House leaders demand FAA answer why it overruled its own engineers' safety concerns about Boeing 737
Ian Duncan
Two leading House Democrats wrote to the FAA on Thursday demanding to know why the agency appeared to overrule its own engineers concerns about safety issues related to the Boeing 737 Max and the 787 Dreamliner, ultimately siding with the manufacturer rather than its own staff.
House Transportation Committee Chairman Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), who chairs the committees aviation panel, asked FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson to provide answers about how the agency weighs the validity of safety issues raised by its own experts compared to the objections raised by the aircraft manufacturers the FAA is supposed to oversee.
The congressmen wrote: The two cases
suggest that the opinions and expert advice of the FAAs safety and technical experts are being circumvented or sidelined while the interests of Boeing are being elevated by FAA senior management.
he committee has been investigating the development of the Max and its approval by the FAA after the aircraft was involved in a pair of crashes that killed 346 people. The committee learned of the two additional safety issues as part of its investigation, the letter said. They are unrelated to an automated software system that has been implicated in both crashes. Investigations into the crashes have faulted both assumptions Boeing made in designing the automated feature and the FAAs oversight and safety approval process.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/house-leaders-demand-faa-answer-why-it-overruled-its-own-engineers-safety-concerns-about-boeing-737-max/ar-BBWram0