In the days after the first crash of Boeing’s 737 Max, engineers at the FAA came to a troubling realisation: They didn’t fully understand the automated system that helped send the plane into a nose-dive, killing everyone on board. Engineers at the agency scoured their files for information about the system designed to help avoid stalls. They didn’t find much. Regulators had never independently assessed the risks of the dangerous software known as MCAS when they approved the plane in 2017. More than a dozen current and former employees at the FAA and Boeing who spoke with The New York Times described a broken regulatory process that effectively neutered the oversight authority of the agency. The regulator had been passing off routine tasks to manufacturers for years. <br/>
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As US govt test pilots ran through dozens of flight scenarios on the Boeing 737 Max in recent weeks, a potential failure got their attention. The plane’s flight computer tried to push the aircraft’s nose down repeatedly during a simulator run, prompted by a stream of erroneous flight data. The FAA pilot concluded commercial pilots might not have time to react and avoid a tragedy in a real plane. That flaw -- the latest discovered on the family of jets involved in 2 fatal crashes since October triggered by a different failure that pushed their noses down -- was revealed by FAA last month. It threw new uncertainty on the return to flight of the company’s best-selling model and sent its engineers scrambling for a fix. “We are confident that is a software update, not a hardware update,” Boeing CE Dennis Muilenburg said Wednesday. <br/>
The British aerospace industry has stepped up plans for a Brexit exodus from the UK aviation regulator, as a second deadline for the UK leaving the EU without a deal looms. More than 600 British aerospace firms have now applied to be regulated in Europe as third-country parties under a scheme for companies seeking access to the single market in case of a no-deal Brexit. The scheme opened in October. The UK’s CAA gives regulatory approval for British-made parts to be used throughout the EU, but that ability will lapse if the UK leaves without a deal. The number of applications by UK firms for EU authorisation to cover themselves for a no-deal Brexit has tripled between December and July. The aerospace lobby group ADS estimates that about 800 companies will eventually need new regulatory arrangements under a no-deal Brexit. <br/>
A new 7-lane security checkpoint at Frankfurt Airport uses state-of-the-art screening technology to reduce passenger wait times, according to airport operator Fraport. The checkpoint, a joint effort of Fraport and the German Federal Police, is housed in a purpose-built extension to Concourse A at Terminal 1. The new control lane configuration allows more passengers to present hand baggage for screening, and travellers can pass slower passengers in the same lane, Fraport said. The lanes also provide more space for analysing X-rays and performing manual checks, which are conducted by security service companies on behalf of the Federal Police. “Thanks to the new control lanes, considerably more passengers can now pass through security control in Concourse A, resulting in shorter waiting times,” Fraport CE Schulte said. <br/>