The Boeing 737 MAX was supposed to be the next stepping stone for Boeing as they progressed through the new millennia starting with the 787 Dreamliner. Unfortunately, due to corporate greed and disregard for safety, Boeing pushed this aircraft through with minimal testing and improper procedures in the event of certain malfunctions and emergencies. “Boeing pushed to develop the 737 MAX to compete with Airbus’s A320neo plane”(Webb 2019) to prevent American Airlines from placing their largest ever order with Airbus. 346 people died because of it.
The two crashes of 737 Max’s which killed 346 people are due to a flight control system called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) which is designed to assist in handling the aircraft at low speeds and or high angles of attack. What the system does is it will lower the nose of the aircraft without the pilots intervention if the system believes the aircraft is going to stall. In the two crashes it activated for unknown reasons and the pilots did not have the training or ability to prevent the nose pitching down and thus, the two aircrafts crashed, killing all aboard.
These crashes immediately raised red flags around the globe. Multiple flight agencies grounded them pending further information until a global ban on 737 MAX’s was put in place. Nearly 400 planes have been grounded which consisted of 8,600 flights per week spanning between 59 carriers, thus leading to thousands of cancelled flights all over the world. Boeing’s stock crashed due to the deaths and groundings of the planes as Boeing engineers worked to try and correct the problem. Personally, when I think of Boeing I immediately think of these crashes and upon doing more research, was taken aback by how greedy upper management was.
While upper management does answer to their shareholders, trading human lives for profit is absolutely unacceptable but it feels like Boeing did with the release of the MAX. While the first issue I have is not entirely Boeing’s fault, Boeing was able to certify some of their own work and systems as approved by the FAA due to a 2005 congressional ruling (Beene 2019). To the regular person, that just sounds fishy. On one hand you want to trust the company as the consumer to do what is right, but on the other, having another party take a quick peek and inspect a few components is what should have happened from the start. The next thing Boeing should have changed was to have developed a new aircraft from the start like they originally said they were going to instead of retrofitting larger engines to an aging airframe. I believe Boeing will get through this and continue to manufacture aircraft but it will take years for them to makeup for the mistakes made on the 737 MAX program
Levin, A., & Beene, R. (2019, December 3). Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-03/max-disasters-fuel-outcry-over-how-faa-let-boeing-self-certify
Webb, K. (2019, March 24). Boeing reportedly pushed engineers to develop 737 Max at twice the normal pace. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-737-max-rushed-2019-3
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