The Federal Aviation Administration says it will increase its oversight of Boeing and its suppliers, and will re-examine the longstanding practice of allowing company employees to perform some safety analysis of its planes.
Regulators at the FAA say they will begin auditing the production of Boeing’s 737 Max 9 planes after a panel blew off an Alaska Airline flight in midair last week. The agency also said it would assess the safety risks of having delegated some of its oversight authority to Boeing.
“It is time to re-examine the delegation of authority and assess any associated safety risks,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement Friday. “The grounding of the 737-9 and the multiple production-related issues identified in recent years require us to look at every option to reduce risk.”
No one was killed during the Alaska Airlines incident, but investigators say it could have been much worse if the plane, which was at 16,000 feet when the door plug blew out, had violently depressurized at a higher altitude.
The heightened scrutiny of Boeing comes as some lawmakers and safety advocates have raised questions about the company’s quality control — and about the FAA’s ability to oversee its design and manufacturing operations.
Their reputation is in shambles. I’ll seek airbus for my family for now.
The previous huge issue with the Max, where planes were noise diving, was a result of Boeing being unable to compete with Airbus. They altered their design to hold more people, but couldn’t get it to fly straight, so they included an automated system that “auto corrected” the issue. How does a design that has to have a system that autocorrects constantly get made to begin with?
It is a whole lot more complicated than what you said but the gist of the matter is Boeing’s greediness and MBAs getting priority over Engineers.
Is that even an option for a US domestic flight?
Fwiw Kayak has built this search feature in specifically to filter out the 737 Max. It’s quite difficult to avoid Boeing, but other models are usually available, esp from American Airlines.
That’s good to know! Definitely don’t want to fly on a max for sure.