Boeing creates committee for safe aircraft design

Boeing said Wednesday it has created a permanent committee "to ensure safe design" of its aircraft, a decision that follows increased pressure from regulators and lawsuits stemming from two crashes of the company's top-selling 737 MAX jet.

The Aerospace Safety Committee, headed by former US Navy admiral Edmund Giambastiani Jr, an ex-vice-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former nuclear submarine officer, will oversee the development, manufacture and production of Boeing's products and services.

"The safety of the global aviation industry is rooted in its dedication to continuous improvement and learning," he said in a statement. "The independent committee review was extensive, rigorous and focused on delivering specific recommendations to ensure the highest levels of safety in Boeing airplanes and aerospace products."

In Washington, the US Office of Special Counsel said inspectors who developed training requirements for MAX pilots were "underqualified", and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) appears to have misled Congress.

In a letter to President Donald Trump, Special Counsel Henry Kerner said information presented to Congress by the FAA "obfuscates" concerns about the qualifications of safety inspectors and "diverts attention away from the likely truth of the matter: that they were neither qualified under agency policy to certify pilots flying the 737 MAX nor to assess pilot training on procedures and maneuvers".

He added: "The FAA's failure to ensure safety inspector competency for these aircraft puts the flying public at risk."

The FAA said in a statement: "We are reviewing the Special Counsel's letter. We remain confident in our representations to Congress and in the work of our aviation safety professionals."

On the new committee, two current members of Boeing's board of directors also will serve: Lynn Good, CEO of Duke Energy, and Lawrence Kellner, president of Emerald Creek Group, a private-equity firm based in California, and former CEO of Continental Airlines.

Following a five-month review of company policies, Boeing's CEO Dennis Muilenburg and the board of directors recommended the following changes: create a product and services safety group that reports directly to senior management to review design and manufacture of new aircraft; encourage engineers throughout the company to report any concerns directly to the chief engineer who reports to the CEO; establish a design requirements program to review materials, data and lessons learned from prior reports of technical problems; re-examine flight deck design and operation to be sure past assumptions meet current and future needs of the flight crew as well as making recommendations on pilot training; and expand the role and scope of the Safety Promotion Center beyond Boeing's engineering staff and assembly line workers to include the company's employees and offices worldwide.

The MAX jet crashes on Oct 29, 2018, in Indonesia and March 30 in Ethiopia killed 346 passengers and crew. Investigators have focused on the MAX's anti-stall device that may have erroneously pointed the nose of the planes down to gain speed to prevent a mid-air stall and into a fatal plunge.