The Full Story On The 737 Max Crashes

The Langewiesche piece in the New York Times Magazine (9/22/19), is a very lengthy and well-researched study of the Boeing 737 Max, its MCAS system, pilot training and airplane maintenance in different countries, what went wrong in the Indonesian and Ethiopian crashes, and why the pilots should have able to diagnose and overcome the problems involving sensor failures, excess airspeeds, and a poorly designed MCAS system.

For me, the NYT article finally explained a mystery that had bothered me for a long time. The 737 Max had flown something like 8,000 flights without incident before the fatal crashes. The mystery was this: If the MCAS system was so dangerously faulty, then how could the plane have flown so many flights without a fatal incident? There were some incidents involving the MCAS system that were reported by pilots, but the pilots were able to counteract those problems because they knew how to diagnose and correct a “runaway trim” problem.

There is much blame to go around for the 2 fatal crashes, including Boeing’s rush to get the 737 Max flying, failure to require both angle-of-attack sensors to agree before automatically engaging the MCAS system, and making a warning light indicator of sensor mismatch an optional purchase.

But the real story involves much more than Boeing’s lack of due diligence in the face of corporate competition with Airbus.

If future disasters are to be avoided, it is important that corporate executives, politicians and the public get the full story, not just any one piece of it.