Aerial photo showing Boeing 737 Max airplanes parked at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, October 20, 2019.
Gary He | Reuters
Boeing employees boasted about pushing regulators to approve the 737 Max without requiring pilots to undergo simulator training, internal documents Boeing released on Thursday show. They also expressed concerns about flight simulators for the aircraft, which was later involved in two fatal crashes which killed 346 people.
The manufacturer had given the more than 100 pages of internal messages to the Federal Aviation Administration and lawmakers, who raised new alarms about the certification of the planes almost four years ago and about Boeing’s dismissive attitude of regulators.
“I want to stress the importance of holding firm that there will not be any type of simulator training required to transition from the [the older model of the 737] to MAX,” read a message from Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot in March 2017 to another employee. “Boeing will not allow that to happen. We’ll go face to face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement.”
Another message from a Boeing employee later that year called an undisclosed party “morons” for ordering a type of cockpit display and said India’s aviation regulator “is apparently even stupider.”
Boeing said the messages “do not reflect the company we are and need to be, and they are completely unacceptable.”
Boeing had told regulators to remove simulator training from requirements before the FAA approved the jets, which became Boeing’s best-selling aircraft, in 2017. The names of the people in the emails were redacted, but included in copies sent to lawmakers.
The FAA, for its part, said the documents don’t present any safety risks that it already knew about under its own review of the planes. It also backed the safety of the simulators mentioned in the documents.
In messages from April 2017, one Boeing employee told another: “This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.”
Another message showed a Boeing employee hopeful they could “gang up” on regulators and steer them “in the direction we want.”
A Boeing employee asked a colleague in a February 2018 message: “Would you put your family on a MAX simulator-trained aircraft? I wouldn’t.” His coworker replied: “No.”
“These newly-released emails are incredibly damning,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, which is investigating the Max. “They paint a deeply disturbing picture of the lengths Boeing was apparently willing to go to in order to evade scrutiny from regulators, flight crews, and the flying public, even as its own employees were sounding alarms internally.”
Boeing is in the midst of the biggest crisis in its history, as it scrambles to fix its scarred reputation from the fallout of the crashes. The planes have been grounded for almost 10 months, far longer than Boeing expected. The crisis cost its former CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, his job and prompted Boeing to plan to suspend production of the planes this month while the grounding continues.
On Tuesday, Boeing said it would recommend simulator training for pilots before the 737 Max can return to service, an about-face from its earlier stance and one that promises to drive up costs for Boeing and its airline customers.
