Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft was doomed by the manufacturer’s “culture of concealment” that prioritized cost-cutting over safety, while the Federal Aviation Administration’s poor judgment sealed its fate, the US House has concluded.
A software glitch that should have been discovered and repaired instead shipped by default with all new 737 MAX planes, resulting in a pair of horrific crashes that killed a total of 346 people and forced the grounding of 737 MAX planes worldwide. The error had been concealed by Boeing executives and ignored by FAA regulators, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee found in its preliminary report delivered on Friday.
The scathing results of the committee’s investigation came just days before the anniversary of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302’s disastrous demise shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa. Less than six months before that, Lion Air flight 610 had also crashed immediately after takeoff from Jakarta.
Harsh preliminary report from Congress faults Boeing, FAA over 737 MAX crashes: "Efforts to obfuscate information," an automated system that "violated Boeing’s own internal design guidelines," and more https://t.co/YS8dkOw1QS via @seattletimes
— Rami Grunbaum (@rgrunbaum) March 6, 2020
Boeing “failed in its duty to identify key safety problems and to ensure they were adequately addressed during the certification process,” the committee found, excoriating the company’s “culture of concealment” that hid critical issues from not only the FAA but also its customers and the pilots flying its planes. The report slams Boeing for putting cost and schedule ahead of the lives of passengers and highlights the preventable nature of both crashes.
UPDATED
U.S. House preliminary report faults Boeing, FAA over 737 MAX crashes https://t.co/NAtJU3qBxU. pic.twitter.com/maBGzfIXNK— Dominic Gates (@dominicgates) March 6, 2020
DETAILS TO FOLLOW
Source: RT