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Boeing employees’ frightening internal messages released in 737 Max investigation
‘Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t.’
By Elizabeth Lopatto and Sean O'Kane Jan 9, 2020, 10:26pm ESTShare this on Facebook (opens in new window)
Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images
Boeing employees discussed the problems with the 737 Max in chats and emails that the company characterized as “completely unacceptable” in a statement released today. “Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t,” one employee said to another in one chat in February 2018, according to documents obtained by The Verge and originally reported by The New York Times. “No,” the other person replied.
“I still haven’t been forgiven by God for the covering up I did last year,” a Boeing employee said in a different 2018 conversation, according to the documents. The employee appears to be referring to interactions with the Federal Aviation Administration.
The redacted messages come from documents Boeing sent to Congress in December, which you can read in three collections here, here, and here. The messages show how Boeing tried to reduce the amount of simulator training required by the FAA to certify pilots for the 737 Max. These efforts ultimately left pilots unprepared to deal with the fatal flaw that brought down two 737 Max planes in five months, killing 346 people.
in a statement. “Apologies from Boeing are not enough after these astonishing & appalling emails,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, in a tweet. “Action & accountability are long overdue.”
The Boeing 737 Max was the most recent update to the 737, a plane that’s been flying for so long that entire airlines have built their businesses on it. Not having to retrain pilots from the 737 NG to move to the 737 Max was a particular selling point for the plane: classroom time and simulator time are expensive. The 737 Max’s development was particularly urgent, as Boeing’s main rival Airbus had developed the A320neo, which was considerably more fuel efficient than the Boeing 737 NG. But because Boeing rushed the 737 Max into service, pilots were not properly trained — or even made aware of — a piece of software that doomed the two fatal flights.
The newly released documents illustrate how forceful Boeing was in selling this idea internally, and to its customers. “I want to stress the importance of holding firm that there will not be any type of simulator training required to transition from NG to MAX,” the chief technical pilot of the 737 program, whose name is redacted, said in one 2017 email. “We’ll go face to face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement.” If a customer wanted internal training, this employee wrote, that additional training “should be limited.”
One particular series of June 2017 emails between the chief technical pilot and an undisclosed airline show how aggressive the company was in trying to limit the amount of simulation work. “There is absolutely no reason to require your pilots to require a MAX simulator to begin flying the MAX,’ the chief technical pilot wrote to the airline. “Boeing does not understand what is to be gained by a 3 hour simulator session.”
start recommending simulator training for the 737 Max in anticipation of the plane’s return to flight. Exactly when that return will happen remains unclear; the company indefinitely halted production of the plane in January, and the FAA has still not certified it to fly again.
Late last month, a senior Boeing executive reportedly told The Seattle Times that documents containing messages from the 737 Max’s senior technical pilot might continue to generate bad press for Boeing. Now we can see why.
‘Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t.’
By Elizabeth Lopatto and Sean O'Kane Jan 9, 2020, 10:26pm ESTShare this on Facebook (opens in new window)
Boeing employees discussed the problems with the 737 Max in chats and emails that the company characterized as “completely unacceptable” in a statement released today. “Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t,” one employee said to another in one chat in February 2018, according to documents obtained by The Verge and originally reported by The New York Times. “No,” the other person replied.
“I still haven’t been forgiven by God for the covering up I did last year,” a Boeing employee said in a different 2018 conversation, according to the documents. The employee appears to be referring to interactions with the Federal Aviation Administration.
The redacted messages come from documents Boeing sent to Congress in December, which you can read in three collections here, here, and here. The messages show how Boeing tried to reduce the amount of simulator training required by the FAA to certify pilots for the 737 Max. These efforts ultimately left pilots unprepared to deal with the fatal flaw that brought down two 737 Max planes in five months, killing 346 people.
in a statement. “Apologies from Boeing are not enough after these astonishing & appalling emails,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, in a tweet. “Action & accountability are long overdue.”
The Boeing 737 Max was the most recent update to the 737, a plane that’s been flying for so long that entire airlines have built their businesses on it. Not having to retrain pilots from the 737 NG to move to the 737 Max was a particular selling point for the plane: classroom time and simulator time are expensive. The 737 Max’s development was particularly urgent, as Boeing’s main rival Airbus had developed the A320neo, which was considerably more fuel efficient than the Boeing 737 NG. But because Boeing rushed the 737 Max into service, pilots were not properly trained — or even made aware of — a piece of software that doomed the two fatal flights.
The newly released documents illustrate how forceful Boeing was in selling this idea internally, and to its customers. “I want to stress the importance of holding firm that there will not be any type of simulator training required to transition from NG to MAX,” the chief technical pilot of the 737 program, whose name is redacted, said in one 2017 email. “We’ll go face to face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement.” If a customer wanted internal training, this employee wrote, that additional training “should be limited.”
One particular series of June 2017 emails between the chief technical pilot and an undisclosed airline show how aggressive the company was in trying to limit the amount of simulation work. “There is absolutely no reason to require your pilots to require a MAX simulator to begin flying the MAX,’ the chief technical pilot wrote to the airline. “Boeing does not understand what is to be gained by a 3 hour simulator session.”
start recommending simulator training for the 737 Max in anticipation of the plane’s return to flight. Exactly when that return will happen remains unclear; the company indefinitely halted production of the plane in January, and the FAA has still not certified it to fly again.
Late last month, a senior Boeing executive reportedly told The Seattle Times that documents containing messages from the 737 Max’s senior technical pilot might continue to generate bad press for Boeing. Now we can see why.
