‘We’re going to ground the plane’: How Boeing’s Max was parked

For days after the second fatal crash of a Boeing 737 Max last year, one nation after another halted flights on the beleaguered jetliner. But officials in the US held out, saying they needed hard evidence linking the two disasters to a common cause before grounding Boeing’s best-selling jet. Early on the third day, that evidence arrived from Boeing itself. One of the manufacturer’s top safety officials called the US FAA’s chief of safety, Ali Bahrami on the morning of March 13, 2019, according to documents released by investigators for the House of Representatives that reveal undisclosed details on the jet’s grounding. Satellite data of the crash in Ethiopia had been decoded the night before and showed similarities with a Max crash in the Java Sea months earlier, Bahrami said the Boeing official told him. Physical evidence from the scene also bolstered the linkage, he was told. The crashes and subsequent investigations have cost Boeing billions of dollars, spawned a criminal probe and tarnished the reputations of both the company and FAA. Regulators are poised to restore the jet to service later this year after mandating changes to a flight control system that went haywire, contributing to the crashes that killed 346. On that day in 2019, Bahrami abruptly ended the call with Elizabeth Pasztor, Boeing’s then-vice president for safety in its commercial airplanes division, and rushed to the office of the FAA’s then-acting Administrator Daniel Elwell. Bahrami said he recommended a halt to all Max flights and Elwell agreed. “Then I immediately called Boeing and let them know, ‘We’re going to ground the fleet,’” Bahrami said. Story has full details.<br/>