[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by ME

.....between Boeing and the ’ kissin cousin' FAA's 'apparent lack of impartial integrity in approving the craft and it's faulty MCAS, a universal truth of aviation holds true: profits first...sardine packed expendible passengers second...small wonder the Ethiopian investigators have turned over the flight recorder data to the French to avoid a FAA cover-up!

MEETS

Originally Posted by W.S.J.

The safety-certification process that put the Boeing 737 MAX in the air is coming under congressional scrutiny in what is shaping up as a test of the aircraft maker’s influence in Washington.
Boeing Co. and its lobbyists for years pushed to speed up the time it takes to get a new plane certified to fly. Congress and the Federal Aviation Administration—which were both targets of the company’s multimillion-dollar lobbying—supported efforts to delegate some safety-certification functions to Boeing. An internal Federal Aviation Administration review has tentatively determined that senior agency officials didn’t participate in or monitor crucial safety assessments of a flight-control system for Boeing Co.’s 737 MAX jet later implicated in two fatal crashes, according to industry and government officials.
The results, these officials said, also indicate that during the FAA certification process for the 737 MAX, Boeing didn’t flag the automated stall-prevention feature as a system whose malfunction or failure could cause a catastrophic event. Such a designation would have led to more intense scrutiny.
FAA engineers and midlevel managers deferred to Boeing’s early safety classification, the inquiry determined, allowing company experts to conduct subsequent analyses of potential hazards with limited agency oversight. Boeing employees who served as designated agency representatives signed off on the final design, according to people familiar with the findings.
Over the years, the FAA increasingly has relied on so-called authorized designees to act for the agency, with the goal of freeing up government resources to focus on what are deemed to be the most important and complex safety matters. Last year, Congress endorsed and expanded the FAA’s authority to utilize such company resources in approving new aircraft, systems and parts.
Following the two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 MAX airplanes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, lawmakers are questioning whether a new automated antistall system in the aircraft was properly vetted. Several are zeroing in on the Organization Designation Authorization program, established by the FAA in 2005, that allows certain aspects of safety certification to be delegated by the FAA to a plane maker.
That program “left the fox guarding the henhouse,”
Boeing has built an army in Washington of more than 30 in-house lobbyist$ and 16 outside firms to pre$$ for its interests across the federal government.
The company’s $15.1 million in lobbying expenditures in 2018 was the fourth-largest total of any individual company, according to filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Among the company’s external lobbyists is Norm Dicks, a former Democratic congressman from Washington, where the company has a major presence. Mr. Dicks was hailed in the local press as “Mr. Boeing” during his time in Congress. In 2018, Boeing paid Mr. Dicks $290,000 to lobby his former colleagues on the company’s behalf, primarily concerning a troubled aerial-refueling tanker plane for the Air Force, lobbying records show.
The company’s lobbyists work the halls of Congress seeking to influence everything from the development of future space initiatives to the federal tax code to military-procurement policies.
The company is known to swarm the White House when foreign leaders visit, the better to press the case for the company’s military aircraft and airliners. It was a leading corporate proponent of reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, one of a number of policy fights that have driven up Boeing’s lobbying spending in recent years. Its lobbying expenditures peaked at nearly $22 million in 2015.

BOTTOM LINE: A SUCCESSION OF SMALL ERRORS (ALA TITANIC) CAUSED TWO AIR DISASTERS; THE ERRORS STARTED AT THE VERY TOP (PROFIT AND DESIGN) AND WORKED DOWN TO FOUR PEOPLE; THE TWO PILOTS IN TWO AIRPLANES INSUFFICIENTLY BRIEFED TO DEAL WITH THEIR AIRCRAFT STALL SENSOR ISSUES...EVERYONE ELSE WAS...'JUST ALONG FOR THE (SHORT) RIDE'! https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/2/18518176/boeing-737-max-crash-problems-human-error-mcas-faa