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Boeing C.E.O. Knew About Pilot’s Warnings Before Second Crash Boeing C.E.O. Knew About Pilot’s Warnings Before Second Crash
(about 5 hours later)
In November 2016, well before the 737 Max was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane’s chief technical pilot told a colleague that a new system on the plane was “running rampant” in simulator tests. The pilot, Mark Forkner, went on to say that he had unknowingly lied to regulators. WASHINGTON — Boeing’s chief executive faced the grieving relatives of two deadly crashes of its 737 Max jet at an emotional congressional hearing on Tuesday, as senators pummeled him with questions about whether the company should have grounded the plane before the second accident. At times looking shaken, the executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg, said that if he could do it over again, he would have acted after the first crash, off the coast of Indonesia last October. “If we knew everything back then that we know now, we would have made a different decision,” he testified. He said Boeing officials had asked themselves “over and over” again why they didn’t ground the plane sooner.
In a January 2017 email, two months after acknowledging that he “unknowingly” lied to regulators, Mr. Forkner again pushed the F.A.A. to remove mention of the system, known as MCAS, from pilot training materials. “I think about you and your loved ones every day,” Mr. Muilenburg told the families, who at one point stood behind him holding up large photographs of the dead.
“Delete MCAS,” Mr. Forkner wrote. In aerospace speak, he described the system as “way outside the normal operating envelope,” meaning that it would only activate in rare situations that pilots would almost never encounter in normal passenger flights. Still, Mr. Muilenburg acknowledged for the first time that he knew before the second crash that a top pilot had voiced concerns about the plane while it was in development. The admission will most likely lead to more questions about why Boeing did not act more decisively before that crash, of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, on March 10.
But the instant messages to his colleague show that Mr. Forkner appeared to realize in November that MCAS was causing issues in the simulator and making it difficult to gain control of the plane. Two days later, Mr. Muilenburg called President Trump to defend the safety of the Max. The plane was grounded, however, on March 13, although the United States waited longer than most countries to act.
The messages, which were made public this month, raise serious new questions about what Boeing knew about the new system, known as MCAS, which played a role in both crashes. The two accidents killed 346 people and have thrown the company into crisis and roiled the global aviation industry.
During a hearing before Congress on Tuesday, Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive, said that the company had not been able to speak to Mr. Forkner, who now works for Southwest Airlines, about the messages. Mr. Muilenburg, who had spent weeks preparing for his appearance, was measured throughout more than two hours of testimony. He mostly avoided being cornered by senators’ lines of questioning, and declined to agree to demands that he endorse proposals to reform aviation laws.
However, when asked when he learned of the messages from Mr. Forkner, Mr. Muilenburg said: “I believe it was prior to the second crash.” The hearing was held on the first anniversary of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610, in Indonesia. The mood in the hearing room was tense. Multiple senators asked Mr. Muilenburg to address families of crash victims seated behind him.
Lawmakers also asked why Boeing, which has known about the messages for months, waited so long to hand the messages over to Congress and the F.A.A. The chief executive, who has been criticized for failing to convey sympathy after the crashes, apologized to the families directly in his opening remarks.
“Boeing should have notified the F.A.A. about that conversation upon its discovery immediately,” Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said in his opening statement. “We are sorry,” he said. “Deeply and truly sorry.”
The Times was the first to report on Mr. Forkner’s involvement in the Max, revealing that during the plane’s development, he asked the F.A.A. to remove mention of MCAS from the training manual. During several tense exchanges, senators on the commerce committee sharply criticized Boeing’s handling of the situation. Mr. Muilenburg said in opening remarks that the company had “made mistakes” and he vowed to redouble its focus on safety.
As Mr. Muilenburg left the room at the end of his testimony, Nadia Milleron, mother of Samya Stumo, a victim of the crash in Ethiopia, asked him to “turn and look at people when you say you’re sorry.” He turned around, looked her in the eye, and said “I’m sorry.” Boeing faces multiple federal investigations into the design of the plane, including a criminal inquiry led by the Justice Department.
Ms. Milleron said she wanted Mr. Muilenburg to step down. She and other family members of victims held posters of their loved ones. Among the most intense rounds of questioning concerned messages that a pilot central to the development of the Max sent to a colleague in November 2016, months before the plane was certified by regulators.
“He needs to resign, I will say that to his face,” said Ms. Milleron, before Mr. Muilenburg began his testimony. “I think he’s very bad for Boeing, he’s very bad for the U.S., he’s very bad for safety. He should resign, the whole board should resign.” The pilot, Mark Forkner, said in the messages that he had “unknowingly” lied to the F.A.A. about the system, which was “running rampant” in the flight simulator and causing him trouble. The system, known as MCAS, ultimately contributed to both crashes. Boeing provided the messages to the Justice Department in February, though it did not give them to lawmakers or the F.A.A. until this month.
Mr. Muilenburg, who has been criticized for his response to the crashes, appeared emotional in his opening remarks at a hearing of the Senate commerce committee. Mr. Muilenburg said he became aware of Mr. Forkner’s messages “prior to the second crash.”
“We are sorry,” he said, addressing his remarks to the families of the crash victims. “Deeply and truly sorry.” In January 2017, two months after his exchange with a colleague, Mr. Forkner sent an email to the F.A.A. reiterating an earlier request that the regulator remove mention of MCAS from pilot training materials.
Mr. Muilenburg outlined changes being made to the Max and the company in response to the crashes. “We’ve been challenged and changed by these accidents,” he said. “We made some mistakes, and we got some things wrong.” “Delete MCAS,” Mr. Forkner wrote in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times. He described the system as “way outside the normal operating envelope,” meaning that it would activate only in rare situations that pilots would almost never encounter in normal passenger flights.
His opening remarks came after Senators Roger Wicker and Maria Cantwell made sharp opening statements about Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration. Mr. Muilenburg said he “didn’t see the details of this exchange until recently.” He added that the company was “not sure” what the pilot meant in the messages to his colleague, and noted that the company had not been able to speak to Mr. Forkner, who now works for Southwest Airlines.
“One thing is crystal clear,” Ms. Cantwell said. “If you want to be the leader in aviation manufacturing, you have to be the leader in aviation safety.” “You’re the C.E.O., the buck stops with you,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, adding, “How did you not in February set out a nine-alarm fire to say ‘we need to figure out exactly what happened,’ not after all the hearings, not after the pressure but because 346 people have died and we don’t want another person to die?”
As the 737 Max was developed, it was Boeing employees working on behalf of the F.A.A., not government inspectors, who signed off on many aspects of the plane. This system of so-called delegation, which lets manufacturers sign off on their own work, is under scrutiny. Mr. Muilenburg, who appeared alongside Boeing’s chief engineer, John Hamilton, remained stoic as lawmakers took turns jabbing at the company and its signature airplane. The senators pressed Mr. Muilenburg to account for seemingly lax oversight by the F.A.A., haranguing him about the close relationship between the aerospace giant and its regulator.
Investigations by The New York Times have revealed that Boeing employees sometimes felt pressure to play down safety concerns and meet deadlines, that key F.A.A. officials didn’t fully understand MCAS and that the F.A.A. office in Seattle that oversees Boeing was seen inside the regulator as excessively deferential to the company. In a report released this month, Indonesian investigators said that errors by the flight and maintenance crew contributed to the crash. But they blamed Boeing for designing a system that triggered repeatedly based on a single sensor and failing to notify pilots that it existed. A task force of nine international regulators said in a separate report that Boeing never fully explained the system to regulators, who relied heavily on the company to help certify the plane and did not have the expertise in place to adequately assess the information it did receive.
“We cannot have a race for commercial airplanes become a race to the bottom when it comes to safety. The company, the board cannot prioritize profits over safety,” Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, where Boeing has its major operations, said in her opening statement. An earlier investigation, by the National Transportation Safety Board, found that the company had underestimated the effect that a malfunction of MCAS would have on the cockpit, wrongly assuming that pilots would immediately counteract an erroneous firing.
Boeing and its allies in industry also waged a yearslong lobbying campaign to get the F.A.A. to delegate even more to the company, an effort that paid off with the passage of last year’s F.A.A. reauthorization act. Now, lawmakers are questioning whether the entire system of certifying airplanes needs an overhaul. As the 737 Max was developed, Boeing employees working on behalf of the F.A.A., not government inspectors, signed off on many aspects of the plane. This system of so-called delegation, which lets manufacturers approve their own work, is now under scrutiny.
“No matter what we did last year, we need to be pulling some of that back into the public sphere, and take some of it out of the hands of industry,” Representative Rick Larsen, a Democrat from Washington, told The Times. Boeing employees in its Seattle-area and Charleston, S.C., plants have said they sometimes felt pressure to meet deadlines while conducting safety approvals. Investigations by The New York Times have revealed that key F.A.A. officials didn’t fully understand MCAS and that the regulator at times deferred to the company, making decisions based on how much they would cost Boeing and its production schedule.
“Boeing lobbied Congress for more delegation and now we have to reverse that delegation,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said, referring to the company’s push to pass legislation that undercuts the role of the F.A.A. in approving airplanes.
“I would walk before I was to get on a 737 Max,” said Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, adding, “You shouldn’t be cutting corners, and I see corners being cut.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Muilenburg will appear in front of the House transportation committee, which has been leading the congressional investigation into the Max and is expected to adopt an even more adversarial stance. His appearances mark the first time a Boeing executive has addressed Congress about the crashes.
Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon and the chairman of the transportation committee, will add a new piece of information, saying that Boeing engineers at one point proposed placing an MCAS alert inside the cockpit, according to a copy of his opening statement. No such alert was ever installed, though, and Mr. DeFazio plans to press Mr. Muilenburg on why that decision was made.
Inside Boeing, Mr. Muilenburg’s performance in front of Congress is seen as a key test of whether he will remain in his post as chief executive, as the board weighs further management changes.
This month, Boeing dismissed the executive in charge of its commercial division, Kevin McAllister, and stripped Mr. Muilenburg of his title as chairman, in a sign that the board is moving more urgently toward holding senior leadership accountable for the crisis.
Nadia Milleron, whose daughter Samya Stumo died in the Ethiopia crash, sat three rows behind Mr. Muilenburg at the hearing and said she believed “he should resign" and “the whole board should resign.”
As Mr. Muilenburg left the room at the end of his testimony, Ms. Milleron asked him to “turn and look at people when you say you’re sorry.”
He turned around and looked her in the eye.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Natalie Kitroeff reported from Washington and David Gelles from New York.