Boeing Resumes Self-Certification for Airworthiness

Minuteman

Minuteman

Shipoaster
tl;dr this is not hugely controversial unless you have strong views that the FAA should not delegate any certification, or have concerns about regulatory capture (hello).

I believe this is only for airworthiness certs on individual production examples. It turns out the Alaska plug door event happened on an aircraft that was subject to FAA sign-off. That has a few implications: a) that Boeing and the FAA's inspection capabilities are comparable, and b) the process at the time was so massive and opaque that anyone's standards were insufficient.

E.g., one system for planning and tracking work, and a second, separate one for documenting for certification. That seems like nickel-shaving tech debt that contributed to massive errors that cost more than any capital investment or delays.

Short of a small army of auditors with proctoscopes, I don't see how any customer could have made an informed choice that would have deterred them from "give us more airframes now!!"

viewfromthewing.com

FAA Gives Boeing Back The Power To Declare New 737 MAX And 787 Jets Safe

Starting July 20, Boeing will again issue final airworthiness certificates for newly built 737 MAX and 787 aircraft—authority the FAA reserved after fatal crashes and production failures. The agency says eight months of alternating inspections produced comparable quality findings, while federal...
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Minuteman said:
tl;dr this is not hugely controversial unless you have strong views that the FAA should not delegate any certification, or have concerns about regulatory capture (hello).
Click to expand...

It's the latter that tends to raise an eyebrow with me (metaphorically since I can't physically do that) mainly because it seems to normalize across most industry sectors. If there was a more ironclad (and enforced) standard to prevent this kind of thing, even at the optics level, I'd have more faith. Like if, say, the administrator of an agency was barred from that role until he provided adequate documentation of divestiture from industry assets.

Yes, I'm crossing some parallel but related streams here.
 
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