FOURTEENTH DAY

Pilots confronted Boeing with 737 Max fears after first fatal crash, audio reveals
Boeing appeared to play down concerns of a second crash
Audio release comes as House committee reviews FAA role
American Airlines (AA) pilots angrily confronted a Boeing official about an anti-stall system suspected in
two fatal crashes of the manufacturer’s 737 Max aircraft, according to a new recording. In audio obtained
by CBS News, members of AA’s pilots’ union quizzed Boeing officials about the system – knowns as
MCAS – in a tense meeting in November last year, weeks after a Lion Air Max crashed in Indonesia and
four months before the loss of an Ethiopian Airlines Max. In total, 346 people died in the two crashes.
Boeing has been criticized for not disclosing how the MCAS anti-stall system worked – a move that allowed
the company to avoid costly retraining.
“We flat-out deserve to know what is on our airplanes,” one pilot is heard saying in the recording.
“These guys didn’t even know the damn system was on the airplane – nor did anybody else,” another said.
The official, Boeing vice-president Mike Sinnett, claimed the Lion Air disaster was a once-in-a-lifetime
accident.
He said: “I don’t know that understanding this system would’ve changed the outcome on this. In a million
miles, you’re going to maybe fly this airplane, maybe once you’re going to see this, ever. So we try not to
overload the crews with information that’s unnecessary so they actually know the information we believe is
important.”
The pilots countered: “We’re the last line of defence to being in that smoking hole, and we need the
knowledge.”
Boeing said it would make software changes but did not want to “rush and do crappy job of fixing the right
things”. The fix was still being developed when the Ethiopian Airlines jet went down.
The release of the recording came as the House transportation committee opened a hearing into the role of
Boeing’s regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in certifying the Max.
Democrat Rick Larsen, a member of the committee and the chair of the aviation subcommittee, said: “The
FAA has a credibility problem.” He cited a Wall Street Journal story that claimed an internal review had
found that senior FAA officials did not participate in or monitor crucial safety assessments of MCAS.
Larsen said: “If that is in fact true, the [designation] process is not working as Congress intended.”
The acting FAA administrator, Daniel Elwell, said he was “not aware of an internal assessment that
reaches that conclusion”.
Elwell was criticized for the FAA’s decision to hold off on grounding the US’s Max fleet after the second
crash. The FAA was the last major world regulator to ground the plane and did so only after Donald Trump
announced that the plane would be grounded.
Democratic congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton said: “Why did it take so long compared to other
countries? The public wants to know: why did it take so long?”
Elwell said the FAA was a “data-driven, risk based system” and acted after it had received sufficient data to
link the two crashes.

Boeing’s 737 Max fleet 'will remain grounded for weeks'

US politicians say ban will last through April, as data from Ethiopian Airlines flight arrives in France
Boeing’s 737 Max 8 and 9 planes will remain grounded for weeks at a minimum, US politicians said on
Thursday, as flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the crashed Ethiopian Airlines plane arrived
in France.
After a briefing with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), congressman Rick Larsen said the planes,
which have been involved in two fatal crashes in the last five months, would be banned from flying “at least
through April” while new software is installed and investigations continue.
Investigators will begin analysing flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines plane wreckage on Friday, in
an attempt to establish what caused the crash that has grounded Boeing’s 737 Max fleet worldwide.
In a photo of the data recorder released by France’s bureau of civil aviation safety (BEA) the central part of
the recorder appears intact, though the edge appears somewhat mangled. A BEA spokesman said it was
unclear whether the data was retrievable.

There is mounting anger in Ethiopia over the handling of the crash. In Addis Ababa, about 200 family
members of crash victims left a briefing with Ethiopian Airlines officials, saying the carrier has not given
them adequate information.
Officials said they had opened a call-in centre that is open 18 hours a day to respond to questions, but
relatives said they were not getting the answers they needed.
Relatives arrived at the crash scene in Hejere, about 31 miles (50km) from Addis Ababa, some wailing or
beating their chests as a bulldozer navigated piles of debris. Blue plastic sheeting covered the wreckage of
the plane.
The crash on Sunday, in which 157 people were killed minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa, was the
second such calamity involving Boeing’s 737 Max in less than six months. A Lion Air jet crashed in
Indonesia in October, also shortly after takeoff, killing all 189 people on board.
Citing newly refined satellite data and evidence from the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, the FAA has
suggested the possibility of a shared cause for the two crashes. After assessing that data, “it became clear
to all parties that the track of the Ethiopian flight was very close and behaved very similarly to the Lion Air
flight”, FAA administrator Daniel Elwell told reporters.
But aviation experts cautioned that it was still too early to draw conclusions. “To my mind people are
drawing optical conclusions at the moment,” said Robert Mann, aviation consultant and former airline
executive. “We need to wait for the hard data from these readers.”
One central question investigators will address is whether software known as MCAS used by the 737 Max
to prevent stalling was central to the accident. Lion Air officials have said sensors on their crashed plane
produced erroneous information on its last four flights, triggering an automatic nose-down command that
the pilots were unable to overcome on its final flight.
Ethiopian Airlines’ chief executive, Tewolde GebreMariam, said its pilots had received special training on
how to deal with that problem. “In addition to the basic trainings given for 737 aircraft types, an additional
training was given for the Max version,” Tewolde said. “After the Lion Air crash, questions were raised,
so Boeing sent further instructions that it said pilots should know.”
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Boeing 737 Max crashes
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The two crashes have shaken the aviation industry, scared passengers worldwide and put significant
pressure on the world’s biggest aircraft manufacturer to prove the safety of a model intended to be the
standard for decades. On Thursday the United Nations, which lost 21 members of staff in the Ethiopian
Airlines disaster, said none of its staff should travel on 737 Max 8s until the cause of the crashes had been
established.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump followed leaders around the world in grounding Boeing’s 737 Max fleet.
The US president told reporters: “They [Boeing] have to find the problem … and they will find it.”
A software fix for the 737 Max that Boeing has been working on since the Lion Air crash will take months to
complete, the FAA said on Wednesday. The implementation of that fix was delayed for five weeks because
of the US’s government shutdown, the Wall Street Journal revealed this week. An FAA spokesman
confirmed on Thursday that the FAA will not unground the airplanes until the software patch is approved
and installed.
Deliveries have effectively been frozen, but production continues.
Norwegian Air has said it will seek compensation from Boeing for costs and lost revenue after grounding its
737 Max fleet. Japan became the latest nation to suspend the planes on Thursday, and Garuda Indonesia
said it may cancel its order for 20 of the aircraft, depending on the FAA’s position.
Under international rules, Ethiopia is leading the investigation, but the BEA will analyse the black boxes as
an adviser. The US authorities had lobbied to take the lead in the investigation. While the BEA is one of the
world’s best qualified investigation teams Mann said it “looked political” that the boxes had not been sent to
the US.
Boeing is one of the US’s most powerful lobbyists and spent more than $15m on Washington lobbying last
year, according to OpenSecrets.org, a group that tracks lobbying data.
Japan's biggest airline grounds its Dreamliners over engine problem
This article is more than 2 years old
ANA’s decision to ground its fleet of Boeing 787s, the world’s biggest, expected to result in
cancellation of at least 350 flights
’s biggest airline has started grounding its fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners after discovering a problem with
the plane’s Rolls-Royce engines, in another setback for the troubled aircraft.
ANA’s decision to replace a key engine part, possibly on all 50 of its Dreamliners, is the latest in a series of
glitches to have plagued the fuel-efficient plane since it made its maiden commercial flight – three years
behind schedule – in late 2011.
The groundings are expected to lead to the cancellation of at least 350 flights on ANA’s Japanese domestic
routes through to the end of next month, according to the Nikkei business newspaper.
The carrier cancelled nine flights on Friday, affecting more than 3,000 passengers and costing the airline
an estimated 55m yen (£414,000) in lost revenue.
ANA is the world’s biggest operator of Dreamliners; its domestic rival, JapanAirlines (JAL), operates 30
787s, but they are fitted with a different type of engine.
The problem came to light while ANA and Boeing engineers were investigating the cause of an incident in
February, when an ANA 787 had to return to Kuala Lumpur airport after one of its engines overheated.
Inspections revealed damage to medium-pressure turbine blades in the aircraft’s Trent 1000 engines.
Rolls-Royce said it had notified other airlines that use the same type of engine, adding that it would make
an improved part available by the end of the year.
The firm said it was “working closely with ANA to minimise the effect on aircraft service disruption”.
A spokesman for Boeing in Tokyo said: “We are aware of the situation and are working with Rolls-Royce
and ANA to resolve any issues impacting the airplanes in service.”
The Dreamliner has suffered a string of problems in its first few years of service, including fuel
leaks, battery fires, a wiring problem, a brake computer fault and a cracked cockpit window.
In the most serious incident in Japan, an ANA Dreamliner was forced to make an emergency landing in
January 2013 after a smoke alarm went off in the cockpit.
ANA has already started repairing all of its Dreamliners on international routes after investigators found that
the same medium-pressure turbine blades were corroding, possibly due to a design flaw.
The Dreamliner’s commercial debut in October 2011 was supposed to have heralded a new era in
commercial flight. The plane, which is made of carbon fibre and other lightweight materials, is 20% more
fuel-efficient than conventional airliners and 30% cheaper to maintain, as well as featuring design
improvements for more comfortable medium and long-haul flights.
Boeing had received orders for 1,161 Dreamliners as of last month, and has delivered 445.
Boeing rushes to restore faith in 787 Dreamliners
This article is more than 6 years old
All Dreamliners grounded after a string of safety scares with first airline pushing for compensation
and FAA starting investigation
Boeing has said it is "working round the clock" to restore faith in its troubled Dreamliner after safety
warnings from US authorities prompted airlines around the world to ground the plane, and the first
demands for compensation that could run into hundreds of millions of pounds.
Ethiopian Airlines on Thursday became the final airline to withdraw its four 787s from service, a day after
the two Japanese airlines who pioneered Dreamliner operations suspended their flights after a string of
incidents.
A dismal 10 days for Boeing culminated in an All Nippon Airways (ANA) plane making an emergency
landing on Wednesday, leading the carrier and fellow Japanese airline JAL to ground their entire fleets,
having already suffered battery fires, fuel leakages and cracks in the windscreen over recent days.
American regulators followed their lead and grounded the Dreamliner in their jurisdiction – United Airlines
owns six such planes – saying a recent series of safety incidents meant urgent action was needed. Chile's
LAN, Air India and Qatar Airways followed suit.
LOT airlines, the Polish national carrier which had championed the Dreamliner ahead of its maiden
transatlantic flight from Warsaw to Chicago on Wednesday, announced it would seek compensation from
Boeing after grounding its plane at O'Hare airport before the return leg. LOT also warned it would only
accept delivery of three additional Dreamliners, expected in March, if the technical issues have been
resolved.
LOT's move is the first unequivocal demand for compensation, although the Qatar Airways chief executive,
Akbar Al-Baker, last month indicated he would want to be reimbursed for "teething problems" that affected
its services. Qatar's five 787s are now grounded.
Analysts expect the final cost for Boeing to run into hundreds of millions of pounds, although compensation
would likely take the form of discounts on orders, free service and repair rather than direct payment.
Analysts at Mizuho Securities in Japan calculated that grounding the 787s could cost ANA alone more than
$1.1m (£700,000) a day.
Boeing's chief executive, Jim McNerney, expressed "deep regret" over recent events and said he would
make the entire resources of the company available to assist the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in
its inquiries. He said: "The safety of passengers and crew members who fly aboard Boeing airplanes is our
highest priority. The company is working around the clock with its customers and the various regulatory
and investigative authorities.
"We are confident the 787 is safe and we stand behind its overall integrity. We will be taking every
necessary step in the coming days to assure our customers and the travelling public of the 787's safety and
to return the airplanes to service."
The troubles overshadowed some good news for the Seattle-based manufacturer, as rival Airbus confirmed
it had fallen behind Boeing in annual orders, and been outstripped in delivery of planes for the first time in a
decade. While Airbus trumpeted 833 net orders, exceeding its targets, and a record delivery figure of 588
aircraft in 2012, Boeing's 1,203 orders and 601 deliveries last year – mainly of 737s – put it back on top.
Airbus refused to be drawn into the Dreamliner debate. Speaking ahead of his company's unveiling of its
2012 results in Toulouse, France, the chief executive, Fabrice Bregier, said it was not his place to "give
Boeing lessons" and noted that Airbus had suffered similar problems – alluding to the cracks in the wings
of the new Airbus A380s in 2011.
The advanced technology behind the 787, a "plastic plane" made from lighter, carbon composite materials,
garnered enormous orders from airlines eagerly awaiting its fuel savings. Holiday firm Thomson –
scheduled to be the first British airline to operate Dreamliners – based its advertising on the new planes,
which also promise a better experience for passengers and fewer ill-effects from long-haul flights.
However, its cutting edge status could backfire if problems erode public confidence. After production
problems that delayed delivery by three years, the aircraft's "teething problems" – after 15 months in
service – have now prompted the FAA to act. Its chief initial focus is the lithium-ion batteries that caught
fire. Japanese authorities believe the latest incident could have resulted in a serious accident.
In one silver lining, analysts said the Dreamliner's woes and delays could provide a temporary fillip for the
airline industry overall, which has had profits hit by an excess of plane capacity.
Nuclear safety fears grow as France snubs UK watchdog
This article is more than 2 years old
France’s slow response to ONR on suspect components raises question for regulator’s interaction
with Chinese contractors
Britain’s nuclear watchdog was made to wait more than a fortnight for key files from energy giant EDF confirming that
components recently revealed to be suspect had not been used in one of Britain’s largest nuclear power stations.
Emails released under the Freedom of Information Act show that in early May, France’s EDF Group initially rebuffed
requests from the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to hand over files about a foundry in France that made
specialist parts for EDF’s reactors. The request followed a shock announcement by the foundry’s owner, Areva, on 2
May that quality control reports could have been falsified. The email trail shows the ONR was still making requests for
a components list on 18 May, 16 days after the safety fears were first aired.
Dr David Lowry of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, who obtained the emails, said they raised
questions about the regulator’s powers. “ONR has run into so many difficulties in obtaining safety documentation from
the French nuclear industry. How will it obtain key documents from the notoriously secretive Chinese nuclear industry,
if they get permission to build their own reactors at Bradwell, on the Blackwater Estuary in Essex?”
The UK regulator feared that the suspect Areva components might have been used in the construction of Suffolk’s
Sizewell B power station and that others were destined for the proposed Hinkley Point C in Somerset.
Greenpeace France claimed that “the potential falsifications and anomalies”constituted “a major safety risk because
the parts involved are large components which are essential to operating the reactors”.
When the concerns emerged, an ONR spokesman said: “ONR is aware of the reports of possible falsification of
manufacturing and quality control at Areva’s reactor vessel plant at Le Creusot. We have been in contact with the
licensee and are looking into any applicability in the UK.”
But emails suggest that the watchdog struggled to obtain information from the French company’s UK subsidiary, EDF
Energy, to enable it to make an urgent safety assessment.
An email from the ONR dated 13 May states: “We have been in contact with EDF Group and while they do have
access to the Areva component files, they are not able to release them to EDF Energy.”
The watchdog said EDF had informally advised it that none of the components in Sizewell B posed a safety risk. But,
without access to the files, it had to rely on the French firm’s assurances.
The ONR’s chief nuclear inspector wrote in desperation on 18 May to his counterpart at ASN, France’s nuclear
watchdog,. “I am concerned that without sight of the full list of implicated components supplied to the UK it is not
possible for ONR to independently verify the UK position,” he wrote.
The ONR was left having to ask its French counterpart for a list of the suspect components or to “facilitate Areva
sending the list directly to ONR”. It continued: “As you will appreciate, there is significant public interest in the UK and
as a respected regulator it is important that we have sight of the source information without which the robustness of
our public responses and our safety assurances are diminished.”
EDF Energy insists it was ultimately able to access all the relevant files from its parent company, EDF Group, and
shared these with the regulator.
Eventually, in June, EDF stated that it was able to independently confirm that Sizewell B was not affected by issues
under investigation at Areva’s Creusot Forge in France. France’s energy minister, Ségolène Royal, said tests
confirmed there were no mechanical problems associated with the suspect components.
The regulator’s ability to oversee foreign energy companies operating in the UK has been thrown into sharp relief by
the planned £18bn construction of Hinkley Point C, which is awaiting approval from the government.
A spokeswoman said ONR “had no trouble” accessing files it needed in the necessary timescales. As published
documents show, we engaged closely with the licensee, but also with Areva and the French regulator, ASN.”She said
an independent review had confirmed “no deficiencies were identified”.