Boeing's
'culture of concealment' led to fatal 737 Max crashes, report finds
Preliminary
findings conclude Boeing ‘jeopardized the safety of the flying public’ in its
attempts to get Max approved by regulators
Dominic
Rushe in New York
@dominicru
Fri 6 Mar
2020 19.21 GMTLast modified on Sat 7 Mar 2020 00.44 GMT
A “culture
of concealment”, cost cutting and “grossly insufficient” oversight led to two
fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft that claimed 346 lives, a
congressional report has concluded.
The
preliminary findings, issued by Democrats on the House transportation
committee, conclude that Boeing “jeopardized the safety of the flying public”
in its attempts to get the Max approved by regulators.
In a
blistering 13-page report the committee found Boeing’s Max design “was marred
by technical design failures, lack of transparency with both regulators and
customers”.
According
to the report, in 2011 the manufacturer was “under tremendous financial
pressure” to compete with its rival Airbus’s A320neo aircraft. The speediest
solution was to update its 737 fleet rather than develop a new plane.
As a result
of those pressures, and in order to get the Max certified as quickly as
possible, the manufacturer misled and withheld information from the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) and even “the very existence” of the MCAS
anti-stall software system, blamed for the crashes, from pilots.
The report,
based on internal documents, whistleblower testimony and public hearings,
faults the FAA, too. The congressional committee cited conflicts of interest
among Boeing employees who were authorized to perform certification work on
behalf of the FAA and said Boeing’s influence over the FAA’s oversight had
resulted in FAA management “rejecting safety concerns raised by the agency’s
own technical experts at the behest of Boeing”.
The
regulator’s oversight was “grossly insufficient” and it “failed in its duty” to
both uncover critical problems and make sure Boeing fixed them, the committee
found. “The combination of these problems doomed the Lion Air and Ethiopian
Airlines flights,” the report concluded.
In one
example of regulatory failure the committee reported that following the crash
of a Lion Air Max, the FAA learned that Boeing had failed to fix an inoperable
alert on an estimated 80% of the 737 Max fleet “and decided not to inform the
FAA or its customers about the non-functioning alert for more than 14 months,
which should have raised concerns about Boeing’s transparency with the FAA”.
The report
says its findings “paint a disturbing picture of Boeing’s development and
production of the 737 Max and the FAA’s ability to provide appropriate
oversight of Boeing’s 737 Max program. These issues must be addressed by both
Boeing and the FAA in order to correct poor certification practices that have
emerged, faulty analytical assumptions that have surfaced, notably insufficient
transparency by Boeing, and inadequate oversight of Boeing by the FAA”.
Boeing was
forced to ground its entire fleet of Max airliners after the crashes of the
Lion Air Max in 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines jet in 2019.
Lawmakers
are now considering a range of options to combat what critics describe as
failed safety culture at the company.
In a
statement Boeing said: “Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the
families that lost loved ones in these accidents. We have cooperated
extensively for the past year with the committee’s investigation. We
will review this preliminary report.”
Bad air:
Pilots worldwide complain of unhealthy cabin fumes
But
regulators in the EU and the U.S. aren’t convinced that any danger posed to
crews warrants significant action.
By SAIM
SAEED, DANIEL LIPPMAN AND BRIANNA GURCIULLO 3/2/20, 6:00 AM CET Updated 3/7/20,
5:03 AM CET
In 2014,
while flying a plane full of passengers for a subsidiary of United Express,
pilot Richard Papp said he became so overwhelmed with nausea and dizziness that
he “couldn’t think straight” and could barely fly safely, after inhaling what
he said were noxious fumes permeating the cockpit.
"At
the end of the day, we couldn’t even put a sentence together,” the U.S. pilot
said in an interview with POLITICO.
Papp’s case
isn’t an isolated one.
On February
17, an easyJet flight to Venice had to return to Belfast after passengers
detected “a strong smell” of gas, according to the Belfast Telegram. In 2015,
six people complaining of fumes on board a U.S. Spirit Airlines flight had to
receive medical attention upon landing. Last year, seven people on another
Spirit flight had to go to a hospital after they were “overcome by fumes”
smelling like oil. A third Spirit flight last year was forced to land
prematurely in Los Angeles because of fumes in the cabin. At least four
lawsuits have also been brought by flight attendants.
But despite
cabin crews’ calls for investigations and tougher rules to ensure that engine
oils don't bleed into cabin air, so far regulators in the U.S. and the EU
aren’t convinced that any danger posed to crews warrants significant action.
In January, EASA invited pilots, manufacturers and
airlines to Cologne to discuss cabin fumes, where pilots were keen to emphasize
the threat.
The Federal
Aviation Administration said there have been 204 fume events recorded in its
"Service Difficulty Reports" (SDR) database since October. In a 2013
report to Congress, the FAA said it found 69 such events between 2002 and 2011.
But others paint a very different picture of how often fume events happen on
board — for instance, a Kansas State University study that surveyed the SDR as
well as a NASA database of aviation safety reports and other sources, found
that the annual number was likely much higher, estimating on average almost
2,000 fume incidents per year from 2007 to 2012.
The FAA
said it “thoroughly investigates these events and makes sure the cause is
addressed before the aircraft is returned to service.” A spokesperson also
noted that “modern aircraft have highly effective environmental control systems
that filter air as it is circulated throughout the aircraft cabin, and multiple
studies over the years have consistently concluded that cabin air meets or
exceeds health and safety standards.”
But pilots
and at least one independent researcher say there's just not enough consistent
data to make those conclusions.
Two years
ago, the FAA warned in a safety alert that airlines and pilots should ensure
their procedures and check-lists address what to do about odors and fumes on
board and asked operators, manufacturers and regulators to boost efforts at
prevention. But the FAA hasn’t ordered manufacturers to actually change the way
air on most planes gets funneled into the cabin, which pilots say can be fouled
by engine oil intermixing with breathable air, due to the planes' design,
combined with poor maintenance and faulty seals.
The
situation in Europe is much the same. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency
(EASA) published two studies in 2017 finding that cabin air quality “is similar
or better than what is observed in normal indoor environments” and that the
concentration of substances that could cause health problems to be “too low to
be major concern for neuronal function.” The agency will publish another study
on oil contamination incidents on flights in April.
“EASA has
not identified concerns that would justify to mandate general design changes or
to amend products certification specifications,” said EASA spokesperson Janet
Northcote, despite reports of more than 100 fume incidents in 2017 and 2018.
In January,
EASA invited pilots, manufacturers and airlines to Cologne to discuss cabin
fumes, where pilots were keen to emphasize the threat. The European Commission
is considering launching a study on fumes’ health effects on pilots.
The battle
over research
Susan
Michaelis, an aviation consultant and researcher with a specialty in cabin air
quality at Scotland's University of Stirling, said in a 2011 paper that it’s
impossible to know the “true extent” of instances of contaminated air because
airplanes typically don’t have, and aren't required to have, detection systems.
In addition, she said the current system of self-reporting fume issues is
ineffective.
Beyond
that, Michaelis argued that there’s “an almost industry-wide concerted effort
to marginalize and control how the contaminated air issue is addressed.” The
industry has formed “a powerful coalition that ignores or manipulates external
data and works towards a solution agreeable to its partners,” she wrote,
comparing it to Big Tobacco and the asbestos industry.
“Effectively
all data that implies there is a problem has been brushed aside in favour of
commissioning yet more research that has reached the stage of going around in
circles, and ignoring the fact that the toxicity of heated jet engine oil was
already recognized in 1954,” Michaelis wrote.
Pilots complain that because of imperfect seals and
the way the system is designed, chemicals from engine oil or hydraulic fluid
sometimes seep into the air conditioning system, contaminating the air and
affecting crew health.
U.S.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, who has introduced a bill that would require planes
to have carbon monoxide sensors and order the FAA to better record and monitor
fume events, said in an interview that “the FAA has put this issue on automatic
pilot and it’s going nowhere so far. It’s failed to really address the problem,
and it’s putting air travelers in peril.”
“The air
inside containers flying hours on end for hundreds or thousands of miles is
among the most dangerous breathed by travelers or anyone else these days,” he
said. “Pilots and flight attendants are rightly concerned, but so should be all
of the traveling public.”
He also
said he trusts independent researchers' findings more than the FAA when it
comes to incident data. "They may be defining fume events to favor the
airlines. All too often on health and safety issues over the years the FAA has
been partial to the industry’s interests over the public interest," he
said.
Most
commercial aircraft flying today, except for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, produce
compressed air in the engine, which is then siphoned off and used in the
plane’s cabin, a feature known as a bleed system. Pilots complain that because
of imperfect seals and the way the system is designed, chemicals from engine oil
or hydraulic fluid sometimes seep into the air conditioning system,
contaminating the air and affecting crew health. Passengers can be affected
too, but because most don’t fly as frequently as pilots and flight attendants,
they are usually less affected by strong fumes, pilots contend.
Pilots say
they have come to know the smell, frequently described as reminiscent of dirty
socks or magic markers.
“I have
smelled that my whole career since I started flying for the airlines in 2002,”
said one pilot for a major U.S. airline, who flies an Airbus A320 and asked for
anonymity to protect his career.
When asked
what Airbus is doing to mitigate the risk of cabin fumes, a spokesperson for
the company said: “Airbus cabins are designed to prevent air contamination
under normal operating conditions.” A Boeing spokesman said in a statement that
“in the rare instances where low levels of contaminants may be present in bleed
air, all reliable scientific data currently available has concluded that the
cabin air in Boeing aircraft remains safe.”
Clean air
calls
Brussels
Airlines pilot Rudy Pont said he went to EASA’s meeting on cabin fumes with
three recommendations — to build better filtration systems, to install sensors
that could measure and warn of air quality problems, and to develop
standardized medical protocols when cabin air is contaminated.
One Alaska Airlines flight attendant, Vashti Escobedo,
sued Boeing in 2016 after what she said was a single bad fume event.
But Pont
said it’s an uphill struggle. “Just recognition that there is a problem is
something we’ve been fighting for years and years.”
Flight
attendants have filed at least four lawsuits against Boeing, alleging harm
caused by cabin fumes.
One of the
suits was brought by former flight attendant Cynthia Milton, who is suing
Boeing, alleging fume exposure on board a 767 damaged her health and made her
unable to work. Milton said she blacked out while working on board an
international flight; the plane had to divert to Canada to take her to a
hospital. Since the incident, Milton claims she has to use oxygen daily.
“I’ve lost
everything,” said Milton, who filed suit in late January for damages. “I no
longer can work. I’ve lost my home. I was a perfectly healthy person but I’ve
lost every bit of health I’ve had — and so my ultimate goal is that this never
happen to anybody else.”
A number of
flight attendants have also sued aircraft manufacturers | Christof Stache/AFP
via Getty Images
One Alaska
Airlines flight attendant, Vashti Escobedo, sued Boeing in 2016 after what she
said was a single bad fume event. She alleged in the lawsuit that she experienced
daily migraines, blurry vision and memory and concentration problems. The suit
was recently settled.
Boeing
declined to comment on the lawsuits.
British
union Unite filed a case last year against major U.K. airlines including
easyJet and British Airways for exposing their employees to toxic air; a ruling
is expected next year. British Airways says there is nothing wrong with its
cabin air quality.
While far
from admitting fault, some airlines are reacting.
Pilots said
that some U.S. airlines, such as American Airlines, JetBlue, Spirit and
Frontier, have already changed their check-lists to underline the importance of
pilots putting on oxygen masks when they smell fumes.
German
carrier Lufthansa said it has invested €2 million to improve cabin air quality.
The airline said it is testing a filter called HEPA/CARBON, and is
participating in a study on cabin air quality by the German Institute for
Prevention and Occupational Medicine, the results of which are expected this
year.
Britain’s
easyJet has almost finished a retrofit of its fleet with “high performance
carbon recirculation filters.”
“We feel
we’re at the forefront of the industry in dealing with this issue,” an easyJet
spokesperson said.
While pilots haven’t gotten the traction they would
like at EASA, they have had more luck at the European Committee for
Standardization (CEN), a body that develops and defines voluntary standards at
a European level.
But some
check-lists for other airlines are still too cumbersome and take too long to
complete to prevent fume incidents, pilots say. Maintenance crews on the ground
also have trouble replicating the issue.
While
pilots haven’t gotten the traction they would like at EASA, they have had more
luck at the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), a body that develops
and defines voluntary standards at a European level. There, the pilots managed
to get a draft set of guidelines approved by the committee, which will be up
for a final vote later this year.
But EASA is
reacting to the attempted end-run around its regulations. The agency sent a
letter, seen by POLITICO, to CEN disagreeing with the standards. The draft
agreement “contains some elements that appear controversial and that are not
supported by results of research studies conducted to date,” read the letter
from EASA’s Head of Strategy and Programs Massimo Mazzoletti, dated January 14.
Airline
lobbies IATA and A4E also sent a joint letter, also seen by POLITICO, to CEN in
November. “The highly prescriptive requirements set out in this draft are out
of proportion to any demonstrated risk,” the letter read.
The
ultimate solution some pilots want is to have pure, clean outside air
compressed from electronic compressors instead of being shunted through hot
engines that may contain chemicals.
“There is
enough research” on the subject, said Pont, the Brussels Airlines pilot. “The
time to act is now.”
Saim Saeed
contributed to this report from Brussels. Daniel Lippman and Brianna Gurciullo
contributed from Washington.
Want more
analysis from POLITICO? POLITICO Pro is our premium intelligence service for
professionals. From financial services to trade, technology, cybersecurity and
more, Pro delivers real time intelligence, deep insight and breaking scoops you
need to keep one step ahead. Email pro@politico.eu to request a
complimentary trial.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário