US: Documents show safety concerns at Boeing before deadly crashes

One Boeing employee worried the 737 Max might be “vulnerable.” A company document said if pilots didn’t respond to a new automated system within seconds it would be “catastrophic.” A plan to include an alert for the system, known as MCAS, was considered but scrapped. The new revelations about how Boeing wrestled with the safety questions surrounding the new system on its best-selling plane came at a congressional hearing on Wednesday in Washington, adding to evidence that the company was aware of concerns about the plane’s safety before two crashes that left 346 people dead. Taken together with emails released this month showing that a top Boeing pilot was having trouble with the new system in the simulator before the plane was complete, the documents paint a fuller picture of Boeing employees’ developing and at times raising concerns about MCAS. The company, facing intense competitive pressure from its rival Airbus, ultimately determined the system was safe to install in the Max. And it continued to defend the safety of the plane after the accidents. The latest documents were made public at a hearing of the House transportation committee that lasted more than five hours. Committee members took turns grilling Boeing’s CE Dennis A. Muilenburg, interspersing calls for his resignation with slides depicting damning internal company documents questioning the safety of the automated system. In one partly redacted email from 2015, years before the plane was certified, a Boeing employee questioned whether the system was vulnerable to malfunctioning if a single sensor failed. Investigators believe that is what happened in both doomed flights. The new documents again raise the question of why Boeing installed MCAS in the Max after making it more powerful and less reliable. Story has more details of <br/>