Boeing executives said today that they would take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of the company’s 737 MAX airplanes, after Ethiopia’s Civil Aviation Authority issued a preliminary report saying that an Ethiopian Airlines jet was felled last month due to the same sensor problem that caused a fatal crash in Indonesia less than five months earlier.
The Ethiopian crash and last October’s Lion Air crash in Indonesia killed a total of 346 people and led to the worldwide grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX airplanes. Like investigators in Indonesia, the Ethiopian investigators said an automated flight control system known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, forced the plane into a catastrophic dive.
Boeing’s software-based MCAS system was added to the 737 MAX as a safeguard against stalling, but in both cases, investigators said a faulty sensor fed bad data into the system. The preliminary report on the Ethiopian crash, issued today, said the pilots tried Boeing’s recommended procedure for overriding the MCAS system but still failed to regain control of the plane.
In one statement, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said it was apparent that the MCAS system added to what is already a high workload environment. “It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk,” he said. “We own it, and we know how to do it.”
We at Boeing are sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 accidents and are relentlessly focused on safety to ensure tragedies like this never happen again.
Watch the full video here: https://t.co/kZawq35YnZ pic.twitter.com/G9uIHjxsWi
— Dennis A. Muilenburg (@BoeingCEO) April 4, 2019
Muilenburg said Boeing has nearly completed work on a software update that would “prevent an MCAS-related accident from ever happening again.” He expected the fix to be certified and implemented throughout the 737 MAX fleet in the weeks ahead.
In a separate statement, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Kevin McAllister said the company would “carefully review” the preliminary report from Ethiopian investigators, “and will take any and all additional steps necessary to enhance the safety of our aircraft.”
Ethiopian Airlines and investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration reacted to the day’s developments on Twitter:
#Ethiopia|n Airlines Statement on the Preliminary Report of the Accident on ET 302 pic.twitter.com/azAKxyptq8
— Ethiopian Airlines (@flyethiopian) April 4, 2019
NTSB statement: The preliminary report issued Thursday April 4, 2019, by the Ethiopia Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau presents the initial information developed during their investigation of the crash of flight 302. NTSB investigators and technical advisers reviewed…
— NTSB_Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) April 4, 2019
… the draft preliminary report and provided input. The NTSB, FAA and Boeing have had access to the Flight Data Recorder data since it was downloaded, and investigators and technical advisers continue to analyze the data in coordination with Ethiopian authorities.
— NTSB_Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) April 4, 2019
Correction: #FAA statement on the investigation by the #Ethiopian authorities. pic.twitter.com/8n1m2mIGt2
— The FAA (@FAANews) April 4, 2019
