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| People hold up pictures of the victims of Boeing 737 MAX accidents as Federal Aviation Administration Administrator(FAA) Stephen Dickson(R) testifies before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Capitol Hill (AFP Photo/JIM WATSON) |
New York (AFP) - The top US air transport regulator on Wednesday doused Boeing's hopes that its 737 MAX will return to the skies this year while lawmakers probed why the agency did not ground the plane after the first of two crashes.
In an
interview just ahead of a congressional hearing on the crashes, Federal
Aviation Administration chief Steve Dickson told CNBC the aircraft will not be
cleared to fly before 2020.
The process
for approving the MAX's return to the skies still has 10 or 11 milestones left
to complete, including a certification flight and a public comment period on
pilot training requirements, he said.
"If
you just do the math, it's going to extend into 2020," he said.
The MAX has
been grounded since March following the second of two crashes that killed a
total of 346 people.
Boeing has
been aiming to win regulatory approval this month, with flights projected to
resume in January.
But Dickson
said, "I've made it very clear Boeing's plan is not the FAA's plan."
"We're
going to keep our heads down and support the team in getting this report done
right."
A
captured agency?
Many of the
questions at the subsequent hearing in the House Transportation Committee
focused on why the FAA did not move more aggressively after the first crash.
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FAA
administrator Stephen Dickson, shown here at a swearing-in in August, is
expected to face tough questioning at a congressional hearing Wednesday
(AFP
Photo/WIN MCNAMEE)
|
Boeing and
the FAA have been under intense scrutiny following the crashes for their
response to issues with the aircraft, including the flight-handling system
involved in both accidents, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation
System, or MCAS.
Rather than
grounding the plane after the October 2018 Lion Air crash, the FAA determined
that it would require Boeing to revise the MCAS flight handling system in a
process overseen by the FAA.
The agency
also issued guidelines to flight crews worldwide on how the respond to a
problem with MCAS, an automated system that pilots were unable to control
during the Lion Air crash.
At
Wednesday's hearing, Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat leading a
congressional probe, cited an internal FAA risk analysis that, without fixes to
MCAS, the MAX could suffer as many as 15 such catastrophic accidents over its
decades of expected use.
That is a
much higher rate than other planes and aviation experts consider it
unacceptable.
Dickson,
who did not join the agency until this summer following the two crashes, said
he did not know who saw the internal analysis but that the agency's decisions
after the Lion Air crash were "data driven."
"We
really didn't know what the causes were" of the Lion Air crash, Dickson
said, adding that issues with aircraft maintenance and pilot performance were
also factors besides the MCAS.
"Obviously
the result is not satisfactory," Dickson said when pressed if the agency
had made a mistake.
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After
crashes that killed 346 people, Boeing has been aiming to get its 737 MAX
certified to return to the skies this month, but the FAA says that cannot
happen
until 2020 (AFP Photo/JUSTIN SULLIVAN)
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"The
decision did not achieve the result it was intended to achieve."
DeFazio
said the FAA's response was "way less than not satisfactory... it was catastrophic."
DeFazio
said it was not clear how widely the internal FAA risk analysis had been
distributed in the agency and whether officials on a key air worthiness panel
saw the document.
"We
may have a captive regulatory problem in the field offices," DeFazio said,
referring to FAA officials in Seattle who on key decisions deferred to Boeing
during the MAX certification.
A Boeing
spokesman said the company agreed with the FAA's response to the Lion Air
crash.
"The
actions that Boeing and the FAA took, including the issuance of the Operations
Manual Bulletin and Airworthiness Directive and the timeline for implementing
the MCAS enhancements, were fully consistent with the FAA's analysis and
established process," the Boeing spokesman said.
Dickson
said he was determined to improve the agency's operations to prevent future
crashes.
He said the
accidents showed problems with "fragmented and inadequate"
communications at the agency that inhibited the agency's ability to
comprehensively assess safety during certification.
The House
Transportation Committee also will hear from Edward Pierson, a former senior
manager at Boeing who told company brass he feared production problems put
plane safety at risk.
Michael
Collins, a former FAA safety engineer who has criticized the agency's move to
delegate some decisions to Boeing, will also testify.
Shares of
Boeing were down 0.6 percent in early afternoon trading at $345.75.
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