Plane truths

Even as investigations into the March 10 crash of a Boeing 737 MAX8 aircraft operated by Ethiopian Airlines continue, the aircraft has now been grounded in most parts of the world including in the US, its country of manufacture. This followed initial evidence of similarities between the Ethiopian Airlines crash and the crash of a Boeing 737 MAX8 aircraft operated by Lion Air in Indonesia in October last year. Meanwhile, a damning report in The Seattle Times details the manner in which aircraft maker Boeing and the US aviation regulator Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certified the aircraft’s suspect flight control system called MCAS (Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System). According to the report, the FAA managers pushed their engineers to delegate assessing the safety of the aircraft to Boeing itself and to speedily approve the resulting analysis. The safety analysis report delivered by Boeing to the FAA — used to certify the safety of the plane — had several crucial flaws. These major lapses on the part of the FAA and Boeing seem to have played a role in the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air flights. That the FAA — counted among the foremost global aviation regulators — allows an aircraft manufacturer to assess key safety aspects of its own aircraft is appalling. The haste to approve the analysis done by Boeing could have been driven, at least in part, by the motivation to let the US manufacturer catch up with its rival, the Europe-based Airbus.

The episode also shines a spotlight on the largely duopolistic nature of the global aircraft industry — with giants Boeing and Airbus in a long-running intense dogfight to dominate the airspace. This race for dominance now seems to have led to lapses on aircraft safety. Other aircraft manufacturers such as Canada-based Bombardier and Brazil-based Embraer have been scaling up but are still relatively quite small in size. Among others, the Chinese and the Russians have also got into aircraft manufacturing. Even so, most planes ordered across the globe, including in India, are from Boeing and Airbus.

For India, there are important takeaways. One, the regulator DGCA should enhance capacity and tighten the screws to independently and rigorously assess and certify foreign-made aircraft. Relying on reputations of hitherto storied foreign regulators is fraught with risk. Also, being among the fastest growing major aviation markets in the world, India must shake off past setbacks, and step on the gas to develop civilian aircraft on an industrial scale. This can be a real Make-in-India initiative with a host of positive, long-term spin-offs. Developing components for foreign-made aircraft is not enough.