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This is the last straw of Curtis Eubank. 

Boeing flight control engineers have repeatedly expressed concerns about the safety of the software on the company's new 737-MAX aircraft they are developing, and urged his boss to implement a backup system, just as they did on the Dreamliner model. 

But his appeal fell on deaf ears, and his manager said he was worried about the cost impact. In 2015, the manager of Ewbank told him: “Before Boeing changes things, people must die.” After that, he was angry and frustrated and left Boeing.

Three years later, on October 29, 2018, fishermen working near the coast of Jakarta, Indonesia, watched in horror as a Lion Air Boeing 737-MAX sailed into the water at a speed of 500 miles per hour, killing all 189 people on board.

A few months later, on March 10, 2019, another 737-MAX crashed after taking off from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing 157 people. 

Subsequent investigations found that the Maneuvering Characteristics Enhancement System (MCAS) software of the two aircraft encountered the same fatal problem-this was one of the key issues that Ewbank posed to Boeing. The system was accidentally triggered on two aircraft because a faulty angle of attack (AOA) sensor transmitted inaccurate information about the position of the aircraft's nose, causing the nose to dive, which the pilot could not ignore.

In the "Blind Flight—The Tragedy of the 737 MAX and the Downfall of Boeing" aired on Tuesday (Double Daily), investigative reporter Peter Robison described the key mistakes that led to the deaths of 346 people and why these accidents revealed "a family The decadent culture of iconic American companies".

The airplane giant was founded in 1916 by timber giant William Boeing and is now the largest exporter in the United States, with annual revenues of more than 100 billion U.S. dollars and more than 100,000 employees.

But the two 737-MAX crashes put the company in a difficult position-exposing the frugality and savings, cost reductions and compromises that have led to these two tragedies for decades.

Robison believes that Boeing's merger with rival McDonnell Douglas in 1996 was the key, because it led to a comprehensive change in the spirit of the airline giant, which caused dissatisfaction among employees to a large extent. For example, Boeing executives now find that they have to adopt the "5-15 rule" introduced from McDonald, which means that the time to read memos should not exceed 5 minutes and the time to write them should not exceed 15 minutes. "Idealism has just disappeared," an insider told Robinson. "It's about something else-shareholder value, I guess."

McDonald’s executives, later described by federal mediators as “hunter killer assassins”, clashed with Boeing’s “Boy Scouts,” and employees became increasingly dissatisfied. In 1999, when engineers were told that they would no longer receive contract bonuses, this triggered the largest white-collar strike in American history, with more than 23,000 Boeing employees in six states on strike. Boeing eventually succumbed, but the 40-day strike cost the company approximately $750 million.

"Before Boeing changes things, people must die."

The dissatisfaction among employees continued to deepen. In 2009, when Boeing launched their new aircraft Dreamliner, the workers nicknamed it "Bottom Liner" and "End-of-the-Liner". This is the mood of the tired employees.

At the same time, Phil Condit, then Boeing's chief executive, was busy traveling the world in a new US$50 million "Boeing Business Jet" commissioned by him and his (fourth) wife Geda. It is a modification of the 737, which was the largest business jet in the history of the world at the time. It was equipped with a queen-size bed, an office, a sofa lounge with a 42-inch flat-screen TV and two bathrooms, one of which was equipped with 250,000 Dollar-saving AquaJet shower.

In 2003, Condit resigned. Two weeks later, "Business Week" exposed the board of directors to pressure him, asking him to re-examine his strategic mistakes and feminization. The married Condit had a relationship with customer relations manager Laverne Hawthorne, who was later fired and paid a settlement. According to a report in BusinessWeek, before she was fired, “she went to his office to see [Condit] and reminded him of the promise he made to her.” “She looked into his eyes and said:'We are this One person in the room has the ball, of course it’s not you.’”

Condit was replaced by CEO Jim McNerney, who joined in 2005 for $52 million but made cost cutting the core of his business plan, Robinson wrote. As the former CEO of General Electric and 3M, McNerney is known for his “ranking and yanking” strategy of evaluating managers and then firing the bottom 10% every year. 

Crucially, he also gave the green light to Boeing's new aircraft, the 737-MAX, in 2011.

As the main force of the Boeing fleet, the 737 made its debut in January 1967, with a miniskirt stewardess from Pacific Southwest Airlines standing on the wing. But it has never been popular. "It's like a clumsy pickup truck," Gordon Bethune of Continental Airlines, a former Boeing executive, told Robinson.

When the fourth redesign of the 737 was approved in 2011, it was mainly in response to the growing threat of the Airbus A320neo model. The aircraft was named 737-MAX, but it still failed to impress people. "This is a pig with lipstick," a former Boeing pilot told Robinson. "The acrobatics of this kind of aircraft," commented Rick Ludtke, the company's former engineer. "Designed by a clown, and the clown is supervised by a monkey," said an employee tired of endless mistakes.

As Robison wrote, "Like the original 737, the design is fast and dirty." 

But unlike the original version and its subsequent iterations, the new 737-MAX provides optional additional features to attract more and more cost-conscious low-cost airlines. Although this makes sense for accessories and furniture, it is a terrible idea in terms of safety. "In a decisive example, Boeing charged $80,000 for an AOA indicator-this seemingly peripheral cockpit instrument, which would happen on the doomed Lion Air and Ethiopian flights, both None are equipped with optional equipment," Robinson wrote.

To make matters worse, Boeing refused to make any changes to new aircraft that required existing 737 pilots to use simulators for retraining.

Business is difficult. American Airlines placed an order for 200 MAXs, valued at 38 billion U.S. dollars, and they also ordered 260 Airbus A320neo. As of December 2019, more than 15,000 MAX have been ordered, but only 10,571 have been delivered.

After 10 years at the helm, McNerney retired in 2015 and handed over power to 51-year-old Dennis Muilenberg, who has worked at Boeing since 1985 and served as the president and president of its defense aerospace and security business. CEO.

At the same time, with the flight of the 737 MAX, FAA officials tried to inspect the aircraft, but were waved by Boeing engineers and gave them the technique of "filling drawers with paper". "If you can flood them with information, they will disappear," an engineer told Robison.

At other times, the relationship between the FAA and Boeing seemed too harmonious. Once, an FAA manager told Boeing that there was no need to install circuit breakers on MAX high-voltage fuel pump wires, even though the agency insisted on installing circuit breakers for rival Airbus aircraft. On the other hand, Boeing submitted a proposal to the FAA, detailing how to install electronic checklists in the cockpit of the new MAX will cost more than $10 billion, and any safety improvements are negligible. The FAA agreed to make the 737-MAX the only large commercial jet without a single one.

"Boeing has optimized its relationship with them," Robinson wrote.

After the first 737-MAX crashed in Jakarta, CEO Muilenberg began a campaign to limit damage. Appearing on Fox Business Channel, he almost blamed Lion Air for the tragedy. "The bottom line here is that the 737 MAX is safe," he said. "Safety is our core value at Boeing." 

Therefore MAX continues to fly, although the FAA's aircraft certification service has concluded that based on the potential size of the MA​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The machine accident cannot cope with the sensor failure. However, no consideration was given to grounding the aircraft. "No American was killed. The pilot was a foreigner. It has disappeared from the headlines," Robinson wrote. 

Before the second crash, a former Boeing executive reviewed the accident report for a congressional committee and found that 1 out of 25 MAX aircraft encountered some kind of safety issue within a few months after being delivered to the airline. "Despite this record, Boeing and American Airlines officials stated that the MAX was completely safe and allowed 157 people in Ethiopia to enter the cabin innocently on a clear day in March. This is just another routine flight," Robinson said.

To emphasize the insecurity of MAX, Robinson pointed out that in 2018, there was one fatal crash in every 3 million flights, but “before the grounding, MAX’s fatal accident rate in its limited service was 1 in every 3 million flights. 200,000 flights-this is a frequency that has not been seen since the early days of jet aircraft."

Although Boeing did everything it could to keep MAX in the air, no one else was ready to take the risk. On March 11, 2019, China took the lead in grounding the MAX, followed by the European Union, India, Australia, Singapore and Canada. Finally, the 737-MAX was grounded worldwide on March 13.

The 737-MAX was grounded for two years until March 2021. After all changes in software, wiring, and pilot training were completed, the FAA finally approved to fly again in the United States. But this was a costly crisis for Boeing. Orders were lost or delayed, airlines cancelled compensation for thousands of MAX flights, and even the storage costs of aircraft that could not be delivered, costing the company an estimated $20 billion. 

However, when it comes to paying the CEO, Boeing never seems to cut costs. Only two months after the Lion Air crash, Boeing gave Muilenberg the largest salary of his life-31 million U.S. dollars, including a performance bonus of 13 million U.S. dollars. After he was fired after the tragedy in Addis Ababa, a golden parachute worth $60 million eased his decline. 

Or, to put it another way, it’s about $10 million less than the compensation Boeing originally promised to the families of the 346 victims in Jakarta and Addis Ababa.