Insight: Monday 23 November 2020: EASA to Approve MAX, with Differences

News:

EASA officials confirmed that the draft EASA directive will be published this week, enabling the return to service of the Boeing 737 MAX in Europe. A 30 day comment period will be required, which will likely put the final re-approval and go ahead in late December or early January.

Because the aircraft will require changes and pilots will need to be trained to a set of criteria from EASA which will differ from the FAA’s training program, it may be late in the first quarter 2021 before European airlines can resume widespread service with the MAX.

EASA is also likely to require additional changes to the MAX beyond those required by the FAA, but will not require that they be implemented before returning to service. Those required changes may have a one to two year period to be implemented to maintain airworthiness approvals.

The most significant change will be incorporation of a system called “synthetic airspeed” that is used to compare data between various sensors on an aircraft, much as a pilot would, to obtain a more accurate assessment of airspeed and aircraft angle of attack in the event a sensor fails. By comparing multiple instruments, the computer, much like a pilot would do, could conclude through comparative logic that one sensor must be out of order since the results are illogical, and ignore that failed sensor.  It would effectively provide a third “angle of attack” sensor for the computer, which could then choose the 2 out of 3 that agree rather than choose between 2 sensors, one of which is faulty.

Analysis:

There will be two major impacts from EASA veering away from the FAA and requiring additional safeguards for the MAX. The first is a breakdown in the legacy system of reciprocity between regulators. The process for certification of an aircraft in another jurisdiction after FAA certification has for years been a paperwork and fee process – essentially international regulators rubber-stamping the FAA process. That has now changed with EASA, and likely Transport Canada, requiring additional modifications to the MAX.

It will become more costly and time consuming for airframe manufacturers to certify future aircraft, and we expect that international representatives will join the FAA and work more closely with them on future aircraft. The Boeing 777-X will be the initial test for the “new normal” for certification.

The second element is that differing international requirements will result in different aircraft models approved for various countries. If you are a leasing company, do you add all of the global requirements into the aircraft you order to enable easy re-leasing, or do you simply comply with the particular requirements of a leasing customer’s country? What about resale and residual values? Will an EASA model MAX be worth more than a US model? The new requirements from international regulators have opened Pandora’s box, and the key question is how widespread the differences could become. Synthetic airspeed, which is used on all other Boeing airplanes, is not new, but implementation on the 737, whose design dates from the mid-1960s, may not be as easy for Boeing as it sounds.

Insight:

The FAA, and rightly so, has lost international leadership for failing in its oversight in the development of the MAX, and other regulators are now going their own way to ensure that the aircraft meets their own, as well as the FAA’s interpretations on safety. The leadership image the FAA earned over many decades has been lost due to bureaucratic incompetence and too cozy a relationship with Boeing that resulted in 346 lives that would not have been lost if the FAA had done its job.

This will impact every future aircraft developed by Boeing, beginning with the 777-X currently under development. While major differences are not expected between regulators because the 777 on which the 777-X is based was a more recent design, we do not expect international regulators to rubber stamp the FAA process of “grandfathering” old systems that may not meet current requirements, as was the case with the MAX. That could impact the cost and timing of new programs.

Will the FAA be able to effectively address its image problem when EASA and Transport Canada require additional changes beyond those specified by the FAA? With international regulators effectively stating that the airplane can be safer with additional modifications, will the FAA-Boeing relationship be scrutinized even more closely? The families of the victims will certainly ask why the FAA is not requiring additional modifications to ensure safety, and the safety of the MAX will create additional negative publicity for both the FAA and Boeing.

While it will be good for the industry to have the MAX back in service, US leadership in aerospace has suffered a damaging blow that will have long-lasting and significant effects. Both the FAA and Boeing failed, and will be paying for their errors for a long time.

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