Certification
1
panel, an international
team of safety experts headed by the
former head of the US National Transportation
Safety Board (NTSB), found that the FAA had
“inadequate awareness of the MCAS function” and
“limited involvement”, which resulted in “an inability of
the FAA to provide an independent assessment of the
adequacy of the Boeing proposed certification activities
associated with MCAS.”
If the JATR’s assertions are true, how did it get to this
point, where the overseeing agency was incapable of
assessing key components on the aircraft it was meant to
certify?
According to aviation consultant Dr Michael
Dreikorn “a perfect storm” of circumstances are
responsible, not least of which is a decline in standards
at the agency.
“The FAA allowed its competencies at the
management and technical levels to become substandard,”
says Dreikorn, a former FAA official and
current principal partner at ASD Experts, an aviation
consulting firm based in Florida. “They don’t employ the
most experienced individuals in the industry.”
As a result, he says the agency is unable “to push back
intelligently on issues.”
One such issue may have been Boeing’s preference to
keep out mentions of the MCAS system from the 737 Max
pilot manuals, a preference that the FAA green-lighted in a
move that the agency’s then-acting administrator admitted
was misguided in a hearing in the US Congress last May.
Other industry experts
support Dreikorn’s claim of a decline in
standards. Whistleblower testimony published in a
presidential report in September 2019 by the US Office of
Special Counsel alleges that some FAA safety inspectors
were not sufficiently qualified to “certify pilots or to
assess pilot training” for aircraft including the 737 Max.
SYSTEM CHANGE
Another aspect of the certification process singled out
for blame in the fallout from the Max crisis is
Organizational Designation Authorisation (ODA), an
FAA program introduced in 2005 that means aircraft
makers can certify parts of their own designs with
limited FAA oversight.
Delegating certification responsibilities to aircraft
manufacturers has long been common practice in the
aviation industry throughout the world. The sheer scope
and complexity of aircraft means that government
regulators lack the resources to carry out all of the
certification themselves.
Rachel Daeschler, certification director at the
European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) says, “The
design of a large commercial aircraft requires thousands
of highly skilled engineers... it would require at least as
many engineers to check in detail what they do.”
26 MARCH 2020 \\ AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM
“Boeing lost its aerospace
core when it moved from
Seattle to Chicago”
2
1 // Undelivered Boeing 737
Max aircraft stored near
Boeing Field in Seattle,
Washington
2 // Aviation consultant Dr
Michael Dreikorn, a former
FAA official
/AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM