Build a Foundation

How is innovation killing us? It’s supposed to make our world better, safer and faster. Innovation protects us, in theory. It can be great but the many factors it takes for an innovation to be an improvement can easily get overlooked. Weighing the possible cost against the possible benefits we have to determine whether or not it’s worth it.

One of the biggest failures that could happen are technical malfunctions. The Boeing 737 MAX MCAS is an amazing idea on the surface but in action it caused the deaths of hundreds of people. This system was supposed to make our planes safer by preventing stalls. Instead it caused planes to nose dive due to a mechanical failure that detected false stalls. The failure stems from the Angle of Attack(AOA) sensors, which frequently fail. Usually control systems using the AOA sensors take data from all of the sensors. In the case with the 737 MAX one sensor started giving MCAS incorrect data, but the MCAS can only take data from one of the sensors. Since the MCAS couldn’t compare its input to the other sensors it was prone to failures. We already have amazingly safe aircrafts but major design flaws like this could happen more and more if we continue to ignore past problems. These sensors were known to read incorrectly but Boeing still used them as a base for the MCAS system. 

The 737 MAX was an extremely rushed project. It developed when Airbus, a Boeing competitor, released the A330neo. Boeing knew prolonging the project would put them far behind Airbus, so they rushed everything. Along with this the budget was tight. This is unethical due to the sheer amount of work it takes to safely produce an aircraft. Human greed has an impact on how safe our innovations are. Instead of taking the time to ensure the safety of their passengers they weighed the consequences of the possible failure to the cost of implementing the better sensor and determined it would be better to risk a crash. There was so much rush on this that the Federal Aviation Administration wrote off an important review of the aircraft. During the investigation it was discovered that the MCAS was changed to have more of an impact than previously reported. When dealing with the lives of hundreds of people we can’t overlook anything, but when major companies are presented with the decay of sales we risk it. We can’t trust in the organizations that are there to keep us safe from innovation without improvement. Until a failure like this is mended innovation should halt.

When the 737 MAX was released pilots were not properly informed of the MCAS. Whether this was due to the rushed release or Boeing just didn’t think it was important doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that a major innovation happened under the radar of pilots. We don’t have the proper systems in place to detect a major flaw like this. Pilots have an extremely stressful job but we undermine their place in the cockpit when we allow changes like this to happen.

Pilots are trained for years to prevent disasters, they have to have at least 1,500 hours flying to even be considered for commercial flight. That’s not even including flight simulator time or in class time. Even with all of these protocols most fatal plane crashes are due to pilot error. Instead of constantly releasing new systems for pilots to learn, why don’t we develop better training systems? Or put more effort into better coursework for pilots new and old? We could have the safest plane ever and still be at the will of a pilot. They will have to relearn how to control a different plane, when we could accept that as of now we are at our limit for technological advancement in the planes. If we could train the pilots more on the same airfact that mechanically is amazing why continue to put more stress on pilots?

All in all we are not ready for innovative improvements. We have mechanical failures, organizational failures, human failures, and protocol failures. Innovations can happen, but only if we perfect every step of the processes we have now. As of now we have a lot to work on before we can continue to advance, because we need to equally improve every component equally. Even if we had an innovation that could change the world of flying we don’t have the proper channels to make sure it can thrive in our world. So until we fix all of our current problems innovation is useless because it doesn’t have a sturdy foundation to build on.