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In the middle of the Max’s development, two of the most seasoned engineers in the F.A.A.’s Boeing office left.
The engineers, who had a combined 50 years of experience, had joined the office at its creation, taking on responsibility for flight control systems, including MCAS. But they both grew frustrated with the work, which they saw as mostly paper pushing, according to two people with knowledge of the staff changes.
In their place, the F.A.A. appointed an engineer who had little experience in flight controls, and a new hire who had gotten his master’s degree three years earlier. People who worked with the two engineers said they seemed ill-equipped to identify any problems in a complex system like MCAS.
And Boeing played down the importance of MCAS from the outset.
An early review by the company didn’t consider the system risky, and it didn’t prompt additional scrutiny from the F.A.A. engineers, according to two agency officials. The review described a system that would activate only in rare situations, when a plane was making a sharp turn at high speeds.
The F.A.A. engineers who had been overseeing MCAS never received another safety assessment. As Boeing raced to finish the Max in 2016, agency managers gave the company the power to approve a batch of safety assessments — some of the most important documents in any certification. They believed the issues were low risk. ...
