Faa Orders Boeing To Test 737 Rudders

The Federal Aviation Administration is ordering emergency inspections of all Boeing 737 airliners after safety tests revealed that their backup rudder control system can fail under extreme conditions.

The order, announced Friday, calls for the FAA to review and possibly heighten - Boeing’s own voluntary inspection plan. Boeing said it would inspect each of the 2,800 737s currently in service within 10 days, and then again each time a plane has flown 250 hours.

“This event is extremely rare,” said Guy Gardner, the FAA’s associate administrator for certification and regulation. “They are going with what’s in their service bulletin, and we are analyzing it. We agree with it, but we want to look at it and make sure it’s sufficient.”

Despite the unusual order and the National Transportation Safety Board tests that prompted it, the FAA still believes the Boeing 737 is a plane “with a high level of safety,” Gardner said.

The FAA said the inspection order does not suggest that rudder failure caused the still-unexplained 1994 crash of a USAir 737 at Pittsburgh. However, the tests that determined the potential for backup rudder failure came as part of the investigation of that crash.