An anonymous reader writes: Boeing's troubled 737 MAX planes — which have twice crashed, killing 346 people — have experienced at least six mid-air emergencies and dozens of groundings in the year after an extensive probe cleared them to fly.
Key points:
The 737 MAX crashed off Indonesia in 2018 and in Ethiopia in 2019
The US air safety investigator has now confirmed it did not investigate Boeing's alleged production problems after the crashes. The incidents, pulled from US government air safety databases, are among more than 60 mid-flight problems reported by pilots in the 12 months after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recertified the plane's airworthiness in late 2020.
Former employees of both Boeing and the FAA characterised the reports — which included engine shutdowns and pilots losing partial control of the plane — as serious and with the potential to end in tragedy.
In one incident in December 2021, a United Airlines pilot declared a mayday after the system controlling the pitch and altitude of the plane started malfunctioning. An ABC investigation can also reveal the US government will announce a new audit examining Boeing's production oversight of the 737 MAX planes.
In an email obtained by ABC Investigations, the US air safety investigator the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the Inspector-General's office of the US Department of Transportation (DOT) would carry out what it described as "vitally important" work.
"The DOT Inspector-General's office [has] confirmed that Congress requested an audit of Boeing's production oversight and that the review of the production of the 737 MAX will be a part of this audit," the NTSB email said.
Virgin Australia — which declined to comment on the new data — has ordered four of the same MAX-8 model that has crashed twice, and 25 of a newer MAX-10 model, which has yet to take to the skies.
Both planes in the disasters were less than four months old and all MAX planes are manufactured at Boeing's factory in Seattle. The first crash was a Lion Air flight that plunged into waters off Indonesia in October 2018.
In March 2019, a MAX jetliner operated by Ethiopian Airlines went down 6 minutes after take-off from the capital, Addis Ababa. Air crash investigator reports pointed to a malfunction caused by the MAX's flight control software system known as MCAS, in both crashes.
Boeing was charged by the US Department of Justice and paid $US2.5 billion ($3.5 billion) in fines and compensation after it was found to have deceived authorities over the system's complexities and removed references to the MCAS from its pilot training manual.
All MAX planes worldwide were grounded after the second crash as a 20-month safety review was carried out. But in April last year, five months after they were cleared to fly again, 100 MAX jets were again withdrawn from service after the discovery of an electrical fault in the cockpit that could result in the loss of critical flight functions. Boeing told the ABC it traced the problem back to a change in production processes at its Utah factory.
Now, an ABC Investigation has unearthed dozens of other mid-flight incidents on MAX planes during the aircraft's first year back in service. The safety report data was extracted from the FAA Service Difficulty Reporting System as well as anonymous reports submitted to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System.
Pilots declared mid-air emergencies at least six times last year — including one United Airlines flight en route to Houston, Texas in October, which was not in the database. The MAX's flight control system also failed on 22 separate flights, a problem which became the primary focus of the FAA's 20-month recertification effort after the two fatal crashes. More than 42 incidents involved equipment malfunctions, and on more than 40 occasions, flight crews chose to ground the affected aircraft while problems were fixed.
In one incident on an American Airlines flight in April last year, multiple systems including both autopilot functions stopped working soon after take-off. On landing, the crew found the backup power unit, considered vital for safe flight, had failed and was emitting a strong electrical smell.
