Boeing Screwed Up 737 MAX, Blamed Pilots

When it became clear that the Boeing 737 had reached the end of its lifecyle and couldn’t compete with newer Airbus A320, the company’s aerospace engineers wanted to design a new model from scratch to maximize performance and safety. Corporation executives, focused on costs and shareholder profits, insisted that they tarted up the old 737 and called it the “737 MAX.” Worse, Boeing facilities, once centralized in Seattle, were now scattered around the country, so designers, engineers, and test pilots couldn’t communicate as readily.

When the “new” 737 MAX planes began falling out of the sky, Boeing executives quickly blamed the failures on “pilot error,” not their own disasterous decisions.

More:

“Boeing knew doomed 737-MAX plane was ‘pig with lipstick’ but still let it fly,” Gavin Newsham, NY Post

“How Shareholder Capitalism Crashed a Plane (Two, Actually),” Moe Tkacik, New York Magazine

“Boeing built an unsafe plane, and blamed the pilots when it crashed,” Peter Robison, Business Live

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