Boeing 737 Max Airplane: Safe to Fly? Or Yet Another Flying Coffin?

My first brush with Boeing happened, when I, after an all-Marathi primary school, was trying to grasp the nuances of English, a foreign language, which then seemed such a waste as the British had left India over a decade before my birth. My attempts at learning their language were more like a childish revenge against all the wrongs they did in India.

Marathi, my mother-tongue, being Sanskrit based, is pretty scientific in its structure, and simple, because what you write is what you speak. No confusing differences in pronunciation for similar words or vice versa. And, most importantly, no silences while pronouncing any words, hence a childhood joke remains etched in my mind.

An excited child at the airport, on seeing an aircraft take off, shouts, ¡°Boeing, Boeing!¡±

Boeing

¡°Be silent!¡± The teacher says.

And the child obediently continues, ¡°Oeing, Oeing.¡±

But after I left the IAF in 2003 and joined an airline in 2004 to fly the Boeing 737 NG (Next Generation) aircraft, I switched to another oft-repeated slogan, ¡°If it ain¡¯t Boeing, I ain¡¯t going.¡±

Since then, I¡¯ve been flying and am still flying the 737 NG, along with its youngest sibling, the 737 Max.

The Max is the most modern version of the Boeing 737 that has been flying, in its various versions, since 1967. It is also the most fuel efficient, and was the most in-demand airplane for a while¡­

Boeing

Till a brand new 737 Max aircraft of Lion Air crashed on 29th October 2018.

¡®Downfall: A case Against Boeing¡¯ is a chillingly brutal and technically accurate documentary about the crash and the reasons behind it.

It also documents the corporate culture that tried to whitewash the problems in the aftermath of that accident.

Lion Air had a ¡®spotty¡¯ safety record and was, for some time, banned from flying into the United States, so there were some subtle and not-so-subtle attempts at blaming the ¡®third world¡¯ countries and airlines and their pilots.

A former Chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said, ¡°The airline probably needed to do a better job of training their pilots¡­¡±

Boeing

To a question, ¡°Should the passengers in the US be concerned?¡± He replied, ¡°I don¡¯t think so. In the United States, they understand how to operate this aircraft.¡±

Boeing reportedly stated, ¡°An American pilot would never have gotten into such a situation¡­¡±

The Boeing Chairman publicly said, ¡°We can¡¯t really comment on the investigation.¡±

But eventually, the Company admitted to a possibility of erroneous MCAS activation.

To that, a surprised Boeing pilot community that had been flying the new 737 Max airplane reacted with, ¡°What is MCAS? Never heard of it before!¡±

As I¡¯ve always said about airplanes, ¡®in case of trouble, this vehicle cannot be stopped on the roadside to await assistance.¡¯

Boeing

So, although you might have driven your car all your life without ever looking under the hood, we pilots are required to learn a lot about the planes we fly. Which is also why switching from one plane to another is not as easy as driving one car today and a different one tomorrow. It involves a lot of ground training and simulator flying, followed by flying in the new cockpit ¡®under supervision¡¯ before being allowed to fly by yourself.

This entire process takes months of studies and millions of Rupees.

So, against this background, imagine the pilots asking, ¡°What is MCAS? Never heard of it before!¡±

To everyone¡¯s utter surprise, Boeing had included MCAS in the pilots¡¯ manuals only under ¡®Abbreviations¡¯. There was no explanation about that system anywhere else in any of the pilots¡¯ manuals, which, for the record are four, (FCOM Volume 1, FCOM Volume 2, QRH and FCTM) and together run into some 7,000¡ªyes, seven thousand¡ªpages.

We pilots are not required to memorise everything, for that would be impossible, but there are a few ¡®memory items¡¯ that one ¡®must know¡¯ and there are things about the aircraft systems that the pilots ¡®should know¡¯. After that, we can refer to the books for everything else, as long as one knows where to find that information.

So, overall, the process of pilot (and engineer) training and certification is robust, well documented and legally enforced.

Which makes this question even more shocking, ¡°What is MCAS? Never heard of it before!¡±

So, what is MCAS?

Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System.

Boeing

Reportedly, according to the Boeing bigwigs, it was just a minor modification to the software that worked in the background and automatically helped the airplane stay within its manoeuvring envelope.

Let me explain ¡®manoeuvring envelope¡¯. Promise I¡¯ll keep it simple.

Say you¡¯re on a motorcycle. Presuming, of course, that you¡¯re on a new highway, (inaugurated just before the elections!) you can only go as fast as the engine will take you or till the frame rattles out of control. Now imagine yourself on that same road a few years later, and you¡¯re forced to go slow. But you can only go so slow and not slower, else you¡¯ll lose balance. Well, between these two speeds is your manoeuvring envelope.

But your bike can only move in two dimensions, so for an airplane, add a third dimension of height, and things get interesting¡ªand complicated.

Which is why, they said, MCAS was automatic, to keep things simple for the pilots.

But Pilots¡¯ unions in the US accused Boeing of withholding vital safety information.

To that, Boeing replied, ¡°We try not to overload the crews with information that¡¯s unnecessary.¡±

The bottom line, they insisted, was that the 737 Max was safe and ¡®existing procedures¡¯ were adequate to handle the situation that caused the Lion Air crash.

And then on 10th March 2019, another 737 Max, this time of Ethiopian Airlines, crashed.

Countries the world over grounded the 737 Max airplane, which caused public pressure in the US for President Trump himself to announce the grounding.

But the Boeing CEO still insisted, ¡°The pilots did not ¡®completely¡¯ follow procedures.¡±

Now, we do have ¡®existing procedures¡¯ to cater for engine failures, but if engines were to start failing regularly, surely someone should ask, ¡®Why?¡¯

Don¡¯t you agree?

Yet there was a massive PR exercise to blame the ¡®poorly trained¡¯ pilots of those non-US airlines.

And, I remember, there were attempts to shift the blame to ¡®cheap¡¯ Indian software inside the MCAS computers! But that didn¡¯t convince anyone.

After the Max planes were grounded and had to be flown empty, without passengers, to different airports for storage, a lot of ¡®well trained¡¯ American pilots weren¡¯t keen to fly that plane.

I¡¯ve been in the IAF for 22 years and have flown the MiG 21, that the ill-informed called the ¡®Flying Coffin.¡¯ But, in all those years and even after that, I¡¯ve never come across a single pilot who refused to fly that plane. My article on the subject highlights this point.

At a Congressional hearing in Washington, DC, the famous Captain ¡®Sully¡¯ Sullenberger said, ¡°We shouldn¡¯t be blaming the pilots. And we shouldn¡¯t expect pilots to have to compensate for flawed designs¡­¡±

Wikipedia

Basically, profits had won over safety, albeit briefly, but with dangerous consequences.

I¡¯ll not reveal the details here with spoilers and I would strongly recommend that you watch ¡®Downfall: A case Against Boeing¡¯ yourself.

It will shock you and will bring tears to your eyes. Don¡¯t miss it.

What is the future? You ask? Is the Max airplane safe?

It is, now.

Boeing engineers have modified the MCAS, made it less obtrusive, and kept it under the pilots¡¯ control unlike earlier.

Also, Aviation Regulators the world over, being ¡®once bitten twice shy¡¯, have mandated Ground Training and Simulator Training for the pilots.

And the airlines have trained their pilots and engineers before inducting the Max airplanes back into service.

The documentary, though absolutely true, is history. And the professionals in the industry have learnt from that.

The future is safe¡ªand fuel efficient.

I¡¯ve flown the MiG 21 and I¡¯m flying the 737 Max.

They¡¯re safe.

I know.