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 inability to control the planes under stall conditions" (Herkert,J., Borenstein, J., &Miller, K., 2020) I think this is gross negligence on the part of Boeing by putting the blame on pilots, when the issue could have easily been avoided had the correct safety process either been acknowledged or implemented. Using input from a single sensor to make a determination that alters the flight controls in a manner that would put the aircraft in a position to stall, which should be known due to the design changes. The issue with the design changes and it increasing the likelihood of a stall and the MCAS system pitching the plane up are a recipe for disaster and should have been caught well before these two accidents happened. I believe it was lazy engineering, and a thirst for profit that caused those accidents and they should have been avoided, had Boeing take their responsibilities to safety seriously and place them at the forefront of every decision.

Herkert, J., Borenstein, J., & Miller, K. (2020). The Boeing 737 MAX: Lessons for Engineering Ethics. Science and Engineering Ethics, 26(6), 2957–2974. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00252-y