Intro

Ok I’m going to level with you, it wouldn’t take much for me to avoid flying, although I naturally have an interest in the aircraft themselves, this is probably due to as I’ve mentioned before my fathers career in the aerospace industry. As a child we had all sorts of schematics, bits of test equipment and regular trips to weapons shows. Even when I was in the air training cadets as a teenager I loved learning about how aircraft worked, but whenever I had to go up in one the anxiety began to close in. Oh I also loved the fact that a ministry of defence sponsored organisation aimed at children allowed us to handle field strips and fire Lee Enfield, martini Henry and sa80 rifles. Who said us brits were a gun shy society. Anyways, today’s subject definitely hasn’t improved my anxiety when it comes to being more than a couple of hundred feet above ground level. In this episode of scandal we are going to peek behind the curtain of one of aviation’s newest and arguably worst scandals. That is of the Boeing 737 Max, its victims and coverup, welcome to scandal a new plainly difficult series. //// Show footage of grounded panes— It’s March 2019 and Billions of dollars worth of aircraft are just sitting around in parking fields around the world. The images could be mistaken for the beginning of the first of the lockdowns to follow a year later. But instead of a pandemic these groundings are of only one type of aircraft, the Boeing 737max. 346 deaths and two strikingly similar aircraft crashes and a new feature Deliberately hidden from Pilots are the reason. These planes are by anyone’s standards brand new, and only a few years before the 737 max was promoted to the world as the new and efficient aircraft, carriers have been waiting for. Save fuel, save money, it’s better for the environment, what’s not to like, also because it’s based on an already existing design, crew training costs should be cheap too. But how In just a few years did we go from the fanfare of the first flight in 2016 to the disasters of 2018/19. Background.

Background

Boeing’s history goes back a long way to during the First World War when it was called Pacific Aero Products Co. This would be changed after only 1 year of operation to the Boeing Aeroplane Company in 1917. In the early days the company under the leadership of William E. Boeing built planes as well as operating them for customers. In 1929, the company was renamed again to United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, under this name the company acquired even more businesses. It’s airlines part of the business, was merged to make United airlines and in 1934 its operations and manufacturing parts of the business were split. The manufacturing side continued to expand and would make a lot of money when the brewing storm clouds of war hit the US in the late 1930s. They manufactured loads of B-17s and B-29 bombers making the company twelfth among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. But bombers became great test beds for developing the transporting of not deadly weapons but instead people on business trips and holidays. Ok I’m going to fast forward to the 1960s with Boeing’s development of what will become the world's best selling jetliner the 737. By this time Boeing had taken the crown as the leading airliner manufacturer, although not the first to market, their 707 passenger plane became the de facto face of jet travel. This was because it had a great feature of not exploding in mid air, I’m looking at you comet. Right back to the 737.

The 737

737 a very popular product The concept for a new airliner for the Boeing company came out of a need to offer a product that could supplement its customers 727 fleets, of short hop tri engined planes. The 727 had been developed to cover the smaller local airport market, which the much larger 4 engined 707 would struggle to make financially viable. Consider it like a small local bus compared to a bigger coach. Well the 737 was to be smaller still as early market research indicated a need for a capacity of around 50-60 passengers as such the new aircraft would have 2 engines, in an effort to reduce costs Boeing tried to make use of as many parts out of the bin from the 737s sisters. Similar fuselage from the 707 and similar flight control equipment from the 727, great. The original designs had rear mounted engines but quickly this was changed to wing mounted pods, this aided in passenger capacity. The engines were mounted directly to the wing allowing for shorter landing gear which had the useful side effect of making luggage loading/unloading quicker but could cause issues for any larger future re-engines. The standard at the time was hydro-mechanical flight control systems, that is that all movements are transmitted from the pilots stick via cables to hydraulic servo valves which then powers the actuators which in turn move the flaps and other control surfaces on the wings and tail. Well from paper to air only took 3 years with the 737s maiden flight on April 9, 1967. Not long after several successful test flights the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued Type Certificate A16WE giving a big thumbs up to the 737-100 for commercial flight on December 15, 1967. With Lufthansa passengers becoming the first people to fly a commercial flight with the new jet on February 10, 1968. The aircraft would go on to dominate the market for the next few decades, all while Boeing continued to tweak and improve the design, however the rather archaic control system remained. The design was not without issues, one such would rear its ugly head in the 1990s. On March 3, 1991, United Airlines Flight 585, a Boeing 737-200 would experience a sudden right hand nose pitch down, whilst attempting to land in Colorado Springs. The resulting crash killed all 25 onboard, what was perplexing to investigators was that the captain of 585 operaterated a strict and conservative cockpit strongly adhering to rules and procedures. A second remarkably similar event happened on September 8, 1994, USAir Flight 427, a larger Boeing 737-300, crashed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this time it was a nose down left turn, the pilots managed to wrestle the plane level only for it to turn a second time. Sadly the aircraft and all 132 aboard were lost. There was a theory regarding the 1991 crash that an uncommanded rudder movement was the cause, but sadly the wreckage was too mangled to find the defect. The NTSB would finally get a break when a 3rd plane, Eastwind Airlines Flight 517 on June 9, 1996, briefly experienced an unexpected rudder command. Thankfully the plane landed safely, the crew and passengers survived. The ntsb were able to gather valuable information from the aircraft and crew resulting in a preliminary conclusion of a faulty rudder PCU and its dual servo valve. This could jam and turn the rudder in the opposite direction of the pilots' input, needless to say the event would confuse flight crews with deadly results. Boeing and the ntsb would test multiple units confirming the fault and ordering Boeing to completely replace all units by 2002. But although this horrendously expensive fault was dealt with, a new aircraft not from Boeing but a rival would start eating up the industry.

Airbus

Airbus 1987 would see the first flight of the 737s biggest competitor the a320. Up until the late 80s the 737 dominated the market but after a320 was released air carriers now had a solid alternative. With this competition the two aircraft became intertwined in the industry as each company set out to improve upon and develop their popular platforms. Because the a320 was newer it had a much more Morden fly by wire control system, where the pilots controls aren’t mechanically coupled to the hydraulic actuators that move the flaps, instead the pilots controls are from a joystick which transmits electrical signals to the control surfaces. . This helps Maintenance costs as there are no complex systems of mechanical linkages and cables to deal with. It was lighter being made out of composite materials, and boasted a wider cabin at 3.95m outside diameter compared to 3.8m of the 737. Airbus boasted that the 737-300 burns 35% more fuel and has a 16% higher operating cost per seat than the V2500-powered A320. And fuel and maintenance costs are vital for scraping as much profit out of shorter routes, the new plane essentially made budget airlines a possibility. But the 737 still proved popular and as such carried on in production even at the new millennium. It was now in its 3rd generation, the aptly named next generation 737 was launched in1997. Next gen development was directly caused by Boeing’s old sister company starting to make orders for, you guessed it, the a320. As the early 2000s came along the 737ng was the standard offering from Boeing, but although better than the 2nd gen classic 737, the design was showing its age. Why not design and build a brand new aircraft, with the idea of improving efficiency and the like, you may ask? Well Boeing had thought of that already, during 2006 the company pondered on the idea of a completely new design to be out for 2010. Initial interest from the market looked good but Airbus was to put a spanner in the works. In December 2010 a new a320 was announced, this was to be called the neo or new engine option, and was aimed squarely at efficiency. The new model was essentially a re-engined design with 2 more fuel Efficient turbo fan units either the CFM International LEAP or Pratt & Whitney PW1000G. With the addition of wing sharklets, you know the little bent parts on the wing tips, the a320 neo boasted 15-20% more fuel efficiency that the previous generation 320. Don’t forget that the previous generation was already more efficient than the 737, as such the neo hit the market strongly. Over 600 commitments were made at the Paris air show, and by the end of the year the total backlog of orders exceeded 1,000. This made the 320neo the world record holder for opening orders. This didn’t go unnoticed by Boeing, but they were adamant that a new plane was the way to go. But long term customer American Airlines would sway Boeing to scrap a clean sheet design when it ordered 260 airbuses breaking the previous Boeing monopoly at the airline. But it wasn’t all terrible American Airlines also tacked on 100 737 next gen as well as requesting 100 737s re-engined with the CFM leap, the same offering the a320 neo came to market with. And here enters the 4th generation 737max. The 737 max.

737 MAX

Ok it feels like it’s taken a while to get here. We are nearly 1800 words into the script and only now are we looking at the subject for the video, but by now you all must know, I do love a lot of context. The new re-engined 737 was approved by Boeing’s board of directors on 30th august 2011. It was hoped the project would achieve a 4% reduction in fuel burn rate compared to the a320. Great! The new aircraft also would offer airline fleets that already operate the 737 the Benefit of not needing significant crew training. To decrease drag the 737 recived split wing tips, and the new larger engines now too big for the original placement were placed further forward and higher. But this was found in testing to significantly change the aircrafts aerodynamic properties, by causing a nose up situation. To bring the flight characteristics back to what a pilot should expect from a 737 a system called Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) impletmented, this would use software to engage the horizontal stabilisers. In the case of the max this would be used to account for the nose up situation caused by the new engines, and thus bring the nose back down. We will put a pin in the mcas system and come back to it in a bit. So because the new plane was already a certified airframe, development time was greatly reduced along with the reduced red tape that a whole new design would attract. Reportedly by November of 2011 Boeing had amassed 700 commitments. 4 years after the program launch in august 2015 the first fuselage rolled off the production line. By The first flight took place on January 29, 2016, at Renton Municipal Airport, nothing out of the ordinary had been reported and a year later the aircraft received its FAA licence in March followed soon after by the remaining world wide licences. The max on release came in 3 variants the 7,8 and 9 which could seat depending on arrangement in 2 class format 138-153, 162-178 and 178-193 respectively. As orders started to stack up carriers had to prepare their crews in the operation of the new aircraft. Traditionally for brand new planes, several hours of simulator time is needed, this costs money, firstly in actually purchasing a simulator or updating the sims the company already has. And secondly, the down time of taking your pilots out of productive work to put them in said simulator. Well with the 737 max and due to it sharing it’s type rating with the 737 next gen, because of the mcas, pilots only needed to undertake a tablet based training course. Strangely but deliberately the mcas was omitted from the 737 maxs manual, this was in an effort to minimise the new systems significance from the federal aviation authority, and thus keep down retraining and licensing costs. Ok I think it’s time to talk about how the mcas system worked. Mcas Mcas was not a new system when it was used in the max, Boeing had been installing it into its military tanker variant of its 767 from 2013. Mcas works to avoid a stall by manipulating the horizontal stabilisers, but is not the same as a stick pusher. It was employed in the Boeing KC-46 Pegasus to help balance the plane during mid air fueling. But in the 737 max it’s sole purpose was to make the plane feel like it’s predecessor because the new bigger engines were placed further forward than previous generations. The system was only active when the max was under manual control, it was given in the software of the plane control system, complete authority to bring the aircraft nose down when it detected a potential stall. The pilots inputs into the controls could not override the mcas. In November 2016, two of Boeing’s 737 MAX Flight Technical Pilots discovered changes with the MCAS system, instead of informing the FAA, Boeing, through these two Pilots, concealed this information and deceived the FAA, meaning the changes weren't added to the flight manuals, thus limiting the perceived effect of the system on the operation of the aircraft, hiding the severity of MCAS from pilots. This inturn allowed Boeing to advertise the aircraft as not requiring significant re-training. The difference from the KC46 MCAS system was that it was activated when a single angle of attack sensor detected the nose rising too far. Even though there were two sensors onboard the aircraft, which meant the system was susceptible to a single point failure. If both sensors disagree an alert can be given to the pilot on a screen, however this was an optional paid for extra, and not all operators purchased this. The first 737 Max delivery was made on May 16, 2017, to Malindo Air, a subsidiary of the low-cost Indonesian carrier Lion Air. And from there deliveries continued with carriers around the world receiving their shiny new 737s. By may of 2018 around 130 Max’s were inservice with 28 airlines racking up over 40,000 in service flights. This number would increase as more aircraft were delivered, one such in august 2018 was a 737max 8, registration PK-LQP, this plane would become the first 737 max accident and the worst in the whole lifespan of the 737. Now I know I've mentioned this whole issue of reducing pilot training needs a few times in the video, but the section shows why it was such a bad idea to hide a new system from pilots, even if it saves you a whole load of money. Lion air flight 610. It is the morning of the 29th October 2018, and 31 year old capitan Suneja and 41 year old co-pilot Harvino prepare their 737max 8 for a flight from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang Indonesia. The domestic journey has the callsign Lion Inter 610 and is pretty bog standard. Both pilots are very experienced with the captain having amassed over 5,000 hours in the 737. Their aircraft today is pretty new having just over 500 hours of operation. The crew arrangement for today’s flight was a bit last minute with the copilot only being informed at 0400. And to add more misery to the morning the Capitain is suffering from the flu. With all crew including a lion air engineer and passengers aboard, the copilot seeks authority to taxi to the runway from Jakarta atc. Captain suneja is at the controls, Jakarta tower issues takeoff clearance and the plane departs the runway at 6:20:33 a.m. Just 3 seconds later, the stick shaker begins, the plane thinks it’s about to stall. An air traffic controller clears the pilots to climb to 27,000 feet, the altitude being displayed to the pilots isn’t making sense. The co-pilot asks for confirmation of their altitude 700 atc replies. The confusion in the cockpit increased as the two men tried to find the correct checklist. They attempt to climb but the nose keeps on being pushed down, none of the readings are matching up, An excess speed warning sounds as the plane is descending. 11 minutes after take off the voice recorder picks up the automatic warnings ``TERRAIN, TERRAIN” followed by “SINK RATE”. At 06:33 Lion Air Flight 610 loses communication contact with atc. The plane and all 189 aboard were gone. Indonesia's Transportation Ministry ordered emergency inspections on all of the 737 Max 8s in the nation's fleet, but all seemed good. Preliminary investigations hinted at control issues, stemming from a faulty angle of attack sensor, The aeroplane’s digital flight data recorder (DFDR) recorded a difference between the left and right angle of attack (AOA) sensors that was present during the entire final flight. It was found that one of the sensors had been replaced 2 days before and issues with the stick shaker and erratic nose down situations were experienced. Now you may ask why was the plane still flying, well according to Lion air officials, Boeing maintenance guidance did not state that it was required to take the plane out of service in that particular fault. The previous four flights had reported similar issues, hinting that just a single sensor failure could cause a nose down situation, but bear in mind the MCAS system had not actually been officially announced by boeing. In november Boeing released an "Operations Manual Bulletin" advising airline operators how to address erroneous cockpit readings. All whilst the Lion air crash was being investigated 737 Max’s continued to be delivered and hundreds of aircraft flew day in day out, even though Boeing were aware of the 1 sensor failure = nosedive event, and the fact that pilots would more than likely be caught off guard by this. By march 2019 Boeing had delivered 386 of the 737 Max jets throughout the world, but a worrying case of groundhog day would hit the industry on the 10th March. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was a 737 max 8, the same as the ill fated Lion air 610, it was scheduled to be an international passenger flight from Addis Ababa Ethiopia to Nairobi kenya. The captain of the morning's flight was Yared Getachew and 29 year old who had over 8,000 hours under his belt, the first officer however was a newish graduate Ahmed Nur Mohammod Nur, aged 25, having 361 flight hours logged. There were a total of 149 passengers and 8 crew on board. At 08:37:34, local time on the 10th March ATC issued take off clearance to ET-302 a few seconds Takeoff roll began from the runway and all seemed normal, values of the left and right angle-of-attack sensors also matched. At 08:38:44, shortly after liftoff, the left and right recorded AOA values deviated, just like with lion air a few months before the stick began to shake, telling the pilots that the plane thought it was going to stall. The MCAS system then activated and pushed the nose down, the pilots wrestled with the 737 managing to just about keep it in the air. The MCAS activated again, dropping the nose, At 08:40:35, the First-Officer called out “stab trim cut-out”, the captain agreed and the trim tab system was then cut out, this also killed the mcas. But the plane was still trimmed for a nose down scenario, and with the engines still at take off power the ground was getting ever closer. The pilots attempted to manually crank the stabilisers to a neutral position, At 8:43, the captain requested switching back on the trim tab system in order to Regain neutral stabilisation, but this also switched back on MCAS. With mcas back on the plane went further into a nose down position and crashed at almost 08:44, six minutes after takeoff. Flight 302 hit the ground at roughly 700 miles per hour. There were no survivors. The flight data recorders were found pretty quickly and were sent to France for investigation, pretty quickly the similarities with lion air 610 were undeniable. On 4 April 2019, the ECAA issued its preliminary report, and although not naming mcas directly, it did state that the automatic trim command occurred without any corresponding motion of the stabiliser. Boeing's Dennis Muilenburg released a statement which tried to push the blame onto the pilots: Pretty dick move if you ask me. Even other pilots such as hudson river miracle pilot sully sullenberger stated after attempting the event in a simulator, “It has been obvious since the Lion Air crash that a redesign of the 737 MAX 8 has been urgently needed, yet has still not been done, and the announced proposed fixes do not go far enough,” He went on to say that a copilot with around 200 hours would have insufficient experience to deal with such a stressful situation.

Music Time

The Groundings Boeing would be hit hard when airlines around the world started grounding their 737 fleets, starting with ethiopian airlines on the 10th of march 2019, followed by On March 11, the Chinese aviation authority, ordering all chinese operated 737 max’s, followed by the eu.

The Groundings

Only one country still held that the max was airworthy, the good old FAA. But they couldn't piss into the wind for too long, eventually grounding all US max’s on the 13th of march. Officially by March 18, 2019, all 387 aircraft in service were grounded. And this would mark a financially crippling time for boeing. Delays after delays would haunt Boeing as its promised software update to reinstate the plane kept on being delayed. As the delay to the software mounted the plane came under increasing scrutiny. Production was cut by 1⁄5 in April 2019, but this wouldn’t be the end. 737 max customers were doubly hit with useless aircraft and reduced schedules, the a320 at this point probably felt like the better option. During 2019 multiple investigations and committee meetings were held to discuss the Max, and two of which were quite extreme in their questioning. A committee meeting in May opened up with a very favourable to Boeing line of accusations from Sam Graves of Missouri, ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “Pilots trained in the United States would have successfully been able to handle” the emergencies on both jets, said Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He added that preliminary reports about the accident “compound my concerns about quality training standards in other countries.” This committee meeting was directly quoting from a report paid for by institutional investors with large holdings in Boeing stock. However even the simulator runs used in the report, kind of contradict this as in one instance the aircraft was only saved by the pilots undertaking a very old technique called the “roller coaster” method ie letting the yoke go to relieve the forces on the tail, then cranking the wheel, and repeating this many times. This technique has not been in U.S. pilot manuals for decades, and during the simulator session the plane lost 8,000 feet of altitude, I should say that in the real life scenario of the Ethiopian airlines crash they never even reached 8,000 to begin with. In October 2019, Boeing Company President and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg testified before a Senate Transportation Committee hearing on 'Aviation Safety and the Future of Boeing's 737 MAX'. He was grilled with questions about internal messages that had raised concerns over the mcas issue of a single failed sensor. During the senate committee it was highlighted that in the contract with Southwest Airlines, the largest 737 max operator that Boeing would be required to pay the airline $1million dollars per aircraft delivered if pilots needed to undertake simulator training. Clearly something Boeing would not have liked to have done, thus giving a reason to downplay the mcas system from the FAA and airlines. When asked about the single sensor activation of mcas Muilenburg said: “We tried to rely on previous architecture, we learned, and we're moving to a two-sensor architecture." On discussing Accountability Rep. Daniel Lipinski of Illinois asked: "I'm not sure what accountability means if you received a $15 million bonus after these planes crashed," Questions were also brought to the CEO about Boeing self certified specficiations of the plane, because it was a derivative of a current type. Muilenburg denied any knowledge of the internal messages, not a good look. But how did Boeing manage to get this new potentially deadly feature past the FAA, well in a december 2018 boeing slideshow the company set out how it felt that MCAS didn't need to individually assess the system as it did not consider it as new or novel. Boeing had an Organisation Designation Authorization, this allowed certain certifications and safety checks to be delegated away from the FAA to the manufacturer. This helped the FAA not have to be involved in every aspect of the certification of an aircraft, but it was intended for minor non safety things, rather than major control and safety issues. Self certifying your own products I can’t imagine, that ever being abused? If it had individually assessed the MCAS then the FAA would have needed to have been involved in assessing the new system, the company argued that MCAS wasn’t new and novel because a similar system was previously used in the 767” tanker for the Air Force. “Accumulation or combination of failures leading to unintended MCAS activation were not simulated nor their combined flight deck effects,” Boeing said in the presentation. But the implementation was different, as the 767 used the data from both aoa sensors to determine if MCAS would intervene, whereas the 737 max only used 1 sensor. Well a review of Boeings Organisation Designation Authorization resulted in November 26, the FAA revoked Boeing's ability to issue airworthiness certificates for individual MAX aeroplanes. The FAA set out 4 required improvements for the max before it could be ungrounded: Installing new flight control computer software. This change is intended to prevent erroneous MCAS activation, among other safeguards. Installing updated cockpit display system software to generate an AOA disagree alert. This will alert the pilots that the aeroplane's two AOA sensors are disagreeing by a certain amount indicating a potential AOA sensor failure. Incorporating new and revised operating procedures into the Aeroplane Flight Manual. This change is intended to ensure the flight crew has the means to recognize and respond to erroneous stabiliser movement and the effects of a potential AOA sensor failure. Changing the routing of horizontal stabiliser trim wires. This is intended to bring the aeroplane into full compliance with the FAA's wire-separation safety standards. In addition to these four design changes, the FAA also will require operators to conduct an AOA sensor system test and perform an operational readiness flight prior to returning each aeroplane to service. — FAA, Airworthiness Directive Summary But as 2019 was drawing to a close the company took another nose dive, excuse the pun, when 737 max production completely paused on December 17, from January 2020. Later on in the month Dennis Muilenburg resigned, to be replaced by board chairman David Calhoun. In the September 16, 2020 a Final Committee Report on Boeing 737 MAX was released.It put the blame on both Boeing and the FAA saying: “Both Boeing and the FAA share responsibility for the development and ultimate certification of an aircraft that was unsafe.” As well as blaming boeing financial pressures: “There was tremendous financial pressure on Boeing and the 737 MAX program to compete with Airbus’ new A320neo aircraft. Among other things, this pressure resulted in extensive efforts to cut costs, maintain the 737 MAX program schedule, and avoid slowing the 737 MAX production line.” On May 27, Boeing resumed production of the MAX albeit slowly and a month later test flights resumed to achieve recertification. The light was at the end of the tunnel for the max as it would soon return to the skies the updates had been done and test flights were underway, in september 2020 FAA administrator and ex Delta Air Lines Boeing 737 pilot, Stephen Dickson, conducted a two-hour test flight, he had previously stated that the max could not return to service until he had undergone the new training and test flight himself. This went ahead with no issues, and a month later On November 18, 2020, the FAA issued a Continuing Airworthiness Notification which essentially revoked the grounding. And over the coming months gradually aviation authorities across the world started allowing the max back into the skies. However, all throughout the grounding and return to service, a criminal case against Boeing was brewing.

The Criminal Case

The criminal case I should say this video makes a hatrick of companies being responsible for multiple deaths and being able to dodge any prison time, this will make you sick I'm guessing. In January Boeing was Charged with a 737 Max Fraud Conspiracy which boeing agreed to pay a fine prosecutors stated: “Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candour by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max aeroplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception. This resolution holds Boeing accountable for its employees’ criminal misconduct, addresses the financial impact to Boeing’s airline customers, and hopefully provides some measure of compensation to the crash-victims’ families and beneficiaries.” “The misleading statements, half-truths, and omissions communicated by Boeing employees to the FAA impeded the government’s ability to ensure the safety of the flying public”. As well as: “Today's deferred prosecution agreement holds Boeing and its employees accountable for their lack of candour with the FAA regarding MCAS”. The company agreed to Pay over $2.5 Billion, this was made up of a criminal penalty of $243.6 million, $1.77 billion of damages to airline customers, and a $500 million crash-victim fund. In the process boeing's stock price tanked, which probably wasn't helped with the world wide pandemic as well. But the company has begun to turn things around with the new and less crashy 737 max, in which customers are still receiving new orders to date 840 units have been built.

My Summary

My conclusion Well we can say that the 737 max was doomed from the start, when Boeing promised the new, much too big engines left engineers to try and sort out the balancing issues, by shoehorning in the MCAS system into the aircraft, and downplaying its significance from regulators, customers and pilots. This allowed Boeing to dodge any fees for retraining pilots as set out in its order contracts, essentially allowing the company to sell the plane as just a continuation from the previous generation and not a new aircraft. Boeing was allowed to self certify and cover up the changes to the max all of which should have been disclosed to the FAA. In what seemed like a massive U-turn and probably to appease the power that be Boeing announced in a January 2020 press release that Simulator training was recommended for crews returning to the 737 max after the fleets ungrounding. All videos on the channel are creative commons Attribution-ShareAlike. Plainly difficult videos are produced by me John, in a wet and windy suburban Southeast corner of London, uk. Help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing! Check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odd and sods, as well as hints on future videos! I've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy check them out! All that's left to say is thank you for watching!

Outro Jam

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-conspiracy-and-agrees-pay-over-25-billion https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-17/boeing-s-737-max-was-a-scandal-but-airline-purchases-are-making-it-a-success https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-statements?item=130336 http://knkt.dephub.go.id/knkt/ntsc_aviation/baru/pre/2018/2018%20-%20035%20-%20PK-LQP%20Preliminary%20Report.pdf https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/07/asia/boeing-airline-advice-lion-air-intl/index.html http://www.ecaa.gov.et/Home/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Preliminary-Report-B737-800MAX-ET-AVJ.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20200310004955/http://www.aib.gov.et/wp-content/uploads/2020/documents/accident/ET-302%20%20Interim%20Investigation%20%20Report%20March%209%202020.pdf https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/after-lion-air-crash-boeing-doubled-down-on-faulty-737-max-assumptions/ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6544179-Boeing-Presentation-to-FAA-Dec-17-2018-MCAS.html https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-statements?item=130596 https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2020.09.15%20FINAL%20737%20MAX%20Report%20for%20Public%20Release.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20160603153744/https://www.casa.gov.au/sites/g/files/net351/f/_assets/main/fsa/2008/feb/18-28.pdf