re: US Pilots reporting the 737 MAX 8 tilting down after turning autopilot on

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Easy fix; just have pilots fly the planes instead of drinking tea and getting bjs from hot flight attendants.

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They are opperating everywhere though. I have been on a few out of Dallas recently.

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2 reported Occurences.

I cant imagine how many times this has happened in the US where a US pilot might be afraid to say something

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Someone at Boeing is buddy buddy with someone at the FAA.

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With more countries grounding Boeing jets and with lawmakers, aviation workers, and consumers calling on the United States to do the same, the head of the aerospace giant on Tuesday made a personal appeal to President Trump.

Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg, called from Chicago and expressed to Mr. Trump his confidence in the safety of the 737 Max 8 jets, according to two people briefed on the conversation. Two of the planes flown by overseas carriers have crashed in recent months in similar accidents.

Boeing’s relationship with Mr. Trump has not always been smooth, however. Shortly after becoming president-elect, Mr. Trump assailed Boeing for the estimated cost of its program to build new Air Force One planes, which provide mobile command centers for the president . . . A couple of weeks later, Mr. Muilenburg visited Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., to try to smooth things over . . . Weeks after the conversation, Boeing donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee.

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For decades, the F.A.A. has used a network of outside experts, known as F.A.A. designees, to certify that aircraft meet safety standards. In 2005, the regulator shifted its approach for how it delegated authority outside the agency, creating a new program through which aircraft manufacturers like Boeing could choose their own employees to be the designees and help certify their planes.

The program is intended to help the F.A.A. stretch its limited resources, while also benefiting plane makers who are eager to avoid delays in the certification process.

The regulator maintains offices inside Boeing’s factories, including those in Renton, Wash., and in Charleston, S.C. “I’ve raised this concern in the past, about people who go to work at the Boeing plant who work for the F.A.A.,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon and the chairman of the House transportation committee. “How much scrutiny are they applying, and could they be influenced?”

“It’s a very cozy relationship,” said Jim Hall, the former head of the National Transportation Safety Board. “The manufacturer essentially becomes both the manufacturer and the regulator, because of the lack of the ability of government to do the job.”

At a congressional hearing in 2015, a Boeing executive described the arrangement as effectively having an “arm of the F.A.A. within the Boeing Company,” and said 1,000 employees were part of the program.

The regulatory policy of allowing manufacturers to essentially sign off on the safety of their own products has drawn criticism in the past. In 2011, a report from the Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General found that the “F.A.A. has significantly reduced its role in approving individuals who perform work on F.A.A.’s behalf by further delegating this approval to private companies.”

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US officials say the recent government shutdown played a part in the delay of Boeing's software update for its 737 Max aircraft, which has been grounded by airlines and countries after two deadly accidents in the past five months, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Boeing announced Monday it had been working on a software fix for the 737 Max aircraft over "the past several months and in the aftermath" of Lion Air Flight 610 that went down in late October over the Java Sea off Indonesia

Boeing, which said it was working with the Federal Aviation Administration "on development, planning and certification of the software enhancement," said the fix will be on 737 Max planes no later than April.

But the company's software update had initially been expected in early January, the Journal reported.

Citing people familiar with the details, the Journal reported that discussions between the FAA and Boeing about the software fix dragged on, in part because of "differences of opinion about technical and engineering issues."

Boeing and FAA officials also couldn't agree on how extensive the software enhancement should be, the newspaper reported. US officials also said the recent government shutdown, the longest in US history, delayed work on the update for five weeks, the Journal noted.

The FAA was one of the agencies affected by the government shutdown, which began on December 22 and spanned 35 days. The agency had to recall thousands of its aviation inspectors from furlough over safety concerns.

The FAA determined that the delay in the update was acceptable because its experts and Boeing deemed there was no imminent safety threat, an unnamed source briefed on the discussions told the Journal.

Boeing declined to comment to CNN about the Wall Street Journal's reporting.

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