Opinion | The #Boeing #737_Max Crisis Is a #Leadership Failure - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/opinion/boeing-737-max.html
Boeing has found a willing partner in the #F.A.A., which allowed the company to circumvent standard #certification processes so it could sell aircraft more quickly. Boeing’s inadequate regard for safety and the F.A.A.’s complicity display an unconscionable lack of leadership at both organizations.
[...]
The 737 Max of today — a 143-foot-long plane seating more than 230 people — is a very different aircraft from the humble 737 of the 1960s, [...] But the current regulatory system allows for significant modifications of an aircraft design without requiring a new certification review . Even though the new plane had different flight characteristics, larger engines and a new flight management system, no simulator training was required for pilots familiar with older model 737s, a marketing move designed by Boeing to increase sales. And the F.A.A. allowed this.
Safety begins at the top, and the top at both Boeing and the F.A.A. has let us down. Boeing’s board must find out who has enabled and encouraged this corporate culture, and hold those leaders accountable, beginning with the chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg.
But this is bigger than the Max 8. We now have an airline safety agency that has become less and less forceful in exercising its regulatory authority over an aircraft manufacturer, even one that appears to be aggressively prioritizing profits over safety.
