Prime Pork

Tucked away in the bloated and controversial 2023 omnibus appropriations bill is language waiving the looming Congressional deadline for safety upgrades to Boeing’s 737 MAX-7 and MAX-10 jets. If signed into law, the bill will render subject aircraft eligible for FAA certification without changes to aspects of their crew-alerting systems ostensibly mandated by 2020’s Aircraft Certification, Safety and Accountability Act.

Boeing management, in the wake of said act’s ratification, artfully pressured Congress, warning that both the MAX-7 and MAX-10 programs faced cancellation were they not certified prior to the legislation’s effective date. That Congress acceded to Boeing’s posturing is evident. Lawmakers did, however, salt the omnibus bill with a provision requiring the extant MAX-8 and MAX-9 fleets to be retrofitted with a pair of flight-control system improvements indigenous to the MAX-10.

The first enhancement provides a third Angle-Of-Attack (AOA) input into the MAX-jets’ flight computer. The additional input would be a virtual cross-check calculated by the aircraft’s flight computer from a variety of sensors and compared to AOA values measured by the MAX’s two physical AOA vanes.

The second enhancement entails the installation of a cockpit switch by which pilots could still erroneous stick-shaker activations.

Past, highly-publicized 737-MAX accidents have been attributed to both flight-control systems overly-dependent on a single angle-of-attack sensor, and false stick-shaker activations.

Within three-years of the 737 MAX-10’s certification, all 737 MAX variants operating in U.S. airspace must be retrofitted with the AOA and stick-shaker upgrades—so specifies the 2023 appropriations bill. What’s more, Boeing will bear the costs associated with the upgrades.

European and Canadian authorities have made clear their intentions to mandate likewise.

Boeing’s MAX-7 and MAX-10 orderbooks reportedly bulge with approximately one-thousand firm purchase commitments worth an estimated $50-billion. Notwithstanding record 787 Dreamliner sales, cancellation of such a windfall of orders would bode poorly for Boeing, its shareholders, and the company’s 141,582 employees.

FMI: www.boeing.com