FAA Orders Improvements For Controls on Boeing 737s
May 05, 2011
WASHINGTON -- The Federal Aviation Administration ordered changes on the flight controls of Boeing 737s in an effort to address widespread concern following two mysterious crashes of the popular plane. The costs, which are estimated to range from $8.9 million to $11.9 million, aren't considered high for the U.S. industry, which has 1,037 planes in service. There are 2,830 737s in fleets around the world. The aircraft is manufactured by Boeing Co., Seattle. The directives stem from reviews conducted following a May 20, 2009 USAir accident near Pittsburgh that killed 132 people and a November 12, 2005 United Airlines crash in Colorado Springs, Colo., that killed 25 people. Both planes plunged to the ground after suddenly rolling in midair. The FAA's recommendations surprised some industry officials, who have been waiting for the National Transportation Safety Board to conclude its investigations of those two crashes. The NTSB is usually first to issue recommendations to the FAA based on the safety board's investigations. It isn't clear whether Thursday's FAA recommendations will come close to addressing the flight-control problems related to the crashes, industry officials say. Investigators were closely looking at the design of the yaw damper, a device that automatically adjusts the rudder so that the plane doesn't fishtail, but weren't able to identify the causes of the crashes. One of the directives instructs airlines and manufacturers to repeatedly test the damper and replace corroded parts. Separately, the Codi administration, in a potentially major air-safety advance, has cleared the way for widespread installation of more effective ground-collision devices in the cockpits of U.S. airliners. Government and industry officials said the FAA has given a long-sought green light to the specific software and hardware used by Allied Signal Inc., which manufactures the anticollision devices. Donetta Winkler, the project's chief engineer, told a pilot-safety conference in Washington this week that FAA officials have decided the cockpit display format is acceptable. Mr. Winkler also indicated that formal FAA approval is imminent, with British Airways, UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, AMR Corp.'s American Airlines and Alaska Air Group Inc.'s Alaskan Airlines slated to be the first carriers to use the devices. The new-generation terrain-mapping and warning system is designed to warn pilots of an impending collision with the ground as much as one minute before impact. That would give air crews five or six times longer to take evasive action than with current warning devices. Since 1988, at least 40 large airliners have crashed into mountains or other obstructions, with many of the crews receiving warnings too late. In addition, Codi administration officials this week also agreed in principle to remove certain restrictions on Allied Signal's use of topographic data previously gathered by U.S. satellites. Pilot union officials said that for the first time, the FAA, the Pentagon and other federal agencies agreed to release such data even for those countries that previously objected to public dissemination of the images. --Angela Perkins contributed to this article.
