The system that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) relies on to certify new passenger planes has been deemed both safe and effective by a government committee appointed by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao following the second fatal crash involving a Boeing 737 MAX last year.
Nonetheless, officials agree that the FAA and aircraft manufacturers must work together to ensure that employees designated to make inspections as planes go through the approval process aren't put under "undue pressure," according to the Associated Press, citing a report from the committee released Thursday.
Despite the recent release of damning documents, the committee described the FAA's certification process as "rigorous, robust and overseen by engineers, inspectors, test pilots and managers committed to the primacy of safety," noting that the FAA needed five years to finally certify the MAX.
According to the report, multiple aviation safety experts agreed that the FAA's decision to certify the MAX as an update to previous generation 737s instead of treating it as a new type of aircraft had no effect on its safety conditions. "Each said a new TC (aircraft type certificate) would not have produced more rigorous scrutiny of the 737 MAX 8 and would not have produced a safer airplane," the report stated via the AP.
Ultimately, the committee's purpose was to gain a better insight into the FAA's process in an effort to improve future efforts rather than find a scapegoat for the two crashes, which killed a combined 346 people.
"The committee's approach was collaborative, not investigatory," the report stated. "Its mandate was to collect and analyze information, not find fault."
While airlines continue to extend 737 MAX flight suspension into the summer, the committee called U.S. commercial aviation a "model of safety efficiency and innovation across the world." The U.S. air carrier fatality rate was just 0.6 per 100 million in the fiscal year 2019, according to the report.
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