Aviation is definitely safe, but
crashes still happen, and sometimes with many casualties. A prime example of
this is the Boeing 737 Max airplane. Two crashes have killed a total of 346.
On October 28, 2018, a 737 MAX 8
flown by Lion Air took off from Bali, Indonesia, bound for Jakarta, Indonesia.
Less than six minutes into the flight, a cockpit alert signaled an impending
stall. The plane’s software directed the flight controls to point the nose
downward. The adjustment occurred three times in close succession, but the crew
was able to override it because an off-duty pilot offered assistance. The
flight made it safely to Jakarta.
The next day, Lion Air Flight 610,
with 189 people on board, took off from Jakarta, Indonesia. The flight was due
to land in Pangkai Pinang, Indonesia. Thirteen minutes after takeoff, the
flight plunged into the Java Sea, killing everyone on board. This was the first
fatal accident and complete loss of a 737 MAX. The aircraft had been delivered
to Lion Air two months earlier.
Almost immediately after takeoff,
the aircraft control column began to violently shake. This is a warning given
by the aircraft that a stall is about to happen. About three minutes into the
flight, the automated control system kicked in, causing the plane to drop seven
hundred feet. The pilot and co-pilot repeatedly tried to lift the nose by
holding down the switch that adjusted the stabilizer on the tail of the plane.
After ten seconds, the automated controls kicked in again, driving the nose
back down. The pilot and co-pilot pulled frantically on the control column, but
twelve minutes into the flight, the plane dropped five thousand feet at four
hundred and fifty miles per hour, into the Java Sea.
The second incident was Ethiopian
Air Flight 302. This flight took off on March 10, 2019, from Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia and was due to arrive in Nairobi, Kenya. The aircraft was basically
brand new, having been delivered four months earlier.
As with Lion Air, this flight
also suffered a flight control system malfunction. While the exact cause of the
crash remains unclear, the aircraft’s vertical speed during takeoff was
unstable. As a result, the flight control system sensed a stall approaching and
forced the plane’s nose into a dive. Despite every effort to pull the plane out
of the dive, the flight control system continued to keep the nose in a downward
position. The end result was a crash that killed all 157 passengers and crew on
board and left a crater at the crash site.
The end result of both crashes
and the massive loss of life forced Boeing to ground all 737 Max planes until a
safe and effective solution to the malfunctioning flight control system is
reached. As of December, 2019, there are no 737 Max planes in service.
To understand how this all
started, you need to go back to December, 1996. This is when Boeing announced
it was buying McDonnell Douglas for $13 billion. Many say this is when Boeing
went from being led by engineers to being led by business executives intent on
making profits.
Until Donald Trump took office in
2016, the Federal Aviation Administration was in charge of certifying aircraft.
Now, company executives are allowed to decide if an aircraft is ready to fly.
This is an indirect cause of both
737 Max crashes. Boeing certified the planes to fly without performing all
necessary tests. As a result, pilots were unable to maintain control of the
aircraft at high speeds.
The earliest the airplane could
resume service is 2020, but many think that may not even happen. Boeing still
needs to verify the flight control system will not malfunction at high speed
and sense a stall is approaching.
This is not the only Boeing
aircraft to experience problems. In the spring of 2004, Boeing began designing
the 787 Dreamliner. The following year, the company named a new CEO, Jim
McNerney. A Harvard M.B.A. grad who worked at Proctor & Gamble, 3M,
McKinsey, and General Electric, he was no stranger to the business world.
Under his tenure, engineers were
discouraged from voicing concern. “What we heard was that we were to follow the
plan. If you can’t do that, you will be fired and someone who is willing to
follow the plan will replace you,” one engineer told The New Yorker Magazine.
By the time the Dreamliner was
ready for delivery in 2011, the program was three years late and billions over
budget. In 2012, some Dreamliner aircraft experienced battery fires. This led
to the fleet being grounded for three months.
In 2005, embracing the
deregulations put forth by George W. Bush’s administration and the Republicans
in Congress, the F.A.A. changed to a model known as Organization Destination
Authorization. This allowed manufacturers to hand select and supervise the
safety monitors. If the monitors saw something that did not look right, they
would raise the concern with their supervisors and not with the F.A.A. The
system was designed to spare manufacturers the necessity of waiting for the all
clear from federal regulators and save the aviation industry $25 billion over
the next decade.
To understand what exactly happened,
you need to look at the beginning of the MAX. Boeing had conceived the 737 MAX
in 2011. That spring, American Airlines told Boeing it was on the verge of
abandoning the older version of the 737. That model debuted in 1967 and had
undergone multiple changes. American was considering purchasing the new Airbus
A320neo, which was more fuel efficient. Boeing had considered building a whole
new jet, but it could take a decade to design the plane and have it pass F.A.A.
inspection. Airlines would also be required to train their pilots on the new
planes. Desperate to retain American, Boeing chose to overhaul the 737.
Updating the plane introduced
some difficulties. The MAX had larger engines, and finding room for them on the
low slung 737 proved to be hard. Boeing decided to place the engines just in
front of the wing. The new position, along with the greater thrust, produced an
aerodynamic challenge during a maneuver called a windup turn. This is a steep,
banked spiral designed to bring an aircraft to the point of stalling. While
required for safety tests, it’s rarely used in typical flying.
A veteran pilot told The New
Yorker Magazine that on most airplanes, you can feel if the plane is about to
stall. Instead of the steadily increasing force on the control column that
pilots were used to feeling—and required by F.A.A. guidelines—the new engines
caused a loosening sensation.
In order to correct this, Boeing
settled on a software feature called the Maneuvering Characteristics
Augmentation System, or MCAS. As the nose of the jet approached a high
angle, suggesting an oncoming stall, MCAS would adjust the stabilizer on
the plane’s tail, pushing the nose down, to alleviate the slackness in the
control column. One pilot told The New Yorker Magazine that Boeing was trying
to make the controls feel the same so training would not be required. Boeing
even went so far as to promise to pay Southwest Airlines, which only flies 737
aircraft, $1 million per plane if simulator training was found to be necessary.
Boeing considered the feature so
minor that it was removed from the 737 MAX’s pilot manual. This meant the Lion
Air pilots had no idea why the plane kept forcing itself downward. The reason
was that an angle-of-attack sensor in the jet’s nose malfunctioned, causing the
plane to think a stall was about to happen and pushing the nose down. This
happened twenty-one times in all.
Nine days after Lion Air flight 310 crashed, the F.A.A. issued an “airworthiness directive,” which required an update of the 737 MAX’s flight-operations manual. Boeing instructed pilots to deal with the excessive downward pitching by following procedures for “runaway trim.” This means that the system controlling the stabilizer angle has malfunctioned. The F.A.A. agreed this would suffice while Boeing came up with a solution to the MCAS, which should be about six weeks.
Captain Chelsey Sullenberger, who made the famous Hudson River landing in 2009, testified at a Capitol Hill hearing that Boeing never characterized a failure of MCAS as more critical because they assumed pilot action would be the safeguard. This was a mistake. “I can tell you first hand the startle factor is real and it’s huge. It absolutely interferes with the ability to quickly analyze the crisis and take effective action,” Sullenberger told The New Yorker. He even admitted to struggling in a 737 MAX simulator after the two fatal crashes. “Even knowing what was going to happen, I could see how crews could have run out of time before they were able to solve the problems. MCAS was fatally flawed and should have never been approved.”
As a result, all 737 MAX jets are grounded until further notice. When the planes will fly again is unknown.
