Second- Hand Safety

Investigators probe the FAA and Boeing after two deadly crashes

- W.J. Hennigan

LAST MAY, CONGRESS OBTAINED A WORRYING internal memo written by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The IG’s investigators had been probing the safety records of two airlines, but as the officials dug in, they found a broader issue that affected the manufacture and daily operations of most of America’s airplanes.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which since 1958 has ensured the safety of the U.S. aviation industry, had in recent years shifted its “oversight strategy,” the IG reported. Instead of “emphasizing enforcement actions,” the IG wrote, the FAA was taking an ever more hands off approach, working with private industry “to address the root causes for noncompliance of safety regulations.”

In the wake of the two Boeing 737 Max 8 crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people in less than five months, last May’s IG memo reads like the latest in a series of missed red flags. Thanks to the FAA’s “oversight strategy,” some industry players are doing virtually all of their own safety checks: one manufacturer “approved about 90% of the design decisions for all of its own aircraft,” according to a recent Department of Transportation audit. And in the fall of 2017—as Boeing scrambled to catch up with its prime competitor, Airbus, which had just introduced a more efficient model for the short-haul market that the 737 served—the aerospace giant reportedly took several liberties with its self-certification.

Those liberties, according to a Seattle Times investigation published March 17, included understating the extent to which a new software program could control flight, downplaying the danger that a failure of the program might pose and minimizing pilot training on the new software.