INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
As a result of the air disasters involving the Boeing 737 MAX-8 aircraft, the author wrote a paper entitled An Analysis of the Engineering Decisions Made by Boeing in Designing the B-737 MAX Aircraft.[1] It was astonishing to the author that Boeing could have designed and placed in service an aircraft with a stall barrier system called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) and not have disclosed this information to pilots who operated the aircraft. It was equally remarkable that the aircraft was designed in a manner that a single point of failure (a malfunction in a single angle of attack indicator) could bring down a transport category aircraft.
In this article, we will examine events that have transpired with Boeing Aircraft Company and ask ourselves, has Boeing’s Safety Management System (SMS) failed?