Uncovering the 737 MAX Tragedy: How Boeing's Negligence Led to Disaster

Bill: I read this book from our local library when it first was available then ordered a copy because I knew I would want to reread it, probably several times. I agree with views who objected to the way the author let his political leanings color this story but in spite of that I think it truly deserves five stars. The reason for my rating is that this is a great chronicle of how a company that had been focused to providing the very best products to its customers and had a history of innovation can be demolished by a management group that is totally focused on share price and short-term profits. It is also a story of how outsourcing, while having some cost savings in the short term, can often lead to production problems and cost growth in the longer term. I know these things are true because I watched them happen during my 30+ years at Boeing. This book and the older "Bill and Ted, How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company" should be required reading in management and ethics courses. At some time in the future when historians are trying to figure out how the United States lost its position as a world leader in technology and innovation, they would do well to read this...

United States on Aug 28, 2023

A. Attarian: Welllll I for one am never looking at a 737 (any variant) or Boeing the same ever again. The Max story alone isn't the tragedy, but the entire shift and downfall of Boeing's culture as well. The story is fascinating and compelling, to be sure. I would say the book doesn't really move into gear until about half way through, but I do appreciate the historical setup and very detailed history (though it is hard to keep track of everyone). The book ends in a whimper -- Boeing's core culture has seemingly remained unchanged and merely reorganized but no return to their engineering roots. This book really does document a decades long tragedy of losing something so uniquely American.

United States on Jul 04, 2023

Railway Mike: A very detailed breakdown of the managerial failings leading to the accidents.

United Kingdom on May 12, 2023

Gordi: I enjoyed this book which I found difficult to put down. There were two fatal incidents involving the 737 MAX aircraft when all those on board were lost. The MAX was the most recent iteration of the Boeing 737 jet aircraft but contained a software fix which had not been sufficiently tested and was able to take control of the aircraft to make it uncontrollable - this was known to Boeing. In my view, this book does answer the question - how was this allowed to happen. Corporate greed was a factor which compromised all those involved in certifying that the aircraft was safe which led to those fatal consequences.

United Kingdom on May 09, 2023

Amazon Customer: I found this book to be a well written account of the recent corporate record of Boeing. The fundamental question addressed here is what should drive a company? 1) maximizing the value of the products to the clients or 2) maximizing the profits to the shareholders. It is painful to see that the latter approach quite deliberately works against the former approach. In a perfect world companies would be encouraged to provide customer satisfaction but in the real world (recently) for Boeing and also General Electric, companies make rich people richer while ignoring their responsibility to serve their customer base responsibly.
I give the authors full marks for opening my eyes to the flaws of the 'system' of big business. I would have appreciated having more technical detail about the engineering problems with the 737max; hence my 4 stars rather than 5 stars. However, I strongly recommend this book; it reads well and it makes a very important statement.

Canada on Jan 05, 2023

Matt: Its quite an interesting read and well written, but really the book is more a political diatribe than any particular analysis of the 737 MAX issues, which are covered only relatively briefly. The author seems to have set out with a very clear mindset about corporate culture issues at Boeing and seems to have largely written his own justification for his belief in that mindset. I think the analysis ignores the evolution of systems engineering across high tech industry and defence in the same era. This book would be so much better if it considered the science, engineering and management of safety in more detail and spent less time telling us about corporate finance, bonuses and the love lives of senior executives.

United Kingdom on Dec 28, 2022

P. Thomas: For many years Boeing bucked the trend and their focus was on producing safe & profitable aircraft.

This book is almost entirely devoted to explaining how returns for shareholders became its raison d'être at the expense of producing quality aircraft. It also explains the symbiotic realationship with the FAA and political interference for the profit motive.

For the cynics amongst us, there are no shocking revelations just a confirmation that making money for shareholders is almost the sole reason for a large number of companies in many different fields to exist these days.

Much like the famed Ford Pinto design flaw whaich resulted in cars catching fire in relatively minor accidents and the cost benefit analysis showing that correcting the design fault was more expensive than the likely amounts of compensation paid to victims, so Boeing decided that the risks were worth it.

However if you are expecting a treatise on the design and testing failures of the 737Max you will be disappointed, there is realtively little technical detail, it focuses almost entirely on the machinations of top level management not only to line the pockets of shareholders, but...

United Kingdom on Dec 15, 2022

Craig E. Dupler: I am a retired Boeing Technical Fellow. The problem that anyone, including a former Boeing employee, faces when trying to write a book like this, is that as a defense contractor, Boeing is really good at keeping secrets, even from itself. So the surprising thing about this book is probably how much the author got right. Certainly, the tone is spot on. But many of the facts just aren't so.

Let me cite two examples that will give a reader a feel for the issues. First, there were three 737 crashes caused by the MCAS design problems, not two. The first was Turkish Ari 1951 which went down in The Netherlands, killing seven - it was mainly a cargo flight. And while the issue was nominally too few interfaces to data sources (i.e, the angle of attack sensors), really, the more basic problem was the underlying design concept, and not its inadequate execution. The concept had two fundamental problems. One is that at a conceptual level, it worked more like a simulator than a tool. It allowed a number of conditions to develop in which the presentation to the flight deck was a completely a creature of the software. The flight crew could be given an illusion of being more in control than...

United States on Feb 18, 2022