Flight security

A second 737 Max crash raises questions about airplane automation

As you read this, over a million people are in flight. Close to a third of the commercial airplanes in the sky at any given moment are Boeing 737s: it is the best-selling jetliner in history. The 737 has safely carried over 20 billion passengers on long trips and on short ones. That legacy of safety is now under scrutiny as the 737 Max, the newest variant of the jetliner, has crashed twice in rapid succession.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed on Sunday, a few minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board. It was the second such tragedy in five months, following an October crash in Indonesia that killed all 189 passengers and crew on Lion Air Flight 610. Airlines and regulators around the world have now grounded the model—though Boeing and the US government insist that it is safe.

The brief history of the 737 Max raises the question of whether Boeing made mistakes in its pursuit of efficiency. America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators will also have questions to answer about their oversight of the way changes to the plane were communicated to pilots.