'Why Is This Airplane Still Flying?' The FAA Missteps That Kept Boeing's MAX Aloft
Just after a Boeing Co. 737 MAX jet crashed in Indonesia a year ago, FAA officials asked themselves: Should they warn the world the entire fleet could have a design flaw?
A Federal Aviation Administration analysis showed a good chance the same malfunction would crop up again, according to agency officials and people briefed on the results. Even under the most optimistic scenario, the agency’s statistical models projected a high likelihood of a similar emergency within roughly a year.
Yet in the end, the FAA didn’t formally consider grounding the MAX or taking other drastic steps, based on the sketchy early information from the October 2018 accident. It simply reminded pilots how to respond to such emergencies.
That decision set the stage for a second fatal MAX crash, of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, less than five months later.
In a critical misstep, FAA officials relied extensively on Boeing’s initial flight-simulator test results, some of the people said.
Boeing largely used its cadre of highly experienced test pilots, an industry practice the FAA and accident investigators later acknowledged wasn’t appropriate to gauge how the other pilots would react in a real emergency.
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