Pilots repeatedly voiced safety concerns about the Boeing 737 Max 8 to federal authorities, with one captain calling the flight manual “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient” several months before Sunday’s Ethiopian Air crash that killed 157 people.
According to Dallas Morning news, five complaints about the Boeing model in a federal database where pilots can voluntarily report about aviation incidents without fear of repercussions.
The complaints are about the safety mechanism cited in Preliminary reports about an October Boeing 737 Max 8 crash in Indonesia that killed 189.
The disclosures found by The News reference problems with an autopilot system, and they all occurred during the ascent after takeoff. Many mentioned the plane suddenly nosing down. While records show these flights occurred in October and November, the airlines the pilots were flying for is redacted from the database.
Records show that a captain who flies the Max 8 complained in November that it was “unconscionable” that the company and federal authorities allowed pilots to fly the planes without adequate training or fully disclosing information about how its systems were different from those on previous 737 models.
The captain’s complaint was logged after the FAA released an emergency airworthiness directive about the Boeing 737 Max 8 in response to the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia.
An FAA spokesman said the reports found by The News were filed directly to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which serves as a neutral third party for reporting purposes.
Tuesday evening, the FAA issued a statement from acting Administrator Daniel K. Elwell saying that the agency “continues to review extensively all available data and aggregate safety performance from operators and pilots of the Boeing 737 MAX.”
“Thus far, our review shows no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft. Nor have other civil aviation authorities provided data to us that would warrant action,” the statement said.
A federal audit in 2014 said that the FAA does not collect and analyze its voluntary disclosure reporting in a way that would effectively identify national safety risks.