Boeing hid software to avoid retraining pilots, and a second 737 MAX crashed

When Indonesian investigators opened the black boxes from Lion Air Flight 610, which crashed in October 2018, they could see a struggle in the data. The pilot was pulling up, and the autopilot was pushing the nose down.

By 45 days after that crash, the diagnosis was widely shared: faulty software called MCAS was to blame. Yet neither Boeing nor the Federal Aviation Administration grounded the plane. In March 2019, a second 737 MAX crashed the same way.

Boeing had hidden the software to avoid costly pilot retraining. To compete with a highly fuel efficient Airbus jet that was winning customers, Boeing did not build a new airplane. A new design would have required hours of pilot training that would make the plane harder to sell. Instead Boeing put a bigger, more efficient engine on its old 737, creating the 737 MAX.

The bigger engine did not fit in the old spot, so Boeing moved it forward on the wing. That left the plane imbalanced, prone to tipping up in test flights. Engineers added MCAS, software that would automatically push the nose down if a sensor said the plane was tipping up, and installed it without telling pilots. When a sensor malfunctioned, the software pushed the plane into the ground.

Investigators moved quickly. The Indonesian safety agency that read the flight recorders found the pilot had been fighting the autopilot. Dominique Gates, who had spent 16 years reporting on Boeing for The Seattle Times, won a Pulitzer for his work on the crashes.

Boeing and the FAA resisted scrutiny. Boeing first blamed the pilots for poor training. The FAA refused document requests from a Senate panel. When the head of the FAA appeared before the Senate, Senator Ted Cruz confronted him about being captured by industry and said, "Sir, do you know you don't work for Boeing?"

The leader of the pilots' union was furious that pilots had not been told about the software. When Boeing executives met with union leaders, the union leaders made a secret recording of the discussion and shared it with reporters. When Boeing stopped answering questions, the union filed public records requests against the company.

In this account, the first crash should never have happened because calling out that system would have forced new pilot training, and the second crash should never have happened at all.