The Boeing 737 MAX

The Boeing 737 MAX is a narrow-body aircraft series made by Boeing as the fourth generation of its most popular airplane the Boeing 737. The new 737 series was launched on August 30, 2011 and performed its first flight on January 29, 2016. 

On October 29, 2018, Lion Air flight 610, a 737 MAX 8 nose-dived and crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after take off from Jakarta’s International Airport. All 189 onboard died. The accident is under investigationwith the final report expected in the summer 2019.   

Many experts believe that the Indonesian pilots lost their battle because they had only 40 seconds to deactivate the automated anti-stall system called MACS - Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System - which is designed to Stake readings from two devices called angle of attack sensors that determine how much the plane’s nose is pointing up relative to the horizontal and it pushes the plane down in an effort to prevent it from stalling thus inadvertently caused the crash.

On March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 a 737 MAX 8, crashed six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa on a scheduled flight to Nairobi killing all 157 on board. The cause of the crash is unclear as of April 1, 2019, though the aircraft's vertical speed after takeoff was reported to be erratic and the pilot had requested clearance for an emergency landing.  There are eerie similarities in the behavior of the aircrafts in these two crashes.

All commercial airplanes are flown by the pilots manually and also by on board computers for the majority of the flight. 

In addition to the accidents in which MACS is suspected that played a role two US pilots have reported that their MACS caused their Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes to tilt down suddenly at mid flight but quickly corrected.  

According to ATAG a total of approximately 100,000 scheduled flights are in the air every day globally.  Although these are similarities between the two accidents, a disconcerting fact, their rarity makes air travel exceedingly safe with the most dangerous part of every trip being the car travel from the house to the airport on the day of the trip. 

In nearly 100 million flights by United States airlines over the past decade, there has not been a single fatality, while about 100 Americans die every day in car crashes, and a similar number from gunshots, and a larger number from opioids and other drugs. 

The culture of safety within commercial air travel is real, and it is a credit to all components: the aircraft companies, the airlines, the air-traffic controllers, the weather forecasters, the pilots and flight crews and ground-maintenance operators, and even the regulators.

The decision of the U.S. and Canada the last countries to ground the Boeing 737 MAX, came after satellite-tracking data point to similarities between the two crashes and have raised questions about the downside of automation.

And while automation has contributed to the airlines stellar safety record it may have played a role to accidents as pilots lose their skill of manually flying the aircraft and complicated automation systems may confuse them and potentially cause them to take wrong actions.  In the Ethiopian Airlines crash, one of the pilots had just 200 hours of flight time, less than a seventh of the time the FAA generally requires for a pilot to fly a passenger plane in the US.

It is not yet known what caused the crashes of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air Flight 610, both after erratic takeoffs. Investigators are looking at whether the MACS software system may have been partly to blame.

Boeing has identified ways to improve MACS and is working on a software patch to submit to theFAA for approval.  In the meantime all American airlines and Boeing are providing additional training to the pilots so that they recognize and take corrective actions if MACS provide abnormal information.  Although it is understandable that the flying public wants assurances about the safety of the aircrafts we fly on it is axiomatic we allow Boeing and the regulatory agencies to complete their investigations and if deficiencies are found to correct them.  In the meantime we should all accept the fact that air-travel is an exceedingly safe way of transportation.