Boeing has reportedly succeeded in lobbying against safety measures for Boeing 737 MAX -7 and -10 aircraft, with Congress sticking the airframe manufacturer’s language into the must-pass year-end budget bill.
Any plane that’s certified starting in 2023 requires new cockpit alerts as a result of legislative reaction to problems with the Boeing 737 MAX. But Boeing is about to get an exemption from this for the new 737 MAX variants.
The Chicago-based company has been intensely lobbying for months to convince lawmakers to waive the Dec. 27 deadline that affects its MAX 7 and MAX 10 airplanes that was imposed by Congress in 2020 after two fatal 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
Congressional leaders have agreed to attach the extension to a bill to fund U.S. government operations and to require new safety enhancements for existing MAX aircraft proposed by U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, the sources said. That massive spending bill still must be passed in the coming days.
Boeing doesn’t want to implement these new safety requirements for the new 737 MAX 7 and MAX 10 variants of the aircraft. They didn’t complete certification requirements in time to avoid them and the FAA wasn’t moving quickly on its end either. So they turned to Congress to pass an exemption.
And it looks like their lobbying has paid off at the last minute.
- The Boeing 737 MAX is safe as-is. Changes aren’t needed for it to ‘be’ safe. It was probably a safe aircraft for U.S. airlines even before the grounding, given pilot training, maintenance record-keeping and use of proper replacement parts, and angle of attack disagree indicators (which frankly shouldn’t have been an option carriers might opt out of). Now there have been safety upgrades and training and it’s the most extensively scrutinized aircraft in history and it’s been operating well since it returned during the pandemic.
- Having different cockpit elements for the 737 MAX -7 and -10 compared to the -8 and -9 could be worse for safety? That’s an argument proponents are making, but retrofitting the -8s and -9s seem like it would make sense here and fleet commonality is what got us into this mess in the first place. Boeing had committed to no separate training for the MAX compared to previous 737 NG aircraft, and so they instituted the MCAS system to compensate for differences in how the MAX behaved.
- It’s a bad look for Boeing to lobby against safety measures for the MAX after high profile crashes and long-term grounding of the aircraft.
- It’s a bad look for Congress to do Boeing’s bidding. Congress passed a requirement for safety changes, but is backing off in response to pressure from Boeing, led by their home state Senator Maria Cantwell who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee. That’s hardly ‘deliberative’ not least of which because the switch is being stuck in at the last moment as part of unrelated legislation.
- The new rules were never intended to apply to the MAX -7 and -10. When passed they didn’t go into effect right away. It was assumed that the two new MAX variants would be approved before the new rules started. But Boeing has been more fraught than anyone realized, and so the grace period they were given has run out.
United is a big customer for the as-yet unreleased aircraft and so is Alaska Airlines. United is expected to fly these planes on premium cross country routes. Boeing even scored a big order from Delta, a huge win from an airline that hasn’t bought new planes from Boeing in years. But applying new safety requirements to the planes would impose both costs and delays.
Boeing lobbying against safety measures, more about the money than people.
It would be nice to see an aircraft manufacture put safety above all else.
Boeing has lost touch with what is really important, in air travel nothing trumps safety.
More reason to NOT fly this aircraft.
Well, the old joke was that when Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged, it got Boeing’s engineers and McDonnell Douglas’ management culture*. Looks like that was the case.
*Remember the DC-10?
Is the plane to safe? Yes. Would it be safer with a properly implemented alerting system? Of course, as in an emergency, seconds matter, and bringing the most important problem to address first to attention helps. That said, emergencies are rare, and why the plane is safe without it. A poorly implemented alerting system can be worse than what we have today, and one implemented under the crush of orders that can’t be delivered before implementation of the improvements is more likely to be poor than good.
I don’t work in the air industry, but worked in telecom equipment design for many years. While building airplane have different challenges than building telecom equipment, they have many similarities. Prioritizing what problem to fix and bringing it to the attention of the appropriate party, or human factors, leads to about 25% of problems.
Automation has its limits, and that’s why we have pilots. The airplane may know what’s going on with the airplane itself, but it doesn’t know what’s going on outside the plane, or in the back, or in the cargo hold. The plane can make it’s best recommendation, which eases the burden on a pilot, but the pilot has to integrate the plane’s recommendation with the knowledge of what’s going on outside.
There is no reason why the same exemption that was given the MAX 8 and MAX 10 should not be also given to the MAX 7 and MAX 10. Boeing should have rebuilt the MAX long before this but they have no alternative and there likely is no other derivatives they can make of the 737.
LUV has been waiting for years to get the MAX 7 and will benefit right off the bat – as long as Boeing gets the paperwork in order. The FAA says that the reason for the delays in certifying the MAX 7 and 10 is because Boeing hasn’t done the same tests and sent in the right paperwork for those two models that it somehow was able to do for the MAX 8 and 9.
In this case, lobbying = bribing.
“Lobbying” in this country is what most other countries call “bribery.”
Personally I’m okay with this, always figured it’d make a bill, USA!
Situational Ethics. I like to be upfront about my hypocrisies
I like to fly 🙂
Very unfortunate. Sad.
next thing you know, the new definition of safe vs unsafe is whether or not planes can fly with automation and a single pilot, like the proposed A350 that Airbus proposed with Cathay last year.
@ GreggB
Happy to be enlightened as is was a long time ago. I thought the AA DC10 crash at ORD was an engine maintenance issue. They were doing something that deviated from the correct procedure. The UA crash was a tail engine blade that severed the hydraulics. I don’t remember anything that was inherently wrong with the plane. I put a hell of a lot of miles in on that.
I’m so glad that we can trust that Congress knows how to judge air safety and air worthiness… Why do we need the FAA at all?
Sheesh politicians, get a clue and leave stuff like this to those who have a better idea of what they’re doing. Wasn’t that the point of the new alarms in the first place, to keep more MAX crashes from happening???
Airfarer,
Having the hydraulics run through the leading edges of the wings isn’t good engineering. The DC-10 had terrible trouble with the aft cargo door. It was hard to latch it closed properly and the external door indicator sometimes didn’t show the door wasn’t locked. That caused a Turkish DC-10 to crash in France when an improperly closed aft cargo door blew off in flight. The cabin floor above collapsed and severed critical flight control runs. I’m pretty sure there was at least one other incident of memory serves.
I’m with Boeing: Safety is for chumps!
Makes sense from a consistency perspective at this juncture, but going forward, Boeing really needs to develop a new single-aisle aircraft.
In other news, Gary was quoted in the WSJ today!
(the article was about last-minute mileage runs for status qualification)
In this case, the date is arbitrary. The plane is either safe or it isn’t safe. Instead of getting an exemption, Boeing could just upgrade the other Max aircraft. But then that would cost money, and we can see that Boeing cares more about money than safety. Thats becoming more of a thing in corporate America, and Congress is taking corporate bribes to go along with it.