Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing Highlight

At this point, in November 2018, the story went in two directions. There was a public narrative, the one advanced by Boeing chief executive officer Dennis Muilenburg, his top engineers, and FAA officials to convince airline pilots and passengers—and maybe even themselves—that the plane was safe. The problem (as they all but said) was one badly run airline from Indonesia. They insisted that an updated checklist was all it would take for any competent pilot to manage the unlikely scenario that brought down the Lion Air plane. And then there was the private narrative. Behind the scenes, some of the largest and most respected airlines in the world were screaming that Boeing had hidden the existence of potentially deadly software inside their planes. Pilots for American Airlines in Texas were so distrustful that they recorded a tense meeting with Boeing executives. Whistleblowers got the attention of federal investigators, who opened a criminal probe into the plane’s design.