Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer, announced that it has withdrawn from the panel set up by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to review Boeing’s safety processes and their impact on the American manufacturer’s safety culture. The panel was created in response to the two 737 MAX crash tragedies in recent years that killed 346 people.
As Portal reports, James Tidball, head of certification at Airbus Americas, was among those named by the FAA. Airbus emphasized Tidball’s impartiality when it comes to safety, but as the panel’s focus is on a competing manufacturer, it decided to opt out of this working group.
As a result, the panel was left with professor and aerospace engineer Javier de Luis, whose sister died in a MAX accident, as well as experts from NASA, FAA, unions, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines, GE Aviation and FedEx.Express .
He has nine months to complete the review and make conclusions and recommendations that Congress required through a 2020 law to reform the way the FAA certifies new aircraft.
A 2020 report by the U.S. House of Representatives described the 2018 and 2019 MAX accidents as a result of flawed technical assumptions by Boeing engineers, a lack of transparency by Boeing management, and insufficient oversight by the FAA. This led to a series of actions that the manufacturer had to take to clean up its internal culture and reduce the risk of new accidents.