737-Max report: US investigators highly critical of Boeing and FAA

Report findings into the fatal crashes of two Boeing 737 Max aircraft have been highly critical of Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Manufacturer Boeing ran a ‘culture of concealment’, while its relationship with the FAA was overly close. The FAA itself ran a regulatory system that was ‘fundamentally flawed’, the 250-page report concludes.

Boeing said it had ‘learned many hard lessons’ from the two accidents. The first involved Indonesian carrier Lion Air in October 2018, in which all 189 onboard died and the second involved an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft in March 2019, when all 157 passengers and crew were killed. The aircraft has been grounded since the second crash.

The 18-month investigation found Boeing ‘failed in its design and development of the Max, and the FAA failed in its oversight of Boeing and its certification of the aircraft’.

The BBC says the report found a series of failures in the plane’s design, combined with ‘regulatory capture’, an overly close relationship between Boeing and the FAA, which compromised the process of gaining safety certification.

"[The crashes] were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA," the report said.

Boeing’s cost-cutting, culture of concealment and ‘troubling mismanagement misjudgements’ all contributed to the disasters, while the FAA was also criticised for ‘inherent conflicts of interest’ and for ‘overruling’ its own technical and safety experts ‘at the behest of Boeing’.

Investigators said Boeing had failed to share information with pilots about the safety system, MCAS, designed to automatically counter a tendency in the 737 Max to pitch upwards. MCAS has been blamed for both crashes.

MCAS was not in crew manuals and Boeing sought to convince regulators not to require simulator training for Max pilots, which would incur extra costs.

Boeing has admitted ‘mistakes were made’ and has made ‘fundamental changes’ following the accidents. It has revised and ‘thoroughly scrutinised’ the design of the aircraft and now wants to focus on getting it back in the air.

The FAA has said it will implement improvements identified in the report.

"Once the FAA and other regulators have determined the Max can safely return to service, it will be one of the most thoroughly scrutinised aircraft in history, and we have full confidence in its safety," Boeing said.