The Boeing Affair: The Hypocrisy of Politicians

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg’s appearance on Tuesday and Wednesday before two congressional panels confirmed many of the troubling reports that have circulated since the second crash of a 737 MAX last March.

Following unrelenting questioning by Republican and Democrat politicians, Muilenburg, who was recently stripped off his title as chairman, apologized to the families of the 346 people who were killed. It was the least he could do.

The case has already cost Boeing nearly $10 billion and the bill will continue to rise as private carriers come forward to seek compensation for the next few months. This includes Air Canada and WestJet, which together own 37 737 MAX planes.

On Tuesday, Muilenburg admitted that, prior to the second crash, he was aware that a senior Boeing pilot, Mark Forkner, had failed to disclose to the authorities the problems he had encountered while handling the automatic angle correction system during simulator tests carried out a year before the aircraft’s entry into service. Despite this, the same Forkner reportedly insisted a few months later that the Federal Aviation Administration refrain from making reference to this system in the flight manual.

Boeing was so convinced that it was a marginal safety mechanism that it only offered to install an optional warning light. Despite warnings from their own engineers, the management team assumed that in the event of a problem, pilots would be able to manually straighten their aircraft in less than 10 seconds. This was not the case.

Another disturbing revelation is that the FAA mainly relied on Boeing engineers to carry out certification tests and that its own employees knew almost nothing about the new automatic correction mechanism. This mechanism was required because the new aircrafts had larger engines than the old 737s.

Let’s not forget that Boeing decided to dress up its very popular old 737 as something new in order to save a few years and billions of dollars in the development of a new aircraft capable of competing with Airbus.

Furthermore, in order to accelerate the new aircraft’s entry into service, Boeing put pressure on politicians for almost a decade to obtain greater delegation of approval powers held by the FAA.

This approach has gone too far, a committee of regulatory authorities from around the world recently concluded. The FAA only had 45 people, including 27 engineers, to check the compliance of the 737 MAX against 1,500 Boeing employees assigned to this task, employees who themselves were under strong pressure from management, it was revealed.

There was something deeply hypocritical in the accusatory speeches by American politicians, Democrats as well as Republicans, delivered this week in Congress. These were the same politicians who, just last year, enthusiastically passed a law that gave even more responsibility to manufacturers like Boeing to increase the competitiveness of the American airline industry. Today, some say they regret it, but it is really too early to applaud them.

To date, regulatory authorities around the world, including in Canada, have relied almost entirely on the U.S. certification process to grant their own permit to fly. For our safety, let us demand that they do things differently from now on.