Boeing 737 MAX – MAX greed, MAX callousness

Is there a limit to corporate greed and avarice? Do we not care even when hundreds of lives are involved?

"In our own lives, in small unknowing ways, are we part of such corporate greed and callousness and do we do enough about it in our workplace? Here is the MAX greed and Max callousness story."

Events leading to the fiasco of Boeing 737 MAX

•  Boeing started delivering 737 MAX in May 2017
•  About 500 MAX aircrafts are flying (as of Mar 2019) and they have an order book of about 4,500 aircrafts
•  October, 2018 - Lion Air flight crashes in Indonesia (killing all on board)
• Boeing hinted at maintenance and pilot problems for the Lion Air crash
•  March 11th, 2019 - Ethiopian Airline flight crashes (killing all on board)
• March 12th,  2019 – all Boeing 736 MAX flights are grounded, except in USA
•  US aviation regulator – FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) let these aircrafts fly for another 3 days, they were grounded on Mar 15th after President Trump ordered them to be grounded.
• Till date, FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) insists 737 MAX is airworthy. Is it???

  WHAT IS THE BASIC ISSUE?

• Boeing changed the engine of the older 737s to a larger engine - to fly farther and with more fuel efficiency. Because 737 is squatter than an A320 (main competing aircraft, made by Airbus) they decided to mount the engine further forward instead, making the plane less aerodynamically stable
• To improve stability, Boeing developed an automatic system called MCAS (Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System) – this is meant to help pilots prevent a stall by pushing the nose of the plane down if it senses the plane is flying at too steep of an upward angle, to stabilise the aircraft
•  The pilots before the Indonesia crash had no idea about MCAS, and Boeing did not mention MCAS in the 737 MAX pilot instruction manuals – because it could involve re-certification and training of pilots on simulators – a supposedly ‘costly’ exercise even when safety issues were involved. For the pilots, till these 2 plane crashes, an older 737 certification was good enough to fly 737 MAX, although there were big changes affecting the safety of MAX
• After the Lion air crash, Boeing discovered that its engineers had known for 13 months about the flaw in the cockpit warning system
•  Because they did not know about MCAS, the pilots would not have known how to counteract the automatic software induced downward movement – they could have had as little as 40 seconds to identify the problem and recover the plane from a nosedive - basically doomed to lose altitude and crash. The Lion air pilots were desperately reading the manuals in those crucial seconds to figure out how to counteract the software induced nose dive
•  June 17 2019 – before the 2019 Paris air show, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg admits for the first time that they made a ‘mistake’ on how they handled the cockpit safety feature
• June 19 2019 – at the Paris air show, IAG (the parent company of British Airways, Air Lingus & Iberia) places an order for 200 737 MAX aircrafts. Surely meant to influence other airlines and must have been given a big discount. These are the games that big boys play.

UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM:

•  FAA’s cozy relationship with Boeing - FAA agreeing to safety self-certification by Boeing. Now Boeing admits that this ‘needs improvement’

As a habit from the past, in most other countries, the aviation regulators blindly followed FAA certification of 737 MAX. Also, the world of bigger aircrafts (150+ seats) – is a duopoly of Boeing and Airbus and it will remain like that for the next 50 years as well. So even if 10 new passenger aircrafts crash, there will be no change to the current environment. Truly scary!!!

 KEY QUESTIONS:

• Why did Boeing not feel the need to alert and train the pilots on the new MCAS system. Is the cost of training more important than hundreds of lives?
•  Why was there 9 months delay in admitting the mistake – was it because these 2 airlines were from Asia & Africa.

Here are some more examples of corporate greed and outright cheating:

• Volkswagen diesel emission tests in USA. VW fitted a software to detect when the vehicles were being tested for emissions and cheat during the test. VW has admitted to have done this in 11 million cars and has paid a penalty in the US
• iPhone battery issue – they deliberately slow down the battery performance of older phones when you install newer version of iOS. To push you towards upgrading and buying the latest version of iPhone. Apple has apologised for it.
• Ikea stores are designed on purpose to be very confusing – the idea being that the longer you spend time in the store the more you will buy
• Orbitz (an online travel portal) – charges more and shows the expensive listings first if you’re using a Mac

The bigger issue– many of us may not be working in critical industries like aviation, but do we encounter this kind of corporate greed and can we do something about it. Can you please share other examples of corporate greed that you came across?