MCAS: The Silent Killer on the 737 MAX

Preface: I worked at Boeing while the Max was being certified, entered service, and was being produced. I very likely made some of the console parts that the pilots were looking at as they fought the controls in their final moments (and those of the passengers). I know it's not my fault, but I still have guilt over that. So many lives lost....... Some additional points: A - There was not a significant restructure of management. At best they had the CEO (who is in charge of executing the will of the board) fall on a sword, then glide to safety on a $62,000,000 parachute. They then replaced him with the guy who lead the board.......who gave the CEO his orders. So they had a guy take blame, give him more money than me and all my ancestors and descendants have ever seen, or will see, put together, then replaced him with the guy that was actually in charge of the corporate environment that caused the problem. I don't know of a worse way to "restructure" after such a disaster they caused. B - The true fallout in the company was that while the big wigs were congratulating themselves and trying to save face and retain shareholder value, that the people on the floor suffered the consequences for the company. A large part of the workforce was laid off or demoted. I was one of the ones laid off. But I was so demoralized from being treated like crap, had been vocal about my displeasure with the direction of the company, that it ended up being good for me. I want to reiterate that my life was infinitely less devastated than those that were in the planes, their family, and friends. They are the victims. Merely pointing out that the upper management suffered no consequences other than their shares being devalued.

The fact that the engineers who alerted the directors in charge that it was unsafe only to find themselves fired because of the warnings.. Amazing.. Also that it turned out that the FAA essentially "trusted" Boings own tests and required no proof before the certification was granted is also unbelievable in this day and age... (If my memory of everything is accurate)

At Boeing, MCAS stands for Money Comes Above Safety.

I'm an aerospace engineer (not at the "B" compay) and my boss's boss once told me to stop looking for issues that were wrong but would add to cost and schedule to correct. I did not stop looking.

As an electrical engineer my jaw literally dropped (yes, I sat there with an open mouth) when I heard the words "one sensor"... What the hell were they thinking!? Were they even thinking at all? This isn't an accident caused by negligence. This is basically as close to deliberate as you can get...

Jesus, that was a factually brutal introduction. I wanted to quit Boeing and I don't even work there.

Boeing did a similar thing in the 90s with the 767 thrust reversers. Lauda Air 004 had a thrust reverser activate just after take off and crashed. Boeing blamed the pilots for the crash and didn't want to ground the 767 and said that such an incident would have been recoverable. Lauda Air's owner (3x formula 1 champion Niki Lauda) called Boeing's bluff and volunteered to try it out in one of their planes. Boeing management eventually admitted it was a design issue.

This makes me think of when McDonnell Douglas introduced the DC-10. There was a significant problem with the cargo door that they had been warned of, but they didn't fix it until after the crash of Turkish Airlines flight 981. 346 people died due to their negligence.

What disgust me even more was that BOTH Boeing and FAA tried to put/push the blame on the 4 pilots involved in the crashes citing, "inferior training/pilots" is what caused the incidents.

I don't understand how the CEOs did not go to jail for murder.

EVERY aviation safety rule was written in blood and yet, every generation or so along comes someone who thinks that they need to be rewritten, usually for sharehoider benefit. That means fresh blood will be needed... RIP to the lost😪

Surprised that you didn't mention that Boeing also decided to move their HQ from Chicago to Arlington, VA. To be closer to their "customers and stakeholders".

Nothing will change until the executives and board members responsible for these decisions start paying for these lawsuits directly out of their pockets, or better yet start going to jail, instead of being allowed to simply resign.

ridiculous that the compensation for the victims was the smallest number used in the aftermath

Air travel is much safer than driving. Boeing: hold my beer.

Unlike the passengers and crew, the c-suite got their golden parachutes. Also, can you please cover Starliner, Boeing's latest disaster.

Great to see this getting the coverage it deserves. Deliberately choosing to only use 1 data source as the input to MCAS was the most criminal decision Boeing bosses made. It was worse than just "they thought it would be fine with a single sensor input". It was that they DELIBERATELY chose to make it a single sensor input to avoid it being labelled as a Safety Critical system that would have invited more scrutiny. This is despite some of the engineers objecting to this. The Boeing bosses who decided this NEED to be sent to jail. I actually first read about the MCAS situation on the 737 Max a few months before the first crash. Was in some random aviation blog, but even then people in the know where saying the whole situation was a disaster waiting to happen.

One of the nastiest aspects of this SNAFU was Boeing trying to blame the Lion air pilots! And if I'm not mistaken, the CEO's involved all walked away with multi million dollar bonuses.

I wonder if this "We are Boeing, it doesn't apply to us" attitude is related the StarLiner debacle. How can a company who has been involved in space for so long forget the Apollo 1 tragedy ?

I flew on a 737 Max a few months ago. I was one of the few that stayed on the plane for the next leg. It gave me time to talk to a flight attendant. She told me that when the Max got returned to service, they asked the attendants if they felt comfortable working on the Max. She also told me that there are plenty of passengers that are still nervous about it. I'll admit i was a bit as well, but quickly got over it, since i remember watching a few investigation documentaries about it.