Reference no: EM132634570
The Boeing 737 MAX is the fourth generation of the venerable Boeing 737 passenger liners. Although the airliner was announced to the public as far back as 2011, it didn't begin commercial service until 2017. That was when Malindo air, a Malaysian aviation company, began commercial flights from Kuala Lumpur Singapore.
According to a Boeing document available online, the company has had 5,012 orders for the aircraft, and shipped 387. Unfortunately, two of those aircraft crashed, killing 346 people.
The problem, which Jason Perlow explains with great clarity, is that the 737 MAX wasn't just another aircraft in Boeing's line. The 737 MAX was a rushed response to competitive pressures from Airbus, who was shipping a new, more fuel efficient variant of the Airbus A320.
Rather than designing an entirely new airframe, Boeing decided to hot rod its well-proven 737 airframe. It added bigger engines, which would have required taller landing gear. Instead of doing so, Boeing relocated the engines and -- here's what apparently got people killed -- compensated for the flight characteristic changes in software.
The software was flawed and people died. Jason argues, and I agree with him, that software can only do so much. This was apparently an aircraft that was incredibly difficult to fly and -- in an analogy to the movie industry adage of "we'll fix it in post" -- the company decided to compensate for the flight challenges with code.
In the first crash, on Oct. 29, 2018, Lion Air flight 610 dove into the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing 189 people. The flight crew made a distress call shortly before losing control. That aircraft was almost brand-new, having arrived at Lion Air three months earlier.
The second crash occurred on March 10, 2019 when Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 departed Ad dis Ababa Bole International Airport bound for Nairobi, Kenya. Just after takeoff, the pilot radioed a distress call and was given immediate clearance to return and land. But before the crew could make it back, the aircraft crashed 40 miles from the airport.
Those engines, though, required Boeing to make critical design changes. Because they're bigger, and because the 737 sits so low to the ground (a deliberate 737 design choice to let it serve small airports with limited ground equipment), Boeing moved the engines slightly forward and raised them higher under the wing. (If you place an engine too close to the ground, it can suck in debris while the plane is taxiing.) That change allowed Boeing to accommodate the engines without completely redesigning the 737 fuselage -- a fuselage that hasn't changed much in 50 years.
On Oct. 11, 2019, an international flight safety panel issued a Joint Authorities Technical Review that faulted both the FAA and Boeing on several fronts. For the FAA, it said the agency needs to modernize its aircraft certification process to account for increasingly complex automated systems by ensuring that aircraft incorporate fail-safe design principles that don't rely too heavily on pilot input.
For Boeing's part, the report cited the company's "inadequate communications" to the FAA about MCAS, inadequate pilot training and shortage of technical staff. The review was conducted by representatives from NASA, the FAA and civil aviation authorities from Australia, Canada, China, Europe, Singapore, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates.
On March 12, 2019, Trump tweeted that airplanes are "becoming far too complex to fly." The reality isn't quite that simple. Commercial airliners have used automated systems for decades (that's what an automatic pilot is). The Lockheed L-1011, introduced in 1972, could land itself. Most airliners flying today also are "fly by wire," meaning that a pilot's commands are carried as electronic signals (rather than over hydraulic lines) to an aircraft's control services. Flight computers also continually stabilize an aircraft during flight without input from the flight crew. Boeing and Airbus have different philosophies for this interaction, but explaining those could take a book.
1.1) Hint: Click on about the airline incidences from the internet and read about the airline's Mission, Goals, and Strategies and the incidences in detail. Read in depth and mention what's your assessment of the company's wrong strategic decisions?
1.2) What right strategic actions should have been taken to avoid the situation.