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Ethiopian Airlines Crash Highlights FAA’s Diminished Clout on World Stage - The Wall Street Journal

The crash site of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in Bishoftu, Ethiopia, on Monday, a day after all 157 people aboard the aircraft were killed.
The crash site of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in Bishoftu, Ethiopia, on Monday, a day after all 157 people aboard the aircraft were killed. Photo: michael tewelde/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Two fatal crashes of Boeing Co. 737 MAX jets less than five months apart diminished the standing of the Federal Aviation Administration even in the eyes of some supporters, since the agency certified the model as safe.

But a potentially bigger blow to the FAA’s stature came as countries around the world grounded the plane without waiting for the U.S. to act, even though the FAA is Boeing’s regulator and has been widely viewed as the global standard setter in aviation safety.

Regardless of what additional data comes out, industry officials and safety experts say the agency’s actions have been perceived by many around the globe as slow and reactive. The longer-term impact, and the FAA’s ability to regain clout, will depend on how the probes evolve.

After the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on Sunday, dozens of countries—including longtime safety partners Canada, the U.K. and Australia—unilaterally suspended 737 MAX flights. The FAA vowed to avoid such a step unless it found more verified data to support action.

On Wednesday, the agency formally ordered the planes grounded, saying new information it received just hours before showed the two crashes bore a greater resemblance than investigators previously could demonstrate.

The FAA didn’t anticipate—and critics say failed to respond swiftly enough—to the intense pressure building overseas.

The FAA is grounding the entire Boeing 737 MAX fleet, a day after the agency said the planes were safe to fly. The U.S. ban comes as more nations suspended flights of the jets following the fatal Ethiopian Airlines crash. WSJ's Robert Wall explains the FAA's reversal. Photo: Getty

“Boeing and the FAA have been considered the gold standard for safety world-wide,” said Jim Hall, a former chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board who has butted heads with the FAA over the years. “But we are putting that at risk.”

The agency’s diminished clout was partly reflected in its unsuccessful, behind-the-scenes push in recent days to have black box recorders recovered from the wreckage of Flight 302 shipped to the U.S. to be downloaded.

That would be normal procedure because the aircraft was built in the U.S. and the NTSB is participating in the probe. But according to people familiar with the details, the FAA’s leadership failed to persuade Ethiopian government officials that the U.S. would be an impartial arbiter of facts. The recorders are being sent to France for analysis.

Before the grounding decision, an FAA spokesman said “the U.S. is the recognized gold standard of aviation safety based on constant oversight and the scrupulous examination of data. The FAA will continue this leadership and apply the same proven approach that has led to the safest period in U.S. aviation history.”

Briefing reporters on the decision Wednesday, acting FAA administrator Daniel Elwell reiterated the agency had waited for authoritative information. “That data coalesced today” he said, “and we made the call.”

Mr. Elwell, who served previous stints at the agency and as a senior adviser to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, has been running the FAA since early 2017, because the White House hasn’t nominated a permanent chief.

The FAA as recently as Tuesday said its review of available information showed “no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft.“ The agency reiterated that if its assessment provides information to support additional moves, “the FAA will take immediate and appropriate action.”

Meanwhile, countries such as China and Singapore, which spent decades emulating the FAA and patterned many of their safety initiatives after U.S. programs, grounded the aircraft without waiting for signals or action from Washington. China, which has been flexing its clout in international air-safety circles as a growing aviation power, was the first to take action against Boeing’s jets. Chinese officials years ago expressed misgivings about some aspects of the FAA’s certification process, according to a former FAA official with extensive international experience. On Wednesday, Mr. Elwell said the agency stood completely behind the plane’s certification.

Beijing brought its rising influence to bear in a successful campaign in 2015 to have Fang Liu, a Chinese air-safety expert, named as secretary-general of the U.N.’s civil aviation arm.

Beijing’s assertiveness also appears to reflect the country’s increasing importance as a prime market for commercial aircraft from both Boeing and European rival Airbus SE .

Veteran industry officials, former high-ranking FAA appointees and outside safety experts said the agency was following traditional rules. U.S. regulators couldn’t initially point to a specific “unsafe condition”—or particular system or component—that required grounding the planes. According to this line of argument, before Wednesday, FAA officials would have been hard pressed to justify determining the fleet wasn’t airworthy.

Based on prior accident investigations and decades of regulatory and legal precedent, the FAA’s practice has been to ground aircraft only when a clearly unsafe condition is revealed and there isn’t any other feasible way to alleviate the hazard.

FAA supporters say that is what happened in 2013, when the FAA blindsided Boeing by temporarily grounding its flagship 787 Dreamliners because of fire-prone lithium batteries. The agency received criticism from company and industry officials, but the planes remained out of service for months until a fix was developed and verified.

In the wake of the Lion Air crash, the FAA signaled it was planning to mandate fixes to a flight-control feature that investigators have said played a major role. But at the time, the agency agreed with Boeing that the suspect system didn’t pose an imminent hazard requiring pulling the planes out of service.

Some industry and former FAA officials believe overseas governments acted based on public pressure, rather than on careful analysis. “The current situation outside the U.S. is sheer chaos,” according to a veteran air-safety expert with decades of experience in the U.S. and overseas. “Emotions and political pressure are driving decisions,” he said, adding that “government officials in other countries face the stark choice of being forced to stare down an angry mob, or have the FAA’s back.”

Mr. Hall, the former NTSB chairman, said he believed it would have been more responsible for Boeing and the FAA to temporarily ground the aircraft until more information was available. The fundamental question, he asserted, is “if it happened on U.S. soil, what would the FAA have done?”

Others, including former FAA chief Randy Babbitt, praised Mr. Elwell’s team for remaining prudent.

“Civil aviation authorities ought to base their decisions on evidence and facts, not conjecture,” said Kenneth Quinn, a former high-ranking U.S. aviation regulator with broad international experience who now runs the global aviation practice of the law firm of Baker McKenzie LLP. “We need to let the investigators do their jobs, free from political or media pressure,” Mr. Quinn said before the grounding.

David L. Mayer, who was managing director of the NTSB during the Dreamliner episode, said the FAA was privy to enormous amounts of data supporting the determination that the plane was safe. But he said the latest information persuaded him to support the 737 MAX grounding. “Yesterday they were facing a more difficult decision than they were facing today,” he said.

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

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