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

by Peter Robison

Pilots that November began registering their concerns in the anonymous Aviation Safety Reporting System maintained by NASA. “I think it is unconscionable that a manufacturer, the FAA, and the airlines would have pilots flying an airplane without adequately training, or even providing available resources and sufficient documentation to understand the highly complex systems that differentiate this aircraft from prior models,” one wrote. “The fact that this airplane requires such jury rigging to fly is a red flag. Now we know the systems employed are error prone—even if the pilots aren’t sure what those systems are, what redundancies are in place, and failure modes. I am left to wonder: what else don’t I know?” Another captain called the MAX flight manual “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient.”