Boeing's 737 Max aircraft under intense scrutiny again
Little more than six months after the Boeing's 737 Max cleared to fly again by US regulate; the aircraft finds itself under intense scrutiny once again. Deliveries of many more new aircraft have been suspended. Boeing and the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, say they are working closely to address the issue.
The last month discovering a potential electrical problem led to the renewed grounding of more than 100 aeroplanes belonging to 24 airlines worldwide. But the affair has given new energy to critics who claim the 737 Max was allowed back into service prematurely and that issues that could have contributed to two fatal crashes have not been fully analysed or addressed.
Those critics include a high profile whistle-blower, Ed Pierson, who has already sought to link allegedly poor production standards at the 737 factories with electrical defects on the crashed planes, which he claims may have been implicated in both accidents. According to Boeing and the FAA, the problem first became apparent during testing a newly manufactured 737 Max 8, which had yet to be delivered to its owner. It founded that the electrical power systems on the aircraft were not working correctly.
The fault was traced to poor electrical bonding, where panel assemblies intended to conduct electricity and form part of a connection with the aircraft's frame were not doing so effectively. According to the FAA, this could potentially "affect the operation of certain systems, including engine ice protection, and result in loss of critical functions and/or multiple simultaneous flight deck effects, which may prevent continued safe flight and landing".
The flaw, then, was a dangerous one. The FAA was worried that other aircraft, which were already in service over time, could develop the same condition. It issued an Airworthiness Directive on 30 April stipulating that affected aircraft should be modified before flying again. On its face, there is nothing to link these flaws with the errant flight control software - known as MCAS - that triggered the loss of two planes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, claiming the lives of 346 people.
In each of those accidents, flawed data from a faulty sensor prompted MCAS to repeatedly force the aircraft's nose down when the pilots were trying to gain height, ultimately pushing it into a catastrophic dive.
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