Boeing woes show not going to max on safety is certifiable

The many incidents involving Boeing aircraft over the past few years have understandably sparked safety concerns, especially among passengers.

However, they should be relieved to learn that there is a robust certification system in place that ensures a high level of safety for civil aviation.

In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration, along with its partners, coordinates with airlines to ensure that all incoming aircraft are safe.

As America is a big market for most commercial carriers, FAA certification can be regarded as a robust and effective assurance system for airworthiness.

Airworthiness generally covers two areas: type certification and continuous airworthiness.

Aircraft companies submit the design and manufacturing details for each type of aircraft, ensuring that the specifications, drawings and design data meet the high standards of safety conforming in all aspects to type certification, which ensures that each aircraft retains all the original characteristics upon which it was designed.

Continuous airworthiness ensures that an aircraft must be in a well-maintained state.

Generally speaking, its body, wings and moving parts must be in a workable condition without appreciable wear and tear.

To ensure the highest standard of safety, aircraft owners and operators are not allowed to process their own certifications. All inspections must be performed by FAA or its authorized agents.

Such inspections must ensure that the equipment is fully operational and capable of operating to designed standards.

Maintenance procedures are reviewed to confirm full compliance with the original schedule. This is obviously a lot more stringent than certifications for road vehicles.

The airworthiness certificate must be displayed in the cockpit for inspection at all times.

The whole process is complex and involves a lot of professionals.

If all manufacturers and operators steadfastly follow the FAA certification process, there should be no safety concerns for passengers, as any discrepancies discovered would be picked up by the FAA, resulting in advisories being issued to aircraft operators to rectify any deviation or shortfall.

Unfortunately, manufacturers sometimes embark on modifications that may improve an aircraft's performance but, for one reason or another, do not submit the modified design or manufacturing details for type approval.

A tragic instance of such a breach is the Boeing 737 Max aircraft.

Its larger diameter engines, installed for improved flight performance, required operational precautions as the distance between the axis of the propellers and the wings had been enlarged, which may affect aircraft stability under some conditions.

It appears that some details of these precautions, including some operational directives, were not fully disclosed to the FAA for further certification.

So when a fatal incident occurred with Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, which was operated using the aircraft, in March 2019, the FAA, following an investigation, grounded all Boeing 737 Max aircraft.

That came first with a continued airworthiness notification, followed by an emergency order a few days later.

There were a few other incidents with the 737 Max involving doors that came loose and other issues with components, but the FAA was able to quickly deal with them in a similar manner.

Such and other alleged discrepancies were also disclosed by whistleblowers who were employees or contractors of the manufacturer, but it is not clear how they were dealt with to ensure all known faults were rectified.

Streamlining manufacturing processes for cost efficiency is understandably a common practice in the commercial world.

That might be acceptable for consumer goods, as inferior products would just be discarded or returned by consumers and render the firm uncompetitive as part of a fair and open commercial process.

But for complex machinery, especially those whose operational failures could have catastrophic consequences, such as airplanes, railways and road vehicles, there can be no compromises on quality when so many lives are at stake.

That is why for such systems and machines, upon whose safe operations public safety is underpinned, there is a most stringent certification system in place to protect the public.

As passengers can't generally be expected to understand these technical details or choose the pilot or the aircraft they want, they can only rely on trustworthy third-party certification or assurance systems to protect their safety and well-being.

Veteran engineer Edmund Leung Kwong-ho casts an expert eye over

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