Government Spending Bill Waives Aircraft Safety Deadline

Boeing gets its way, again.

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Nestled within the Tuesday reveal of the 4,000-page $1.7 trillion government spending bill, Congress struck down a critical December 27 safety deadline that would have required Boeing to update crew-alerting systems on its 737 MAX series. The deadline came from the 2020 Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act, which would have required all planes certified by the Federal Aviation Administration after December 27, 2022, to be equipped with the latest safety standards.

Several planes in the 737 MAX family are in different stages of regulatory approval. Currently, the MAX 8 and MAX 9 are part of the company’s existing fleet, and their crew-alert systems will be updated with what the company calls a preferable “commonality” system. The MAX 8 was the plane model involved in the Indonesia and Ethiopia crashes that left 346 people dead. At the time of the crashes, the consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader called for a total recall of the MAX 8; among the dead was his great-niece, a passenger on the Ethiopian flight.

As the Prospect previously reported, Boeing’s insistence that it has a better means of ensuring airplane safety is belied by the fact that other aircraft manufacturers have met the December 27 deadline.

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Boeing’s push for a deadline extension, fueled by millions of dollars in lobbying, circles back to the same business pressures that led to the company withholding software changes on the original MAX planes from regulators.

Although the MAX 7 is not part of Boeing’s existing fleet, the MAX 7 will have the same commonality system as the MAX 8 and MAX 9. Meanwhile, the MAX 10 is being tested with the latest safety standards.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Boeing had about 1,000 plane orders submitted for its MAX 7 and MAX 10 models, equivalent to $50 billion in revenue. The company claimed that without a deadline waiver, it’s likely it would have had to cancel those orders. That $50 billion is equal to the company’s total sales across commercial jet and military aircraft and services from the previous year.

With a strings-attached deadline extension in the government spending bill that is expected to pass in some form, Boeing now has three years to meet the latest safety standards. Boeing was granted the extension in exchange for including two “safety enhancements.” Those include upgrades to the “angle of attack” (AOA) system and changes to its “stick shaker” system. These provisions were originally floated by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA). Yet Michael Stumo, the father of one of the Boeing crash victims, called the measures weak because they were already implemented by foreign aviation authorities. The company currently says that it expects FAA approval for the MAX 7 in early 2023 and the MAX 10 in late 2023.

While that plays out between Boeing and the FAA in the coming year, Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) will take over the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee from Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR). Sen. Cantwell will stay as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as ranking member. In Boeing’s eyes, this is a win-win situation: Cantwell approved of granting an extended deadline with additional safety requirements; meanwhile, Cruz supported a deadline extension without any. And while DeFazio led the investigation that prompted Congress to pass new safety standards and rejected any form of deadline extension, Graves supported giving Boeing a reprieve.

Aside from Boeing’s negligence, another thread of this story is the systematic failure of the FAA. William McGee, a senior fellow for the American Economic Liberties Project, explained to the Prospect that it was incumbent on the FAA to rebuild its reputation.

In the wake of the fatal crashes, aviation authorities across the globe began conducting their own inspections, a departure from how aviation authorities previously operated. “The FAA was the gold standard,” McGee said. But that’s no longer the case. “Now [foreign countries] are saying, ‘No, we’re going to do our own inspections.’ That is unprecedented.”

This is true. Earlier this month, even as Europe’s equivalent of the FAA, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), told The Seattle Times that it had no comment over “U.S. Congress action,” the EASA’s regulatory mandates would exceed U.S. safety standards.

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