The Boeing 737 MAX (manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes) is infamous for crashing twice in five months back in 2019, killing 346 people. This is unprecedented in modern aviation, and investigations revealed faulty engineering in the automatic safety systems.
Faulty automatic safety systems caused the nose of the plane to point downwards, sending the plane into a dive. This lapse in engineering caused both the Lion Air crash in October 2018 and the Ethiopian Airline crash in March 2019. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded the 737 MAX three days after the Ethiopian Airline crash.
Aeronautical engineer Bjorn Fehrm called the series of events “absolutely unforgivable,” however he believes the flaws have been fixed.
Dennis Muilenburg resigned as CEO of Boeing due to the crashes. Even with the success of Boeing Starliner’s takeoff from Earth, it was not enough for Muilenburg’s job to remain intact. Boeing issued a statement stating that “a change in leadership was necessary to restore confidence in the company moving forward.” Boeing owes about $50 million to the families of the deceased travelers, and the grounding of the 737 MAX cost Boeing almost $18 billion.
The 737 MAX was recently approved to return to the skies on Nov. 18, 2020. Its first flight since the grounding of the plane. After more than 20 months of redesigning the aircraft, the 737 MAX departed from Miami International Airport on Dec. 29, 2020 and traveled successfully to LaGuardia Airport in New York.
