The flight certification tests of the Boeing 737 Max, immobilized since March 2019 due to two fatal accidents, will begin today Monday June 29, 2020, this is in any case what an e-mail from the Federal Aviation suggests Administration (FAA) the authority that certifies civil aircraft in the United States, sent Sunday to Congressional oversight committees. ” The tests are expected to take several days and will include a wide range of in-flight maneuvers and safety procedures to allow the agency to determine whether the changes made meet FAA certification standards. Wrote the FAA.
The Boeing aircraft manufacturer must obtain FAA clearance before its grounded aircraft can fly again, and test flights, with FAA test pilots, are a key step. They should take at least three days. In particular, we will assess the modifications proposed by Boeing to the Max’s automated flight control system which had caused accidents in Indonesia (Lion Air) and Ethiopia (Ethiopian Airlines), killing 346 people in the two crashes.
The flight control system had been implicated because it had been triggered by erroneous readings from the sensors, which caused the aircraft to dive, hence the two dramas. Boeing is said to have remedied this and is now undergoing certification tests that would last three to several days. If there is certification and no new problems are discovered during the test flights, it will probably take at least a month to train the pilots and have the planes modernized, inspected and maintained for months on hold. during. The FAA must approve the Boeing pilot training program, and a panel of international regulators will also comment on the minimum pilot training.
Boeing said it relied on the FAA and global regulators on the Max certification process. Almost 400 Max aircraft had been delivered to the airlines before being detained, and Boeing had built several hundred more. To regain its wings, the Boeing 737 MAX will not only have to undergo a test campaign but also pass its tests. At the controls, an FAA test pilot, and a Boeing test pilot. A flight engineer (essential during test flights but not during commercial flights) will also be assigned to the cockpit. System failures will be caused one after the other and sometimes simultaneously to assess how the plane reacts … and how the pilots take control.
It is the interaction between the flight controls of the Boeing 737 MAX and the pilots that the FAA points to. A failure of the MCAS anti-dropout software was the cause of the two tragedies. An add-on to flight controls appeared on the MAX generation of the B737 without any real certification. The pilots of the airlines during the MAX qualification were not trained there and its existence was not even informed on the flight manual, a real bible when dealing with a breakdown.
The test flights, which have been extensively prepared for the simulator, will be departing from Boeing Field, with touch-and-go at Moses Lake, in the interior of Washington State. After checking the behavior of the aircraft, the FAA may or may not authorize the Boeing 737 MAX to return to flight, which does not automatically mean that the airlines may put it into commercial service. Pilots have yet to be trained. Planes nailed to the ground must be overhauled. All this hassle concerns only FAA certification.
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