The many human errors that brought down the Boeing 737 Max

The conclusion, &quot;nobody did anything wrong, in a strictly technical sense&quot; is too generous to Boeing and the FAA, given that MCAS did not have the redundancy that its classification as &#x27;hazardous&#x27; required.<p>It would probably take either an inquiry like those into the space shuttle accidents, or a whistleblower, to know whether anyone was raising concerns. I can believe it is possible that everyone was convinced by the &quot;in the worst case, it is no worse than ordinary trim runaway&quot; argument (which does not excuse the failure to meet the redundancy requirement), but then the Ethiopian Airlines crash, and its crew&#x27;s inability to manually re-trim, might raise the question of whether trim runaway on any 737 model is more of a risk than had been supposed (to be fair, trim runaway has not caused 737 crashes in the past, AFAIK.)

I&#x27;d like to share AvE&#x27;s video[0] here of a tear down of an AoA sensor. It&#x27;s really quite interesting. More info on the AoA sensor&#x27;s role in the Wiki entry[1].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NhZ0D-JRtz0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NhZ0D-JRtz0</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Boeing_737_MAX#Maneuvering_Characteristics_Augmentation_System_(MCAS)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Boeing_737_MAX#Maneuvering_Cha...</a><p>TLDR&#x2F;TLDW: AoA sensor measures &quot;angle of attack.&quot; AoA sensors are physically over-engineered, but the electrical components may be questionable. If an AoA sensor fails, it may cause a stall. The 737 Max is equipped with two sensors, however, effectively utilized only one at a time because it cost extra for the &quot;AOA-disagree&quot; feature.

&quot;Although the FAA is responsible for the safety of any airplane manufactured in the United States, it delegates much of the certification to the manufacturers themselves.<p>It has to in order to get anything certified at all, says Jon Ostrower, editor-in-chief of The Air Current and a former aviation reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Boeing already has the people and the expertise, it pays better, and it isn’t susceptible to government shutdowns. The FAA, meanwhile, says it would need 10,000 more employees and an additional $1.8 billion of taxpayer money each year to bring certification entirely in-house.&quot;<p>I wonder if therein lies the solution. Allocation of some of the budget there instead of military perhaps? Not to mention the policy paralysis leading up to stupid government shutdowns putting people at risk.

Do we get a new one to learn in engineering school, next to the Challenger disaster, the Therac-25, and the Hyatt Regency bridge?

What&#x27;s the Vegas line on when the plane will be flying again? Boeing says their software update is almost ready. However, I find it difficult to believe that it should fly until after investigations of the 2 crashes are complete and the results from them are used to re-examine the design. That would take a significant amount of time.<p>Then there&#x27;s the political dimension. Let&#x27;s say there are Congressional hearings ongoing that are ripping apart the FAA to figure out if they delegated too much and why they missed stuff. Who would want to fly on a plane undergoing that kind of scrutiny?<p>There&#x27;s also the possibility that the FAA would unground the plane but other countries do not. Usually, much of the rest of the world just trusts the FAA, this is likely to not be the case here. Even if it was ungrounded in the US, who would want to fly on a plane if its not approved to fly in Europe?

I think the punishment to Boeing should be that HQ has to move back to the industrial park in Everett from Chicago. And the C-suite executives must work from offices inside the main assembly building for 20 years. Force them to reconnect with the products they make every day.

the ceo should step down. it&#x27;s ridiculous.

It&#x27;s a well-written article that&#x27;s reasonably fun to read, if anyone has five minutes to spare.