By Andrew Tangel, Andy Pasztor and Robert Wall
Federal prosecutors and Department of Transportation officials
are scrutinizing the development of Boeing Co.'s 737 MAX jetliners,
according to people familiar with the matter, unusual inquiries
that come amid probes of regulators' safety approvals of the new
plane.
A grand jury in Washington, D.C., issued a broad subpoena dated
March 11 to at least one person involved in the 737 MAX's
development, seeking related documents, including correspondence,
emails and other messages, one of these people said. The subpoena,
with a prosecutor from the Justice Department's criminal division
listed as a contact, sought documents to be handed over later this
month.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the Justice Department's
probe is related to scrutiny of the Federal Aviation Administration
by the DOT inspector general's office, reported earlier Sunday by
The Wall Street Journal and that focuses on a safety system that
has been implicated in the Oct. 29 Lion Air crash that killed 189
people, according to a government official briefed on its status.
Aviation authorities are looking into whether the anti-stall system
may have played a role in last week's Ethiopian Airlines crash,
which killed all 157 people on board.
The subpoena was sent a day after the Ethiopian Airlines crash a
week ago.
Representatives of the DOT and Justice Department couldn't
immediately be reached late Sunday. The inspector general's inquiry
focuses on ensuring relevant documents and computer files are
retained, according to the government official familiar with the
matter.
A Boeing spokesman declined to comment, saying the Chicago-based
company wouldn't respond to questions concerning legal matters or
governmental inquiries.
The Justice Department probe involves a prosecutor in the fraud
section of the department's criminal division, a unit that has
brought cases against well-known manufacturers over safety issues,
including Takata Corp.
In the U.S., it is highly unusual for federal prosecutors to
investigate details of regulatory approval of commercial aircraft
designs, or to use a criminal probe to delve into dealings between
the FAA and the largest aircraft manufacturer the agency oversees.
Probes of airliner programs or alleged lapses in federal safety
oversight typically are handled as civil cases, often by the DOT
inspector general. The inspector general, however, does have
authority to make criminal referrals to federal prosecutors and has
its own special agents.
Repeatedly over the years, U.S. aviation companies and airline
officials have been sharply critical of foreign governments,
including France, South Korea and others, for conducting criminal
probes of some plane makers, their executives and in some cases,
even individual pilots, after high-profile or fatal crashes. The
FAA's current enforcement policy stresses enhanced cooperation with
domestic airlines and manufacturers -- featuring voluntary sharing
of important safety data -- instead of seeking fines of imposing
other punishment.
The U.S. government scrutiny comes as Ethiopia's transport
minister, Dagmawit Moges, said there were "clear similarities"
between the two crashes. U.S. officials cautioned that it was too
early to draw conclusions because data from the black boxes of the
Ethiopian Airlines plane still need to be analyzed.
The two crashes have sparked the biggest crisis Boeing has faced
in about two decades, threatening sales of a plane model that has
been the aircraft giant's most stable revenue source and
potentially making it more time consuming and difficult to get
future aircraft designs certified as safe to fly.
The Transportation Department's inquiry was launched in the wake
of the Lion Air accident and is being conducted by its inspector
general, which has warned two FAA offices to safeguard computer
files, according to people familiar with the matter. The internal
watchdog is seeking to determine whether the agency used
appropriate design standards and engineering analyses in certifying
the anti-stall system, known as MCAS.
The FAA said Sunday that the 737 MAX, which entered service in
2017, was approved to carry passengers as part of the agency's
"standard certification process," including design analyses; ground
and flight tests; maintenance requirements; and cooperation with
other civil aviation authorities. Agency officials in the past have
declined to comment on various decisions regarding specific
systems. Sunday's statement said the agency's "certification
processes are well established and have consistently produced safe
aircraft."
Earlier, a Boeing spokesman said: "The 737 MAX was certified in
accordance with the identical FAA requirements and processes that
have governed certification of all previous new airplanes and
derivatives. The FAA considered the final configuration and
operating parameters of MCAS during MAX certification, and
concluded that it met all certification and regulatory
requirements."
Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement
Sunday the company continues to support the Ethiopian
investigation, "and is working with the authorities to evaluate new
information as it becomes available."
Mr. Muilenburg added: "As part of our standard practice
following any accident, we examine our aircraft design and
operation, and when appropriate, institute product updates to
further improve safety."
A Department of Transportation spokesman declined to comment
about the investigation by the inspector general. Representatives
of the office couldn't be reached on Sunday.
Governments world-wide have grounded the MAX, an updated version
of the decades-old 737, while investigators and engineers seek
clues.
The Department of Transportation inquiry, which hasn't been
previously reported, focuses on a Seattle-area FAA office that
certifies the safety of brand new aircraft models and subsequent
versions, as well as a separate office in the same region in charge
of mandating training requirements and signing off on fleetwide
training programs, people familiar with the matter said.
Files and documents covered by the directive also pertain to the
FAA's decision that extra flight-simulator training on the
automated system wouldn't be required for pilots transitioning from
older models, according to people familiar with the matter.
Officials in those offices have been told not to delete any
emails, reports or internal messages pertaining to those topics,
people familiar with the matter said, adding that the probe also is
scrutinizing communication between the FAA and Boeing.
The Department of Transportation inquiry is casting a wide net
for documents about potential agency lapses just as House and
Senate committees prepare for public hearings in the coming weeks
that are expected to grill the FAA's senior leadership on the same
topics.
The DOT inquiry is likely to raise more questions about how
Boeing designed the airliner, how pilots are trained to fly it and
the decisions the FAA took approving the model. The result could be
changes to how the FAA certifies aircraft models, particularly
giving more scrutiny to design changes from earlier models.
The FAA is moving to require more extensive training on the
anti-stall system than Boeing had been championing, according to
people familiar with the deliberations. The more-robust
instruction, consisting of pilots engaging in self-guided
instruction on a laptop computer, would include more details and
require more time to complete than reading a handout, according to
people familiar with the matter. Boeing has been advocating
comparatively limited training, the people said, consisting of new,
written materials aviators would receive explaining operation of
the automated stall-prevention feature -- and how to respond if it
malfunctions.
The investigation is the latest problem for a plane that was
born in a different kind of corporate emergency, according to
industry officials and engineers close to the company: an urgent
need in 2011 to create a relatively small, fuel-efficient jetliner
that could compete with a model from rival Airbus SE that had
swiftly gained traction among customers. A person familiar with
Boeing's development of the plane said the company didn't rush the
project, which had been on the drawing board for some time
then.
To meet the marketing and financial imperatives of speedy FAA
certification, Boeing needed to build a plane that would handle
basically the same as earlier versions of its 737. From the outset,
that was a regulatory requirement in order to obtain certification
as a so-called derivative model, which would translate into a
significantly faster approval process and traditionally less FAA
scrutiny of certain systems.
The automated anti-stall system, called the maneuvering
characteristics augmentation system, initially was intended to
assist cockpit crews in the unlikely event that high-altitude,
high-speed maneuvers suddenly pushed up the nose more than aviators
anticipated. The goal was to make cockpit controls behave the same
as they did in previous models, even though behind the scenes the
automated system was doing much of the work.
But as the engineering effort and flight tests progressed,
according to industry and FAA officials familiar with the process,
the Boeing team saw the same feature as a potentially important
safety net for a different hazard highlighted in previous crashes:
lower-altitude stalls in which startled pilots mistakenly pulled
back on the controls and sometimes crashed aircraft. FAA officials
also recognized the potential benefits and approved the system as
part of the overall MAX approval.
Outside experts now contend both Boeing and the FAA
underestimated the accompanying risks -- and installed a system
that wasn't highlighted in manuals or pilot training.
The FAA's green light, according to safety experts and former
agency officials, came in part because earlier versions of the 737
had proved so safe.
During some of the discussions with the FAA, according to people
familiar with the matter, Boeing's team persuaded the agency that
the system shouldn't be considered so essential that its failure
could result in a catastrophic accident. As a result, it would be
acceptable for the system to rely on a single sensor. In the Lion
Air crash, investigators believe, faulty data sent by a single
sensor led the MCAS system to erroneously push the plane's nose
down steeply, triggering a fatal plunge into the ocean,
investigators believe.
The MAX's grounding threatens Boeing's ability to generate cash
with plane deliveries halted. Boeing, which has been minting 737s
at an unprecedented clip of 52 planes a month, plans to reach 57
planes monthly this year.
The 737 has been a cash cow for Boeing since shortly after it
entered service in 1967. Last year, Boeing delivered to Southwest
Airlines Co. the 10,000th 737 to roll off its production line in
Seattle. It was an industry record for any airliner. The company
has a backlog of more than 4,600 of the planes airlines have
ordered and yet to receive.
Boeing was toying with a new plane to replace the 737, launched
in 1967, and had engineers working on the new plane concept. While
many airlines liked the idea, existing 737 customers didn't want to
retrain their pilots at huge cost and so lobbied for an updated,
more-efficient 737 they could also get faster and more cheaply.
Then in 2011 Boeing learned that American Airlines, one of its
best customers, had struck a tentative deal with Airbus for
potentially hundreds of A320neo planes to renew its short-haul
fleet. American invited Boeing to make a counter-offer. Boeing
realized it needed to act fast, and offered what would become the
MAX.
A senior Boeing executive said late Sunday the MAX was the
company's clear choice from options including a new airplane or a
re-engine of the 737 NG. "The decision had to offer the best value
to customers, including operating economics as well as timing,
which was clearly a strong factor," this executive said.
American eventually bought 260 Airbus planes and agreed to take
200 upgraded 737s from Boeing.
To win customers, and avoid more defections to Airbus, Boeing
also made commitments that there would be minimal requirements for
new pilot training, which can be costly to airlines, especially if
expensive flight-simulator sessions are needed, according to people
familiar with the matter. So Boeing tried to minimize differences
from its existing fleet. Pilots were never specifically trained,
for instance, on the MCAS system. There remains disagreement among
U.S. pilots about whether such additional training was necessary
since an existing procedure would disable the system.
Boeing has said it developed the MAX's training and manuals as
part of its normal process and its aim was to provide information
pilots needed to safely operate the aircraft. The FAA approved the
manuals and training.
Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing flight deck design engineer who
worked on the MAX but wasn't directly involved with the MCAS
system, said managers applied significant pressure to keep costs
low and timetables quick.
"The pressure was incredible to be fast" to keep pace with
Airbus, Mr. Ludtke said.
A former senior Boeing official recalled a "healthy urgency that
comes from competition" in producing the MAX, but no "undue
pressure on the design or the team."
The senior Boeing executive added: "Safety is our highest
priority as we design, build and support our airplanes."
A Boeing spokesman didn't immediately respond Sunday to a
request for comment about the former Boeing engineer and official's
recollections.
Boeing started building the first MAX in June 2015.
--Aruna Viswanatha, Ted Mann, Gabriele Steinhauser and Daniel
Michaels contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Tangel at Andrew.Tangel@wsj.com, Andy Pasztor at
andy.pasztor@wsj.com and Robert Wall at robert.wall@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 17, 2019 23:29 ET (03:29 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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