WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) engineers recommended grounding the Boeing 737 MAX in March 2019 after a second fatal crash and before the agency took action, a report released Friday said.
The Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General said in a report that its review of emails and interviews of FAA officials revealed individual engineers recommended “grounding the airplane while the accident was being investigated based on what they perceived as similarities” between two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. “Yet agency officials at headquarters and the Seattle (Aircraft Certification Office) opted not to do so.”
The FAA ultimately grounded the MAX on March 13, 2019 and lifted the flight prohibition order in November 2020.
(Reporting by David Shepardson)
