Boeing hires temporary workers to prepare 737 Max to fly again

Lindsey Wasson / Reuters

• Boeing has announced plans to hire hundreds of temporary workers to help ground the 737 Max aircraft ready to fly when the FAA lifts its restrictions on the jet plane.
• Boeing has announced its intention to submit to the FAA a proposed fix for the aircraft in difficulty in September and, barring any complications, it should be approved by the beginning of November.
• Parents of an accident victim of the 737 Max, however, felt that the job offers suggested that Boeing was too confident that his proposal would be approved, and wondered if the fix would be properly verified by the FAA.

• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

Boeing said Tuesday it was considering recruiting additional staff and recruiting "a few hundred" temporary employees to help store the 737 Max in storage once the FAA has suspended operations.

The new recruits will be based at Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake, Washington, where Boeing holds the majority of the 737 Max aircraft that were completed but stranded.

The Boeing 737 Max has been blocked by global regulators since March: a 737 Max operating an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed six minutes after takeoff, the second fatal crash in five months. The incidents were attributed to an automated system designed to prevent the aircraft from stalling, but which was activated by mistake.

Since many of the jets will have been stored for at least six months at the time of the grounding, they will require extensive maintenance checks and test flights.

Boeing's CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, said the planner should submit his fix to the Federal Aviation Administration in September, and predicts that the aircraft will be approved for a new entry into service in early November.

However, some family members of the victims of the accident were alarmed to learn from reports that Boeing was preparing plans to get the aircraft back into service.

Read more: "They would have no way to survive": The mother and brother of a Boeing 737 Max victim claim FAA justice

Associated press

A "monetary decision" and not "human"

Nadia Milleron – whose 24-year-old daughter Samya was killed in the second accident while on her way to work – said the lack of transparency on the part of the FAA worried her, as well as her family, that the hotfix is ​​not being examined because carefully as possible.

Although Boeing's job offers suggest that, if her timetable was ending, he could hire aircraft quickly, she and her family felt that they were suggesting that Boeing and the FAA had reached conclusions before considering the hotfix.

"It's like they knew each other, as they talked to each other all the time," Milleron said. "Many people in the FAA are close to Boeing."

"I do not know if it's as presumptuous as the indication that Boeing and the FAA have no intention of waiting for all investigations to be completed," said Michael Stumo, the Samya's father. "Rather than presumptuous, it seems like rushing and steaming rather than for safety."

Read more: A Boeing 737 Max panel reportedly asked the FAA to completely review the way it certifies new aircraft

Stumo and Milleron argued that the FAA require pilots to undergo simulator training before they can fly Max for commercial purposes, although recent reports suggest that the FAA plans to say that simulator training is unnecessary.

They also criticized the agency for its opacity throughout the investigation of the crash and the aircraft certification process.

"Every decision they take now to fly this plane is simply a financial decision," said Milleron. "It's not, it's not a human decision."

"I would like to know if people who have left the only point of failure in the plane are still the ones who make the decisions on the fix," added Stumo.

Read more: Photos show how Boeing's 737 Max aircraft piled up at the company's Seattle factory

Preliminary reports on the two accidents – Lion Air Flight 610 and Flight 302 of Ethiopian Airlines – indicate that an automated system was mistakenly engaged and forced the aircraft nose to point down because of a problem of system software design. The pilots could not regain control of the plane. The system was engaged because it could be activated by a single sensor reading. In both accidents, the sensors are suspected of being out of order, they sent erroneous data to the flight computer and, without redundant verification, triggered the automated system.

The automated system, the Manning Enhancement System (MCAS), was designed to compensate for the fact that the 737 Max's engines are more powerful than those of previous generations. Large engines could tip the nose of the plane, resulting in a stall. In this case, the MCAS could automatically point the nose down to cancel the effect of engine size.