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 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 of the jet that has been grounded worldwide.
A spokesman for Chao said the department and the Federal Aviation Administration 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.
Independent of the FAA, the European Aviation Safety Agency said Tuesday that it is examining whether Boeing’s use of two angle-of-attack sensors is sufficient for safety; Airbus and other manufacturers have used three or more to ensure redundancy.
After the meeting, several dozen relatives held a vigil on the steps of the Transportation Department headquarters in Washington to mark six months since 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.
The group of 11 family members who met with Chao want the FAA to conduct a completely new review of the Max instead of mainly examining changes Boeing made to flight-control software that was implicated in both crashes.
They also want pilots to train on flight simulators before they fly the plane. Boeing, which wants to avoid further delays in bringing the plane back, believes that computer training is adequate for now, with simulator sessions later.
The attendees said Chao pointed to the small number of Max simulators, which makes it less likely that the government would require simulator training before the Max reenters service.
For about half the meeting, Chao and several deputies listened to family members describe the passengers who died in the Ethiopian crash.
“It was very emotional,” said Paul Njoroge, whose wife, three young children and mother-in-law died in the crash.
The relatives are planning their next steps.
“We are not going to away until the correct processes are being followed in ungrounding the plane, if it’s ever ungrounded,” Njoroge said.
Bloomberg News contributed.
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