July 16, 2025 • 51 mins
When Boeing learned that American Airlines might choose Airbus over their planes, it triggered a corporate race that would ultimately kill 346 people. Join Alice and Zach as they explore how Boeing's rushed development of the 737 MAX led to fatal design shortcuts, including a hidden software system called MCAS that pilots were never told about. Discover the corporate culture that prioritized speed over safety, the engine placement problem that started it all, and the tragic crash of Lion Air Flight 610—the first warning of a deadly flaw that Boeing chose to downplay rather than fix.
Sources:
U.S. Department of Justice Documents:
- "DOJ confirms it has a deal with Boeing to drop prosecution over deadly 737 Max crashes" - NPR, May 23, 2025
- "Boeing Reaches Deal with DOJ to Avoid Criminal Prosecution in 737 MAX Case" - Aviation Source News
- "Families of 737 MAX crash victims to object to deal allowing Boeing to avoid prosecution" - Reuters
Crash Investigation Reports:
- "Aircraft Accident Investigation Report. PT. Lion Airlines Boeing 737 (MAX); PK-LQP" - Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee, October 25, 201
- "Aircraft Accident Investigation Report B737-MAX 8, ET-AVJ" - Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority, December 23, 2022
- "Indonesia report finds fatal Lion Air jet crash due to Boeing, pilots, maintenance" - NBC News
Academic and Legal Analysis:
- "Boeing's 737 MAX 8 Disasters" - MIT Sloan case study by John Sterman and James Quinn, May 2, 2023
- "Lion Air Flight JT 610 Crash" - Wisner Baum law firm case analysis
- Wikipedia entries on Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302
News Coverage:
- "5 Years On: Looking Back At The Crash Of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302" - Simple Flying, March 10, 2024
Find FINAL BOARDING CALL online:
- Website: finalboardingcallpodcast.com
- Instagram: @FinalBoardingCallPod
- Facebook: Final Boarding Call
Credits:
Final Boarding Call is hosted by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas, researched and written by Alice Stern, produced and edited by Alice Stern and Zach Stemas.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Picture this, a state of theart, Boeing 7 37, barely four
months old, climbing through theclear morning sky over Indonesia.
Everything appears normal from the ground,but inside the cockpit, the flight crew is
fighting a battle against this airplane.
(00:24):
Just five months later.
The same deadly scenarioplays out over Ethiopia.
We are about to explore how Boeing'srace to compete led to design shortcuts
and how a recent settlement allowsit to escape criminal prosecution
for what many consider the deadliestcorporate crime in US history.
(00:50):
So stow your tray tables,fasten your seatbelt.
And prepare for some extreme turbulencebecause this is final boarding call.
That's heavy.
That is a beginning right there.
Are you pumped?
I am.
This story has it all.
(01:10):
So I'm curious right off the bat isthis, I mean, people were talking
a lot of shit online about Boeing,you know, within the last two years.
Is this what all of that is about?
Okay, cool.
Well, um, why is my voice so high?
I have a bitch voice.
You do not.
Why is my voice so low?
(01:30):
Why is my voice soundlike a 4-year-old girls?
Okay.
I think everybody hates their voice.
I think that's kind of part of it.
I think it's true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alright, so we're gonna getstarted here on this episode.
However, I want to apologize to everybodyif you are hearing what's might sound
like static to you in the background.
It is raining cats and dogs heretoday and we are recording anyway.
(01:53):
Uh, 'cause we have to, we are, weare all caught up with our weeks,
which always stresses me out.
Uh, so we are, we're recording.
It's raining everybody so intensely.
Everybody loves rain.
Stop worrying about the rain sound.
It's beautiful.
People are gonna finallyfall asleep to our podcast.
Okay?
So, yes.
(02:13):
What I will say is thatthere have been recent Boeing
shenanigans that have taken place.
It's getting louder.
It's getting louder.
God dammit.
There are recent Boeing shenanigansthat have taken place on top of the two
cases that we are going to cover today.
And the two cases that we are goingto cover today are relevant to a
(02:36):
particular, uh, software that wasadded to modern Boeing seven 30 sevens.
And it caused horrible things to happen.
So Boeing already kind ofhad a garbage reputation.
And then all of a sudden, like theAlaska Airline flight where the door just
(02:56):
like came flying off of the airplane.
You know, like that does nothelp the Boeing situation.
Um, and we will talk about this, but yeah,Boeing's in like a PR nightmare right now.
There have been investigations into their.
Operations and their facilities andeven whistleblowers within Boeing Oh.
(03:20):
Have been very open andhonest about shit going down.
For real.
I do believe in speakingout, but also mm-hmm.
Things never go goodfor the whistleblowers.
No, and that's, that kind of sucks,like people should, especially if it's
planes, these are the early people tryingto stand up and say, this is wrong.
Let me help you make this case.
(03:42):
And they always get shit on.
Oh yeah, no, for sure.
Damn, we got some lightning outside folks.
Wow.
It's pretty close too.
'cause that was, we could count backthe seconds, but it was probably like
two seconds before it we heard it.
Okay.
Well you can skip this episode ifthe sound is really bugging you
otherwise, or you can listen to iton repeat if you love it like I do.
(04:05):
Yeah.
This is like some A SMR everybody die.
Podcast.
Our, our dog is freaking out.
I know.
Benji does not love this.
No, he hates bad weather.
Okay.
Hello everybody and welcome,welcome to Final Boarding Call.
I'm your disaster obsessed host,Alice, and as always, I'm not a
(04:26):
very reluctant homebody husband.
Yeah.
Zach and Zach, yeah.
I love that.
My name is Zach.
Forgot to tell him they know me by now.
It's, it's fine.
Everybody knows.
As you, you're famous to our200 monthly listeners, but that
number is incredible for us.
Just being some people thatdon't know what we're doing.
No.
Sitting here at a dinner table together.
(04:47):
No.
And we do no marketing.
Like I work in marketing professionallyand we do zero marketing for
this podcast, so it's a lie.
I marketed really hard when I went tomy friend's house to drink beers and
said, Hey guys, we're gonna do this.
And now they listen.
Wow, that heavy marketing, that gorilla.
Word of mouth marketing.
Yeah.
Old school folks.
(05:08):
Okay.
Took it, took it.
200 people.
Zach's got more friends thanme, uh, before, by a lot.
Before we dive in, a quickreminder to our listeners.
Please rate, review, and subscribewherever you get your podcasts.
As the kids would say,smash that subscribe button.
I think that's what YouTubers say.
(05:30):
I don't watch YouTube, but.
Well, guys, I quit for the night,so I'll talk to you another time.
YouTube videos of plane crashes.
All right, let me go over oursources because this case is
jam packed with some insanity.
So there are court documents from Boeing'srecent Department of Justice settlement.
Uh, the final investigationreports obviously from both
(05:50):
crashes, which I always include.
Internal Boeing communicationsthat were revealed during
congressional investigations.
And of course I've gotsome journal articles.
I got some safety experts.
It's all detailed in the shownotes, so check that out if
you're, I don't know into that.
Here we go.
(06:11):
Our story begins, not with a crash,but with a phone call in early 2011.
Boeing, CEOW.
James McNerney received an urgent callfrom the head of American Airlines, one
of Boeing's most important customers.
(06:32):
The message was not good American wasconsidering placing a massive order
for hundreds of Airbus, A three 20 Neoaircraft instead of Boeing airplanes.
Yikes.
Yik, hundreds of airplanes ishundreds, billions of dollars.
(06:53):
Oh, this is like really, really bad.
Mm-hmm.
To understand why this phonecall was so crucial, we need to
step back and look at the fiercecompetition between Boeing and Airbus.
For decades, these two giants hadbeen locked in a global duopoly.
Do you like that duopoly?
Yeah.
Yeah.
(07:14):
Um, I had to double check tomake sure that was a word, but.
But they said, yeah, it is.
It is.
'cause monopoly is a word duopoly,fighting for every order, every route,
every advantage In the commercialaviation market, Boeing's 7 37 had
been a workhorse since the 1960s,but Airbus was gaining ground and the
(07:42):
A three 20 family particularly was.
Getting pretty popular.
Airbus announced the A three 20 Neo, youwanna gimme a little Neo rift real quick?
Not even a little bit.
Oh, okay.
I thought when I said that, that I'dget a little something outta you and
I'd be like, alright look, I knowa little bit of Neo and if it was
(08:05):
playing I could sing along, but.
Do I give a damn about his music enoughto just know the lyrics in my head?
Just sitting here podcasting with you?
Not a bit.
Okay.
Sorry.
Neo.
If you're a listener, we love you.
If you're listening, she loves you.
I'm not gonna lie to you.
Uh, so Neo actually standsfor new engine option.
(08:27):
So it does NEO New engineoption, much like the RB 25 Neo.
For anybody that didn't know, oh.
Great God, the listeners will love that.
Promising airlines, 15% better fuelefficiency and people, you probably
can guess this, but fuel efficiencyis a huge deal in the airline industry
(08:50):
because that is a major cost to airlines.
Like the major cost.
It's, it's.
Gigantic.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
So if you can save 15% of your gas spendon a spreadsheet's big, yeah, that's huge.
And guess what?
The orders poured in airlines.
(09:12):
Were really excited about this.
, We are talking millions of dollarsin fuel costs saved for the average
commercial airliner, I mean, per plane.
That's.
Yeah, it's, it's gonna be a lot of money.
Ultimately what resulted fromthis was that Airbus was eating
into Boeing's market share.
Bummer.
(09:33):
So Boeing faced a critical decision, spend10 years and tens of billions of dollars
developing an entirely new aircraft, orbasically pull their own version of Neo.
Take the Boeing 7 37 that.
Is known and loved and update it.
(09:55):
Give it a little beepup, boop boop to compete.
Put some nice flat screens in there,but also let it get better fuel.
Wow.
Look at that.
You can have it all now.
It's an Escalade that is not GY chairs.
Massaging seats in the driver's seat arethe best, worst thing that ever happened.
They put you to sleep,but God, they're nice.
Yeah.
(10:16):
Okay.
That's terrible.
Well.
Zach, given those two options,which do you think Boeing went with?
Well, because their planes are lookingabout the same, I'm gonna guess that they
decided to keep the same plane They did.
The choice was obvious froma business perspective.
The company was not going to, youknow, quote unquote bet the company
(10:38):
on revolutionary new designs.
hadn't been working on anythingalready, so it's not, they would've
been starting from scratch.
It would've been rough.
Yeah.
Yep.
Just three months after thatphone call with American Airlines,
Boeing launched the 7 37 max,project, not the actual plane.
(10:59):
They launched the project in August, 2011.
The timeline was brutal.
They needed to get this plane to market.
Fast before Airbus capturedeven more of their customers.
However, there was a problembecause there's always a problem
(11:20):
when you're trying to shipsomething really, really fast.
To compete with the A three 20Neos fuel efficiency, the 7 37 max
needed bigger, more powerful engine.
Boeing chose the CFM LEAP one b.
Engine CFM uh, stands for thejoint venture between General
(11:44):
Electric and Saffron, whichis a French aerospace company.
So they got together, they madethis big old badass engine.
And LEAP stands for leadingEdge Aviation propulsion.
So somebody in the boardroom cameup with that and everyone was
(12:04):
like, oh my God, that's so good.
Leap.
That's sick.
Right?
I always wanted to leap.
Leap, okay.
These engines were significantlylarger than the engines on previous
7 37 models, and here's wherethe trouble ultimately begins.
The 7 37 sits lower to theground than other aircraft.
(12:29):
So that's like kind of a fun thingthat I didn't know really until
I dove into this really deeply.
Um, it's a design feature that actuallyallows them to fly into smaller airports.
Simon, this one's for you.
7 37.
So you're plane, they're the low boys.
These low.
(12:49):
Hello.
Are they scraping?
Fun fact, with theseengines on them They were.
They were.
They were, yeah.
They actually would be so big.
These big engines do not fitin the same position as the
smaller engines originally did.
So Boeing's engineers had to movethem forward and higher under the
(13:12):
wing to get enough ground clearance.
I'm gonna be honest, if I'm sitting ona plane and I can see the engines like
a foot off the ground, I'm freaking out.
Okay?
Yep.
Yep.
Well, um, they did what they hadto do in order to keep those bad
boys from scraping on the ground.
Um, and ultimately this probablyseems like a fairly minor change.
(13:36):
You know, it's not like they tookthe engines and were like, let's slap
'em one up here and one over there.
They just moved them forwardand a little bit higher.
However, this affects aerodynamics.
Everything that you do on a plane willaffect the, the aerodynamics of it at
(13:57):
certain angles of attack, which is.
A fancy way of just saying likewhen the plane is doing something.
Mm-hmm.
While banking left.
Yeah.
While like doing stuff.
So this is specifically whenthe nose is pitched up relative
to the oncoming airflow.
So when would we think thatthe nose is pitched up?
(14:19):
When you're taking off?
When you're taking off ex danko Z?
Absolutely.
Obviously the forward mountedengines could create additional lift.
That would actually pushthe nose up further.
So during takeoff, right, the pilotsare like, okay, we're gonna be at a nice
(14:40):
steady angle that's like really safe.
We're taking off.
And then all of a sudden the airplane'slike, oh, we are going up, up, up.
And it's like rocket launchingitself into the stratosphere.
And as we've heard now Zach, and likemany episodes, what happens to an airplane
when it goes up too steep, too fast?
(15:04):
Well, you lose your freakingpropulsion, whatever word they use.
Stall.
Stall.
Yeah.
Stall.
Literally the plane stalls.
So you need more speed to go faster.
Yeah.
What would make this even worse isthat when the nose gets pushed up
more, it would create more lift,which would lift the nose up even
(15:31):
more because of these engines.
It is like they just don back flips.
Correct.
It is just a loop where the attitude
created from these frickingengines is going to create a stall.
It's very bad.
This is not good.
Not good.
(15:51):
Boeing's engineers discovered thisissue during wind tunnel testing
in 2012, so like, thank God they atleast found that and they weren't
just like rolling this thing out.
It should be fine.
Yeah.
Their solution was a software fix.
Called the Maneuvering CharacteristicsAugmentation System, also known as MCAS.
(16:18):
So that one's another one where Gregwas in the boardroom and just like
guys, I was like, guys, what if wejust get this, you guys called it this,
but what if we just took the firstletter from each word, mca, S, mca S.
The system was designed to automaticallypush the nose down if it detected a
(16:38):
dangerous angle of attack, counteractingthe engine's tendencies to launch the
aircraft into fucking outer space.
So, so we've talked about this before, butif this is your first episode, welcome.
We're gonna talk aboutan aerodynamic stall.
So this happens when the smoothair flow over a wing breaks down,
(17:03):
causing the wing to lose its lift.
This can happen at any speed if thewing's angle of attack becomes too steep.
Okay?
Too much uppy, not enough airflow.
Plane stalls.
You need more speed to go up faster.
It's so true.
I mean, you can.
(17:25):
Really think of a car as well.
Like it just, you need more to go up.
When a plane stalls, it will lose controland potentially crash, which is why
preventing stalls is a critical priority.
Eh, eh, you just mademe think of that line.
In mean Girls with thecoach, you will get eight.
(17:47):
And Die.
And Die.
Die.
God, I love that movie so much.
Huh?
You just gave away the movie reference.
We could've done that.
No stickers on that one.
Fuckers no stickers.
You got nothing initially.
MCAS was intended for rare high speedscenarios, and it was designed to move
the horizontal stabilizer, which is thesmall wing, like surface on the tail of
(18:11):
the aircraft that controls uppy downy.
That is pitch.
Pitch is your singing voice.
Yes.
Yes.
So.
Let me read this entire sentence again.
Start to finish because I think Iwrote it and it doesn't make sense.
Initially, MCAS was intended for rarehigh speed scenarios and was designed
(18:35):
to move the horizontal stabilizer.
Just 0.6
degrees over 10 seconds.
There we go.
Sounds like nothing.
Sounds like nothing.
Point six degrees.
But as testing, continued engineersdiscovered the same pitch up Tendency
could occur at low speeds too, like duringtakeoff and climb, as we stated, Zach.
(19:01):
And that is when the plane is mostvulnerable, is during takeoff.
That is actually when mostincidents occur, and that is.
In my opinion, the scariest moment of aflight turbulence does not freak me out.
Take off.
I definitely, well, that was very close.
Holy shit.
Y'all that had to have hit Adrian's house.
(19:25):
That was so bright.
It like hurt my eyes.
That was insane.
Your daughter jumped but didn't wake up.
Oh my God.
Um.
Whoa.
Sick.
Didn't like that one.
That was metal as fuck.
God, that was really intense.
Okay.
Uh, yeah.
So takeoffs are scary.
(19:46):
So is lightning.
So is lightning.
Okay.
Woo.
So this discovery from the engineers ledto a critical decision that would prove.
Fatal.
MCAS was reprogrammed to work atlow speeds and given much more.
Tho it could now move the stabilizer 2.5
(20:10):
degrees in 10 seconds.
More than four times the originaldesign, even more concerning the
requirement for high G forces.
To trigger the system wasremoved entirely, meaning MCAS.
(20:31):
Now relied solely on angleof attack sensor data.
So there is just one point of data andif for whatever reason it interprets
that as being quote unquote dangerous,it will, it makes its own, it will
take over the fucking airplane.
Yes.
That's terrifying to me.
(20:52):
Robots, I mean, we've all seen iRobot.
Throughout this development process,Boeing was working under immense
pressure, and this is kind of whatwe were talking about, Zach, where
things are not good at Boeing.
Internal emails later revealedby congressional investigators,
show employees expressing concernabout the compressed timeline,
(21:16):
engineers were pushed to submittechnical drawings and designs at
roughly double the normal pace.
Hmm.
Sounds like any boss though.
Like I want double the outputand half the money spent.
It's just so scary to me.
Like I get it.
It's a business.
There's pressure, there's this, yougot stakeholders, you've got your
(21:37):
stocks, but this is also an airplanemanufacturer, like you are making
something that hundreds of people.
Could be on at one time.
At one time.
Yeah.
Like that's insane.
Woof.
There's more thunder folks.
Curtis said he was pretty sureI hit the big tree across the
(22:00):
street and he was outside for it.
He's like, my showeris no longer voluntary.
Wow.
Oof.
One Boeing employee wrotein an internal email.
This airplane is designed by clownswho are in turn supervised by monkeys.
So the reply to that email was,would you put your family on a
(22:24):
max simulator training aircraft?
I wouldn't the reply.
No, these are the people that aredesigning and building the airplane.
Mm-hmm.
But the public never saw those concerns.
Why would they?
Because those were internal emails.
Publicly, Boeing maintained that the 737 max was safe, and that the differences
(22:47):
from previous 7 37 models were minimal.
This characterization was crucial foranother key aspect of Boeing's strategy.
Avoiding the need forextensive pilot training.
Mm.
They didn't want to have tospend time getting people
ready to service or fly on 'em.
No, absolutely not.
(23:08):
It's the same.
It's same.
Same but better.
Yeah.
If you have flown, everything's easier.
Thank you.
If you've flown a 7 37 beforeyou're good, you're good.
Yes, there's a feature where theplane will take over and like
try to kill you, but you don't.
Don't worry about that.
Okay.
One of Boeing's key selling points forthe 7 37 max was that pilots already
(23:31):
certified on earlier 7 37 models,would not need expensive and extensive
simulator training to fly this airplane.
Airlines loved this because.
Simulator training can cost tens ofthousands of dollars per pilot and
could also take pilots out of serviceduring the duration of their training.
(23:54):
Mm-hmm.
Boeing set what one engineer calledquote, a ground rule end quote.
For the 7 37 max design, anydesigns we created could not drive
any new training that required.
A, A stim, not a stimulator,a stimulator, a simulator.
(24:15):
End quote.
Um, so they were really instructed by theleadership team, don't do anything where
it's gonna raise a red flag, that moretraining is gonna be needed by the pilots.
This was not about customerconvenience, it was about sales.
Ultimately, if the max required newtraining, the airlines would probably be
out to achieve this goal, Boeing had toconvince the FAA, our good old friends at
(24:39):
the Federal Aviation Administration, thatthe 7 37 max was not even that different.
It's the same thing, and guess what?
It worked.
They succeeded the FAA approvedwhat's called Level B training,
which is essentially iPad basedcomputer training, lasting an hour.
(25:04):
An hour, Zach, a one hourtraining, one hour training train.
Advise you to fly thisnew plane on an iPad.
My training when I worked at Petco waslike seven hours long and this is one hour
and they get to fly this new airplane.
Yeah, but you're taking careof a lot of lives at Petco too,
so it's almost the same thing.
(25:24):
We didn't even have live animals at ours.
That is not where the pets go, folks.
No.
We didn't even have like cute stuff.
We had fish.
Okay.
, Here is a crucial detail.
MCAS wasn't evenmentioned in the training.
Hmm.
In fact, Boeing didn't tellpilots that MCAS existed at all.
(25:49):
The system wasn't described inflight manuals and pilots received
no training on how to recognizeor respond to MCAS activation.
So there is a system that willtake over the airplane if the
sensor tells it to entirely, andthe pilots have no fucking idea.
They don't even know.
They don't know.
They would think that they did something.
(26:11):
Hmm.
It seems problematic.
Zach.
I don't know.
It's bold for sure.
Well, it's, this strategyis not gonna pay off.
Boeing's Chief technical pilot forthe 7 37 Max Mark Forkner worked
hard to keep training requirements,minimal in emails to airline customers.
(26:35):
He referred to using.
Jedi mind tricks to persuaderegulators that additional
training was not necessary.
Icky.
He had a job to do.
Yeah, and I'm sure he got a fatbonus when he successfully convinced
the FAA to approve the limitedtraining program, a Boeing marketing
(26:57):
employee celebrated in an email.
This is a major milestoneand a great accomplishment.
Also icky Boeing justified nottelling pilots about MCAS by arguing
that if the system malfunctionedpilots could handle it using existing
procedures for runaway stabilizer trim.
(27:17):
And this is a condition wherethe aircraft's trim system moves
continuously in one direction.
So I'll break this down 'cause that's.
Like trim What?
Think of trim as the system thathelps keep the airplane flying
straight and level without the pilothaving to consistently or constantly
(27:38):
pull up or push on the controls.
So these procedures had been around fordecades and they involved flipping two
switches to cut power to the trim systems,and then manually adjusting the aircraft's
trim using hand operated wheels.
So, uh, it's okay if we don'tunderstand exactly what that means,
(27:58):
but in Boeing's mind, they were like,oh, the pilots will know what to do.
They'll do this thing thatthey've always done forever.
There was a problem with thisreasoning that wouldn't become
apparent until it was too late.
The existing runaway trim procedureswere developed for older, simpler
aircraft, and the 7 37 maxissystems were far more complex.
(28:24):
And the manual trim wheels could becomeextremely difficult or impossible to turn
under certain conditions, specificallywhen the aircraft was flying fast and
stabilizer was severely out of trim.
It would be like trying to turn thesteering wheel of a car while the
wheels are stuck in very deep mud.
(28:45):
Hmm.
Yeah.
Also, the pilots wouldn't know what thefuck is happening, which to me is just
like what I wish everybody could see.
The hand movements, God, I just, geez,Louise Boeing also made another crucial
decision about MCAS that violatedbasic principles of aviation safety.
(29:09):
The system relied on data from only oneangle of attack sensor which can go bad.
Sensors fail.
Yes, Zach or sensors fail, whatever.
And if you are going to have asystem that will take over an
airplane, you need it to be able totake in more than one data point.
(29:34):
You need redundancy drink.
Most commercial aircraft havemultiple sensors for critical systems
to provide redundancy drink, likehaving backup breaks in your car.
If one fails, at least youhave some others, like my God.
(29:58):
But MCAS used just one sensor alternatingbetween the left and right sensors.
On successive flights, which alsois crazy to me, but that's whatever.
They had to ship it fast.
Zach, the stakeholders, therewas no time the stock market.
I wasn't gonna get that 1.2
(30:18):
million bonus, the bonuses, the 737 max did have two angle of attack
sensors and a cockpit warning systemthat would alert pilots if the
sensors disagreed significantly.
But this warning systemwas offered as optional.
At an extra cost.
(30:39):
And guess what?
The airlines, nobody wants to pay for it.
Like what?
It's optional.
Baby.
Cross that shit off.
So many airlines did not do this,including Lion Air and Ethiopian
Airlines, which are gonna be the twoincidents that we're talking about today.
Believe it or not, folks,we are gonna cover.
(31:02):
Not in the normal depth that we do,but we are gonna cover two plane
crashes that happen because of this.
Obviously, as Boeing prepared, likemy voice just cracked, like I'm
going through puberty as Boeingprepared for the 7 37 Max's entry into
service warning signs were emerging.
(31:22):
Internal communications show employeesexpressing concern about safety and
quality to, you know, important.
Those are two things.
Yeah.
Like you're putting a plane out there.
Yeah, it's on the bottom of theto-do list, but they are on it.
It's fucking, however, the publicnarrative remained positive.
(31:44):
The 7 37 max entered commercialservice in May of 2017.
With great fanfare marketed asBoeing's fastest selling aircraft ever.
So somebody got a big old fat bonus.
Many people did.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
By October of 2018, Boeing haddelivered 2 37 max aircraft
(32:09):
to airlines around the world.
The plane was flying hundreds ofroutes daily, carrying thousands
of passengers, and then on aclear morning over Indonesia.
The first catastrophic failure occurred.
It is October 29th, 2018.
(32:32):
The morning sunrises over you guys.
Please forgive me because I, Ihave this written out phonetically,
but this name is, whew.
The sunrises over jakarta's.
S.
SATA International Airport as Lion AirFlight six 10 prepares for what should be
(32:52):
a routine one hour and 20 minute flight.
Two Ping Call pinon.
The aircraft is a nearly newBoeing 7 37 max eight registration.
PK LQP delivered to Lion Air onlytwo and a half months earlier.
Yeah, this thing is brand new.
(33:15):
Captain Baha, Asha Ba, Baha sCaptain, or it was Harry Potter
would say, yeah, I know captain Vaha.
Apologies for thepronunciation there, folks.
A 31-year-old Indian National commandsthe flight He's experienced with
(33:36):
over 6,000 flight hours and more thanseven years with Lion Air beside him.
Sits first Officer Vinno, a41-year-old Indonesian with over
5,000 hours of flight experience.
Both pilots are what we wouldcall extremely qualified
(33:57):
and familiar with the 7 37.
What they don't know, what they'venever been told is that their
aircraft has a hidden problem.
The day before on the flight fromBali to Jakarta, this same plane
experienced severe control issues.
Passengers would describeit as a rollercoaster ride.
(34:21):
With the aircraft repeatedly divingand then climbing again unexpectedly.
The flight crew declared a pan pan,which is an international distress
signal indicating an urgent situation.
That's one level beforea full on mayday, right?
But they did manage toland the plane safely.
(34:44):
Here is where the story gets even crazier.
That previous flight was actuallysaved by a third pilot, an off-duty
Boeing 7 37 max qualified pilot wasriding in the cockpit jump seat.
What does this remind you of?
The DC 10 train air that camein totally saved the day.
(35:09):
When MCAS began forcing the nose down,this pilot correctly diagnosed the problem
and told the crew to flip the stabilizer.
Trim cutout switches disabling the system.
This information wasn't widely knownuntil months later because people
didn't even know that MCAS existed.
It wasn't even a thing.
(35:30):
It wasn't even a thing.
After landing in Jakarta, theaircraft underwent maintenance.
Workers replaced one of the angleof attack sensors with a used part.
Not even a new one.
Just Just find a bolt.
Find a bolt in your bolt bucket.
That's where I got, it's like some ofmy car friends that brings stuff to me.
It is like, oh, I need a new injector.
(35:52):
Oh my God.
Well there's this one at a salvage yard.
Yeah, I found this one.
No, don't do that.
Okay.
Well, they're doing that on an airplane.
Uh, so they found this used part.
It was not from a pay and pull,uh, but it was from a Florida
company called Extra Aerospaceand folks, it's spelled with an X.
(36:14):
Oh, hell yeah.
Hell yeah, brother.
But the replacementsensor was miscalibrated.
It had been incorrectly repairedand wasn't sending accurate data.
Lion Air's maintenance crew failed todetect this error during installation.
Oh Jesus.
Guys at 6:20 AM Local time on October29th, flight six 10 takes off from
(36:38):
Jakarta with 189 people on board.
For the first five minutes,everything seems normal.
The aircraft climbs steadily throughthe morning sky, but as Captain
Sinha begins to retract the flaps.
Which are kind of the, those likemovable panels on the wings that go
(37:01):
in and out during takeoff and landing.
The miscalibrated angle of attacksensor starts sending false
data to the aircraft's systems.
The faulty sensor tells MCAS that theaircraft is in a dangerous nose up
attitude when it's actually just flying.
(37:21):
It's ju, it's just doing whatthe airplane should be doing.
Okay, so if it sounds a little differentright now than it did one and a half
seconds ago in the script, it's becausewe had to take a pause recording and we
are now on night two of this episode.
So let's jump right back into it.
(37:45):
The faulty sensor tells MCAS that theaircraft is in a dangerous nose up
attitude when it's actually flying.
Normally, MCAS responds as designed.
It automatically commands the horizontalstabilizer to push the aircraft's
nose down, but because the sensordata is wrong, this nose down input.
(38:13):
It is completely unnecessary.
It's also dangerous because they'rejust flying the plane and then
all of a sudden it's dipping.
It's falling outta the sky.
Dipping.
I'm a dip real quick.
Yeah.
Captain Sinha feels theaircraft's nose drop and he
(38:35):
pulls back on his control yolk.
Because that is intuitively what apilot would do to maintain level flight.
But MCAS isn't finished.
The system is designed to activaterepeatedly if it continues to receive
high angle of attack, readings, greetings.
(38:57):
So basically every fewseconds it will try and get.
More input data and if it is getting badinput data, it's just going to continue
to push the nose down, which is where wecurrently are, not what we're looking for.
Yep.
(39:17):
Yeah, the pilots.
Don't understand what's happeningbecause they don't know about MCAS.
So they don't recognize thattheir own aircraft is fighting
them from their perspective.
The plane seems to have developeda mind of its own repeatedly
(39:37):
trying to dive toward the oceanrandomly despite their inputs.
They're trying to control theairplane and it has just taken over
and it's like, go fuck yourselves.
A rude for a plane to say or whatever.
It's so bad.
Just five minutes after takeoff a warning,horn beacons blaring in the cockpit.
(40:00):
This is the cabin altitude warning.
Which we have discussed inprevious episodes, but this
indicates that the aircraft hasa pressurization system issue.
On the 7 37, this warning sounds identicalto the takeoff configuration warning.
(40:22):
Zach, do you remember an episodewhere we talked about this same
sounds, doing two things is bad?
Mm-hmm.
Creating confusion at a critical moment?
Yeah, I hate it.
But also, what are they gonna do?
They're gonna have a beephere and a beep beep there.
Beep.
Beep, beep.
Here, beep there.
Beep everywhere.
(40:44):
Beep, beep, beep.
Okay.
I was more thinking r Kelly.
Like, gimme that.
Gimme your beep.
Beep.
Mm-hmm.
You could run your hands through my juro.
Okay.
Redacted.
Redacted.
Captain Sinha contacts.
Air traffic control.
This is a quote, request RTB.
(41:06):
So that is return to base, which is pilotterminology for requesting permission
to come back to where you came from.
But even as he announces theirintention to return to Jakarta,
MCA continues its deadly work work.
The system activates 21 timesduring the 11 minute flight each
(41:32):
time commanding the nose down.
Mm mm-hmm.
21 times at 11 minutes.
Yeah.
21 times, 11 minutes.
It's so bad the pilots fight valiantly.
But they are battling an invisibleenemy that they don't even know exists.
(41:55):
Their aircraft's speed increasesdangerously as MCAS forces
them into a dive thinkingthat it is saving their lives.
At 6:33 AM 11 minutes after takeoff LionAir flight six 10 disappears from radar.
What is the radar height?
(42:16):
I forget.
I know that you can fly lowenough to fly under radar.
Is it 500 feet or something like that?
Let's find out.
10.
Outta 10.
It is low.
Yeah, if for sure is, uh, it's slowso the internet is telling me that it
is often 2,500 feet above the ground.
(42:37):
Hmm.
I feel like it would be lower, butyou know, I'm not a professional.
Yeah.
I'm in fact, very unprofessional.
Yeah.
And according to this guy on Reddit.
He says most air trafficoperates at 5,000 to 40,000 feet.
There you go, folks.
Not helpful, but that's whatthe internet just told me.
(42:58):
There's your lack of ananswer for the night.
Fabulous.
Thank the internet.
The aircraft hits the JEE atapproximately 400 miles per hour.
Wait, what is a jee?
The Java C Oh, the Java C.
(43:19):
Gotcha.
The Java.
We should not be laughing at this point.
This is so fucked.
Jesus died for our sin.
Theas.
Yeah.
Well this is like just.
Living a nightmare.
The people on this plane, God,I, I wish I could say that this
podcast has not increased my flightanxiety, but obviously it has.
(43:43):
That's a default.
It's like when I binge murder podcastsand then I go on a walk and I'm
like, I'm gonna die on this walk.
You know what's nice is thathasn't increased mine, but.
My Lord, when we were taking off,when we were going to Chicago, like
kind of floated for a second andyou felt that weightlessness in your
stomach and you like grabbed my armand I'm just like, we're fine God.
(44:07):
But the idea of being stuck inan airplane that is trying to
kill you, that's so horrifying.
And my heart breaks for the peoplethat were inside of this plane.
Both the passengers, the crew.
It just is like so unbelievably shitty.
The good news, I guess, if you cancall it that, is that the 189 people
(44:32):
onboard were killed instantly.
I mean, if you crash into a surface at400 miles per hour, doesn't matter what
that surface is, it's messing you up.
Yeah.
The game's over.
Um.
So thank God at least that therewasn't prolonged suffering.
Um, but God, that isjust so fucking shitty.
(44:55):
Uh, in the aftermath, Boeing'sinitial response was telling,
the company suggested that LionAir's maintenance procedures and
pilot training were to blame.
Boeing, CEO, Dennis Muhlenbergmaintained that the 7 37 max
is safe, and that's a quote.
(45:17):
And he emphasized that pilotscould handle MCAS malfunctions
using existing procedures, butbehind the scenes, Boeing knew.
That there was a problem.
Well, yeah.
Eight days after the crash, thecompany issued a bulletin to all
7 37 max operators warning abouterroneous angle of attack data that
(45:39):
could result in un uncom commandednose down movement, the FAA, followed
with an emergency directive requiringBoeing to revise operating procedures.
Boeing rushed to develop a softwareupdate for MCAS initially promising
that it would take quote, maybe sixweeks-ish end quote to fix the system,
(46:04):
which is the most bizarre, like.
Okay, that's fine.
People could die, but that's cool.
Just keep flying for the nextsix weeks, six ish and we'll
get something written up.
Yeah, no, that's great.
But, but I have free time.
It's so messed up.
But the complexity of the problemproved greater than anticipated as
(46:24):
Boeing worked on the software fix.
Airlines and pilots around the world beganasking uncomfortable questions about the
system that they'd never been told about.
The Indonesian investigation would laterreveal the full scope of the problem.
(46:45):
The aircraft had experiencedMCAS related issues on multiple
flights before the crash.
But the problems weren't properly reportedand they were not properly addressed.
And how do you properly report something?
It's like the plane did somethingweird, but I don't know anything weird.
Well, that's Zach.
That's a great point.
(47:06):
Like you can say, oh, I was stuck inthis weird roller coaster like cycle.
And they'll be like, okay.
And then, but why?
They'll go and, you know, Iguess they'll update the sensor.
But the pilots don't know whatthe cause of the issue is.
(47:26):
Hugely problematic.
The investigation found that31 pages were missing from the
aircraft's maintenance log book.
Look.
Wow.
Mm-hmm.
That's a lot of pages.
Mm-hmm.
Is it a cover up?
Okay.
Anyway, that hindered theinvestigation Significantly.
Most damning was the finding that Boeing'sdesign process had fundamental flaws.
(47:54):
MCAS relied on a single sensor.
Folks redundancy drank.
The system had been given farmore authority than originally
intended, and pilots were keptin the dark about its existence.
But as investigators work tounderstand what went wrong with
(48:16):
Lion Air Flight six 10, Boeingsoftware fix remained incomplete.
The 7 37 max continued to fly.
Like nothing had even happenedcarrying passengers who had no idea
that they were boarding a death trap,which is just like so crazy to me.
(48:41):
Insane.
It's like letting any one of thesepassengers like, oh, I built this plane.
We can fly it.
We're fine.
Oh, it's so messed up.
Yeah, I mean, people aregetting on these planes and
they just have no fricking idea.
Like what?
What it is capable of doing to them.
And guess what, Zach?
Five months later, that exact sameflaw would claim 157 more lives.
(49:08):
Honestly, it's kind of shockingthat it didn't kill more people
for that kind of timeframe.
I like they were just flying,like nothing was wrong.
I guess the question is, was itdoing rollercoaster pattern things
like was it still being problematic?
It's just that some of theflights may have gotten lucky.
Yeah.
And the lion flight did not, and thisflight is not going to get lucky.
(49:32):
So folks, we're about to do afirst here on final boarding call.
And we are, you get atwofer, you get a two parter.
Now Zach, I don't dreamof quitting my day job.
I actually love my job.
But if this podcast ever makesit to a point where we can have a
Patreon, which would be kind of cool,then we will release two parters.
(49:55):
At the same time for our Patreonlisteners, but since we ain't got
a Patreon yet, folks, by the way,let us know if you want a Patreon.
We'll instead release the next episode,which is, , the next plane crash of this
Boeing 7 37 max, as well as the resultsof the Boeing investigation next week.
(50:19):
So stay tuned, folks.
Seven days.
You can do it in themeantime without a goodbye.
No, we gotta do a goodbye.
We gotta do our little thing.
In the meantime, remember to stowyour trade tables, fasten your
seat belts, and put your seatsin the up right locked position.
Oh.
Because not every tripmakes its final destination.
(50:42):
That was great.
And you know what?
My bad, I forgot to actually remindthe people where they can find us.
So they can find us on Instagram.
Great.
Facebook redacted our website to stop it.
It would be really hardto come up with that.
Uh, you did really good and we areactually going to end with that.
So here we go.
Good.
Picture this, a state of theart, Boeing 7 37, barely four
months old, climbing through theclear morning sky over Indonesia.
Everything appears normal from the ground,but inside the cockpit, the flight crew is
fighting a battle against this airplane.
(00:24):
Just five months later.
The same deadly scenarioplays out over Ethiopia.
We are about to explore how Boeing'srace to compete led to design shortcuts
and how a recent settlement allowsit to escape criminal prosecution
for what many consider the deadliestcorporate crime in US history.
(00:50):
So stow your tray tables,fasten your seatbelt.
And prepare for some extreme turbulencebecause this is final boarding call.
That's heavy.
That is a beginning right there.
Are you pumped?
I am.
This story has it all.
(01:10):
So I'm curious right off the bat isthis, I mean, people were talking
a lot of shit online about Boeing,you know, within the last two years.
Is this what all of that is about?
Okay, cool.
Well, um, why is my voice so high?
I have a bitch voice.
You do not.
Why is my voice so low?
(01:30):
Why is my voice soundlike a 4-year-old girls?
Okay.
I think everybody hates their voice.
I think that's kind of part of it.
I think it's true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alright, so we're gonna getstarted here on this episode.
However, I want to apologize to everybodyif you are hearing what's might sound
like static to you in the background.
It is raining cats and dogs heretoday and we are recording anyway.
(01:53):
Uh, 'cause we have to, we are, weare all caught up with our weeks,
which always stresses me out.
Uh, so we are, we're recording.
It's raining everybody so intensely.
Everybody loves rain.
Stop worrying about the rain sound.
It's beautiful.
People are gonna finallyfall asleep to our podcast.
Okay?
So, yes.
(02:13):
What I will say is thatthere have been recent Boeing
shenanigans that have taken place.
It's getting louder.
It's getting louder.
God dammit.
There are recent Boeing shenanigansthat have taken place on top of the two
cases that we are going to cover today.
And the two cases that we are goingto cover today are relevant to a
(02:36):
particular, uh, software that wasadded to modern Boeing seven 30 sevens.
And it caused horrible things to happen.
So Boeing already kind ofhad a garbage reputation.
And then all of a sudden, like theAlaska Airline flight where the door just
(02:56):
like came flying off of the airplane.
You know, like that does nothelp the Boeing situation.
Um, and we will talk about this, but yeah,Boeing's in like a PR nightmare right now.
There have been investigations into their.
Operations and their facilities andeven whistleblowers within Boeing Oh.
(03:20):
Have been very open andhonest about shit going down.
For real.
I do believe in speakingout, but also mm-hmm.
Things never go goodfor the whistleblowers.
No, and that's, that kind of sucks,like people should, especially if it's
planes, these are the early people tryingto stand up and say, this is wrong.
Let me help you make this case.
(03:42):
And they always get shit on.
Oh yeah, no, for sure.
Damn, we got some lightning outside folks.
Wow.
It's pretty close too.
'cause that was, we could count backthe seconds, but it was probably like
two seconds before it we heard it.
Okay.
Well you can skip this episode ifthe sound is really bugging you
otherwise, or you can listen to iton repeat if you love it like I do.
(04:05):
Yeah.
This is like some A SMR everybody die.
Podcast.
Our, our dog is freaking out.
I know.
Benji does not love this.
No, he hates bad weather.
Okay.
Hello everybody and welcome,welcome to Final Boarding Call.
I'm your disaster obsessed host,Alice, and as always, I'm not a
(04:26):
very reluctant homebody husband.
Yeah.
Zach and Zach, yeah.
I love that.
My name is Zach.
Forgot to tell him they know me by now.
It's, it's fine.
Everybody knows.
As you, you're famous to our200 monthly listeners, but that
number is incredible for us.
Just being some people thatdon't know what we're doing.
No.
Sitting here at a dinner table together.
(04:47):
No.
And we do no marketing.
Like I work in marketing professionallyand we do zero marketing for
this podcast, so it's a lie.
I marketed really hard when I went tomy friend's house to drink beers and
said, Hey guys, we're gonna do this.
And now they listen.
Wow, that heavy marketing, that gorilla.
Word of mouth marketing.
Yeah.
Old school folks.
(05:08):
Okay.
Took it, took it.
200 people.
Zach's got more friends thanme, uh, before, by a lot.
Before we dive in, a quickreminder to our listeners.
Please rate, review, and subscribewherever you get your podcasts.
As the kids would say,smash that subscribe button.
I think that's what YouTubers say.
(05:30):
I don't watch YouTube, but.
Well, guys, I quit for the night,so I'll talk to you another time.
YouTube videos of plane crashes.
All right, let me go over oursources because this case is
jam packed with some insanity.
So there are court documents from Boeing'srecent Department of Justice settlement.
Uh, the final investigationreports obviously from both
(05:50):
crashes, which I always include.
Internal Boeing communicationsthat were revealed during
congressional investigations.
And of course I've gotsome journal articles.
I got some safety experts.
It's all detailed in the shownotes, so check that out if
you're, I don't know into that.
Here we go.
(06:11):
Our story begins, not with a crash,but with a phone call in early 2011.
Boeing, CEOW.
James McNerney received an urgent callfrom the head of American Airlines, one
of Boeing's most important customers.
(06:32):
The message was not good American wasconsidering placing a massive order
for hundreds of Airbus, A three 20 Neoaircraft instead of Boeing airplanes.
Yikes.
Yik, hundreds of airplanes ishundreds, billions of dollars.
(06:53):
Oh, this is like really, really bad.
Mm-hmm.
To understand why this phonecall was so crucial, we need to
step back and look at the fiercecompetition between Boeing and Airbus.
For decades, these two giants hadbeen locked in a global duopoly.
Do you like that duopoly?
Yeah.
Yeah.
(07:14):
Um, I had to double check tomake sure that was a word, but.
But they said, yeah, it is.
It is.
'cause monopoly is a word duopoly,fighting for every order, every route,
every advantage In the commercialaviation market, Boeing's 7 37 had
been a workhorse since the 1960s,but Airbus was gaining ground and the
(07:42):
A three 20 family particularly was.
Getting pretty popular.
Airbus announced the A three 20 Neo, youwanna gimme a little Neo rift real quick?
Not even a little bit.
Oh, okay.
I thought when I said that, that I'dget a little something outta you and
I'd be like, alright look, I knowa little bit of Neo and if it was
(08:05):
playing I could sing along, but.
Do I give a damn about his music enoughto just know the lyrics in my head?
Just sitting here podcasting with you?
Not a bit.
Okay.
Sorry.
Neo.
If you're a listener, we love you.
If you're listening, she loves you.
I'm not gonna lie to you.
Uh, so Neo actually standsfor new engine option.
(08:27):
So it does NEO New engineoption, much like the RB 25 Neo.
For anybody that didn't know, oh.
Great God, the listeners will love that.
Promising airlines, 15% better fuelefficiency and people, you probably
can guess this, but fuel efficiencyis a huge deal in the airline industry
(08:50):
because that is a major cost to airlines.
Like the major cost.
It's, it's.
Gigantic.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
So if you can save 15% of your gas spendon a spreadsheet's big, yeah, that's huge.
And guess what?
The orders poured in airlines.
(09:12):
Were really excited about this.
, We are talking millions of dollarsin fuel costs saved for the average
commercial airliner, I mean, per plane.
That's.
Yeah, it's, it's gonna be a lot of money.
Ultimately what resulted fromthis was that Airbus was eating
into Boeing's market share.
Bummer.
(09:33):
So Boeing faced a critical decision, spend10 years and tens of billions of dollars
developing an entirely new aircraft, orbasically pull their own version of Neo.
Take the Boeing 7 37 that.
Is known and loved and update it.
(09:55):
Give it a little beepup, boop boop to compete.
Put some nice flat screens in there,but also let it get better fuel.
Wow.
Look at that.
You can have it all now.
It's an Escalade that is not GY chairs.
Massaging seats in the driver's seat arethe best, worst thing that ever happened.
They put you to sleep,but God, they're nice.
Yeah.
(10:16):
Okay.
That's terrible.
Well.
Zach, given those two options,which do you think Boeing went with?
Well, because their planes are lookingabout the same, I'm gonna guess that they
decided to keep the same plane They did.
The choice was obvious froma business perspective.
The company was not going to, youknow, quote unquote bet the company
(10:38):
on revolutionary new designs.
hadn't been working on anythingalready, so it's not, they would've
been starting from scratch.
It would've been rough.
Yeah.
Yep.
Just three months after thatphone call with American Airlines,
Boeing launched the 7 37 max,project, not the actual plane.
(10:59):
They launched the project in August, 2011.
The timeline was brutal.
They needed to get this plane to market.
Fast before Airbus capturedeven more of their customers.
However, there was a problembecause there's always a problem
(11:20):
when you're trying to shipsomething really, really fast.
To compete with the A three 20Neos fuel efficiency, the 7 37 max
needed bigger, more powerful engine.
Boeing chose the CFM LEAP one b.
Engine CFM uh, stands for thejoint venture between General
(11:44):
Electric and Saffron, whichis a French aerospace company.
So they got together, they madethis big old badass engine.
And LEAP stands for leadingEdge Aviation propulsion.
So somebody in the boardroom cameup with that and everyone was
(12:04):
like, oh my God, that's so good.
Leap.
That's sick.
Right?
I always wanted to leap.
Leap, okay.
These engines were significantlylarger than the engines on previous
7 37 models, and here's wherethe trouble ultimately begins.
The 7 37 sits lower to theground than other aircraft.
(12:29):
So that's like kind of a fun thingthat I didn't know really until
I dove into this really deeply.
Um, it's a design feature that actuallyallows them to fly into smaller airports.
Simon, this one's for you.
7 37.
So you're plane, they're the low boys.
These low.
(12:49):
Hello.
Are they scraping?
Fun fact, with theseengines on them They were.
They were.
They were, yeah.
They actually would be so big.
These big engines do not fitin the same position as the
smaller engines originally did.
So Boeing's engineers had to movethem forward and higher under the
(13:12):
wing to get enough ground clearance.
I'm gonna be honest, if I'm sitting ona plane and I can see the engines like
a foot off the ground, I'm freaking out.
Okay?
Yep.
Yep.
Well, um, they did what they hadto do in order to keep those bad
boys from scraping on the ground.
Um, and ultimately this probablyseems like a fairly minor change.
(13:36):
You know, it's not like they tookthe engines and were like, let's slap
'em one up here and one over there.
They just moved them forwardand a little bit higher.
However, this affects aerodynamics.
Everything that you do on a plane willaffect the, the aerodynamics of it at
(13:57):
certain angles of attack, which is.
A fancy way of just saying likewhen the plane is doing something.
Mm-hmm.
While banking left.
Yeah.
While like doing stuff.
So this is specifically whenthe nose is pitched up relative
to the oncoming airflow.
So when would we think thatthe nose is pitched up?
(14:19):
When you're taking off?
When you're taking off ex danko Z?
Absolutely.
Obviously the forward mountedengines could create additional lift.
That would actually pushthe nose up further.
So during takeoff, right, the pilotsare like, okay, we're gonna be at a nice
(14:40):
steady angle that's like really safe.
We're taking off.
And then all of a sudden the airplane'slike, oh, we are going up, up, up.
And it's like rocket launchingitself into the stratosphere.
And as we've heard now Zach, and likemany episodes, what happens to an airplane
when it goes up too steep, too fast?
(15:04):
Well, you lose your freakingpropulsion, whatever word they use.
Stall.
Stall.
Yeah.
Stall.
Literally the plane stalls.
So you need more speed to go faster.
Yeah.
What would make this even worse isthat when the nose gets pushed up
more, it would create more lift,which would lift the nose up even
(15:31):
more because of these engines.
It is like they just don back flips.
Correct.
It is just a loop where the attitude
created from these frickingengines is going to create a stall.
It's very bad.
This is not good.
Not good.
(15:51):
Boeing's engineers discovered thisissue during wind tunnel testing
in 2012, so like, thank God they atleast found that and they weren't
just like rolling this thing out.
It should be fine.
Yeah.
Their solution was a software fix.
Called the Maneuvering CharacteristicsAugmentation System, also known as MCAS.
(16:18):
So that one's another one where Gregwas in the boardroom and just like
guys, I was like, guys, what if wejust get this, you guys called it this,
but what if we just took the firstletter from each word, mca, S, mca S.
The system was designed to automaticallypush the nose down if it detected a
(16:38):
dangerous angle of attack, counteractingthe engine's tendencies to launch the
aircraft into fucking outer space.
So, so we've talked about this before, butif this is your first episode, welcome.
We're gonna talk aboutan aerodynamic stall.
So this happens when the smoothair flow over a wing breaks down,
(17:03):
causing the wing to lose its lift.
This can happen at any speed if thewing's angle of attack becomes too steep.
Okay?
Too much uppy, not enough airflow.
Plane stalls.
You need more speed to go up faster.
It's so true.
I mean, you can.
(17:25):
Really think of a car as well.
Like it just, you need more to go up.
When a plane stalls, it will lose controland potentially crash, which is why
preventing stalls is a critical priority.
Eh, eh, you just mademe think of that line.
In mean Girls with thecoach, you will get eight.
(17:47):
And Die.
And Die.
Die.
God, I love that movie so much.
Huh?
You just gave away the movie reference.
We could've done that.
No stickers on that one.
Fuckers no stickers.
You got nothing initially.
MCAS was intended for rare high speedscenarios, and it was designed to move
the horizontal stabilizer, which is thesmall wing, like surface on the tail of
(18:11):
the aircraft that controls uppy downy.
That is pitch.
Pitch is your singing voice.
Yes.
Yes.
So.
Let me read this entire sentence again.
Start to finish because I think Iwrote it and it doesn't make sense.
Initially, MCAS was intended for rarehigh speed scenarios and was designed
(18:35):
to move the horizontal stabilizer.
Just 0.6
degrees over 10 seconds.
There we go.
Sounds like nothing.
Sounds like nothing.
Point six degrees.
But as testing, continued engineersdiscovered the same pitch up Tendency
could occur at low speeds too, like duringtakeoff and climb, as we stated, Zach.
(19:01):
And that is when the plane is mostvulnerable, is during takeoff.
That is actually when mostincidents occur, and that is.
In my opinion, the scariest moment of aflight turbulence does not freak me out.
Take off.
I definitely, well, that was very close.
Holy shit.
Y'all that had to have hit Adrian's house.
(19:25):
That was so bright.
It like hurt my eyes.
That was insane.
Your daughter jumped but didn't wake up.
Oh my God.
Um.
Whoa.
Sick.
Didn't like that one.
That was metal as fuck.
God, that was really intense.
Okay.
Uh, yeah.
So takeoffs are scary.
(19:46):
So is lightning.
So is lightning.
Okay.
Woo.
So this discovery from the engineers ledto a critical decision that would prove.
Fatal.
MCAS was reprogrammed to work atlow speeds and given much more.
Tho it could now move the stabilizer 2.5
(20:10):
degrees in 10 seconds.
More than four times the originaldesign, even more concerning the
requirement for high G forces.
To trigger the system wasremoved entirely, meaning MCAS.
(20:31):
Now relied solely on angleof attack sensor data.
So there is just one point of data andif for whatever reason it interprets
that as being quote unquote dangerous,it will, it makes its own, it will
take over the fucking airplane.
Yes.
That's terrifying to me.
(20:52):
Robots, I mean, we've all seen iRobot.
Throughout this development process,Boeing was working under immense
pressure, and this is kind of whatwe were talking about, Zach, where
things are not good at Boeing.
Internal emails later revealedby congressional investigators,
show employees expressing concernabout the compressed timeline,
(21:16):
engineers were pushed to submittechnical drawings and designs at
roughly double the normal pace.
Hmm.
Sounds like any boss though.
Like I want double the outputand half the money spent.
It's just so scary to me.
Like I get it.
It's a business.
There's pressure, there's this, yougot stakeholders, you've got your
(21:37):
stocks, but this is also an airplanemanufacturer, like you are making
something that hundreds of people.
Could be on at one time.
At one time.
Yeah.
Like that's insane.
Woof.
There's more thunder folks.
Curtis said he was pretty sureI hit the big tree across the
(22:00):
street and he was outside for it.
He's like, my showeris no longer voluntary.
Wow.
Oof.
One Boeing employee wrotein an internal email.
This airplane is designed by clownswho are in turn supervised by monkeys.
So the reply to that email was,would you put your family on a
(22:24):
max simulator training aircraft?
I wouldn't the reply.
No, these are the people that aredesigning and building the airplane.
Mm-hmm.
But the public never saw those concerns.
Why would they?
Because those were internal emails.
Publicly, Boeing maintained that the 737 max was safe, and that the differences
(22:47):
from previous 7 37 models were minimal.
This characterization was crucial foranother key aspect of Boeing's strategy.
Avoiding the need forextensive pilot training.
Mm.
They didn't want to have tospend time getting people
ready to service or fly on 'em.
No, absolutely not.
(23:08):
It's the same.
It's same.
Same but better.
Yeah.
If you have flown, everything's easier.
Thank you.
If you've flown a 7 37 beforeyou're good, you're good.
Yes, there's a feature where theplane will take over and like
try to kill you, but you don't.
Don't worry about that.
Okay.
One of Boeing's key selling points forthe 7 37 max was that pilots already
(23:31):
certified on earlier 7 37 models,would not need expensive and extensive
simulator training to fly this airplane.
Airlines loved this because.
Simulator training can cost tens ofthousands of dollars per pilot and
could also take pilots out of serviceduring the duration of their training.
(23:54):
Mm-hmm.
Boeing set what one engineer calledquote, a ground rule end quote.
For the 7 37 max design, anydesigns we created could not drive
any new training that required.
A, A stim, not a stimulator,a stimulator, a simulator.
(24:15):
End quote.
Um, so they were really instructed by theleadership team, don't do anything where
it's gonna raise a red flag, that moretraining is gonna be needed by the pilots.
This was not about customerconvenience, it was about sales.
Ultimately, if the max required newtraining, the airlines would probably be
out to achieve this goal, Boeing had toconvince the FAA, our good old friends at
(24:39):
the Federal Aviation Administration, thatthe 7 37 max was not even that different.
It's the same thing, and guess what?
It worked.
They succeeded the FAA approvedwhat's called Level B training,
which is essentially iPad basedcomputer training, lasting an hour.
(25:04):
An hour, Zach, a one hourtraining, one hour training train.
Advise you to fly thisnew plane on an iPad.
My training when I worked at Petco waslike seven hours long and this is one hour
and they get to fly this new airplane.
Yeah, but you're taking careof a lot of lives at Petco too,
so it's almost the same thing.
(25:24):
We didn't even have live animals at ours.
That is not where the pets go, folks.
No.
We didn't even have like cute stuff.
We had fish.
Okay.
, Here is a crucial detail.
MCAS wasn't evenmentioned in the training.
Hmm.
In fact, Boeing didn't tellpilots that MCAS existed at all.
(25:49):
The system wasn't described inflight manuals and pilots received
no training on how to recognizeor respond to MCAS activation.
So there is a system that willtake over the airplane if the
sensor tells it to entirely, andthe pilots have no fucking idea.
They don't even know.
They don't know.
They would think that they did something.
(26:11):
Hmm.
It seems problematic.
Zach.
I don't know.
It's bold for sure.
Well, it's, this strategyis not gonna pay off.
Boeing's Chief technical pilot forthe 7 37 Max Mark Forkner worked
hard to keep training requirements,minimal in emails to airline customers.
(26:35):
He referred to using.
Jedi mind tricks to persuaderegulators that additional
training was not necessary.
Icky.
He had a job to do.
Yeah, and I'm sure he got a fatbonus when he successfully convinced
the FAA to approve the limitedtraining program, a Boeing marketing
(26:57):
employee celebrated in an email.
This is a major milestoneand a great accomplishment.
Also icky Boeing justified nottelling pilots about MCAS by arguing
that if the system malfunctionedpilots could handle it using existing
procedures for runaway stabilizer trim.
(27:17):
And this is a condition wherethe aircraft's trim system moves
continuously in one direction.
So I'll break this down 'cause that's.
Like trim What?
Think of trim as the system thathelps keep the airplane flying
straight and level without the pilothaving to consistently or constantly
(27:38):
pull up or push on the controls.
So these procedures had been around fordecades and they involved flipping two
switches to cut power to the trim systems,and then manually adjusting the aircraft's
trim using hand operated wheels.
So, uh, it's okay if we don'tunderstand exactly what that means,
(27:58):
but in Boeing's mind, they were like,oh, the pilots will know what to do.
They'll do this thing thatthey've always done forever.
There was a problem with thisreasoning that wouldn't become
apparent until it was too late.
The existing runaway trim procedureswere developed for older, simpler
aircraft, and the 7 37 maxissystems were far more complex.
(28:24):
And the manual trim wheels could becomeextremely difficult or impossible to turn
under certain conditions, specificallywhen the aircraft was flying fast and
stabilizer was severely out of trim.
It would be like trying to turn thesteering wheel of a car while the
wheels are stuck in very deep mud.
(28:45):
Hmm.
Yeah.
Also, the pilots wouldn't know what thefuck is happening, which to me is just
like what I wish everybody could see.
The hand movements, God, I just, geez,Louise Boeing also made another crucial
decision about MCAS that violatedbasic principles of aviation safety.
(29:09):
The system relied on data from only oneangle of attack sensor which can go bad.
Sensors fail.
Yes, Zach or sensors fail, whatever.
And if you are going to have asystem that will take over an
airplane, you need it to be able totake in more than one data point.
(29:34):
You need redundancy drink.
Most commercial aircraft havemultiple sensors for critical systems
to provide redundancy drink, likehaving backup breaks in your car.
If one fails, at least youhave some others, like my God.
(29:58):
But MCAS used just one sensor alternatingbetween the left and right sensors.
On successive flights, which alsois crazy to me, but that's whatever.
They had to ship it fast.
Zach, the stakeholders, therewas no time the stock market.
I wasn't gonna get that 1.2
(30:18):
million bonus, the bonuses, the 737 max did have two angle of attack
sensors and a cockpit warning systemthat would alert pilots if the
sensors disagreed significantly.
But this warning systemwas offered as optional.
At an extra cost.
(30:39):
And guess what?
The airlines, nobody wants to pay for it.
Like what?
It's optional.
Baby.
Cross that shit off.
So many airlines did not do this,including Lion Air and Ethiopian
Airlines, which are gonna be the twoincidents that we're talking about today.
Believe it or not, folks,we are gonna cover.
(31:02):
Not in the normal depth that we do,but we are gonna cover two plane
crashes that happen because of this.
Obviously, as Boeing prepared, likemy voice just cracked, like I'm
going through puberty as Boeingprepared for the 7 37 Max's entry into
service warning signs were emerging.
(31:22):
Internal communications show employeesexpressing concern about safety and
quality to, you know, important.
Those are two things.
Yeah.
Like you're putting a plane out there.
Yeah, it's on the bottom of theto-do list, but they are on it.
It's fucking, however, the publicnarrative remained positive.
(31:44):
The 7 37 max entered commercialservice in May of 2017.
With great fanfare marketed asBoeing's fastest selling aircraft ever.
So somebody got a big old fat bonus.
Many people did.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
By October of 2018, Boeing haddelivered 2 37 max aircraft
(32:09):
to airlines around the world.
The plane was flying hundreds ofroutes daily, carrying thousands
of passengers, and then on aclear morning over Indonesia.
The first catastrophic failure occurred.
It is October 29th, 2018.
(32:32):
The morning sunrises over you guys.
Please forgive me because I, Ihave this written out phonetically,
but this name is, whew.
The sunrises over jakarta's.
S.
SATA International Airport as Lion AirFlight six 10 prepares for what should be
(32:52):
a routine one hour and 20 minute flight.
Two Ping Call pinon.
The aircraft is a nearly newBoeing 7 37 max eight registration.
PK LQP delivered to Lion Air onlytwo and a half months earlier.
Yeah, this thing is brand new.
(33:15):
Captain Baha, Asha Ba, Baha sCaptain, or it was Harry Potter
would say, yeah, I know captain Vaha.
Apologies for thepronunciation there, folks.
A 31-year-old Indian National commandsthe flight He's experienced with
(33:36):
over 6,000 flight hours and more thanseven years with Lion Air beside him.
Sits first Officer Vinno, a41-year-old Indonesian with over
5,000 hours of flight experience.
Both pilots are what we wouldcall extremely qualified
(33:57):
and familiar with the 7 37.
What they don't know, what they'venever been told is that their
aircraft has a hidden problem.
The day before on the flight fromBali to Jakarta, this same plane
experienced severe control issues.
Passengers would describeit as a rollercoaster ride.
(34:21):
With the aircraft repeatedly divingand then climbing again unexpectedly.
The flight crew declared a pan pan,which is an international distress
signal indicating an urgent situation.
That's one level beforea full on mayday, right?
But they did manage toland the plane safely.
(34:44):
Here is where the story gets even crazier.
That previous flight was actuallysaved by a third pilot, an off-duty
Boeing 7 37 max qualified pilot wasriding in the cockpit jump seat.
What does this remind you of?
The DC 10 train air that camein totally saved the day.
(35:09):
When MCAS began forcing the nose down,this pilot correctly diagnosed the problem
and told the crew to flip the stabilizer.
Trim cutout switches disabling the system.
This information wasn't widely knownuntil months later because people
didn't even know that MCAS existed.
It wasn't even a thing.
(35:30):
It wasn't even a thing.
After landing in Jakarta, theaircraft underwent maintenance.
Workers replaced one of the angleof attack sensors with a used part.
Not even a new one.
Just Just find a bolt.
Find a bolt in your bolt bucket.
That's where I got, it's like some ofmy car friends that brings stuff to me.
It is like, oh, I need a new injector.
(35:52):
Oh my God.
Well there's this one at a salvage yard.
Yeah, I found this one.
No, don't do that.
Okay.
Well, they're doing that on an airplane.
Uh, so they found this used part.
It was not from a pay and pull,uh, but it was from a Florida
company called Extra Aerospaceand folks, it's spelled with an X.
(36:14):
Oh, hell yeah.
Hell yeah, brother.
But the replacementsensor was miscalibrated.
It had been incorrectly repairedand wasn't sending accurate data.
Lion Air's maintenance crew failed todetect this error during installation.
Oh Jesus.
Guys at 6:20 AM Local time on October29th, flight six 10 takes off from
(36:38):
Jakarta with 189 people on board.
For the first five minutes,everything seems normal.
The aircraft climbs steadily throughthe morning sky, but as Captain
Sinha begins to retract the flaps.
Which are kind of the, those likemovable panels on the wings that go
(37:01):
in and out during takeoff and landing.
The miscalibrated angle of attacksensor starts sending false
data to the aircraft's systems.
The faulty sensor tells MCAS that theaircraft is in a dangerous nose up
attitude when it's actually just flying.
(37:21):
It's ju, it's just doing whatthe airplane should be doing.
Okay, so if it sounds a little differentright now than it did one and a half
seconds ago in the script, it's becausewe had to take a pause recording and we
are now on night two of this episode.
So let's jump right back into it.
(37:45):
The faulty sensor tells MCAS that theaircraft is in a dangerous nose up
attitude when it's actually flying.
Normally, MCAS responds as designed.
It automatically commands the horizontalstabilizer to push the aircraft's
nose down, but because the sensordata is wrong, this nose down input.
(38:13):
It is completely unnecessary.
It's also dangerous because they'rejust flying the plane and then
all of a sudden it's dipping.
It's falling outta the sky.
Dipping.
I'm a dip real quick.
Yeah.
Captain Sinha feels theaircraft's nose drop and he
(38:35):
pulls back on his control yolk.
Because that is intuitively what apilot would do to maintain level flight.
But MCAS isn't finished.
The system is designed to activaterepeatedly if it continues to receive
high angle of attack, readings, greetings.
(38:57):
So basically every fewseconds it will try and get.
More input data and if it is getting badinput data, it's just going to continue
to push the nose down, which is where wecurrently are, not what we're looking for.
Yep.
(39:17):
Yeah, the pilots.
Don't understand what's happeningbecause they don't know about MCAS.
So they don't recognize thattheir own aircraft is fighting
them from their perspective.
The plane seems to have developeda mind of its own repeatedly
(39:37):
trying to dive toward the oceanrandomly despite their inputs.
They're trying to control theairplane and it has just taken over
and it's like, go fuck yourselves.
A rude for a plane to say or whatever.
It's so bad.
Just five minutes after takeoff a warning,horn beacons blaring in the cockpit.
(40:00):
This is the cabin altitude warning.
Which we have discussed inprevious episodes, but this
indicates that the aircraft hasa pressurization system issue.
On the 7 37, this warning sounds identicalto the takeoff configuration warning.
(40:22):
Zach, do you remember an episodewhere we talked about this same
sounds, doing two things is bad?
Mm-hmm.
Creating confusion at a critical moment?
Yeah, I hate it.
But also, what are they gonna do?
They're gonna have a beephere and a beep beep there.
Beep.
Beep, beep.
Here, beep there.
Beep everywhere.
(40:44):
Beep, beep, beep.
Okay.
I was more thinking r Kelly.
Like, gimme that.
Gimme your beep.
Beep.
Mm-hmm.
You could run your hands through my juro.
Okay.
Redacted.
Redacted.
Captain Sinha contacts.
Air traffic control.
This is a quote, request RTB.
(41:06):
So that is return to base, which is pilotterminology for requesting permission
to come back to where you came from.
But even as he announces theirintention to return to Jakarta,
MCA continues its deadly work work.
The system activates 21 timesduring the 11 minute flight each
(41:32):
time commanding the nose down.
Mm mm-hmm.
21 times at 11 minutes.
Yeah.
21 times, 11 minutes.
It's so bad the pilots fight valiantly.
But they are battling an invisibleenemy that they don't even know exists.
(41:55):
Their aircraft's speed increasesdangerously as MCAS forces
them into a dive thinkingthat it is saving their lives.
At 6:33 AM 11 minutes after takeoff LionAir flight six 10 disappears from radar.
What is the radar height?
(42:16):
I forget.
I know that you can fly lowenough to fly under radar.
Is it 500 feet or something like that?
Let's find out.
10.
Outta 10.
It is low.
Yeah, if for sure is, uh, it's slowso the internet is telling me that it
is often 2,500 feet above the ground.
(42:37):
Hmm.
I feel like it would be lower, butyou know, I'm not a professional.
Yeah.
I'm in fact, very unprofessional.
Yeah.
And according to this guy on Reddit.
He says most air trafficoperates at 5,000 to 40,000 feet.
There you go, folks.
Not helpful, but that's whatthe internet just told me.
(42:58):
There's your lack of ananswer for the night.
Fabulous.
Thank the internet.
The aircraft hits the JEE atapproximately 400 miles per hour.
Wait, what is a jee?
The Java C Oh, the Java C.
(43:19):
Gotcha.
The Java.
We should not be laughing at this point.
This is so fucked.
Jesus died for our sin.
Theas.
Yeah.
Well this is like just.
Living a nightmare.
The people on this plane, God,I, I wish I could say that this
podcast has not increased my flightanxiety, but obviously it has.
(43:43):
That's a default.
It's like when I binge murder podcastsand then I go on a walk and I'm
like, I'm gonna die on this walk.
You know what's nice is thathasn't increased mine, but.
My Lord, when we were taking off,when we were going to Chicago, like
kind of floated for a second andyou felt that weightlessness in your
stomach and you like grabbed my armand I'm just like, we're fine God.
(44:07):
But the idea of being stuck inan airplane that is trying to
kill you, that's so horrifying.
And my heart breaks for the peoplethat were inside of this plane.
Both the passengers, the crew.
It just is like so unbelievably shitty.
The good news, I guess, if you cancall it that, is that the 189 people
(44:32):
onboard were killed instantly.
I mean, if you crash into a surface at400 miles per hour, doesn't matter what
that surface is, it's messing you up.
Yeah.
The game's over.
Um.
So thank God at least that therewasn't prolonged suffering.
Um, but God, that isjust so fucking shitty.
(44:55):
Uh, in the aftermath, Boeing'sinitial response was telling,
the company suggested that LionAir's maintenance procedures and
pilot training were to blame.
Boeing, CEO, Dennis Muhlenbergmaintained that the 7 37 max
is safe, and that's a quote.
(45:17):
And he emphasized that pilotscould handle MCAS malfunctions
using existing procedures, butbehind the scenes, Boeing knew.
That there was a problem.
Well, yeah.
Eight days after the crash, thecompany issued a bulletin to all
7 37 max operators warning abouterroneous angle of attack data that
(45:39):
could result in un uncom commandednose down movement, the FAA, followed
with an emergency directive requiringBoeing to revise operating procedures.
Boeing rushed to develop a softwareupdate for MCAS initially promising
that it would take quote, maybe sixweeks-ish end quote to fix the system,
(46:04):
which is the most bizarre, like.
Okay, that's fine.
People could die, but that's cool.
Just keep flying for the nextsix weeks, six ish and we'll
get something written up.
Yeah, no, that's great.
But, but I have free time.
It's so messed up.
But the complexity of the problemproved greater than anticipated as
(46:24):
Boeing worked on the software fix.
Airlines and pilots around the world beganasking uncomfortable questions about the
system that they'd never been told about.
The Indonesian investigation would laterreveal the full scope of the problem.
(46:45):
The aircraft had experiencedMCAS related issues on multiple
flights before the crash.
But the problems weren't properly reportedand they were not properly addressed.
And how do you properly report something?
It's like the plane did somethingweird, but I don't know anything weird.
Well, that's Zach.
That's a great point.
(47:06):
Like you can say, oh, I was stuck inthis weird roller coaster like cycle.
And they'll be like, okay.
And then, but why?
They'll go and, you know, Iguess they'll update the sensor.
But the pilots don't know whatthe cause of the issue is.
(47:26):
Hugely problematic.
The investigation found that31 pages were missing from the
aircraft's maintenance log book.
Look.
Wow.
Mm-hmm.
That's a lot of pages.
Mm-hmm.
Is it a cover up?
Okay.
Anyway, that hindered theinvestigation Significantly.
Most damning was the finding that Boeing'sdesign process had fundamental flaws.
(47:54):
MCAS relied on a single sensor.
Folks redundancy drank.
The system had been given farmore authority than originally
intended, and pilots were keptin the dark about its existence.
But as investigators work tounderstand what went wrong with
(48:16):
Lion Air Flight six 10, Boeingsoftware fix remained incomplete.
The 7 37 max continued to fly.
Like nothing had even happenedcarrying passengers who had no idea
that they were boarding a death trap,which is just like so crazy to me.
(48:41):
Insane.
It's like letting any one of thesepassengers like, oh, I built this plane.
We can fly it.
We're fine.
Oh, it's so messed up.
Yeah, I mean, people aregetting on these planes and
they just have no fricking idea.
Like what?
What it is capable of doing to them.
And guess what, Zach?
Five months later, that exact sameflaw would claim 157 more lives.
(49:08):
Honestly, it's kind of shockingthat it didn't kill more people
for that kind of timeframe.
I like they were just flying,like nothing was wrong.
I guess the question is, was itdoing rollercoaster pattern things
like was it still being problematic?
It's just that some of theflights may have gotten lucky.
Yeah.
And the lion flight did not, and thisflight is not going to get lucky.
(49:32):
So folks, we're about to do afirst here on final boarding call.
And we are, you get atwofer, you get a two parter.
Now Zach, I don't dreamof quitting my day job.
I actually love my job.
But if this podcast ever makesit to a point where we can have a
Patreon, which would be kind of cool,then we will release two parters.
(49:55):
At the same time for our Patreonlisteners, but since we ain't got
a Patreon yet, folks, by the way,let us know if you want a Patreon.
We'll instead release the next episode,which is, , the next plane crash of this
Boeing 7 37 max, as well as the resultsof the Boeing investigation next week.
(50:19):
So stay tuned, folks.
Seven days.
You can do it in themeantime without a goodbye.
No, we gotta do a goodbye.
We gotta do our little thing.
In the meantime, remember to stowyour trade tables, fasten your
seat belts, and put your seatsin the up right locked position.
Oh.
Because not every tripmakes its final destination.
(50:42):
That was great.
And you know what?
My bad, I forgot to actually remindthe people where they can find us.
So they can find us on Instagram.
Great.
Facebook redacted our website to stop it.
It would be really hardto come up with that.
Uh, you did really good and we areactually going to end with that.
So here we go.
Good.
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