michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: As Boeing developed a new line of passenger jets, it was determined to avoid costly training for pilots. Then, two of those jets crashed. It’s Tuesday, March 19.

natalie kitroeff

The global aerospace business is essentially a duopoly. There are two big companies. There’s Boeing, which is American-owned, and there’s Airbus, a European rival.

michael barbaro

Natalie Kitroeff is a business reporter at The Times.

natalie kitroeff

These two are always competing with each other. They are competing on every single aspect of an airplane. And they’re often competing for the same customers.

[music]

natalie kitroeff

So in late 2010 —

archived recording We’re not redesigning the A320. It’s pretty damn good just the way it is. What we’re doing is offering new, more fuel-efficient engines on today’s airplane.

natalie kitroeff

— Airbus announces that it is offering a new, fuel-efficient version of its best-selling A320 plane.

archived recording Well, an A320neo —

natalie kitroeff

It’s going to be the A320neo.

archived recording It’s a new engine option offered on today’s A320 family of aircraft. And now they’re being offered with new, more fuel-efficient engines. We’re putting our money on re-engining the world’s best-selling single-aisle aircraft.

natalie kitroeff

This amounts to essentially a frontal assault for Boeing. Fuel savings mean that airlines are saving on costs. And if Airbus is going to offer an option that is going to save airlines money, Boeing better will come up with its own alternative in order to compete in this cutthroat environment, where they have one main rival.

michael barbaro

So what does Boeing do in response to its biggest and most important rival coming up with this fuel-efficient jetliner?

natalie kitroeff

Boeing scrambles to respond quickly.

archived recording [MUSIC] We are making a decision to invest in the 737 family.

natalie kitroeff

And within months, the company comes up with an upgrade of its own.

archived recording Max efficiency, which leads to profitability, max reliability, and to the flying public, max passenger appeal.

natalie kitroeff

It’s going to be a fuel-efficient version of their 737 workhorse. It is going to have bigger engines. And it’s going to save airlines money on this fuel.

archived recording The best single-aisle airplane in the world. [MUSIC]

natalie kitroeff

And they’re going to call it the 737 Max. And one of the main goals of this engineering process is to keep this new plane as similar to its predecessor as possible.

michael barbaro

Why?

natalie kitroeff

Part of the reason is that Boeing is competing with Airbus. And they’re competing with them on every single cost item. And a plane is not just metal and technology. It’s also what it costs to operate the aircraft and to train pilots to fly it.

michael barbaro

Hm.

natalie kitroeff

If the 737 Max turned out to be so different from its predecessor that it required training on a flight simulator, one of these giant machines where you have a cockpit and it mimics the experience of flying the plane, it would cost airlines tens of millions of dollars over the life of an aircraft. It’s incredibly expensive. So if Boeing were to say, we have this beautiful new jet, but it’s going to require twice the amount of training that the Airbus model requires, the executives might pause on that. So as the company is manufacturing this plane, it wants to find ways to make it fly exactly the way that its predecessors did.

michael barbaro

So that there is not a need for training.

natalie kitroeff

Exactly. And there’s a little bit of a problem.

[music]

natalie kitroeff

There is something that is fundamentally different about this plane. Its engines are bigger, and those engines need to be mounted farther forward on the wings. And that changes the aerodynamics of the plane. So the placement of those engines makes the nose of the plane push upward in certain circumstances. And that can lead to a stall, which is a dangerous situation. So Boeing has to come up with a solution to make the plane act the way its predecessor did and to counteract that force. So what it does is it comes up with this system, this software.

michael barbaro

And what does the new system do?

natalie kitroeff

The new system automatically corrects for that upward motion of the nose. And it pushes the nose down automatically. And it’s supposed to be working in the background, in a way that pilots don’t even notice, correcting for an issue that was not in the prior model of this plane. And it’s supposed to be something that is just keeping the pilot in a position where he or she feels as though the plane is flying in the same exact way under the same conditions that the prior model did.

michael barbaro

So Boeing thinks even though the engines are different, that they have developed a system that makes the engines operate essentially the same way the old 737 did. And from a pilot’s point of view, therefore, there would be no need for new training?

natalie kitroeff

Yes. Boeing believed there was no need for extra training for pilots who had flown the previous model. And the Federal Aviation Administration agreed. In March 2017, the F.A.A. certified the plane. It did not require flight simulator training for pilots who had flown the prior model. And regulators around the world followed suit. Two months later, Boeing shipped out its first 737 Max out of Seattle. And the company decided that it does not need to fully inform pilots that this new software even exists.

michael barbaro

Hmm. So they don’t even tell the pilots. They think it is so unimportant to the operation of the plane from the experience of a pilot that they don’t even need to know?

natalie kitroeff

Yes.

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michael barbaro

So what happens next? This plane is certified, on the market. What happens?

archived recording Well, it’s wheels up for Boeing’s new 737 Max.

natalie kitroeff

Orders come pouring in from across the globe.

archived recording Boeing says the Max 8 is the company’s fastest-selling plane in its history, with nearly 4,700 orders for more than 100 customers across the world.

natalie kitroeff

And carriers make this the best-selling Boeing jet ever.

archived recording 100 737 Maxes expected to be sold to AerCap. That’s a lessor from the Netherlands. Also, Korean Airlines expected to order 30 of those.

natalie kitroeff

Pilots love it.

archived recording It flew beautifully. Its engines were extremely quiet.

natalie kitroeff

It is a hit.

archived recording 1 Still, take a look at shares of Boeing, which — archived recording 2 Are up! And up today!

natalie kitroeff

They’re enjoying a ton of success in the stock market.

archived recording 14 Logged orders or commitments for almost 400 aircraft, with a total sticker price of more than $37 billion.

natalie kitroeff

Investors love them, customers love them — until October 29, 2018, when Lion Air Flight 610, a 737 Max carrying 189 people, takes off and, 12 minutes later, crashes into the Java Sea.

archived recording Three days after Lion Air Flight JT610 mysteriously disappeared before plummeting into the sea, there may be hope for answers.

michael barbaro

What do we learn about what went wrong on that flight?

archived recording Military personnel have found one of the black boxes.

natalie kitroeff

So a picture begins to emerge of this flight that suggests that the pilot may be fighting with that system.

archived recording Flight data shows the on-board computers were pushing the plane’s nose down. Then the pilots aimed the nose higher. That happened 26 times, with the crew never following procedures to correct the problem.

natalie kitroeff

So while the software is pushing the nose down, the pilot is trying to push it back up over and over and over again, multiple times. That is the picture that begins to emerge. But we do not have full conclusive evidence yet.

michael barbaro

So it seems like the pilots on this flight are fighting a flight control system, a self-correcting one that’s supposed to keep the nose from going up, that they don’t even know exists, right?

natalie kitroeff

That’s exactly right. And what experts believe was happening was that this system was taking in a faulty sensor reading. So it was responding to bad data. And that is why it kept triggering over and over and over again, despite the pilot’s best efforts to get the plane back on course.

michael barbaro

And eventually those pilots lose their battle against the system.

natalie kitroeff

Eventually, the plane plunges into the sea, killing all 189 people on board.

[music]

michael barbaro

What, Natalie, is the reaction among the airlines that have bought this line of planes to this emerging realization that Boeing hadn’t revealed what turned out to be this important piece of information, the existence of this system that may likely have contributed to this crash?

natalie kitroeff

Pilots are furious — livid, in fact — that they have not been informed that this thing even exists. So they have these meetings, in which they told Boeing officials that this was a breach of trust and that it was disrespectful.

michael barbaro

So I have to assume that these angry pilots, in addition to just wanting to be sure everyone knows about this system, are demanding training so that they can properly respond to this system.

natalie kitroeff

No, they’re not. The F.A.A., Boeing, nobody is recommending more training on this system.

michael barbaro

Why not?

natalie kitroeff

The American pilots that I’ve talked to, they believe that because they’ve been informed about the system, now that they know how it works, they are able to safely fly this plane. They know how to deal with this software if it becomes an issue on their flights. And they feel confident about flying the plane. This is a confidence that’s, in part, based on statistics and experience. There has been only one fatality on U.S. airlines in the last decade. Boeing has an enviable safety record. In many ways, they had good reason to be confident. And they’re also promised a fix to the software that pushes the nose down. That’s going to come within the next several weeks. They will be informed of it. And they feel confident that that is enough.

michael barbaro

O.K., so after this Lion Air crash, the only thing that changes is that Boeing vows to fix the system. But no additional training is ordered for any pilot anywhere. And the 737 Max planes are free to keep flying?

natalie kitroeff

Yes.

archived recording 1 A jet has crashed, and the tragedy is being felt around the world. archived recording 2 U.S. aviation investigators and a technical team from Boeing are headed to Ethiopia tonight. That’s where a new 737 Max 8 jetliner crashed today, minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa. archived recording 3 Killing everyone on board, Flight 302 was en route to Nairobi, Kenya, when it crashed in the town of Bishoftu just six minutes after takeoff. The plane was carrying 149 passengers and 8 crew members.

natalie kitroeff

Immediately, it becomes apparent that there are some similarities between this flight and the Lion Air crash.

archived recording 1 Preliminary data shows a, quote, “clear similarity” to the Lion Air Max 8 crash off Indonesia in October. archived recording 2 Both planes were Boeing 737 Max 8 aircrafts. archived recording 3 What we now understand is what people had suspected, that there are certain similarities between the Lion Air crash and the Ethiopian crash earlier this month.

michael barbaro

What are those similarities?

natalie kitroeff

So the pilot of the Ethiopian Airlines flight reported flight control problems. So that was a first clue. The plane is also moving in the same way that the Lion Air plane was, up and down. The speeds are changing rapidly, suggesting that the pilot may have been fighting with this system, again, with the pilot trying to pull the nose up, and the system pushing it down. Then there is physical evidence recovered at the site of the crash that seems to suggest that the nose was being pitched down. We don’t know why. But again, it all points to this system being involved, potentially contributing to another tragedy.

michael barbaro

And so what is the reaction this time, after the second crash of a 737 Max?

natalie kitroeff

Boeing stands firm behind the plane. And American carriers are right there with them. But —

archived recording China has grounded its entire Boeing 737 Max fleet.

natalie kitroeff

— regulators around the world seem a little less confident. The Chinese and Indonesians quickly ground the 737 Max.

archived recording More countries following China’s lead and grounding the Boeing 737 Max 8 jet.

natalie kitroeff

Once the Europeans follow —

archived recording European Aviation Safety Agency, they have banned flights of the 737 Max series, adding to similar groundings by China, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, the U.K., Singapore, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Turkey. I could go on.

natalie kitroeff

— American regulators are all of a sudden under immense pressure for the F.A.A. to ground these planes.

archived recording (donald trump) Boeing is an incredible company. They are working very, very hard right now. And hopefully, they’ll very quickly come up with the answer. But until they do, the planes are grounded.

michael barbaro

All of this looks very bad for Boeing, obviously. And it seems to stem from this original motivation, as you described it, to avoid classifying this new energy-efficient plane that would compete against Airbuses as fundamentally different from older models of the 737 that would require expensive training of the pilots, even though a very crucial part of the plane was different.

natalie kitroeff

That’s right. This motivation to keep this plane as similar as possible to its predecessor permeated the entire engineering process. Remember, this is how Boeing needs to compete with Airbus. It’s also raising questions about the entire process for certifying aircraft in the United States. There is renewed scrutiny on the closeness between the F.A.A. and Boeing. The F.A.A. and Boeing work together to certify planes. The F.A.A. actually relies heavily on Boeing employees to help certify its aircraft.

michael barbaro

And is that basically industry practice? Companies that make these planes work with the Federal Aviation Administration on the approval process?

natalie kitroeff

That’s exactly right.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

natalie kitroeff

I mean, folks were talking about this, right? But nobody was kind of raising red flags. I mean, it wasn’t like people were up in arms about the way that this certification system works. But now there’s been two crashes of the same model in less than five months. And we’re hearing more and more from regulators and former regulators about how this close relationship may be too cozy.

michael barbaro

Natalie, what do we know about the role that Boeing’s employees played specifically in the certification of the Boeing 737 Max?

natalie kitroeff

We know that Boeing plays a critical role in helping to certify its aircraft. And we are learning more and more about the role that it played in the case of the 737 Max. The Seattle Times recently reported that not only was the F.A.A. relying heavily on Boeing in this case, but that Boeing itself was turning out an analysis that was downplaying the potential risks of a software system that is now at issue after these two crashes.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

natalie kitroeff

The F.A.A., like any federal agency, has a limited budget. And there’s a reason why it would want to rely on the people who are most informed about the inner workings of increasingly complex aircraft in order to determine whether that plane is airworthy. You can see why you would need a relationship, and one where there is a lot of information-sharing, right? Because the one side can’t employ as many people as Boeing does. And the other side has a ton of expertise. But is that relationship too close?

michael barbaro

Right. And there seems to be a lot of trust at the center of this system you’re describing that allows Boeing to basically be like a co-regulator of itself. And the most important trust involved here seems to be that a business will always put safety above profits. And I guess the question here is whether in a system with that much trust, that balance could get out of whack, and safety might lose out to profits. And the only way we would know that is when there’s a tragedy or two tragedies.

natalie kitroeff

Boeing doesn’t want planes to crash. So their motivations are, in many ways, exactly aligned with their customers’. But what’s emerged after these two crashes — I mean, you heard the pilots. They said this was a breach of trust.

michael barbaro

Right.

natalie kitroeff

I think a lot of people are feeling that right now, that feeling of questioning of this process. And this isn’t to say anything about Boeing’s motivations. We are at the very beginning of investigating these two flights, and we do not want to rush to conclusions. But you’re asking the questions that the people at the front line of this industry, the pilots, the crew, they’re asking that right now. How do we regain trust in Boeing? And how do we know for sure that we are being told everything we need to know in order to fly these planes?

michael barbaro

We’ve been talking about trust, the trust that the F.A.A. had in Boeing, that the airlines, their pilots and crews had or didn’t have in this plane. But I’m wondering now about the trust that we, as the flying public, have in these planes. And it’s kind of hard to imagine wanting to fly on a 737 Max anytime soon. Let’s say that the software gets fixed. And Boeing and the F.A.A., through their certification process, they all sign off on everything being safe. Why should we trust them after that? Why should we trust them, kind of, ever?

natalie kitroeff

I think that coming up with the software fix is manageable for Boeing, an industrial juggernaut that has dealt with these issues before. And you’ll remember, the 787 Dreamliner was grounded for three months in 2013, when it had battery fire problems.

michael barbaro

And that was a Boeing plane?

natalie kitroeff

Right, a Boeing plane. And we all fly on it. It’s possible that people will be wary right now. But Boeing has the capacity to fix this thing and probably will. The bigger question is whether these two tragedies lead to a more wholesale transformation in the process for regulating the aircraft manufacturers in this country. What, if anything, is going to change in the process by which we determine, in the United States, that planes are safe to fly?

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michael barbaro

Natalie, thank you very much.

natalie kitroeff