FAA's 'self-certification' criticized after 737 crash

The US aircraft industry is moving toward using its own employees to certify the safety of aircraft, a departure from prior practices at the Federal Aviation Administration that could endanger air safety, said the former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

James Hall expressed his views in an opinion piece in The New York Times, one day after the FAA's decision on Wednesday to ground Boeing's MAX 8 and MAX 9 planes following fatal crashes of the craft in Indonesia in October and in Ethiopia on March 10.

China was the first to ground all Boeing 737 Max 8 airplanes, followed by other countries.