FAA chief meets Boeing officials, tries out Max simulator

The nation's top aviation regulator tested new flight-control software for the Boeing 737 Max in a simulator on Thursday and gave it a favourable review.

New Federal Aviation Administration chief Stephen Dickson, who is a pilot, also toured the Max assembly line near Seattle and met with senior Boeing officials.

The Max has been grounded since March after two crashes killed 346 people.

Boeing hopes the FAA will allow it to fly again in the next couple months.

But Dickson said his agency has no timetable for reviewing changes that Boeing is making to the plane.

Boeing has not yet submitted its safety analysis of the changes. Dickson said he has seen draft materials that still need more work. He did not provide details.

The FAA's reputation was damaged by revelations it didn't take part in determining the safety of a key flight-control system called MCAS before certifying the Max for flight in 2017.

The system was implicated in both crashes, one off the coast of Indonesia last October, the other in Ethiopia in March.

Dickson, a former Air Force fighter pilot who flew earlier versions of the 737 during a long career at Delta Air Lines, had a session in a flight simulator to test changes Boeing has made to MCAS making it less powerful and easier for pilots to control.

After practicing simulations of normal flights, he planned to go back in the simulator and test failure situations later Thursday.

"It handles like a 737," he told The Associated Press. "The airplane handles very well from everything I can tell."
However, at Dickson's Senate confirmation hearing in May, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called it "safety on the cheap" and self-policing. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said bureaucrats tend to become captives of industries they oversee, and he implored the mild-mannered Dickson, "Be pissed off that 346 people died."
"It makes the FAA a more effective regulator, and it makes the manufacturer safer because we're able to share data in real time."