Yesterday FlyersRights urged the Senate Commerce Committee to back legislation repealing the aircraft certification program known as ODA (organizational delegation authority) that allows Boeing employees and other aircraft makers to certify planes as safe with minimal FAA oversight.
“The core of aircraft certification reform must be a return to the pre-2005 system. All aircraft safety certification experts must be technically competent, selected and under the supervision of the FAA, not Boeing or other plane makers. The present system is both corrupt and incompetent. Boeing’s own engineers have bragged about deceiving the FAA with ‘Jedi mind tricks’ while deriding FAA safety personnel as ‘dogs watching TV’”, noted Paul Hudson, a longtime member of the FAA Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee and president of FlyersRights.org, the leading airline passenger organization.
About 1500 Boeing employees chosen and supervised by Boeing managers approved the Boeing 737 MAX with undisclosed and deadly software used to cover up an unstable design. This caused two crashes with 346 deaths since 2018.
Since March 2019, all 800 MAX planes have been grounded, production halted, and Boeing unable to receive FAA and international regulator approval to unground. The MAX safety debacle has placed Boeing in financial crisis, US aviation safety regulation under a cloud, threatening millions of US jobs and the leading US goods export.
The FAA and Boeing while claiming “transparency” have also refused to release the technical details of the Boeing MAX proposed fix to outside experts.
