Boeing and the U.S. government have “been cozy forever,” Jim Hall, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) from 1994 to 2001, told Yahoo Finance. Now the government is reportedly investigating Boeing.
And that partnership is now under scrutiny as the Chicago-based plane maker’s 737 Max 8 planes were grounded across the world after two fatal Max 8 crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia within the span of six months.
‘There is a conflict of interest’Boeing’s relationship with the federal government began with the company’s inception. It sold one of its first few planes to the U.S. Air Force. And through its existence, Boeing has been the biggest plane manufacturer in the U.S. Former Boeing safety engineer and airsafe.com creator Todd Curtis stressed to Yahoo Finance that “it was quite common for people to move from one side of the aviation world to the other. It's not uncommon to go between the federal government and the private industry.”In December, Trump named Patrick Shanahan — who served 31 years at Boeing managing the 787 Dreamliner passenger jet — as his acting defense secretary. In February, Boeing nominated Trump’s former U.S.
In the month of January 2019 alone, disclosures from the Federal Election Commission reveal that the company raised nearly $230,000 — the majority going to various campaigns across the state for their inaugural committee, etc. In 2005, the FAA changed the process of selecting who was designated to certify if a new aircraft met government safety standards. The rule basically allowed manufacturers — like Boeing, not the FAA — to chose their own employees to certify their own planes.
Multiple experts explained to Yahoo Finance that Boeing’s safety officers knew their profession best and that the time-strapped FAA agents could outsource some of their inspections and retain a more supervisory role.
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