Boeing 737 Max

Author: Nicholas Stubblefield Edited by: Nora Lewis

Suggested Citation:

Stubblefield, N., Lewis, N. (2026). Boeing 737 Max. Technology Assessment Project Case Study Library, University of Michigan. https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/tap-case-study-library/boeing-737-max

Boeing 737 Max

Key Takeaways

• Highly technical industries often place an emphasis on innovation, which can lead to the outpacing of regulatory knowledge and expertise.
• This can then lead to a concentration of regulatory roles and oversight into the industry itself, as regulatory agencies often have limited resources.
• When industries value profit and innovation over safety, it can result in sloppy engineering, unsustainable timelines, and design lock-in. This regulatory avoidance and culture of complacency can result in deadly disasters.

The 737 Max is Boeing's newest addition to its bestselling fleet. Announced in 2011, completed in 2016, and certified in 2017, the 737 Max marks a long-lasting legacy of Boeing continuity. Not a radically new design, the Max is the fourth generation descendant of Boeing's first commercial airliner: the 737. Boeing introduced the original 737, a single-aisle two-engine jet, to airlines in 1967. Airlines embraced the design for passenger air travel, and Boeing perpetuated the design for decades with successive models only moderately altered to improve fuel efficiency and traveler capacity. The slight alterations between 737 designs were not simply a testament to the durability of the core design; they also took advantage of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) compliance mechanism, which was more relaxed for already existing technology and assumed new 737s were largely the same as already approved models. This tactic guaranteed fast certification from the ruling regulatory body.

The Max's design built on its predecessor, "The Next Generation," by adding two larger, more fuel-efficient engines. However, because of the standard, low-sitting frame of the 737, the larger engines had to be placed more forward on the wings than was typical for earlier generations. The new placement of the engines came with a unique trade-off: the plane occasionally pitched up during certain stages of flight. To improve pitch stability, Boeing engineers developed the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). The MCAS automatically reads in data about the jet's angle of attack (AoA), which is the wings' position relative to the oncoming wind flow. If the AoA is too high, the plane can lose lift and begin falling, a condition called stalling. When the AoA exceeds a certain threshold, the MCAS is automatically triggered and pushes the plane's nose down. Importantly, Boeing intended MCAS to work entirely in the background and be activated without pilot input.

Conception in Competition (and Tech Lock-In)

Having released its "Next Generation" 737 in 1993, Boeing spent the first decade of the new century mulling over its next direction for jet design. Two camps emerged: one perpetuated the established and trustworthy line with an enhanced 737, and the other advocated for an entirely new, smaller aircraft. However, enjoying a sizable monopoly with the "Next Gen" still in demand, Boeing officials felt no great rush to develop their next commercial product.

In 2010, Boeing's sole U.S. market competitor, Airbus, announced its own upgraded, more fuel-efficient single-aisle jet: the A320NEO. Boeing brass initially mocked the move, predicting a lack of demand for the plane would spell financial chaos for its competitor. Boeing customers felt differently. American Airlines (AA), suffering annual profit loss from increased fuel prices, sought to significantly upgrade their existing fleet (one of the oldest among the U.S.'s top six airlines) and turned to Airbus, whom they had not purchased from in over two decades, to secure an order of their new plane.

The following year, Gerard Arpey, American Airlines' chief executive, called Boeing president W. James McNerney Jr. to inform him of the deal. Boeing had enjoyed exclusive privilege supplying the airline, and the closing deal with Airbus threatened its monopoly. If Boeing wanted in, explained Arpey, it would have to move fast and aggressively. In an instant, Boeing's future, and the future of all commercial flight, was decided. To compete with Airbus and court defecting customers, Boeing would have to meet the market's demand for fuel-efficient single-aisle jets. This meant eschewing new innovation and pursuing an upgraded 737. On August 30, 2011, Boeing announced the official launch of their new jet: the 737 Max. Boeing's rapid course change did not preserve its monopoly. American placed its order for 460 new single-aisle jets: 200 from Boeing and 260 from Airbus. Scorned, top officials at Boeing set in motion an ambitious, accelerated plan to outpace and outsell the NEO with its 737 Max, and by 2011's end they were already posturing with promises of a superior product. John Hamilton, the 737's chief project engineer, announced the Max would leapfrog the NEO and have 7 percent better operating economics.

Boeing's hope for market domination rested on fast product turnaround and customer preference. Its strategy necessitated a production schedule faster than anything in Boeing's history, and executives demanded one primary condition in the design to guarantee customer appeal: avoid changes to the 737 model that would require costly, time-consuming pilot training on a simulator. By marketing the Max as a new and improved 737 "Next Generation" but with all the same cockpit bells and whistles, Boeing could pitch their plane as an easy-to-transition-to jet that would save airlines millions of dollars on fuel cost without the need to retrain their pilots.

This decision reinforced the technological lock-in at even smaller levels of engineering. One Boeing engineer complained: "There was so much opportunity to make big jumps, but the training differences held us back."

Disaster

On October 29, 2018 at 6:20 a.m., Lion Air flight JT 610 prepared to take off from Indonesia's Jakarta airport. The plane, a new 737 Max, immediately experienced critical problems. Less than 30 seconds before takeoff, the cockpit displayed two different windspeeds, and the plane's angle of attack sensors disagreed by 21 degrees. After takeoff, dual displays continued to show discrepancies in readings for altitude, speed, and angle of attack. Five minutes into the flight, these contradictory data activated the MCAS, which pushed the plane's nose down for two seconds before the pilot regained control. Then the MCAS activated again, and then again, and then again, each time plummeting the jet toward the ground. For six minutes the pilots wrestled their own plane to keep it in the air. They lost that battle. At 6:31 a.m., flight JT 610 crashed into the sea, and all 189 people on board were killed.

Five months later, it happened again. On March 10, 2019, a 737 Max 9 owned by Ethiopian Airlines crashed six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Later investigations found that a faulty reading from the angle-of-attack sensor detected a stall and caused the MCAS to force the plane's nose down. Despite following the instructions for an erroneously triggered MCAS response that Boeing provided after the October crash, the pilots could not regain control of the plane, and all 157 people on board perished.

Regulation Revelations

Following the March crash in Ethiopia, the United States House of Representatives created a special panel to investigate both Boeing and its regulatory overseer, the Federal Aviation Administration, for misconduct. Their report, an 18-month accumulation of inquiries and testimonies, discovered a "horrific culmination" of failed government oversight, design flaws, and proactive inaction.

Private Prioritization of Profit

The most damning conclusions from the report laid bare Boeing's deliberate efforts to unburden the Max from regulatory scrutiny and jeopardize product safety in pursuit of fast deliverables. Conceived as a response to an outperforming competitor, production of the Max was haunted by a framework of corporate necessity. Its monopoly destroyed, Boeing found itself on the defensive, and its reactionary strategy to develop the Max made the jet a desperate means of survival rather than true product innovation. Boeing consistently promoted unprecedented cost- and time-cutting procedures at every level of the engineering process. Officials tasked engineers with completing designs at twice the usual pace, which unsurprisingly affected quality. Early timeline tech specs were considered uncharacteristically "sloppy" by Boeing staff, and even at later stages these specs still contained glaring omissions. In the words of the Congressional report: "There was tremendous financial pressure on Boeing to compete with Airbus' new A320neo aircraft. This pressure resulted in extensive efforts to cut costs, maintain the 737 MAX program schedule, and avoid slowing the 737 MAX production line: production pressures that jeopardized the safety of the flying public."

Regulatory Avoidance

Critical to Boeing's plan was avoiding the additional regulatory scrutiny and lengthy pilot simulator training that typically accompanies new designs. The appeal of the 737 to airlines is its continuity of familiarity. Minimal changes to successive generations meant pilots could easily transfer from one model to another with only a brief online course for preparation instead of a costly, month-long instruction program. This made new planes less expensive investments for airlines and streamlined their certification process at the FAA, making training a threat to Boeing's bottom line. For instance, a 2011 contract with Southwest Airlines stipulated that any simulator training necessary to fly the Max would drop the price of each plane by $1 million. When, in 2013, an engineer recommended installing a second, supplementary airspeed indicator, Boeing shut down the proposal because it would require additional pilot training.

The new larger engines could be flown with similar procedures as other 737s, but MCAS, a major software addition with flight-altering implications, would turn heads at the FAA. Fearing regulatory intervention, Boeing cultivated a "culture of concealment" to withhold MCAS information from the FAA, airlines, and Max pilots. Boeing was able to hide and misrepresent most information about MCAS by taking advantage of the FAA's Designee Program. Citing limited resources and strained expertise, the FAA created the Designee Program in 1958, which permits the agency to appoint private industry employees and organizations to conduct regulatory evaluations in its stead. The agency claims the superior technical capabilities and expertise of the private sector make this program necessary and attractive. These designees perform nearly all certification duties related to aircraft safety and personnel competency. However, this designee program indicates a widening skill gap between industry and regulators that makes compliance harder to enforce. When Boeing began to develop the 737 Max in 2011, it appointed its own designees to report on safety evaluations and compliance with regulatory standards to the FAA, which enabled the company to hide information about MCAS.

For instance, designees presented the software as a modification rather than a new feature. As development progressed, MCAS problems and alterations never made it to the FAA. During a pilot test for the Max, the pilot took ten seconds to identify and respond to an uncommanded MCAS activation, a response time the pilot called "catastrophic." Boeing's designees did not disclose these results to the FAA. In 2016, designees chose to conceal changes to MCAS in the Flight Standardization Board Report (FSB), a document detailing important information to include in the airplane manual and pilot training materials. As a result, both the training materials and the Max manual contained no information about MCAS, so pilots were kept ignorant of its existence. In the end, Boeing got exactly what it wanted. When the Max rolled off the assembly line and into airports, pilots simply needed a one-to-three-hour online module to take to the skies.

While Boeing exploited the FAA's lack of resources and expertise, regulators also instilled a culture of industry deference. In the wake of the 737 Max crashes, the FAA sought to understand and improve its safety culture. Employees reported that their industry counterparts complained regularly about the financial stress caused by overbearing regulatory standards and expected them to find industry-friendly solutions. This pressure led to policy choices and interpretations that prioritized business-oriented outcomes, with FAA senior leadership sometimes even taking Boeing's side over its own safety engineers. One government report assessed that regulators were "overly concerned with achieving the business-oriented outcomes of industry stakeholders and are not held accountable for safety-related decisions."

Persisting Issues

Even after the twin crashes and Boeing's professed commitment to improve its safety culture and regulatory compliance, accidents persisted. In 2024, an emergency door flew off a 737 Max 9 in the middle of a flight. Subsequent investigations discovered loose bolts on the door plugs of several jets as well as systemic maintenance and equipment issues, including misdrilled holes on fuselages, missing bolts, and engines going up in flames. Problems were not limited to the 737 Max. Following the 2018 and 2019 crashes, the Boeing 777 model experienced multiple problems, including plane engines breaking mid-flight and raining down debris. A 2024 FAA report found Boeing lacked a systematic way of capturing and resolving safety concerns and that its employees were unaware of the company's efforts to establish an enterprise-wide safety culture. The Max is not an isolated event but rather a symptom of Boeing's systemic and dangerous prioritization of profit over safety.

Relevance to Advanced Nuclear Energy

We chose the 737 Max as a case to explore how and why companies avert regulatory oversight, and how regulation avoidance leads to tragic disasters. We found that highly technical industries that place an emphasis on innovation can quickly outpace regulatory knowledge and expertise. This "expertise gap" often precipitates the concentration of regulatory roles like oversight into the industry itself as regulatory agencies try to optimize their comparatively limited resources. However, while the expertise gap is a mechanism companies use to avoid regulatory compliance, profit is their underlying motivation. Boeing's prioritization of profit over all other technical and safety considerations was a story that extended well beyond the 737 Max and impacted its entire workplace culture. Here, profit not only encouraged regulation avoidance; it also prompted sloppy engineering, unsustainable timelines, and design lock-in.

Key References

Gates, D. (2019, March 17). Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system. The Seattle Times.

Gelles, D., Kitroeff, N., Nicas, J., & Ruiz, R. R. (2019, March 23). Boeing was 'Go, Go, Go' to beat Airbus with the 737 Max. The New York Times.

House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure. (2020). Final committee report: The design, development, and certification of the Boeing 737 MAX.

Kitroeff, N., Gelles, D., & Nicas, J. (2019, July 27). The roots of Boeing's 737 Max crisis: A regulator relaxes its oversight. The New York Times.

Krisher, T. (2020, September 16). Panel's report blasts Boeing, FAA for crashes, seeks reforms. AP News.

U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). (2004). Aviation safety: FAA needs to strengthen the management of its designee programs.

Zweifel, T. D., & Vyas, V. (2021). Crash: Boeing and the power of culture. Journal of Intercultural Management and Ethics, 4(4), 13–25.

References

Baker, S. (n.d.). This timeline shows exactly what happened on board the Lion Air Boeing 737 Max that crashed in less than 13 minutes, killing 189 people. Business Insider.

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Federal Aviation Administration. (n.d.a.). About the FAA designee program.

Federal Aviation Administration. (n.d.b.). Delegation and designee background.

Gates, D. (2019, March 17). Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system. The Seattle Times.

Gelles, D., Kitroeff, N., Nicas, J., & Ruiz, R. R. (2019, March 23). Boeing was 'Go, Go, Go' to beat Airbus with the 737 Max. The New York Times.

Hayward, J. (2022, September 15). The Boeing 737: The original, classic, NG and Max — what's the difference? Simple Flying.

House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure. (2020). Final committee report: The design, development, and certification of the Boeing 737 MAX.

Kamb, L. (2024, March 15). Boeing and Alaska Airlines deny liability in lawsuit over door plug blowout. NBC News.

Kitroeff, N., Gelles, D., & Nicas, J. (2019, July 27). The roots of Boeing's 737 Max crisis: A regulator relaxes its oversight. The New York Times.

Koenig, D. (2020, August 8). FAA employees who oversee airplane makers report pressure. AP News.

Krisher, T. (2020, September 16). Panel's report blasts Boeing, FAA for crashes, seeks reforms. AP News.

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U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). (2004). Aviation safety: FAA needs to strengthen the management of its designee programs.

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Zweifel, T. D., & Vyas, V. (2021). Crash: Boeing and the power of culture. Journal of Intercultural Management and Ethics, 4(4), 13–25.