Transport committee  No, not at all. We are relying on what is presented to us in line with the concept of doing a validation. As Mr. Robinson explained, we cannot go back and recertify the entire aircraft. We have to choose the areas we will review. It so happened that MCAS was not an area that we delved into in any great depth.

Transport committee  I don't like to be flippant, but with 20/20 hindsight—I believe one of the members mentioned that—we know a lot more now than we did then. Often in aircraft accidents—and there have been many throughout history—what we learned from that accident was not known by the designer nor by the regulator.

Transport committee  Oh yes, indeed. The certification process of every aircraft that we go through involves stumbling over problems that we cannot perceive. I'm sure many of you have wondered why it has taken so long to get the Max back in service. It is a result of the certification process. There have been three iterations, and still one to go with the software patch that Boeing is developing because partway through the development of the software patch more problems were discovered and they had to fix them.

Transport committee  It's six years.

Transport committee  It may also be worth noting that we already have additional measures we're planning to put in place above and beyond what would be required by the FAA, and this is open knowledge to both Boeing and the FAA. We have suggested they do numerous things. Fortunately, in some cases, as time went on they started to adopt these ideas.

Transport committee  Thank you. We have to go back to the original validation where, as previously explained, we look at the changes from the previous model. The MCAS was presented to us. The explanation for its existence and the way it operates was defined to us. However, at the time we did not have cause to dig any deeper.

Transport committee  It's my understanding that Boeing has developed an additional maintenance program specifically as a result of this situation that was not there otherwise.

Transport committee  At the training level, yes. I explained earlier the OE process with the naive candidates, which are sometimes airline pilots, that are invited to take place. We typically do not involve the operators directly in the certification process. That is a communication between the applicant, or the designer of the airplane, and the certifying authority.

Transport committee  That's a result of a manufacturing issue as opposed to a design issue, more than likely.

Transport committee  And there were no fatalities.

Transport committee  With regard to the purpose of the report, once it's approved, it goes out as the recommended set of training that the operators will adopt. The actual training program for an airline, if we're talking about large aircraft, is approved at the local level, depending; there are a lot of unique situations within an airline.

Transport committee  They don't on the certification process itself. As I mentioned earlier, the certification of the design, the type design, as we call it, is carried out through a certification process. The OE is a separate and subsequent step. Once you've got your design and the functionality is there, the cockpit does what it does.

Transport committee  There are some very discrete changes, but I wouldn't characterize it as a result—

Transport committee  That is the basic purpose of the OE. As I said in response to one of the previous questions, you take the training material that is intended to bridge the gap between one and the other, and whatever those differences may be—be they how cockpit indications are displayed, the handling characteristics or whatever may be different between the two aircraft—that is the purpose of the delta training to make sure it bridges that gap.

Transport committee  I understand your question better now. In fact, it was mentioned earlier by one of our esteemed members that it was a software failure. Actually, it wasn't, and most aircraft accidents are a combination of various things. In terms of one of the things we've learned and one of the things we questioned very early on—and I think this is more to your point—it's that given what we now understand and that we didn't as well as we should have, perhaps, about the MCAS, that system, its failure modes and the resulting effects in the cockpit with an AOA disconnect, an angle of attack indicator disconnect, what we've learned from there has implications with respect to the design itself, the basic architecture, but also with respect to whether the training was indeed sufficient.