Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2019-12-23)

◼ BUSINESS Bloomberg Businessweek December 23, 2019

17

were downstairs, there was an extreme amount of
crosstalk,” Coker says. “We could do a walk-through
or a rehearsal of a proposed procedure and see
where the flaws were—much harder when you have
to go to Miami or tell somebody over the phone.”
It wasfroma hotelroominMiamithatformer
BoeingpilotMarkForkner—oneofthemanual-
writing pilots—sent frustrated instant messages in
November 2016 about a Max simulator that wasn’t
working, according to a former colleague. When
congressional investigators released those mes-
sages this October, they caused an outcry because
they seemed to suggest Boeing knew of issues long
before the Max was flying. What they may show
instead is a lousy information loop at the company.
Early in 2016 test pilots and engineers had
expanded the authority of a software system that
had the ability to point the Max’s nose down. It was
meant to address a limited stall condition most pilots
would never see. But Forkner and others working
on the simulator hadn’t been alerted about the
change or that FAA staff had already observed it acti-
vate during test flights. “Why are we just now hear-
ing about this?” Forkner wrote. His lawyer didn’t
respond to emailed questions.
Problems with the system have been tied to a
single point of failure—a vane that measures the
angle of the plane’s nose against the oncoming
wind. When it malfunctions, the measure trips a
bewildering array of cockpit warnings including a
thumping alert known as a stick-shaker that indi-
cates a plane is in danger of stalling.
Boeing never tested how pilots would respond to
such a failure, which later occurred in the accidents.
“When they look back, the failure to adequately test
this in the sim was Problem One,” says Chris Hart,
former chairman of the U.S. National Transportation
Safety Board, who led a panel of aviation authorities
examining the Max’s shortcomings. “Fragmentation
played a big role in it, the failure to communicate.”
Boeing has vowed a massive pilot training initia-
tive, part of a broader effort to reinforce safety. Pilots
say it’s recently advertised jobs for more in-house
trainers. Muilenburg says Boeing has already begun
rethinking the design of its flight decks to ensure
human responses are adequately considered.
But no reexamination can reverse the human
toll suffered before the Max’s initial design and
training flaws were discovered. Boeing delivered
the first Max jets to a Lion Air subsidiary in mid-

2017. Just 15 months later, the carrier’s pilots on
      successive flights were forced to troubleshoot the
      design problem that Boeing had missed.
      Taking the Max through a preflight checklist
      in Jakarta in October 2018, Lion Air Captain

$400m

200

0

Shareof

passenger

revenue

Feerevenue,2007-

◼Baggagefees ◼Cancellationandchangefees

Turkey

sandwich

American

$10.

400m

200

0

Southwest

No

sandwiches

available

400m

200

0

United

The

Everything

BunBurger

is $

400m

200

0

Delta

$10.

400m

200

0

JetBlue

$

Those High-Fying Fees

DATA:BUREAUOFTRANSPORTATION STATISTICS, BLOOMBERG, COMPANY REPORTS

While airfare inflation remains low, ancillary revenue from baggage

and reservation-change fees is growing. And an onboard sandwich

can easily cost you $10. The outlier to this fee-for-all frenzy:

Southwest Airlines, which still gives flyers two free checked bags.

400m

200

0

Q1'07 Q3 '

Spirit

No

sandwiches

available

20%