‘Idiots’: Boeing dismissed Lion Air’s call for 737 MAX training a year before crash in Indonesia

Doing simulator training would have undercut the jet’s selling point: that crews trained on an older 737 version could fly the MAX after just a computer course

Boeing also failed to tell Lion Air about a new flight-control feature on the MAX that required training so pilots would be able to better respond to malfunctions

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A grounded Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft sits on the tarmac at terminal 1 of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Cenkareng, Indonesia, on Tuesday, March 15, 2019. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 6:00pm, 14 Jan 2020Updated: 9:05pm, 14 Jan 2020

Indonesia’s Lion Air considered putting its pilots through simulator training before flying the Boeing 737 MAX, but abandoned the idea after the planemaker convinced them in 2017 it was unnecessary, according to people familiar with the matter and internal company communications.

The following year, 189 people died when a Lion Air 737 MAX plunged into the Java Sea, a disaster blamed in part on inadequate training and the crew’s unfamiliarity with a new flight-control feature on the MAX that malfunctioned.

Boeing employees had expressed alarm among themselves over the possibility that one of the company’s largest customers might require its pilots to undergo costly simulator training before flying the new 737 model, according to internal messages that have been released to the media.

Those messages, included in the more than 100 pages of internal Boeing communications that the company provided to lawmakers and the US Federal Aviation Administration and released widely on Thursday, had Lion Air’s name redacted.

A rescuer inspects parts of a crashed Lion Air jet retrieved from the waters off Java Island, on October 31, 2018. File photo: AP

But the US House committee provided excerpts of those messages to Bloomberg that un-redacted the Indonesian carrier’s name.