This archive report was first published on 29 October 2019.
October 29, 2019, marked the anniversary of the Lion Air 737 MAX crash in Indonesia, the first of two crashes within five months that killed a total of 346 people.
Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, expressed concerns about the safety of the 737 MAX in an interview with Reuters ahead of hearings this week.
“Clearly the accidents didn’t have to happen and I don’t think there was sufficient attention to how different pilots would react to signals in the cockpit,” Wicker said.
Several reports have found Boeing failed to adequately consider how pilots respond to 737 MAX cockpit emergencies in designing the airplane.
The Federal Aviation Administration has spent months reviewing Boeing’s proposed software upgrades to a key safety system and other training and system changes but is not expected to allow the plane to return to service until December at the earliest.
“That plane won’t fly unless 99.9 per cent of the American public and American policymakers are convinced that it’s absolutely safe,” Wicker said.
Wicker also planned to raise Boeing’s communication with the FAA during the 737 MAX’s development and “the relationship between regulators and manufacturers” during the hearing.
