Boeing's 'culture of concealment' led to fatal 737 Max crashes, report finds

Preliminary findings conclude Boeing ‘jeopardized the safety of the flying public’ in its attempts to get Max approved by regulators

Dominic Rushe in New York
@dominicru
Fri 6 Mar 2020 19.21 GMT
Last modified on Sat 7 Mar 2020 00.44 GMT

A “culture of concealment”, cost cutting and “grossly insufficient” oversight led to two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft that claimed 346 lives, a congressional report has concluded.

The preliminary findings, issued by Democrats on the House transportation committee, conclude that Boeing “jeopardized the safety of the flying public” in its attempts to get the Max approved by regulators.

In a blistering 13-page report the committee found Boeing’s Max design “was marred by technical design failures, lack of transparency with both regulators and customers”.

According to the report, in 2011 the manufacturer was “under tremendous financial pressure” to compete with its rival Airbus’s A320neo aircraft. The speediest solution was to update its 737 fleet rather than develop a new plane.

As a result of those pressures, and in order to get the Max certified as quickly as possible, the manufacturer misled and withheld information from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and even “the very existence” of the MCAS anti-stall software system, blamed for the crashes, from pilots.

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