Ethical Engineering choices
Ethics in the aviation world is a very serious affair. From aircraft operators, maintainers, the engineers, and the pilots are entrusted to perform their work correctly and safely. Safety should be at the forefront of every single decision in the industry, whether that be from engineering choices, maintenance practices or just good professional conduct as a pilot. However a recent issue has occurred with ne of the largest aircraft manufacturers in the world. By now everyone has heard of the issues with the Boeing 737 MAX and both the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes. A lot of the blame has been centered around the MCAS system, which is true to a point. The real issue and root cause was poor engineering caused by trying to keep up with a competitor. Boeing took several shortcuts in the design of the 737 MAX and it's systems, and overlooked what should have been an easily identifiable safety shortcoming. " In the 737 MAX case, the company pointed to the pilots’ alleged i...