By Ben Kesslen - NBC News
A House of Representatives report on the two Boeing 737 Max plane crashes that killed 346 people accuses the US company and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of "failures serious and repeated ".
The accident in Indonesia in October 2018 and the one in Ethiopia in March 2019 were "the horrifying culmination of a series of flawed technical assumptions by Boeing engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing management and an extremely insufficient supervision by the FAA ", affirms the report released this Wednesday by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of the Lower Chamber.
["Designed by clowns." Emails from Boeing employees show mockery of a plane that was later banned from flying]
The committee chairman, Democrat Peter DeFazio, said in a statement that the report shows "how Boeing - under pressure to compete with Airbus and generate profits for Wall Street - escaped the FAA's scrutiny, withheld critical information from pilots and, finally, put into service planes that killed 346 innocent people.
[Boeing acknowledges the company's "mistake" in two accidents that left 346 dead]
"What is particularly frustrating is how Boeing and the FAA played with public safety in a critical period between the two accidents," added DeFazio.
The October 2018 Lion Air crash in Indonesia killed 189 people and was followed, five months later, by Ethiopian Airlines, which killed 157 people.
After hearing the report, Boeing said in a statement that the company is "dedicated to doing the work" that is necessary.
"We have many hard lessons to learn as a company from the accidents of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, and from the mistakes we have made," the company said.
[Boeing CEO resigns after fatal 737 MAX crashes. The company appoints a new CEO]
"As this report points out, we have made fundamental changes to our company and we will continue to look for ways to improve," he added.
The FAA said for its part that "we look forward to working with the committee to implement the improvements identified in the report."
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"We are already undertaking significant initiatives based on what we have learned from our own internal reviews, as well as independent reviews of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents," the agency said.
DeFazio said the Congressional committee decided to release its report after 18 months of investigation to "highlight not only Boeing's failed safety culture, but also loopholes in the FAA's regulatory system that allowed for this fatally flawed aircraft to enter service. "
The report claims that Boeing made "great efforts to cut costs" due to financial pressure and refused to stop its 737 Max production line, jeopardizing safety.
It further concludes that Boeing withheld "crucial information" from the FAA, and that the federal agency's regulation of the airline was affected by its current oversight structure with respect to Boeing, which "creates inherent conflicts of interest." .
