Today the Boeing aircraft company is a perfect case study into the disastrous consequences of unconstrained capitalism and corporate greed. Even for those of you who have little to no interest in aviation, you should all by now have read about the continual mishaps and near-accidents involving Boeing aircraft over the last 6 months. But this is not a recent phenomenon, and to think so would be a grave injustice to all those who needlessly lost their lives when two 737 Max aircraft were lost in separate but almost identical accidents, killing 346 people in Q4 2018 and Q1 2019. Yet still today we have been hearing about doors shearing off Boeing aircraft in mid-flight, missing bolted connections and lap joints, or of landing gear suddenly falling off upon take off. There has also been a number of whistleblowers who have been forcibly silenced or have died suddenly by apparent suicide or sudden illness. It is curious why we don’t hear such news about Airbus with the same frequency, and I can assure you that today I would certainly be extremely hesitant to fly in a Boeing aircraft and would be much safer and happier in an Airbus.

The reason for this is largely down to the different safety culture and business strategy within Airbus that is marked by the willingness to invest more while utilizing more time and resources within the preliminary design phase and in Research and Development. Unlike Boeing, Airbus are not chasing after innovation: instead, Airbus create it. Of course this does not make Airbus fail-safe and clearly any company is susceptible to sharing the same fate as Boeing. Yet, the sad reality is that Boeing, just like the biggest investment banks, is simply too big to fail. The biggest crime of Boeing is that 346 people’s lives were needlessly lost precisely due to shear incompetence and unconstrained greed. By adopting a neo-liberal ‘top-down’ culture, Boeing did not see the passengers of it’s aircraft as human beings with hopes, dreams and aspirations, nor as people navigating the world and falling in and out of love or providing for a family; rather Boeing viewed them as no more than instruments for profit and gain in a business strategy where safety took a back seat.

 

The downfall of Boeing is most unfortunate because Boeing was not always like this. Indeed by producing remarkable aircraft such as the Boeing 747, 737 NG and 777, the company set the standard for aviation safety, best practice and innovation, and made the city of Seattle extremely proud of the company and of it’s workforce. So how did this all happen and where did it go wrong for Boeing? Some would perhaps think it ironic that a causal factor for all this was in fact environmentalism, and moreover the pressing need to design and produce aircraft that were ‘cleaner’, ‘quieter’ and ‘greener’. Furthermore, because this drive for efficiency was largely driven by international pressure and fiscal policy from entities such as the Aerospace Growth Partnership (AGP) or the Advisory Council for Aviation Research and Innovation in Europe (ACARE), from 2006 onwards there was a race between Boeing and Airbus to meet these demands while at the same time maintaining profit and dominance over the other. In this way, members of the European Union and the United Nations were effectively regulating and transferring the responsibility of environmentalism onto big enterprise with little to no thought as to how the pursuit of profit would impact the overall strategy.

 

In 2010 enter the Airbus A320 NEO which boasted advanced light weight composite materials, improved aerodynamics and the choice of a new generation of quieter and more efficient engines developed by CFM International (the LEAP-1A option) or Pratt and Whitney (the PW1100G option). All of this meant that the A320 NEO was far more fuel efficient and had substantially less operating and maintenance costs than the Boeing 737 NG fleet, which made the NEO a natural choice for airlines the world over. Consequently, Boeing had to respond quickly to the sudden fall in demand for it’s aircraft and adopt a new business strategy to compete with Airbus.

 

This is where things get somewhat ludicrous. Of course CFM International and Pratt and Whitney do not care who they sell their engines to, whether it be Airbus or Boeing makes little to no difference, yet the downside for Boeing was that the new generation of engines were substantially larger than the older and less efficient variants. This meant that to fit the engines correctly onto the existing 737 NG fleet, Boeing would have to invest time, capital and resources into redesigning the wing root and mid-fuselage to allow the wings to sit higher off the ground than before, thereby allowing the larger and more efficient engines to hang from the wing correctly. For the corporate leaders at Boeing, not engineers but men of finance and business strategy, this was simply too much to ask.

 

 

In 2017 enter the vastly flawed Boeing 737 MAX, which was a flight risk and disaster waiting to happen from the very start. For this aircraft Boeing decided to install the larger and more efficient engines onto the existing wing and fuselage design of the 737 NG aircraft, while at the same time incorporating lightweight composite materials, improved aerodynamics and avionics. The consequences of this decision were vast and far reaching. In lay man’s terms the larger engines disrupted the smooth and attached airflow on the wing surface that is required to produce and maintain lift at various angles of attack, and instead the airflow was prone to turbulence and separation as the aircraft pitched up. This meant that the 737 MAX was prone to losing lift during the climb phase of flight and stalling, effectively falling out of the sky, and naturally enough the corporate heads at Boeing asked the engineers to come up with a solution to help rectify this gross design flaw.

 

The engineering team at Boeing came up with the ‘Manoeuvring Characteristic Augmentation System’ or simply MCAS for short, and while it sounds complex and impressive it really isn’t. In essence the system utilized software commanded by a single sensor, that when activated, was designed to take control away from the pilots to pitch the aircraft’s nose down abruptly in 5 second intervals in an effort to reattach airflow over the wings and regain lift. The unforgivable aspect of all this was that in the event of a fault with the sensor or software there was no back-up MCAS system installed, thereby breaking the most fundamental aspect of aircraft design: the need for system redundancy. Unfortunately, things get more ludicrous from here. In light of all the changes to aircraft performance with the 737 MAX compared to it’s predecessor, Boeing decided not to inform the pilots or airlines of the adverse handling characteristics or of the new MCAS system. Instead to cut training costs and to maximise sales they sold the aircraft to airlines on the basis that all pilots would not need to be retrained from the 737 NG to the 737 MAX type.

 

Just after a year of service 346 people died in two similar crashes less than five months apart in the 737 MAX when the MCAS sensor and software failed. The pilots of Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29th 2018, and of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10th 2019 fought desperately to understand and regain control of their aircraft which was pitching violently towards earth in 5 second intervals. Not being aware of the MCAS system it is difficult to imagine what must have been going through their minds as the aircraft literally took on a life of it’s own. They fought bravely for what must have seemed like an eternity. It is difficult to imagine the shear horror the passengers were going through in their last moments as they were hurtling towards earth in what was apparently a state of the art aircraft that had just entered service.

 

Today Boeing have stated they have fixed the issue and the Boeing 737 MAX continues to operate, flying thousands of passengers on a daily basis. Yet, in light of recent news events, there remains many problems with Boeing aircraft and with the company culture. All of this really begs the question, is the blame solely with Boeing or is it the economic and political environs they find themselves operating in?

 

Not long after the fatal crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 I was lecturing a foundation degree class in Engineering in Belfast. At the end of the class I went on a rant expressing my disappointment in Boeing, on the importance of work place unions to boost safety and to reign in corporate greed and on the problems with unconstrained capitalism. At the end of the class a student approached my desk and reminded me of the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union. I am sure he will do very well for himself in this world of ours.