Boeing Agrees to Redesign 737 Rudder; All Planes to be Retrofitted
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Shifting our focus to a high-flying safety issue with regard to the world's most widely used plane: the Boeing 737. Apparently the manufacturer has agreed to redesign the rudder on the 737. Carl Rochelle live in Washington picking things up on this story. Carl, how serious is it?</s>CARL ROCHELLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Bill, it's a serious problem for makers of 737 jetliners and the people who fly it, but it's not a safety issue at this point. Here's what's happening. Here's the order of things. The FAA will today announce a notice of proposed rule making mandating the redesign of rudders on 737 jetliners. That's the world's most widely used jetliner. Now, Boeing agrees with the order and is already working on the redesign. And the FAA says it expects the redesign to be completed by sometime next summer, probably around July. Once the redesign is completed and approved, it will be installed on all new 737s and retrofitted on all that are now flying. Now, officials estimate it will take about five years to complete the retrofit, and that's after the design is finished, and that's next summer, so we're talking about probably six years before all in the fleet are retrofitted. The action is the result of a study of 737 rudder problems by a test and evaluation group assembled by the FAA following the final report on the crash of Flight 427 near Pittsburgh in September of 1994. The National Transportation Safety Board found that the probable cause of the crash of the US Airways 737 was a rudder problem. FAA officials say the airplane is safe, pointing to three airworthiness directives or mandatory repair orders that have been installed on the 737 fleet, and new pilot training to deal with rudder anomalies. The officials say since the repairs were made, there have been no more reports of rudder problems. But the Test and Evaluation Board decided the ultimate solution to the problem was to redesign the rudder, adding a degree of redundancy that is not there now. For instance, an additional hydraulic unit as a backup to the ones that are now operating. There are more than 3,000 737s flying worldwide, Bill.</s>HEMMER: Carl, quickly here on this issue of urgency, how urgent is it applied by the FAA and Boeing?</s>ROCHELLE: You can get the degree of urgency by the timeline that things are moving forward. They think it is something that needs to been done. They say it's the ultimate solution, but they say it is not a safety of flight issue, that with these new airworthiness directives or mandatory fixes in place and the new training for pilots, they have had no more reports of rudder problems for 737s since it happened. Needs to be done, but it's not something that's got to be done right this minute.</s>HEMMER: Gotcha. OK, Carl Rochelle in Washington. Thanks, Carl.