What Has Happened to Boeing Since the 737 Max Crashes
A still from "Boeing's Fatal Flaw," a new FRONTLINE documentary with The New York Times.
This story was originally published Sep. 14, 2021. It was last updated on March 25, 2024.
Five years ago, 346 people were killed in two crashes involving Boeing 737 Max planes within the span of almost five months: first off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018 and then in Ethiopia in March 2019.
Boeing’s Fatal Flaw, a 2021 FRONTLINE investigation with The New York Times, examined how commercial pressures, flawed design and failed oversight contributed to those devastating tragedies and a catastrophic crisis at one of the world’s most iconic industrial names.
In recent months, Boeing has come under renewed scrutiny after a door-like panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines blew off just a few minutes after takeoff in January 2024. An updated version of our documentary examines the impact of this latest crisis.
“This was supposed to be one of the most highly scrutinized planes in the world. And here you are with another incident that was risking passengers’ lives,” the Times’ Sydney Ember says in the updated documentary.
Here we take a brief look at what has happened to Boeing since the deadly 2018 and 2019 crashes and the recent Alaska Airlines incident.
Change in Leadership
Dennis Muilenburg had been CEO of Boeing since 2015. In the aftermath of the crashes, he testified before U.S. Senate and House committees in October 2019, acknowledging the fatal accidents happened “on my watch” and saying he and the company were accountable. He told the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, “If we knew back then what we know now, we would have grounded [the 737 Max] right after the first accident.”
Two months after the congressional hearings, on Dec. 23, 2019, Muilenburg was fired by Boeing. The company described the move as “necessary to restore confidence” in Boeing “as it works to repair relationships with regulators, customers, and all other stakeholders.”
David Calhoun stepped into the role of CEO in January 2020. Less than three months after the January 2024 Alaska Airlines incident, Boeing announced that Calhoun would step down by the end of 2024.
A $2.5 Billion DOJ Settlement and Challenges
On Jan. 7, 2021, the Department of Justice announced that Boeing would pay a $2.5 billion settlement, resolving a DOJ charge that the company had conspired to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aircraft Evaluation Group.
The DOJ’s criminal investigation focused on the actions of two employees who Boeing said in court documents “deceived the FAA AEG” about the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) onboard the 737 Max — a system the DOJ said “may have played a role” in both 737 Max crashes. The DOJ said the employees’ “deception” led to information about MCAS being left out of a key document released by the FAA, as well as airplane manuals and pilot-training materials.
As Boeing’s Fatal Flaw recounts, congressional investigators found internal documents showing that, after Boeing realized the impact MCAS would have on pilot training and FAA certification, some Boeing employees suggested removing all references to MCAS from training manuals.
“Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception,” said David P. Burns, the acting assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s criminal division when the settlement was announced.
The company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ, in which Boeing agreed to pay a nearly $244 million fine, to set up a $500-million fund for the families of people who died in the two crashes, and to pay $1.77 billion to airlines that had been affected by the 20-month grounding of the 737 Max that began in March 2019.
Boeing also agreed to continue cooperating with the DOJ’s Fraud Section on “any ongoing or future investigations and prosecutions” and is required to report any alleged violation of fraud laws by Boeing employees when dealing with foreign or domestic agencies, regulators or airline customers.
Boeing declined FRONTLINE’s request to be interviewed for the documentary. In a statement, the company said safety is its top priority and it has worked closely with regulators, investigators and stakeholders “to implement changes that ensure accidents like these never happen again.”
Former Boeing Pilot Found Not Guilty for Fraud
In October 2021, a federal grand jury criminally indicted Mark Forkner, Boeing’s former chief technical pilot for the 737 Max airplane, on fraud charges. Forkner, who became the first and so far only individual to face criminal charges after the two fatal crashes, was accused of providing “materially false, inaccurate and incomplete information” to FAA regulators about flight-control software involved in the 2018 and 2019 crashes. Forkner was later found not guilty of all charges in federal court.
Forkner declined to be interviewed for the documentary, but his lawyer told the Times that his communications with the FAA were honest and that “he would never jeopardize the safety of other pilots or their passengers.”
Lawsuits by Families of Crash Victims
By November 2019, Boeing was facing more than 150 lawsuits filed by families of people who had died in the two crashes — over 50 of the suits stemming from the Indonesian crash and about 100 from the crash in Ethiopia, according to the Associated Press’ review of federal court records.
In July 2020, Boeing told a U.S. federal court that claims related to 171 of the 189 people killed in the Indonesia crash were either partially or fully settled, although the settlements were not publicly disclosed.
As of June 2023, cases related to 68 passengers from the Ethiopian Airlines crash were pending.
The Grounding and Return of the 737 Max 8 and Max 9
In the days after the second 737 Max crashed in March 2019, regulators around the world — from China to the European Union and several other countries — grounded the plane. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration followed suit on March 13, 2019, after initially saying the planes were safe to fly.
When the FAA retested and approved the 737 Max 8 and Max 9, ending the grounding in November 2020, it required airlines to take the following steps before putting the planes back into service: installing new flight-control-computer and display-system software; incorporating revised flight-crew procedures; rerouting wiring; completing a test of the “angle of attack” sensor system, which had contributed to both the 2018 and 2019 crashes; and performing an operational readiness flight.
The FAA, in conjunction with aviation agencies from Canada, Brazil and the European Union, also concluded that pilots operating the 737 Max would need to complete special training. It is not clear who would pay for this additional training, which reversed one of Boeing’s original sales pitches to airlines for the 737 Max: that the plane would require minimal pilot training.
A December 2020 Senate committee report criticized Boeing and the FAA’s handling of the 737 Max recertification testing, saying that, based on whistleblower information and testimony, it appeared Boeing and FAA officials had “established a pre-determined outcome,” and that Boeing officials “inappropriately coached” test pilots in the MCAS simulator. The report alleged, “It appears, in this instance, FAA and Boeing were attempting to cover up important information that may have contributed to the 737 MAX tragedies.”
The FAA responded at the time, saying: “Working closely with other international regulators, the FAA conducted a thorough and deliberate review of the 737 Max.” The agency added it was “confident” the issues that led to the two crashes had been “addressed through the design changes required and independently approved by the FAA and its partners.”
“We have learned many hard lessons” from the crashes, Boeing said in its own statement at the time. The company said it took the committee’s findings seriously and would continue to review the report in full.
Following the Senate report, families of the 2019 Ethiopian crash victims wrote to the FAA and the U.S. Department of Transportation in a letter dated Dec. 22, 2020, and reviewed by Reuters, asking for the 737 Max approval to be rescinded and for an investigation to “determine whether the MAX recertification process was tainted.”
A Brazilian airline was the first to fly a 737 Max after regulators there followed the FAA in ungrounding the plane. On Dec. 29, 2020 — a week after the families’ letter — the 737 Max flew paying passengers in America for the first time after nearly two years of being grounded. A month later, Europe’s aviation authority also gave the 737 Max clearance to fly.
On Aug. 26, 2021, India lifted its ban on the 737 Max after “closely” monitoring the plane’s performance elsewhere and noting “no untoward reporting.” China, which was the first country to ground Max jets after the deadly crashes, resumed commercial flights with the model in January 2023.
The 737 Max 10
On June 18, 2021, Boeing’s new model 737 Max 10 took to the skies for its first flight. The Max 10 is larger than the Max 8, which was involved in the 2018 and 2019 crashes, and the Max 9. According to Boeing’s technical specs, the Max 10 is 14 feet longer than the Max 8 and can seat a maximum of 230 people, compared to the Max 8’s capacity of 210.
At the time of the test flight, Boeing was already working on additional safety features in the Max 10 requested by European regulators, according to Reuters.
“We’re going to take our time on this certification,” Stan Deal, who became president and CEO of Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes division in October 2019, said at the time of the Max 10’s first flight, according to The Seattle Times. “We’re committed to make further safety enhancements.”’
The FAA cleared the Max 10 to begin test flights, a step towards certification, last November.
Alaska Airlines Plane Incident
On January 5, an Alaska Airlines jet made an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon, after a portion of its fuselage blew out and left a door-sized hole in the side of the aircraft while it was around 16,000 feet in the sky. None of the 171 passengers and six crew members were seriously injured. The FAA temporarily grounded more than 170 Max 9 jets so they could be inspected.
In the aftermath, Boeing CEO David Calhoun has said, “Boeing is accountable for what happened.”
A Feb. 6 preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board said that the bolts meant to secure the door-like panel appeared to be missing before the flight.
Later the same month, the FAA released a long-awaited report that found that Boeing’s safety culture has been “inadequate” and “confusing.” The FAA gave Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan to address quality control issues.
The FAA conducted a six-week audit after the Alaska Airlines incident, and on March 4 said that it found Boeing had allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements.
Boeing now faces legal trouble in relation to the Jan. 5 event, including lawsuits filed by passengers and shareholders.
On Feb. 21, Boeing told employees that Ed Clark, who led the 737 program since 2021, would be replaced. The memo announcing Clark’s departure and other changes said the company was focused “on ensuring that every airplane we deliver meets or exceeds all quality and safety requirements.”
The Justice Department also began a criminal investigation into Boeing in the aftermath of the Alaska Airlines incident, as reported first by The Wall Street Journal.
“Cultural change doesn’t happen overnight, especially at big corporations like this,” David Gelles, one of the Times reporters featured in Boeing’s Fatal Flaw, says. “If Boeing wants to get back to that place of grandeur where it was for so long one of the most important American companies, it’s going to take not four years, but it might take 14.”
Watch the 2024 update of Boeing’s Fatal Flaw, a FRONTLINE investigation with The New York Times, in full below.
