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5AlarmFirefly t1_j5zn5ic wrote

Reply to comment by tristan957 in 737 Max crashes: Boeing in court on fraud charge by greatdevonhope

The original MCAS system was supposed to be very rarely used with several backup sensors. After it was approved by FAA, Boeing changed the design, allowing the system to run at almost all times and making it rely on a sole sensor (which is absolutely bonkers engineering). They intentionally hid the changes from the FAA certifiers so they wouldn't have to retrain pilots. In fact, they specifically requested that the MCAS system be removed from training manuals, so 737 pilots didn't even know about it till it started making headlines.

There was a branch of the FAA that did know about the changes, but they didn't require Boeing to rerun their safety tests on the new system. However, they also weren't the certifying branch.

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tristan957 t1_j5znmi2 wrote

Appreciate the explanation. So this was more of a procedural issue in that one branch can't tell the other branch to recertify the plane?

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5AlarmFirefly t1_j5zoby3 wrote

Well, the one branch absolutely should have required the new safety tests, and maybe they assumed Boeing had informed the other branch of the changes? But never trust giant corporations to self-regulate I think is the takeaway message. Boeing is overwhelmingly responsible for the crashes. They even continued to hide the issues with MCAS after the first crash.

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