FAA analysis after first 737 MAX crash estimated high risk of further accidents

Reported today on The Seattle Times

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FAA analysis after first 737 MAX crash estimated high risk of further accidents

An internal Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) analysis completed a month after the first crash of a Boeing 737 MAX in Indonesia last fall estimated a high risk of further accidents.

That revelation drew urgent questions in Congress Wednesday as to why the MAX was not grounded then, before the second crash in Ethiopia.

The FAA analysis projected that without action, the failure of the flight control system that had brought down Lion Air Flight 610 on Oct. 29 would result in about 15 more fatal crashes during the 45-year life of the 737 MAX fleet worldwide.

That estimate built in an assumption that one flight crew out of 100 would fail to react effectively and cope with the emergency, even though it was known at the time that out of two Lion Air flights where the system went haywire, one out of the two ended in catastrophe.

The document known as a Transport Airplane Risk Analysis, dated Dec. 3, 2018, was presented Wednesday at a U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee public hearing in which FAA Administrator Steve Dickson testified on the role of the FAA in the MAX crashes.

Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) asked Dickson why the MAX had not been grounded immediately after that analysis indicated such an unacceptably high risk.

Dickson responded that the analysis was used as a tool to work out the timeframe in which action was needed, and that by then Boeing was already working on a software fix for the flight control system.

Earl Lawrence, executive director of the FAA's Aircraft Certification Service, added that because the agency had already issued an airworthiness directive informing pilots of the danger of the flight control system, and because Boeing wa

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