Under The ‘Boeing 737-MAX’ Case In 2019, Boeing was sued in a class action lawsuit by over 400 pilots accusing the company of covering up known design flaws in their 737-MAX aircraft

Boeing 737 Max Safety System Was Vetoed, Engineer Says

By Natalie Kitroeff, David Gelles and Jack Nicas

Published Oct. 2, 2019 and Updated Oct. 29, 2019

A senior Boeing engineer filed an internal ethics complaint this year saying that during the development of the 737 Max jet the company had rejected a safety system to minimize costs, equipment that he felt could have reduced risks that contributed to two fatal crashes.

Boeing has provided the complaint, which was reviewed by The New York Times, to the Department of Justice as part of a criminal investigation into the design of the Max, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry, who requested anonymity given the active legal matter. Federal investigators have questioned at least one former Boeing employee about the allegations, said another person with knowledge of the discussions, who similarly requested anonymity.

It is unclear what, if any, assessment investigators have made of the complaint.

The complaint, filed after the two crashes, builds on concerns about Boeing’s corporate culture, as the company tries to repair its reputation and get the planes flying again.

Many current and former Boeing employees have privately discussed problems with the design and decision-making process on the 737 Max, outlining episodes when managers dismissed engineers’ recommendations or put a priority on profits. The engineer who filed the ethics concerns this year, Curtis Ewbank, went a step further, lodging a formal complaint and calling out the chief executive for publicly misrepresenting the safety of the plane.

During the development of the 737 Max, Mr. Ewbank worked on the cockpit systems that pilots use to monitor and control the airplane. In his complaint to Boeing, he said managers had been urged to study a backup system for calculating the plane’s airspeed. The system, known as synthetic airspeed, draws on several data sources to measure how fast a plane is moving.

Such equipment, Mr. Ewbank said, could detect when the angle-of-attack sensors, which measure the plane’s position in the sky, were malfunctioning and prevent other systems from relying on that faulty information. A version of the system is used on Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, a new plane model.

Mr. Ewbank did not respond to requests for comment.

In both crashes of the Max, an angle-of-attack sensor is believed to have failed, sending bad data to automated software designed to help prevent stalls. That software, known as MCAS, then activated erroneously, sending the planes into irrecoverable nose dives.

Mr. Ewbank noted in the complaint, “It is not possible to say for certain that any actual implementation of synthetic airspeed on the 737 Max would have prevented the accidents” in Ethiopia and Indonesia. But he said Boeing’s actions on the issue pointed to a culture that emphasized profit, in some cases, at the expense of safety.

Throughout the development of the Max, Boeing tried to avoid adding components that could force airlines to train pilots in flight simulators, costing tens of millions of dollars over the life of an aircraft. Significant changes to the Max could also have required the more onerous approval process for a new plane, rather than the streamlined certification for a derivative model.

According to Mr. Ewbank’s complaint, Ray Craig, a chief test pilot of the 737, and other engineers wanted to study the possibility of adding the synthetic airspeed system to the Max. But a Boeing executive decided not to look into the matter because of its potential cost and effect on training requirements for pilots.

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“I was willing to stand up for safety and quality, but was unable to actually have an effect in those areas,” Mr. Ewbank said in the complaint. “Boeing management was more concerned with cost and schedule than safety or quality.”

His account, and the description of the system’s benefits on the 787 Dreamliner, were backed up by a former senior Boeing employee involved in the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing Justice Department investigation. The former Boeing employee, who worked on the Max, confirmed that executives had discussed the system. The employee said they had determined that trying to install such new technology on the 737 Max, a plane based on a 1960s design, would be too complicated and risky for the project, which was on a tight schedule.

But the former Boeing employee said Mr. Ewbank’s complaint overstated the importance of such a system and understated the complexity of adding it to the 737 Max. This employee said Boeing had installed the system only on the 787 Dreamliners, noting that it was unclear how or whether the Max could similarly calculate synthetic airspeed, because it has fewer sensors. The employee also did not recall Boeing executives citing the potential impact on pilot training when deciding not to study adding the system.

A company spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said in a statement, “Boeing offers its employees a number of channels for raising concerns and complaints and has rigorous processes in place, both to ensure that such complaints receive thorough consideration and to protect the confidentiality of employees who make them.”

Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg, said in a speech on Wednesday that “it is critical we take a step back to humbly look at our culture.”

“We’re taking action as a result of the accidents to reinforce our values of safety, quality and integrity because we know we can always do better,” Mr. Muilenburg said at the Economic Club of New York.

Shares of Boeing fell 2 percent in trading on Wednesday.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, declined to comment on the complaint.

Mr. Ewbank worked as an engineer at Boeing from 2010 to 2015, and was generally well regarded by his colleagues, according to two people with knowledge of his work, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive internal inquiry. Mr. Ewbank’s complaint said he had left the company in part because he had become concerned that it was not making safety its priority. He returned to Boeing in 2018 and is working on the development of a new 777.

Mr. Ewbank said he hadn’t filed a complaint during the development of the Max because, in part, the “fear of retaliation is high.”

He stepped forward this year, he explained in the complaint, because of the “ethical imperative of an engineer — to protect the safety of the public.”

“Boeing is not in a business where safety can be treated as a secondary concern,” Mr. Ewbank wrote in the complaint. “But the current culture of expediency of design-to-market and cost cutting does not permit any other treatment by the work force tasked with making executive management’s fever dreams a reality.”

Question 1: Who was the decision-maker in the case, and what conflicting demands did they have to accommodate?

Question 2: What was the initial ethical dilemma faced by the decisionmaker in this case?