Boeing and FAA: Safety protocol is flawed

Re: “FAA response preserves Boeing’s big role in certifying its own planes,” [May 20, Northwest]: It is obvious the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) must depend on manufacturers like Boeing to provide the details to prove new plane designs are safe. But one aspect is almost completely overlooked.

Boeing does not have its own probabilistic safety requirements. Those come from the FAA. One of those requirements is seriously flawed because events identified as “Major Failure Conditions” are allowed to occur once every hundred thousand flight hours.

There isn’t any recognition at all that when flight crews are unable to cope with those failure conditions, they can develop into catastrophic accidents. As a (retired) 34-year veteran of Boeing, I remind them their focus should be on saving lives.

Ted W. Yellman, Bellevue

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