737 MAX 8: When the Boeing 737 Max 8 first entered service
in May of 2017, it was touted as being the new standard for narrow body aviation.
And while this was a bold claim, no one really contested it except maybe airbus.
After all, 737s had been reliably flying since 1967, so it’s not to surprising that the
newest version of the 737 would take the crown of being the most reliable and the most efficient.
For the longest time, it seemed like this was indeed the case.
Leading airlines like Southwest were receiving dozens of 737 maxes and they were being used
almost immediately.
Within a year of launch, 130 planes had been delivered to 28 different airlines, and maxes
across the world had flown 42,000 flights, transporting 6.5 million people.
At this point, I think it was safe to say that the 737 max was proving to be just another
routine upgrade for Boeing.
But, all of this would change on October 29, 2018.
At 6:20 AM, Lion Air flight 610 took off from Jakarta, Indonesia.
And almost immediately, the pilots started noticing some weird things.
The plane was telling them that the aircraft was in danger of stalling, and it appeared
that the flight controls were all screwed up.
The speed the altitude readings were way off and it felt like the nose of the aircraft
was being pushed down.
The pilots promptly contacted air traffic control and requested permission to return
to Jakarta, but it was already too late.
Just 13 minutes after takeoff, air traffic control would lose contact with Flight 610.
They would go ahead and inform the National Search and Rescue Agency who would deploy
three ships and a helicopter around the area in which contact was lost, and what they found
was devastating.
Flight 610 had crashed into the Java Sea near an oil platform, killing all 189 people on
board.
Workers on the nearby oil platform said the plane was essentially uncontrollably nosediving
before crashing.
While this was no doubt an international tragedy, most people didn’t look into it much more
than just that.
After all, Lion Air had a history of safety concerns and poor management.
In fact, they were even banned from flying in European airspace up until 2016.
So, much of the world just wrote it off as an isolated incident and issued a warning,
but the 737 max remained in service.
Flash forward 5 months and it seemed like things were going fine.
737 maxes had been routinely flying for nearly 2 years now making it more and more likely
that Flight 610 truly was just a one off tragedy.
But, this would change on March 10, 2019.
At 8:38 AM, Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 took off from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Just one minute into the flight, the pilots started reporting flight control issues and
that the aircraft was pitching downward.
Just 5 minutes later, the plane nosedived into the ground at 700 miles per hour, once
again killing everyone on board.
This crash was taken much more seriously.
It was extraordinarily unlikely that the same issue took place twice within a matter of
months just by chance.
Within the next 72 hours, 737 maxes were grounded around the world as it was clear who was at
fault.
Since then, much of the companies’ leadership has been ousted, Boeing has paid billions
of dollars in fines and settlements, and public sentiment has very much turned against Boeing.
But, likely the most haunting evidence that has come out since then is a 117 page report
detailing internal communications at Boeing regarding the 737 Max.
One Boeing employee said quote “This is a joke.
This airplane is ridiculous.”
And this was way back in 2016, years before the either incident.
Another employee wrote “I honestly don’t trust many people at Boeing.”
Clearly, engineers at Boeing knew that the 737 Max wasn’t fit to fly, yet the aircraft
managed to pass all of its inspections with flying colors, and hundreds of millions of
people continue to fly in their aircraft including many world leaders.
But, if even boeing engineers don’t trust Boeing, why should we?
A HISTORY OF NEGLIGENCE: If you look at the situation at face value,
you’ll probably think that the 737 max 8 was just a one off incident.
After all, Boeing has been manufacuting planes for over a hundred years and they rarely have
such issues right?
Well, this is true, it is rare that Boeing has issues, but the key thing to note is why
they have issues.
Boeing has produced tens of thousands of aircraft over the decades, so it only natural that
they have a few hiccups here and there regardless of how careful they are.
If this was the fate of the 737 Max 8, it would actually be somewhat understandable,
but the 737 Max 8 wasn’t caused by an honest oversight or bad luck.
It was caused by deep rooted negligence and ignorance that has been rampant within the
company for decades, and the 737 Max 8 was by no means the first example of this.
One of the first examples of their negligence dates back to the late 1980s with a cargo
door incident.
The story starts off on March 10, 1987 with a Pan Am flight from London to New York.
The journey started off perfectly fine and would go smoothly up until the plane reached
an altitude of 20,000 feet at which point, the crew noticed that the cabin was depressurizing.
So, the pilots would decrease the altitude to 15,000 feet at which point the pressurization
problems disappeared.
Thinking that the first occurrence was just a fluke, the pilots would increase the altitude
to 20,000 feet once again, and like clockwork the problems would reappear.
Fortunately, the pilots didn’t try to push the boundaries and just turned around and
returned to London.
Once the plane was on the ground, the aircraft was examined which revealed that all of the
cargo door locking arms had either been damaged or completely sheared off.
Boeing would initially blame this incident on the ground crew mishandling the cargo door,
but a few years later, it would become clear who was truly at fault.
On February 24, 1989, United Airlines flight 811 would take off from Los Angeles heading
towards Sydney.
The flight had two intermittent stops on the way though at Honolulu, Hawaii and Auckland,
New Zealand.
The first leg of the flight was completed flawlessly with no concerns or issues.
The second leg started off fine too up until the flight crossed 20,000 feet at which point
everyone on board heard a load thump.
Before anyone could even react, the cargo door swung open with such force that it ripped
open the entire aircraft at 22,000 feet in the air.
9 passengers would be catapulted out of the aircraft and would all die.
Everyone else on board assumed that an explosion had gone off and that they were under attack.
Miraculously, the pilots were able to turn around the aircraft and return to Honolulu.
And once the plane was on the ground, the flight crew expeditiously unloaded everyone
within just 45 seconds, terrified that another explosion would go off.
But, after extensive research that lasted years, it was determined that cause of the
incident was not an explosion but rather faulty engineering in the cargo door that could have
been fixed if Boeing took the first incident more seriously.
This in itself is pretty troubling, but the story gets even worse.
26 years later in 2015, an FAA investigator would complete a routine checkup on Boeing’s
factories and suppliers when he ran into a mechanic working on a 777 cargo door.
When questioned about his work, the mechanic would tell the inspector that “he does not
use the inspection tools required and enters false inspection data on the work order.”
Furthermore, “He admitted to falsely entering the data for approximately 7-8 years.”
It’s not that the mechanic didn’t want to perform thorough inspections, but rather
that the quotas from Boeing were so high that he didn’t have the time or resources to
do so.
And if this mechanic alone had been doing this for 7-8 years, imagine how many decades
this issue may have been ongoing at Boeing.
This may have been the reason for the United Airlines disaster in 1989.
But, the fine for all of this was a measly $12 million.
PROFITS OVER LIVES: The cargo door incident and the 737 max incident
are just two of many Boeing incidents in recent history.
787 dreamliners have had issues with leaking fuel, they’ve also had issues with batteries
catching on fire, and FAA has found inadequate inspections techniques on multiple occasions.
But, how did Boeing get so bad?
They obviously weren’t always bad.
At one point in history, they were the leaders in the aviation industry pushing forward innovation
and bringing out aircraft like the 747.
How did they go from that to this?
Well, usually, with these sorts of things, there’s never a singular reason.
But, one large catalyst that many aviation experts point to is the McDonnell Douglas
acquisition in 1997.
Before this acquisition, Boeing was largely filled with engineers.
In fact, people often described Boeing as an association of engineers as opposed to
an actual company.
Obviously, Boeing themselves were slowly shifting away from this by the late 1990s, but MD aggressively
accelerated this transition.
You see, MD on the other hand was the exact opposite of Boeing.
They had a reputation of cutting corners and maximizing profits over everything else.
Considering this, I don’t know why Boeing decided to acquire them, but they did and
almost immediately, you could see the effect.
If you’re a fan of the aviation industry, you’d know that a substantial amount of
Boeing’s manufacturing and engineering takes place in Seattle, Washington, so you would
assume that their headquarters were also in Seattle, but this is not the case.
After the MD acquisition, the HQ was moved from Seattle to Chicago.
The official reasoning was that Boeing wanted a more central location for their HQ.
But, in reality, it seems that MD was able to convince Boeing to separate their engineers
and leadership.
This would make it easier for leadership to implement questionable cost cutting measures
while minimizing backlash from engineers, and that’s exactly what they did.
Over the next couple of years, Boeing would aggressively outsource airplane construction
integrating more than 50 partners.
Pretty soon, they got it to a point where the majority of parts weren’t even produced
by Boeing factories.
These factories turned into assembly plants where premade parts were just bolted together.
In fact, less than 40% of the 787 is actually built by Boeing, and this is extremely dangerous
given their industry.
When Apple’s contractors screw up and their iPhones end up bending, it’s not a big deal.
But when Boeing’s contractors screw up and the flaps don’t work or the cargo door doesn’t
close, it’s deadly literally.
Nonetheless, Boeing would double down on this path, and in 2005, they would hire their first
CEO without aircraft engineering experience: Jim McNerney.
To this day, insiders joke that McDonnel Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.
I think you can guess why this is such a popular joke.
CHANGE?: With such unsettling evidence coming out against
Boeing, you would think that they would make sweeping changes.
But, this is not the first time that such evidence has come out against Boeing.
And if they didn’t change in the past, it’s not a very compelling case that they’ll
change now.
And the truth is, they have no reason to change because they wont face any consequences.
Sure, they had to pay a hefty fine and sit through a bunch of media backlash, but at
the end of the day, they still have a duopoly with Airbus and no one is challenging that.
It’s not like people are going to stop going on business trips or vacations or any of that.
And if we’re being honest, how many people even know what aircraft they’re flying on.
They just book the cheapest flight or the most convenient flight.
They might have a preference for the airline, but they almost never have a preference for
the aircraft itself unless they’re aviation nerds.
So, it’s not like Boeing’s reputation is really going hurt their top line over the
long term and that’s just the aviation side of things.
If we look at the space and defense side of Boeing, they have so many government contracts
worth tens of billions that it’s not even funny.
There is some hope though.
While it doesn’t look like the government or the public will hold Boeing accountable,
it looks like their own questionable practices are.
It turns out that outsourcing everything to people who don’t know what they’re doing
doesn’t actually work over the long term.
I mean , who would’ve thought?
Excessive outsourcing has resulted in several production flaws with the 787 which has severely
limited production and deliveries.
This has resulted in Boeing losing billions of dollars every quarter.
In fact, they haven’t had a single profitable 12 month period since the 737 fiasco.
And you can’t blame this on Covid either given that Airbus is more profitable than
ever.
So, it looks like Boeing is finally getting a taste of their own medicine, but that’s
just what I think.
Do you trust Boeing?
Comment that down below.
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