European regulator plans its own test flights of Boeing 737 MAX

Europe’s aviation regulator will send its own test pilots and engineers to fly forthcoming certification flight tests of Boeing’s newly modified 737 MAX, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said Tuesday. In addition, EASA said it favours a design that takes readings from three independent Angle of Attack sensors rather than the two-sensor system in Boeing’s proposed upgrade to the MAX. The European agency’s stance underscores how badly the two deadly MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia have disrupted the harmony in international aviation that previously granted primacy to the US FAA. In little-noted comments at the European Parliament last week, the French executive director of EASA, Patrick Ky, had pointed words for his American counterparts. “The FAA is in a very difficult situation,” said Ky. “When they will say, this (airplane) is good to go, it’s very likely that international authorities will want a second opinion, or a third opinion. That was not the case one year ago. I think that’s going to be a very strong change in the overall worldwide hierarchy or relationship between the different authorities.” Although EASA said it’s not mandating how Boeing must address its concern over the Angle of Attack system redesign, Tuesday’s declaration that it would prefer a three-sensor system was a more specific critique than that laid out in Ky’s slide presentation last week, which said Boeing had “still no appropriate response to Angle of Attack integrity issues.”<br/>