called the craft’s stability into question.
Lion Air Flight 610 went down Oct. 29, 2018, after it took off from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.
Then on March 10, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed just after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. All 157 people onboard were killed.
Jay Blackman
Jay Blackman is an NBC News producer covering such areas a transportation, space, medical and consumer issues.
David K. Li
David K. Li is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.
Boeing lead pilot warned about flight-control system tied to 737 Max crashes, then told regulators to delete it from manuals
Published Fri, Oct 18 201912:23 PM EDTUpdated Fri, Oct 18 20197:39 PM EDT
Leslie Josephs@lesliejosephs
Phil LeBeau@Lebeaucarnews
- In 2016, a Boeing pilot warns a colleague about an “egregious” flight-control program on the 737 Max.
- The system is later implicated in two fatal crashes that killed 346 people.
- Emails show the pilot told regulators to delete the mention of the software from pilot manuals.
watch now
VIDEO03:35
FAA: Substance of Boeing documents is ‘concerning’
A Boeing pilot warned about problems with the flight-control program on the 737 Max that was implicated in two fatal crashes, said he “unknowingly” lied to regulators, and told the Federal Aviation Administration not to include the system in pilot manuals before regulators deemed the plane safe for the public in 2017, according to messages released Friday.
The messages deepened the manufacturer’s crisis over the bestselling jets, which have been grounded worldwide since March in the wake of the crashes, sending the stock to an eight-week low.
The Boeing lead pilot complained in one of the messages that a flight-control system, known as MCAS, was difficult to control, according to the messages, which were obtained by NBC News.
That system and pilots’ ability to recover from its failure in flight are at the heart of investigations into the crashes. Investigators have implicated the system in both crashes — a Lion Air 737 Max that went down in Indonesia in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines plane of the same model that crashed in March.
MCAS malfunctioned on both flights, repeatedly pushing the planes’ noses down until their final, fatal dives. All 346 people on both flights were killed.
“Oh shocker alerT! MCAS is now active down to M .2. It’s running rampant in the sim on me,” Mark Forkner, Boeing’s former chief technical pilot for the 737, said in 2016 to a colleague, Patrik Gustavsson, referring to the simulator, according to the transcript. “Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious.”
His colleague replied that they would have to update the description of the system.
“So I basically lied to regulators (unknowingly),” read Forkner’s reply. Gustavsson responded: “It wasn’t a lie, no one told us that was the case.”
Forkner’s attorney, David Gerger, said in a statement, “If you read the whole chat, it is obvious that there was no ‘lie.’”
“The simulator was not reading right and had to be fixed to fly like the real plane,” he said. “Mark’s career — at Air Force, at FAA, and at Boeing — was about safety. He would never put anyone in an unsafe plane.”
‘Jedi mind-tricking regulators’
Forkner in January 2017 instructed an FAA employee to remove MCAS from pilot manuals and training, according to an email between the two that was obtained by NBC News.
“Delete MCAS, recall we decided we weren’t going to cover it in the FCOM or the CBT, since it’s way outside the normal operating envelope,” Forkner wrote.
He said in an earlier email to an FAA official that he was “jedi mind-tricking regulators into accepting training the training that I got accepted by FAA etc.”
The FAA on Friday said Boeing withheld these “concerning” messages for months from regulators.
The agency, which first certified the planes in 2017, said it is “disappointed that Boeing did not bring this document to our attention immediately upon its discovery,” adding it is “reviewing this information to determine what action is appropriate.”
Pilots at airlines, including American, complained after the crashes that they did not know about the MCAS system until after the first crash.
Boeing shares fell sharply Friday after the news broke, shedding nearly 7% and shaving about 170 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The stock ended at $344, the lowest close since Aug. 21.
CEO under fire
The messages add to pressure already piling up on Boeing and CEO Dennis Muilenburg. The company and the FAA are facing several investigations into the plane’s design and software.
The company’s board removed Muilenburg as chairman last week, saying the division of the two roles will help him focus on bringing the plane back to service. Muilenburg is set to testify at two congressional hearings for the first time since the crashes: a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Oct. 29 and a House Transportation Committee panel scheduled for Oct. 30.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, called the instant messages “shocking, but disturbingly consistent with what we’ve seen so far in our ongoing investigation of the 737 MAX, especially with regard to production pressures and a lack of candor with regulators and customers.”
He said the incident “is not about one employee; this is about a failure of a safety culture at Boeing in which undue pressure is placed on employees to meet deadlines and ensure profitability at the expense of safety. Boeing will have to answer for this and other questions at our hearing on October 30th.”
watch now
VIDEO03:18
If Boeing did mislead the FAA, CEO Dennis Muilenburg is done: Jim Lebenthal
The FAA turned over the instant messages to U.S. lawmakers and the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General, the agency said.
“Over the past several months, Boeing has been voluntarily cooperating with the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s investigation into the 737 MAX. As part of that cooperation, today we brought to the Committee’s attention a document containing statements by a former Boeing employee,” Boeing said in a statement.
Boeing has developed a fix for the software that misfired on the crashes but regulators haven’t yet signed off.
Airlines have missed out on hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue because of the grounding, which forced them to cancel flights and reduce their growth plans. Carriers repeatedly pulled the planes out of ischedules with no end in sight to the grounding. Southwest this week canceled 737 Max flights through Feb. 8, later than any U.S. carrier.
“We want to know more details and we stand with [FAA] administrator [Steve] Dickson in his demand for more information and an explanation on why this information were withheld,” said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for American Airlines pilots’ union.
Pilots at Southwest, the largest Max customer in the U.S., earlier this month sued Boeing for allegedly rushing the plane to market and said the grounding has meant its pilots have lost out on about $100 million in pay.
“The FAA’s announcement echoes the very serious concerns at the center of SWAPA’s lawsuit, and this is more evidence that Boeing misled pilots, government regulators and other aviation experts about the safety of the 737 MAX,” Southwest pilots’ union said in a statement. “It is clear that the company’s negligence and fraud put the flying public at risk.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/busine...ew-of-mcas-aggression-in-2016-and-misled-faa/
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Stunning messages from 2016 deepen Boeing’s 737 MAX crisis
Oct. 18, 2019 at 12:19 pm Updated Oct. 18, 2019 at 8:48 pm
1 of 3 | Grounded 737 MAX passenger planes are parked across East Marginal Way near the south end of Boeing Field. (Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times)
By
Dominic Gates
and
Steve Miletich
Seattle Times staff reporters
Boeing’s MAX crisis deepened Friday with new controversy around an exchange of bantering texts between senior pilots that suggested Boeing knew as early as 2016 about the perils of a new flight-control system later implicated in two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.
The exchange of messages in 2016 between the two lead technical pilots on the Boeing 737 MAX program was released Friday after regulators blew up at the company for belatedly disclosing the matter. The messages reveal that the flight-control system, which two years later went haywire on the crashed flights, was behaving aggressively and strangely in the pilots’ simulator sessions.
In the exchange, one of the pilots states that given the behavior of the system, known as a Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), he had unknowingly lied to the FAA about its capabilities.
“It’s running rampant in the sim on me,” 737 Chief Technical Pilot Mark Forkner wrote to Patrik Gustavsson, who would succeed him as chief technical pilot. “I’m levelling off at like 4000 ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like craxy. I’m like, WHAT?” (Spelling errors in the original.)
“Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious,” Fo
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ng-was-tardy-in-turning-over-737-max-evidence
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Photographer: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg
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Boeing Pilot Expressed Worries About 737 Max Safety in 2016
By
Alan Levin
,
Ryan Beene
, and
Julie Johnsson
October 19, 2019, 12:37 AM GMT+8 Updated on October 19, 2019, 4:22 AM GMT+8
- Instant messages chronicle exchanges between Boeing employees
- Pilots were alarmed by performance of MCAS feature on jet
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BA
BOEING CO/THE
344.00
USD
-25.06-6.79%
LUV
SOUTHWEST AIR
53.48
USD
-0.38-0.71%
0285115Z
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES PILOTS AS
Private Company
A high-ranking Boeing Co. pilot working on the 737 Max three years ago during its certification expressed misgivings about a feature since implicated in two fatal crashes, calling its handling performance “egregious,” according to 2016 instant messages.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Boeing alerted the Transportation Department late Thursday of instant messages between the pilot and another employee of the planemaker. The regulator said Boeing was aware of the communications for months.
“The FAA finds the substance of the document concerning,” the agency said in a statement. “The FAA is also disappointed that Boeing did not bring this document to our attention immediately upon its discovery.”
The messages are a stunning turn in the saga of Boeing’s best-selling jet, which has been grounded worldwide since March 13. While the planemaker has said repeatedly that it followed proper procedures to certify the jet, the communications show that senior pilots at the company were concerned about a critical aspect of its design and were worried that regulators had been misled.
When Will Boeing 737 Max Fly Again and More Questions: QuickTake
The revelations also raise questions about Boeing’s embattled Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg. They surfaced less than two weeks before Muilenburg is scheduled to appear before lawmakers in Washington to address questions on the plane. Boeing directors stripped Muilenburg of his chairman role on Oct. 11 in the wake of a damaging report from a multinational review of the plane’s certification.
Boeing tumbled 6.8% to $344 at the close, the biggest drop since February 2016.
The November 2016 instant messages, which were reviewed by Bloomberg News, were exchanges between between Mark Forkner, then Boeing’s chief technical pilot for the 737, and another 737 technical pilot, Patrik Gustavsson.
In the messages, Forkner and Gustavsson raised multiple concerns about the automated flight control system implicated in the two fatal crashes, including not being given data by the company’s test pilots and Forkner describing his alarm at simulator tests in which he encountered troubling behavior in the system.
Boeing had earlier assured the aviation regulator that the feature known as Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System was benign and didn’t need to be included in the plane’s flight manuals, according to a person familiar with the issue. Earlier in 2016, FAA had approved the company’s request, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the issue and asked not to be named.
Unknowingly Lied
Forkner told Gustavsson that MCAS was “running rampant in the sim on me,” referring to simulator tests of the aircraft. “Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious.”
Forkner expressed concern that he may have unknowingly misled the FAA. “So I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly),” he wrote.
“It wasn’t a lie, no one told us this was the case,” Gustavsson replied.
MCAS automatically pushes down the plane’s nose if it senses it’s in danger of an aerodynamic stall.
Two crashes within less than five months -- Lion Air Flight 610 on Oct. 29 off the coast of Indonesia and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10 outside Addis Ababa -- killed 346 people and led to the global grounding of the 737 Max jets. Similar malfunctions triggered MCAS to repeatedly push the planes’ noses down until pilots lost control and dove.
Related: Boeing CEO’s Fate Intertwines With 737 Max as Key Tests Loom
“I’m levelling [sic] off at like 4000 ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like craxy [sic],” Forkner said in the messages. “I’m like, WHAT?”
The communications between the pilots suggest MCAS was performing in simulator tests in ways they hadn’t expected.
“I don’t know, the test pilots have kept us out of the loop,” Gustavsson said.
Forkner replied, “they’re all so damn busy, and getting pressure from the program.”
Forkner is now a pilot at Southwest Airlines Co., the airline said in a statement.
“If you read the whole chat, it is obvious that there was no ‘lie,’” David Gerger, a lawyer for Forkner, said in an email. “The simulator was not reading right and had to be fixed to fly like the real plane. Mark’s career -- at Air Force, at FAA, and at Boeing -- was about safety. And based on everything he knew, he absolutely thought this plane was safe.”
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson sent a terse letter to Muilenburg on Friday demanding more information.
Earlier: Regulators Were in Dark Over Design Changes on Boeing’s 737 Max
“I understand that Boeing discovered the document in its files months ago,” Dickson said. “I expect your explanation immediately regarding the content of this document and Boeing’s delay in disclosing the document to its safety regulator.”
Boeing gave the text messages to the Justice Department in February -- the month before the second 737 Max crash -- but didn’t inform the FAA because the exchange is sensitive to a criminal investigation being conducted, said a person familiar with the matter.
Knowing it would need to disclose the document to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which is conducting an investigation of the plane’s certification, the planemaker shared the document Thursday night with the Department of Transportation’s general counsel.
‘More Evidence’
“This is more evidence that Boeing misled pilots, government regulators and other aviation experts about the safety of the 737 Max,” Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said in a statement Friday. “It is clear that the company’s negligence and fraud put the flying public at risk.”
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon, said the exchange “essentially constitutes a smoking gun” of the pressure exerted by Boeing executives to get the 737 Max into service quickly. He said Muilenburg, who is scheduled to speak before the committee on Oct. 30, should resign.
The committee’s investigation into FAA’s original certification of the 737 Max has returned hundreds of thousands of documents, including emails he called disturbing that, in addition to interviews and whistle-blower reports, point to a pattern of “massive production pressure exerted from on high on Boeing employees to get this plane out, and apparently it was ‘get it out no matter what.”’
Boeing said it has been cooperating with the committee’s investigation.
“As part of that cooperation, today we brought to the committee’s attention a document containing statements by a former Boeing employee,” company spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in an email.. “We will continue to cooperate with the Committee as it continues its investigation. And we will continue to follow the direction of the FAA and other global regulators, as we work to safely return the 737 MAX to service.”
A lawyer representing Boeing in the matter, McGuireWoods LLC’s Richard Cullen, said in a statement that: “The Boeing Company timely produced the Mark Forkner IM document to the appropriate authorities.”
Reuters previously reported on the FAA’s statement.
Aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia said, “This doesn’t look good.”
While the revelation may not slow Boeing and FAA’s attempts to get the plane back in service, it further roils the company, said Aboulafia, vice president with Fairfax, Virginia-based Teal Group.
“To what degree was the board aware of this when it recommended changes?” he said. “Because this would appear to be exactly the oversight and governance issue that they should pay attention to.”
— With assistance by Mary Schlangenstein
(Updates shares in sixth paragraph.)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...about-dangers-737-max-officials-said-n1068821
Boeing knew for 'some months' about the dangers of the 737 Max, officials said
Company employees mentioned instabilities in the craft during a 2016 instant message chat.
Boeing test pilots warned of problems years before deadly 737 Max crashes
Oct. 19, 201901:43
Oct. 19, 2019, 3:09 AM +08 / Updated Oct. 19, 2019, 4:46 AM +08
By Jay Blackman and David K. Li
Boeing Co., the maker of the grounded 737 Max jet, knew for "some months" about messages between two employees in which one of them expressed serious concerns about the troubled craft, officials said.
But the company delayed handing over the communications to federal regulators investigating the key flight-control system on its jet following two deadly crashes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The communication was an instant message chat between two employees in 2016, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
Mark Forkner, the Max's chief technical pilot, told a colleague there were problems with the jet and that, "I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)."
He went on to describe his own difficulty in handling the craft.
"I'm leveling off at like 4000 ft, 230 knots and the plane is trimming itself like crazy (sic)," Forkner wrote, using the flight term for adjusting aerodynamic forces so that the plane maintains a set altitude. "I'm like WHAT?"
The conversation came before two fatal crashes in 2018-19, that killed more than 300 people.
FAA chief Steve Dickson bluntly demanded an explanation from Boeing.
"I expect your explanation immediately regarding the content of this document and Boeing's delay in disclosing the document to its safety regulator," Dickson wrote in a letter Friday to Boeing President and CEO Dennis Muilenburg.
Late Friday afternoon, Boeing Vice President Gordon Johndroe said in a statement that Muilenburg called Dickson directly "to respond to the concerns raised in his letter."
"Mr. Muilenburg assured the Administrator that we are taking every step possible to safely return the MAX to service," Johndroe added.
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Boeing has said it's cooperating with regulators in hopes of getting the 737 Max back in the air someday.
“Over the past several months, Boeing has been voluntarily cooperating with the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee’s investigation into the 737 MAX," the company said in a statement.
"As part of that cooperation, today we brought to the Committee’s attention a document containing statements by a former Boeing employee. We will continue to cooperate with the Committee as it continues its investigation."
Reuters was the first to report on the existence of the messages.
"Boeing alerted the Department of Transportation to the existence of instant messages between two Boeing employees, characterizing certain communications with the FAA during the original certification of the 737 MAX in 2016," according to a statement by the FAA.
"Boeing explained to the Department that it had discovered this document some months ago. The Department immediately brought this document to the attention of both FAA leadership and the Department’s Inspector General. The FAA finds the substance of the document concerning. The FAA is also disappointed that Boeing did not bring this document to our attention immediately upon its discovery. The FAA is reviewing this information to determine what action is appropriate."
Two fatal crashes of 737 Max jets have called the craft’s stability into question.
Lion Air Flight 610 went down Oct. 29, 2018, after it took off from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.
Then on March 10, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed just after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. All 157 people onboard were killed.
Jay Blackman
Jay Blackman is an NBC News producer covering such areas a transportation, space, medical and consumer issues.
David K. Li is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.
