For today’s preposterous aviation idea, think of something an aircraft salesman would never, ever say: “We’re sorry, although we would like to sell you one of our airplanes, we just don’t think you’re qualified to fly it.”
OK, maybe a sales force somewhere, somehow has actually said that to a would-be customer, but I’ll bet the thought has crossed the minds of a few people at Boeing recently. If you’ve been following our coverage of the October Lion Air crash, you will have noticed that the airline has gotten into a bit of a one-way pissing contest with Boeing because it claims Boeing was remiss in not informing customers about technical changes in the new 737 MAX series. Specifically, Boeing appears not to have documented an automatic trim and stall-protection system called Maneuvering Augmentation Characteristics System or MCAS.
A preliminary reportbased on flight data recorder traces confirmed that MCAS was active during the final minutes before JT610 plunged into the Java Sea off Jakarta on Oct. 29, killing all 189 people aboard. No one has directly said MCAS is implicated or even a factor, but the airline’s announced plans to cancel remaining orders for the MAX—$22 billion worth—puts the two companies on a legal collision course and invites news consumers to assume the worst about the accident cause. Lion Air’s owner and co-founder, Rusdi Kirana, has said publicly that Boeing has treated the airline unfairly in the wake of the crash. If that’s so, it might be because Boeing said if MCAS malfunctioned, standard runaway trim procedures would handle the anomaly. And that’s exactly what happened on the flight before the accident flight when the crew confronted the same abnormal.
Boeing has declined to comment publicly. At stake is the company’s third largest customer for the MAX, behind Southwest and Flydubai, with some 200 MAX aircraft on order, according to Bloomberg. In the cutthroat competitive world of the single-aisle airline business, the 737 is a cash cow for Boeing and Airbus is ever in the wings to take disaffected customers into its fly-by-wire arms. And there’s nothing like a crash with a subtext of something wrong with the airplane to give a competitor a sales cudgel.
Consider what we know, without even speculating about the accident cause. Lion Air has a reputation for go-go growthand an accident and safety record so dismal that in 2009, insurance underwriters sent in a consultant to overhaul the company’s safety and training culture. “Buying all the latest-generation, state-of-the-art engineering will be in vain if you don’t have the systems in place to prioritize safety,” the consultant said. In one incident, an inspector grounded an airplane, only to have the airline go over his head to government authorities, who approved the airplane for flight, despite the squawked defect.
Boeing can read accident-rate numbers as well as the rest of us, so I have to think when they sell airplanes into a safety culture known to be less than the equivalent of developed-world standards, there’s a certain betting on the come to it. An aircraft manufacturer can have only so much influence over how its customers use the airplanes. If the pilot training and maintenance standards are slipshod and government oversight doesn’t step into the breach, the combination is likely to—sooner or later—result in an accident.
And for those who think regulators have little or minimal role, you’re simply flat out wrong. The extraordinary safety record U.S. airlines have achieved is the result of manufacturers’ and airlines’ self interest, advancing technology and prodding by regulators to toe the agreed-to line, despite the expense and bother. Part of that regulation is an independent accident investigatory body—the NTSB in the U.S.—with sufficient resources to conduct accident probes free of meddling. That’s not to say no meddling is attempted, but in the U.S, the flying public can be reasonably certain an investigation is free of taint.
A fully funded and fleshed out accident investigation process is simply the expectation for an air transport system aiming for world-class performance. Here, Indonesia appears not to be ready for prime time. Last week, a National Transportation Safety Committee source saidthat it didn’t have the money to search and recover the cockpit voice recorder, which certainly contains information vital to a complete accident investigation. As wreck recovery sites go, the Java Sea is relatively shallow and recorders have been recovered in far more challenging locales. Giving up on it is like declaring the jigsaw puzzle complete with half the pieces missing.
I’ve read suggestions that Boeing will end up funding the recovery. I’m sure it could write a check out of the coffee fund. And Boeing may have more of a vested interest than any other entity since how the pilots reacted to whatever emergency they confronted is a critical part of the story if Boeing wants to imply—and let’s be harshly honest about this—that the pilots still had a flyable airplane they should have been able to recover.
Then it will have to begin the delicate business of trying to preserve those 200 MAX orders that Lion Air placed or, at the least, keep the airplane from being tarnished enough to erode further sales. When it sent out emissaries to U.S. pilot unions to explain the mysteries of MCAS last month, it got a start on the latter. Boeing clearly has fence mending to do and part of that process is to learn what really happened to JT610.
Additional info: Click here for the preliminary accident report on JT610.
I wrote a comment on this piece when it came out (apparently lost with the Avweb move to the new website?) and I was as upset then as I am now re-reading this article.
The clear assumptions when this piece was written were that:
1. Boeing had done nothing wrong in the design of the aircraft, and
2. The safety culture outside of airlines in the developed world was likely a contributing factor
We now know that even Sully would have had great difficulty recovering from this, and the 737-MAX remains grounded due to inherent, critical design flaws.
In my original comment, I cautioned Mr. Bertorelli of jumping to such conclusions without clear evidence. I hope that he will take the opportunity now to re-read this piece and learn from it with the benefit of hindsight so that he doesn’t repeat this mistake.