The Boeing flight control engineer had repeatedly raised concerns about the safety of the software on the company’s new 737-MAX airplane they were working on, urging his bosses to implement a back-up system, just like they had done on their Dreamliner model.
But his appeals fell on deaf ears, his managers citing concerns about the cost implications. Angry and frustrated, Ewbank quit Boeing in 2015 after his manager told him: “People have to die before Boeing will change things.”
Three years later, on October 29, 2018, fishermen working off the coast of Jakarta, Indonesia, watched in horror as a Lion Air Boeing 737-MAX plowed into the water at 500 miles per hour, ki----g all 189 people on board.
few months later, on March 10, 2019, another 737-MAX crashed after take-off from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, leaving 157 people dead.
Investigations later found that both aircrafts had suffered the same fatal issue with the plane’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) software — one of the critical concerns Ewbank had flagged to Boeing. The system had accidentally triggered on the two planes because a faulty angle of attack (AOA) sensor had transmitted inaccurate information about the position of the plane’s nose, causing it to nosedive, something the pilots were unable to override.
But the two 737-MAX crashes brought the company to its knees — exposing decades of skimping and saving, cost-cutting and compromises that led to both tragedies.
Boeing’s merger with rival McDonnell Douglas in 1996 was key, because it led to a wholesale change in the airline giant’s ethos, much to the displeasure of staff, Robison argues. Boeing executives, for example, now found themselves having to adopt the “5-15 rule,” imported from McDonnell, where memos shouldn’t take more than five minutes to read and 15 minutes to write. “The idealism just went out,” one insider told Robison. “It was about something else – I guess shareholder value.”
But the two 737-MAX crashes brought the company to its knees — exposing decades of skimping and saving, cost-cutting and compromises that led to both tragedies.
Boeing’s merger with rival McDonnell Douglas in 1996 was key, because it led to a wholesale change in the airline giant’s ethos, much to the displeasure of staff, Robison argues. Boeing executives, for example, now found themselves having to adopt the “5-15 rule,” imported from McDonnell, where memos shouldn’t take more than five minutes to read and 15 minutes to write. “The idealism just went out,” one insider told Robison. “It was about something else – I guess shareholder value.”
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