FAA lets Boeing sign off on 737 MAX, 787 airworthiness certificates again
cnbc.com179 points by hmm37 14 hours ago
179 points by hmm37 14 hours ago
> The U.S. government on Friday said Boeing can once again issue airworthiness certificates for its bestselling 737 Max aircraft and 787 Dreamliners, an authority that was stripped from the manufacturer after fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 of the 737 Max.
I'm a bit confused by this. From what I've read an "airworthiness certificate" is not a certificate that the aircraft design is good and safe. That would be a type certificate.
The airworthiness certificate is issued for a particular aircraft and certifies that it conforms to the approved design for that type of aircraft, all outstanding airworthiness directives applicable to the type have been applied, no unsafe alterations or repairs have been made, all required documentation and logs are present, the inspector doesn't see any damage, leaks, or other problems that could make it unsafe, and other things like that.
The two 737 MAX crashes had nothing to do with anything that would have been found during their airworthiness inspections. They were functioning exactly as they were designed to, as covered by their type certificate.
So what was the point of suspending Boeing's authority to do those inspections?
The issue was actually the door plug scandal. It showed that Boeing's QC was compromised in their factory and they were not able to properly certify that the aircraft were being built as designed.
As an aside this a long talked-about problem with the South Carolina factory, that the place does not follow aerospace standards and practices. The door plug failure was the highest profile QC miss out of that factory.
SC wasn't really involved in this. The fuselage came from Spirit in Kansas, and final assembly happened in Renton.
Does it matter? As a customer of the plane (and traveller) I'd like QA to be top notch and I would expect it to be final inspection at assembly stage.
Noob here, would that not also have potentially been found during routine maintenance inspections?
It was such a way that you had to disassemble the entire thing to see it wasn't assembled correctly - routine maintenance is looking for wear items, not usually "they didn't put any bolts in".
>So what was the point of suspending Boeing's authority to do those inspections?
Disclaimer: I used to work in airworthiness certification as well as maintenance and design modification engineering for the C-130, but not for any of the Boeing products.
You're generally correct. In layperson's terms, the Type Certificate is like the blueprint or the spec, and the individual airworthiness certificates are a certification that each aircraft coming off the assembly line is in conformance with the approved type design.
When the MCAS debacle happened, the FAA mandated a change to the type design, and further mandated embodiment of that design change through an Airworthiness Directive. This is the part that addressed the MCAS hazard condition. When they withheld Boeing's authority to issue certificates what that really gave them was, at the airframe serial number level, the ability to ensure that the modifications had been embodied correctly.
You're right that that final certification has little to do with correcting the underlying MCAS design flaw on the 737, but there were also quality issues with the 787, and because Boeing's in-house ODA issues those certificates acting as the FAA itself, and those certifications are essentially the last hurdle before delivery of the aircraft (and thus the last hurdle before revenue coming into Boeing's coffers), the FAA withheld that authority so that Boeing employees could not be unduly pressured by management's perverse incentives. Somebody elsewhere in these comments posted the OIG report that briefly touches on this pressure.
In fewer words, it was about ensuring independence in final airworthiness release, and ensuring Boeing's ODA could not be pressured by management who subscribe to the Jack Welch school of ethics.
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Edited to add:
There is a valid argument to be made that the FAA didn't handle this situation correctly/adequately. For context, in aerospace when we identify that a hazard condition exists we classify both the severity and the likelihood of occurrence. So for example depending on the organization's risk acceptance matrix, one might have a hazard with high severity but extremely low chance of occurrence, and that might be considered acceptably safe (or not!).
The FAA now says that the back-and-forth they have been doing over the last however many months produced comparable production-quality findings regardless of which organization issued the certificates (Boeing's ODA or the FAA itself).
As best I could tell at the time this issue was a hot topic, when it withheld Boeing's issuance authority the FAA never clearly articulated:
- Which risks it was controlling,
- How much risk reduction it expected,
- What data would demonstrate effectiveness, and
- What objective conditions would permit termination of the withholding
So again, there's an argument that the FAA just sort of decided that they now have that Warm Fuzzy and everything is fine.
Doesn't directly answer your question, but the CNBC article appears to be correct. See https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-statement-boeing-airworthin...
> The FAA stopped allowing Boeing to issue airworthiness certificates for 737 MAX airplanes in 2019 during their return to service following the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, and for Boeing 787 airplanes in 2022 because of production quality issues.
“You can no longer certify aircraft of this design as safe” seems a reasonable response to a design flaw causing multiple crashes. My question would be whether the design flaws have been addressed. If not, then allowing them to keep making and certifying them does turn the whole exercise into a piece of theatre. Unfortunately, it’s a totally believable decision for some bureaucracies.
The two are unrelated, though. The airworthiness certificate is focused on whether a particular plane is built according to the design. It doesn't say anything about the design. And the planes were still being certified, just by the FAA instead of Boeing.
(Looking at a bit more research, I think this bit was revoked because during the investigation the FAA found that Boeing was skimping on these inspections too, but the details are a little unclear)
The 737 has had 14 major recertifications. The aircraft today looks/behaves nothing like the original from the 1960s.
The main motivation for recertifications comes from commercial pressure where if a aircraft is given a new number and not recertified, then the pilots have to be retrained.
Honestly, back when the 737 MAX debacle happened, a lot of consumers claimed that they would stop flying aircrafts if they ran into 737 MAXs. And I don't think it happened in enough numbers - or even enough to make news. Sales went through the roof, everything kept working.
Recertifications are very common. The issue really is is the aircraft is AS different and untested as the old MAXs, and I really can't see that happening again in the next decade or two atleast.
> Honestly, back when the 737 MAX debacle happened, a lot of consumers claimed that they would stop flying aircrafts if they ran into 737 MAXs. And I don't think it happened in enough numbers - or even enough to make news. Sales went through the roof, everything kept working.
Is this kind of consumer revolt even really possible?
If you feel strongly enough that you refuse to fly altogether, then of course you can avoid flying on a 737 MAX. But I think most people did not feel the risk was that high. They just want to select "guarantee no 737 MAX" when booking a flight, and as far as I can tell that option doesn't exist.
Even if the flight is not a 737 MAX when you book, they can and sometimes do change aircraft, and as far as I know there's no option to get your money back when they do. If you show up and see it's a 737 MAX...you either get on or you lose your money, and have to find some other way to get where you're going, right?
If you really, really want to avoid an aircraft type, you book with an airline that simply doesn't fly them.
Sure, there's a tiny chance they put a chartered jet in for your flight, but that's exceedingly rare.
> If you really, really want to avoid an aircraft type, you book with an airline that simply doesn't fly them.
How do you do that? And which companies does not have these today?
> How do you do that?
By choosing to spend your money elsewhere.
> And which companies does not have these today?
- JetBlue, Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Volaris, Breeze Airways
- easyJet, Wizz Air, Vueling, ITA Airways, IndiGo, AirAsia, Cebu Pacific, Air Arabia
- Middle East Airlines, Tunisair, flynas
All of the above have no Boeing aircraft in their fleet at all.
Emirates doesn't fly the 737, but does fly Boeing aircraft.
About half of airlines prefer Airbus planes, and it's pretty rare to have a mix of Boeing and Airbus AIUI.
In 2013 there were approximately 24,000 737 flights per day[1] - likely more today. If narrowed to just the MAX variants, it's still thousands per day.
Two, albeit high profile, crashes out of all the daily MAX volume is simply not something to worry about - let alone influence your booking choices.
[1] - https://chinaerospace.oss-cn-beijing.aliyuncs.com/18.1%20%E6...
You're applying everyday casual risk analysis to the highly-regulated environment of commercial air transport, where the MAX crashes absolutely were out of the norm and well beyond accepted levels.
Bear in mind when the crashes occurred there were fewer than 100 MAX in service.
Until you are on the plane. Sorry, but reasonably people and countries expect zero crashes and any single crash is worth worrying about because shareholder money should not trump a single human life.
Honestly they kinda screwed over people -- like me -- who tried to avoid the MAX planes for a while. I'd specifically book around the MAX planes and then they would change equipment at the last minute into a MAX. There is no meaningful "knob" an aviation consumer can turn to express an aircraft preference, and given how US airspace works, you often don't have a meaningful choice in carrier (unless you're willing to take on extra stops).
Sure there is. Just fly carriers that use an Airbus fleet. It’s honestly pretty trivial.
In the US (parent mentioned US specifically) I think that's just Frontier now that Spirit is gone. I mean technically that's doable sure but idk if I would say trivial it's really limited on routes and the experience is terrible from what I understand.
The #1 rule of marketing is that people's actions rarely line up with what they say they're going to do.
Sort by price ascending and pick the first result.
I live in Calgary. Both major airlines cost the same. There is no difference in sorting. Both airlines use the 737.
I lived in Tokyo. I used to spend more to avoid getting accosted at the US border. A lot more.
You can't call it choice when your vendors all offer the same product for the same price.
In Europe "no 737 MAX" basically means "no Ryanair". Depending on how you feel about Ryanair, avoiding the 737 MAX can be very easy.
In other places, like the US, they may not be practical to avoid.
This is what I do. No Ryanair. Everyone else runs A320 series across Europe. I usually just fly easyJet.
There's more and better reasons than MAX to avoid Ryanair.
Sadly Polish national airlines (among others) also went hard on 737MAX8 so it's not only the budget ones.
The things you do for NATO protection. You buy all franchise equipment only for the franchise giver to walk out on the deal.
> In Europe "no 737 MAX" basically means "no Ryanair". Depending on how you feel about Ryanair, avoiding the 737 MAX can be very easy.
Eh?
- https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/AEA1517
Honestly no Ryan Air is the right decision for oh so many reasons, but yes the horrible 737-Max is top on the list
Consumers are indeed very concerned... that they be able to purchase £49 tickets on RyanAir.
And then they complain about seat sizes and baggage dimensions.
People want to get what they're promised in a reasonable fashion. If the prices are hiding something like nonstandard seats or unreasonable baggage procedures, then that's a legitimate problem, not something they should shut up about because they should have known.
I have avoided flying on a 737 MAX and have even asked about it at gates when a plane was switched.
Part of the problem though is that many, many, many routes were straight up removed during and after COVID and still haven't returned. There is often no choice, particularly with certain companies like Southwest. However, I haven't flown Southwest since I learned that they were basically complicit, if not directly involved, in Boeing's 737 MAX issues.
Toyota had the largest recall in history for the unintended acceleration debacle. Yes, lots of people were saying they'd never set foot in a toyota again. Now people don't even remember it.
Just to comprehend this a bit better - it sounds like the FAA had stripped Boeing of the ability to self-recertify and actually sent inspectors for the most recent certifications. After several successful certifications and what would appear, to the inspectors, to be real process improvements, they're now re-granting Boeing the ability to self-recertify when self-recertification is allowed?
This is well outside my knowledge domain so I'm not trying to make any statements on whether this was correct, but rather to better comprehend the change.
This is accurate, except “recertify” is the wrong verb. This is about signing off on individual airplanes.
If the deterenc3 to newplanes is type certifications of pilots, how would a law change look that circumvents this hurdle?
This is absolutely frightening.
Why?
Having airworthiness certification done by an independent organization not beholden to Boeing's shareholders makes much more sense to me. Giving the authority to Boeing to do its own airworthiness certification feels like the fox guarding the hen house.
But independents would need to be embedded into the company every step of the way, it would get to be point they would look exactly like Boeing employees. But what does happen is audits where the work is checked
That's one way it could go but it doesn't have to. The NRC guy walking into a comtrol room is not anybody's friend.
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Wow you got 'em.
Oncologist: You have Stage 4 cancer
You: Wow, that's frightening
Oncologist: You've had it at least since September, were you frightened then?
Brilliant argument. No longer concerned!
What if they didn't know that and simply assumed self-certification simply would never happen again?
Or are you implying that "since no plane crashed since September, they're safe going forward"?
"Read the article". Clearly reading is not enough.
Who gave whom a golden airplane ... totally worth it, for them at least.
I only fly airbus. If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going.
I don't go that far and I'm not exactly scared to fly on a Boeing (because statistically it's still very safe, I ride motorbikes which is probably 100x more dangerous etc etc).
However I definitely prefer flying on an Airbus, put it that way
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This is not exactly the same thing, this isn't Boeing being allowed to sign off on their design -- this is only the airworthiness certificate which means "this particular airplane we just built follows the spec which was already otherwise approved".
All I read is that the US govt signs on off US export. I'd be surprised if there was not pressure on FAA to lower the bar.
Yeah, not thanks. A company being kept alive by the US government is not one I'll ever trust with my life.
They should never have allowed aircraft manufacturers to sign their own airworthiness certificates in the first place. Are there that many new aircraft types every year? What is the FAA for? Why does it not take responsibility for certification itself, instead of trusting the aircraft manufacturer’s “Trust Me Bro”?
Until the next mass crash ...
The EU should refuse to allow such planes to enter their airspace.
Totally insane. Repeating the same errors as in the past and hoping for a better outcome... Only corruption can explain that...
Let's see if the EU shows some backbone or not.
The EU is like a tiger - without teeth, fur or claws. I think the only thing that works here is total boycott of airplanes that constantly unalive people through mass crashes. (Wikipedia really gathers useful data here in a simple-to-read manner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...)
You can and should say the word “kill”.
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Exterminate. Exterminate. Apocalypse now. Apocalypse now.
Am I doing it right?
> The EU is like a tiger - without teeth, fur or claws.
EU regs forced apple to move to type-c. They appear to be moving towards either requiring replaceable batteries, or requiring a higher quality batter (larger % of original charge after 1000 cycles). Those both seem valuable to consumers, and coming from a position of regulatory strength.
Interesting analogy, maybe a house cat?
I think a better analogy is "The EU is like a lumbering elephant. You can steer it, but only if you know how. Otherwise it just keeps on lumbering"
Airbus was a bureaucrats wet dream, and by modern Biz Bro standards should never have got off the ground.
Now it rules the skies. Boeing, having drunk the financial Kool Aid is wilting
Tortoise and the hare?
It turns out that sometimes you really do want health and safety obsessed bureaucrats.
Can you explain exactly why this is bad?
There has been a history of problems with that exact airframe where people died. People dying is usually considered bad.
Now root cause of the issue that airframe had before was that Boeing was given the leeway to certify it themselves with too little oversight by the FAA. In short: the airframe of the Boeing 737 MAX is so far away from the originally certified 737 airframe it is ridiculous to consider them the same airplane. The adjustments Boeing made via softeare to deal with the physical changes (like putting the much bigger engines forward so they have enough clearance under the wings without having to certifying this as a new airframe) was the cause of the incidents. A truly independent FAA would have never even remotely accepted that.
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I would assume the poster is asking for a more detailed explanation of the implied connection between this and the plane crashes.
Well that is profoundly lazy.
Here, put it into your favorite LLM: "Is there a suspected or established relationship between Boeing's self-certification and the 737 MAX crashes?"
That will almost certainly link to the thousands of pages of Congressional, OIG, FAA testimony, investigation, and reporting.
Does GP think Boeing's self-certification authority was revoked after the accidents just for funsies? By random chance?
I did, in fact, spend a bit of time trying to look this up, because as pointed out by other comments, it was not entirely clear what relationship this revocation (which is about inspecting built aircraft vs the design) had to do with the crashes (which were primarily the result of a faulty design). I didn't find a particularly illuminating summary other than maybe the investigation also turned up some other problems.
More to the point, the original poster was implying that there would be a relationship between the reinstatement of Boeing's self-certification and future crashes. Which I think would be worth some deeper analysis beyond 'corporations bad'.
I perused that document. It says quite a bit on how the FAA needs to work on type certificates, but seems limited to that. It says nothing on airworthiness certificates. I'm assuming you know this, but the reason people say there's a hard difference on this is because they really are two different topics covering two different things.
For the uninitiated, and simplified. For a particular aircraft you are about to board to be legally allowed to fly it needs an airworthiness certificate. An airworthiness certificate says _that_ particular airplane is essentially _identical_ to a prototype (or set of identical prototypes) that the manufacture has flight tested and demonstrated is safe to the certifying authority. The formal acceptance of the prototypes safety is called a "Type" certificate.
The ability to say "we made this identical to our prototypes" is what the FAA is restoring the authority of Boeing to self certify, and is a _normal_ thing for a manufacturer to have. It's _abnormal_ for a manufacturer to not have that, as it's the certifying authority basically saying "you don't know how to physically construct airplanes".
The document referenced says the FAA essentially accepted proofs / was pressured to accept assertions from Boeing that the type was actually safe, when it was not. That's basically saying Boeing didn't know how to _design_ aircraft.
As has been noted in several of the comments, the crashes were a result of a faulty design, not aircraft failing to meet the design.
The self-certification here wasn’t part of the chain of events that led to the crashes; it appears to have been related to other issues the FAA uncovered as a side effect of their investigation.
As has been noted in the actual reports, the crashes (as is true of all crashes) were the result of a specific chain of failures across several functions and organizations.
One component of that chain of failures is the self-certification process. If the FAA had the resource and mandate to actually understand each aircraft design change, then it's very likely (not guaranteed, but very likely) that the MCAS design having a single point of failure on the AoA sensor would have been flagged as problematic by FAA.
The addition of MCAS to the 737 MAX received type approval by the FAA in response to Boeing's documentation, not in response to anything Boeing approved or issued. No aircraft manufacturer has ever been allowed to issue a type certificate.
The self-certification process (airworthiness certificates) is the manufacturer (rather than the regulator's inspectors) stating "this one specific aircraft with serial number _______ has been built according to the design covered by its type certificate". Nothing more.
In other words, an airworthiness certificate only specifies that a specific aircraft is airworthy /because/ it is built according to an airworthy design. Whether the design is safe or not has always only been up to the regulator to decide. In this case, the regulator dropped the ball and approved an unsafe design. If Boeing was not allowed to self-certify their own aircraft, the FAA would still have issued airworthiness certificates for them, including the two aircraft that would have gone on to kill hundreds of people, because they were built according to the design the FAA approved.
No, an early, low-risk version of MCAS was proposed and given type approval by FAA. Then the MCAS design was changed iteratively and continuously without prompting another type approval process. Thenceforth, Boeing's ODA self-certification process was the only statutorily required step that could have caught that the post-type approval changes actually increased the risk significantly.
You should read the OIG report. It actually discusses all of this. It is absolutely possible an FAA cert would've missed the MCAS issue as well, but as OIG points out, one variable was significant commercial pressure on Boeing's ODA to approve the (iterated-since-type-approved)-MCAS. Presumably FAA staff would be less susceptible to this type of commercial pressure.