Boeing’s CEO faces a second day of grilling on Capitol Hill over the 737 Max, the plane involved in two crashes that killed 346 people.

House Transportation Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said Wednesday Boeing Co. showed a “lack of candor all through this” as it developed the plane and didn’t tell pilots about a new flight-control system until after a Max crashed a year ago in Indonesia.

The committee’s top Republican, Sam Graves of Missouri, said he wasn’t absolving Boeing of mistakes but that the airlines in Indonesia and Ethiopia shared blame for the accidents involving their Max planes.

CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the company made mistakes with the flight-control system called MCAS, which pushed the nose of both accident planes down based on faulty readings from a single sensor. Boeing is revising MCAS, tying it to an additional sensor at all times and making it less powerful.

“We are learning, we still have more to learn, we have to work to do to restore the public’s trust,” Muilenburg said.

Muilenburg testified Tuesday before a Senate committee. He avoided major gaffes but was criticized for several mistakes, including failing to tell Congress and regulators about a senior test pilot’s messages that seemed to raise alarms the new flight-control system.

Boeing hopes to win approval from the Federal Aviation Administration before year-end to get the Max back in the air. Regulators in other parts of the world have indicated they may take longer to review Boeing’s changes to the plane.

After the hearings, Congress is likely to consider changes in how the FAA certifies new planes.

AP

Oct 30, 2019