Preliminary findings conclude Boeing ‘jeopardized the safety of the flying public’ in its attempts to get Max approved by regulators

A “culture of concealment”, cost cutting and “grossly insufficient” oversight led to two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft that claimed 346 lives, a congressional report has concluded.

The preliminary findings, issued by Democrats on the House transportation committee, conclude that Boeing “jeopardized the safety of the flying public” in its attempts to get the Max approved by regulators.

In a blistering 13-page report the committee found Boeing’s Max design “was marred by technical design failures, lack of transparency with both regulators and customers”.

According to the report, in 2011 the manufacturer was “under tremendous financial pressure” to compete with its rival Airbus’s A320neo aircraft. The speediest solution was to update its 737 fleet rather than develop a new plane.

As a result of those pressures, and in order to get the Max certified as quickly as possible, the manufacturer misled and withheld information from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and even “the very existence” of the MCAS anti-stall software system, blamed for the crashes, from pilots.

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The report, based on internal documents, whistleblower testimony and public hearings, faults the FAA, too. The congressional committee cited conflicts of interest among Boeing employees who were authorized to perform certification work on behalf of the FAA and said Boeing’s influence over the FAA’s oversight had resulted in FAA management “rejecting safety concerns raised by the agency’s own technical experts at the behest of Boeing”.

The regulator’s oversight was “grossly insufficient” and it “failed in its duty” to both uncover critical problems and make sure Boeing fixed them, the committee found. “The combination of these problems doomed the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights,” the report concluded.

In one example of regulatory failure the committee reported that following the crash of a Lion Air Max, the FAA learned that Boeing had failed to fix an inoperable alert on an estimated 80% of the 737 Max fleet “and decided not to inform the FAA or its customers about the non-functioning alert for more than 14 months, which should have raised concerns about Boeing’s transparency with the FAA”.

The report says its findings “paint a disturbing picture of Boeing’s development and production of the 737 Max and the FAA’s ability to provide appropriate oversight of Boeing’s 737 Max program. These issues must be addressed by both Boeing and the FAA in order to correct poor certification practices that have emerged, faulty analytical assumptions that have surfaced, notably insufficient transparency by Boeing, and inadequate oversight of Boeing by the FAA”.

Boeing was forced to ground its entire fleet of Max airliners after the crashes of the Lion Air Max in 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines jet in 2019.

Lawmakers are now considering a range of options to combat what critics describe as failed safety culture at the company.

In a statement Boeing said: “Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families that lost loved ones in these accidents. We have cooperated extensively for the past year with the committee’s investigation. We will review this preliminary report.”