NTSB: FAA Should Make Boeing Reassess 737 MAX Pilot Actions

Boeing Co should take a harder look at pilot response to cockpit emergencies in its 737 MAX safety assessment and potentially make changes to flight deck alerts, pilot procedures and training, the National Transportation Safety Board said.

The U.S. air accident investigator unveiled on Thursday several recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the wake of fatal crashes of a Lion Air 737 MAX in Indonesia and an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX that killed 346 people in total and led to the plane's grounding.

Boeing has said the feeding of erroneous Angle of Attack (AOA) data to a system called MCAS that pushed the planes lower was a common link in two wider chains of events leading to the crashes.

"We want FAA to ensure that Boeing takes a close look at all these different failure conditions that can activate MCAS and ensure that they have evaluated the pilots' response to that," Dana Schulze, director of the NTSB Office of Aviation Safety, told reporters at a briefing. NTSB wants that assessment completed before the plane's grounding is lifted.

Boeing's 737 MAX simulator tests with test pilots "did not look at all potential flight deck alerts and indications that pilots might face when this specific failure condition occurred in Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines," Schulze said, adding Boeing did not evaluate the "actual scenario" in the two fatal crashes in the simulator.

The NTSB said the FAA should address assumptions Boeing and other manufacturers make in designing software systems to address emergencies and whether the systems should be revised to account for varying pilot reactions to cockpit alarms and alerts.

The safety board also said the FAA should develop "robust tools and methods" to validate assumptions about pilot response "to safety-significant failure conditions as part of the design certification process."

Boeing is revising the 737 MAX software to require the MCAS system to receive input from both AOA sensors, and added additional safeguards.

FAA Deputy Administrator Dan Elwell said on Wednesday at a congressional hearing that if the AOA sensors differ by 5.5 degrees or more then MCAS cannot operate. If MCAS does operate it can only operate once unless the problem had been "completely resolved," he added.

"We still have a lot of work to do," Elwell said.

The NTSB said it was not analyzing the pilot actions in the two fatal crashes and said the recommendations were not a reflection on the pilots in those crashes but rather in response to assumptions in the U.S. certification process.

The FAA said in a statement it "will carefully review these and all other recommendations as we continue our review of the proposed changes to the Boeing 737 MAX."

Boeing said in a statement it is "committed to working with the FAA in reviewing the NTSB recommendations."

Boeing's 737 MAX safety system assessments assumed "immediate and appropriate pilot corrective actions in response to uncommanded flight control inputs, from systems such as MCAS," the NTSB said, and should take into account how other possible flight deck alerts and other factors could impact pilots' decision making and makes changes as warranted.

"We want them to step up how they certify these airplanes with regard to human interface," said Schulze. "Machines are deterministic. They are going to fail the same way if the same conditions are present. Humans are not that way. We are just asking the FAA to ... consider that factor more scientifically in how they certify airplanes."

The NTSB wants the FAA to require the same assessment for all other airplane manufacturers and thinks other international regulators that certify airplanes should consider making the same changes.

It is not clear when Boeing will conduct a key certification test flight, a step needed before the FAA can return the plane to service, but the company has said it hopes to resume flights early in the fourth quarter. The FAA said last week it will need a month after the test flight is completed before it could allow flights to resume.

Elwell said the FAA has not decided on what training changes it will require.