Relatives of passengers killed in Boeing crash protest in DC

Families of the passengers who died in one of the Boeing 737 Max crashes lobbied Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao on Tuesday to slow what they consider a rush to let the plane fly again. Two of the relatives who took part in the two-hour meeting in Washington said Chao promised that the government will take as long as necessary to ensure that the plane is safe but stopped short of agreeing to an entirely new, top-to-bottom review. A spokesman for Chao said the department and the FAA have taken unprecedented steps to understand the accidents and the FAA's certification of the plane in 2017. One of those steps, he said, included Chao's appointment of a special committee to review the FAA's process of certifying planes. After the meeting, several dozen relatives held a vigil on the steps of the DoT headquarters to mark the six-month anniversary of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302. They carried pictures of many of the 157 people who died. Another 189 died in the October 2018 crash of a Max jet operated by Indonesia's Lion Air. A group of 11 family members asked Chao to direct the FAA to conduct a completely new review of the Max instead of mainly examining changes Boeing made to flight-control software called MCAS, which was implicated in both crashes. FAA is part of her department. Chao did not commit to full re-certification but said the FAA will wait for recommendations from a technical review board before it lets the plane fly, according to a department spokesman. The department is also being advised by a review panel that includes international regulators and by the special committee that Chao appointed, but the FAA won't wait for those reports before deciding whether to approve the Max for flight, the spokesman said.<br/>