On November 20, 2018, Boeing Co. planned a conference call with airlines for Tuesday morning to discuss systems on its 737 MAX jet after the model’s crash in Indonesia last month, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
The discussion came in the wake of the Lion Air disaster, when a Boeing 737 MAX plunged into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, killing all 189 people on board. It was the first major accident involving the newest version of Boeing’s popular narrow-body aircraft.
After the crash, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration warned airlines that bad sensor inputs tied to the anti-stall system could cause the aircraft to push its nose down automatically, even with autopilot switched off. That warning raised fresh concern about how pilots could keep control of the jet in an emergency.
American Airlines Group Inc. said last week that it had been “unaware” of some functions of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, which was designed to help prevent the 737 MAX from stalling. Indonesian investigators also said the system was not described in Lion Air’s flight manual.
Bloomberg first reported Boeing’s plan for the airline call. One source familiar with the matter said the meeting could still be postponed.
Boeing said last week that it had issued two updates to operators worldwide, both aimed at reinforcing existing procedures for dealing with MCAS-related situations. The company declined to comment further.
In a message to employees on Monday, Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg said reports alleging the manufacturer withheld MCAS information from airlines were “untrue,” and that the function had been described in the flight crew operations manual, according to aviation journalist Jon Ostrower.
A United Airlines union said in a Friday memo that the carrier’s pilots were properly trained to handle an MCAS malfunction, even though the system was not mentioned in a course for pilots moving from older aircraft to the new jet.
Indonesian investigators said a preliminary report on the Lion Air crash would be released on Nov. 28 or 29, after analysis of the flight data recorder. Divers had not yet recovered the cockpit voice recorder, which could help explain pilot actions and provide a fuller picture of the final moments before the crash.
Reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; additional reporting and writing by Jamie Freed in Singapore.
