Back in 2017, the Boeing 737 was a new fuel efficient jet that was anticipated to take over the skies and be able to battle against Air Bus’ new fuel efficient jet. This was one of the most anticipated commercial jets in the last 15-20 years. However, a pair of deadly crashes killing over 350 people in 2018-2019, halted the use of these new Boeing commercial jets. This was a software issue in the jet that was causing these deadly crashes. Following the crashes, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all Boeing 737 Max’s in the United States.
Yesterday, the FAA announced that the update in software that Boeing released fixed the glitch in the system, and that the planes would again be allowed to fly. Prior to the FAA grounding these planes, there had already been almost 400 delivered to Boeing’s customers, and there were 400 waiting to be delivered. Each of these 737 Max’s cost about $100 million dollars, so these were billions of dollars up in the air for both Boeing and airlines such as Southwest, and American Airlines.
With the Boeing 737 Max being cleared by the FAA once the proper repairs are made, this will help both airlines and Boeing begin to revive their businesses. Between the Coronavirus pandemic and the 737 Max crashes from 2018 and 2019, this has been a very difficult time for both parties.
While this may sound scary, it will still be months before the Boeing 737 Max can actually carry passengers again. By lifting the grounding of these planes, they can begin to train their pilots on how to use the system in case of emergency. This will take months of training for each individual pilot from each company.
I had invested in Boeing at the beginning of the the pandemic and everyone thought that was a terrible idea. When I saw that Boeing 737 Max was cleared to fly, I checked my stocks as quickly as possible and now I’m the one laughing. Thank you for your post!
The software issue was only part of the problem.
in the mid 2010s Airbus had just released a new more fuel-efficient mid range aircraft that everyone knew was going to kick Boeing in the dust with its current mid-range selections.
This new airbus had new engines that Boeing had no choice but to put on their own aircraft. Problem was, the engine was too big and when assembled onto its boeing counterpart the engine was just barely off the ground.
To compensate for this, boeing just raised the engine up a little bit and viola they have a better plane. But here’s the problem, by accounting for the space beneath the engine, the aerodynamics of the plane became far more susceptible to uncontrollable pitch which could cause the plane to pitch up to stall at vertical.
Boeing’s fix for this was rushed because they were going to lose shareholders if they did not act in time. In doing so they developed software that is supposed to help control the pitch of the plane better and prevent it from going out of control.
Problem is that this software couldn’t be overridden, and if the plane was descending to a fatal crash, the pilots couldn’t control that because the software kept thinking it was still pitching up.
So that’s the detailed story behind everything.