Who Will Fly in the Max 8 Now?

A Lion Air Boeing Max 8 jet crashed in the sea off the Indonesian coast on October 29, 2018. Some pilots I know attributed the crash to faulty training. “American pilots are better trained and know how to manually fly the plane. Most pilots rely only on the computerized system.” they reasoned. I took their word for it that more training was needed for foreign pilots. I swore off flying anything but American planes.

Five months later when the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing Max 8 crashed, I again thought that foreign pilots needed better training. Still, I was relieved that, in March 2019, President Trump ordered the planes grounded. Who wants to take a chance? Numbers don’t lie.

The Truth is Out There

Now, with still grounded Max 8 planes, the truth is seeping out and the news is frightening. According to the Associated Press, Boeing itself hid the truth from the FAA and pushed their planes onto the market with glaring defects. Knowing that, from the start, the aircraft’s systems were flawed, they put the marketing and sales of their planes before the safety of every passenger and crew member. The NY Post article noted that in newly revealed information that employees complained “This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.”

Mighty Boeing Has Fallen

It’s unimaginable that the Boeing Corporation, having every means at its disposal to build reliable aircraft, would lower its safety standard. Lowered to such a degree that multiple employees and pilots were apprehensive of a pending disaster. They dutifully expressed their concern, all to no avail. Their concerns were ignored by upper management.

The mark of a good organization is one that’s willing to be alert for signs of issues and fix them before the disaster strikes. When the pursuit of profit comes before the very lives of stakeholders and their biggest consumers, their downhill slide to failure is eminent. They have little time to take drastic steps to fix this. As a major industry to both government and the private sector, they owe it to all to do so.

Can Boeing Regain the Trust of the Public, Pilots or the FAA?

It remains to be seen whether or not Boeing will be able to recover the trust that the aviation industry once placed in their products. The FAA should now diligently test every aspect of the equipment before lives are again entrusted into the plane manufacturer’s hands. Stocks will fall and heads will roll before a better Boeing can emerge. That or it goes insolvent and has to sell off it’s holdings as the free market does it’s thing.