one of the clearest and most disturbing examples on the dangers of late-stage capitalism and how billion dollar companies are willing to put the lives of innocent people at risk for financial gain is the crashes of lion air flight 610 (killing 180 people) and ethiopian airlines flight 302 (killing 157 people) and Boeing’s involvement in it
so basically what happened is that the manufacturer Airbus (HUGE Boeing rival) came out with this brand new plane in 2010 called the A320neo which had a larger engine and fuel efficient and was basically going to make Airbus aloooot of money. Boeing, of course, didn’t like this and scrambled together to come out with their own updated plane called the 737 max. the only problem is…….. this new plane design was rushed into production (to keep up with Airbus’s new plane) and had some serious design flaws.
first, the engine on the 737 max was too close to the ground so they moved it higher towards the windows which is just fine and dandy except it would cause the plane to point too far up during take off and cause a stall aka start falling out of the sky. so instead of taking the time to re-engineer the new plane Boeing decided to cut some corners instead (money money money) and add a software system called the MCAS which automatically forces the nose down if the plane begins to stall. this software was extremely faulty however with incorrect readings and was extremely dangerous because it could control of the entire plane and make it go nose down without the pilot’s awareness. and since Boeing also didnt want to spend the money on re-training the pilots they elected not to tell pilots about this new system at all. so can you imagine being a pilot flying a plane that suddenly starts to fucking dive bomb out of nowhere?? because that’s what happened in these two crashes - after take off the plane would receive faulty data and begin to dive towards the ground. the pilots had no clue that this software even existed and was controlling the plane. and since the pilots had no idea what was happening or how to fix it, this software caused them to ultimately crash and kill themselves and all passengers on board
watch these videos for more info and always check what kind of aircraft you’re flying on in the future
exactly. and the reason that this huge design and software flaw was able to go under the radar is that Boeing and the FAA have an extremely close relationship ($$$) and the FAA actually allowed Boeing to do its own certification check which is extremely unethical when you’re dealing with the safety of millions and millions of lives. it makes you wonder what else slips through the cracks