>> the plane suddenly lost a section of its fuselage mid-flight... >> the faa panel is blasting the aircraft company... >> narrator: amid new problems with boeing's 737 max, >> where was the oversight to make sure the most critical pieces were there? >> a special update to the award-winning investigation with the "new york times," into the problem-plagued airplane. >> lion air flight jt610 went missing from radar...

>> and then the second plane crashed. >> crashed minutes after taking off... >> this was going to be an existential crisis for the company. >> they had no idea how powerful mcas was. >> faa's oversight was sorely lacking. >> the mounting pressure on boeing. >> this was supposed to be one of the most highly scrutinized planes in the world. here you are with another incident that was risking passengers' lives. >> we are going to approach this, number one, acknowledging our mistake. >> narrator: now on frontline, >> it had direct echoes of everything we had been reporting on years ago. >> narrator: boeing's fatal flaw. >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. additional support is provided by the abrams foundation, committed to excellence in journalism... park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues... the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation

committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more at macfound.org. the heising-simons foundation, unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities. at hsfoundation.org. and by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. and additional support from koo and patricia yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. and from the fredric j. ridel living trust. ♪ ♪ >> on the morning of october 29, i was woken up by a colleague who alerted me that a lion aircraft crashed. he said, "it's the max," and i was surprised, because it was a new aircraft.

my company provided the air data for aircraft flying around the jakarta area. so i went to the computer and looked at the data. it was immediately apparent that, okay, something was wrong. (indistinct radio chatter) the plane went up to about 2,000 feet, just over a minute after takeoff, and the plane had a bit of a dive. and then the plane climbed to about 5,000 feet. (indistinct radio chatter) but then, at 5,000 feet, the plane was fluctuating up and down. and then the plane just started diving. it, it just didn't make sense. you don't see planes diving on departure. i was baffled. why did it go down? ♪ ♪ >> lion air flight jt610 went missing from radar... >> narrator: 189 people were killed in the crash of lion air flight 610. >> the boeing 737 max 8... >> narrator: the plane was a new boeing 737 max.

>> what do we know about this 737 max 8? >> narrator: the fastest-selling jet in boeing history, just introduced the year before. >> we don't yet know what caused this crash. >> a breakthrough this evening, the flight data recorder. it holds many of the keys... >> narrator: the data from the black box quickly got to f.a.a. engineers in the united states. ♪ ♪ >> there is a purity of this data. it comes directly from the black boxes. so it's recording airspeed, altitude. >> narrator: the data showed what appeared to be a glitch, something repeatedly moving part of the plane's ta, controlling its pitch. >> it didn't take long, just a couple of minutes, to see that there was rapid movement of the horizontal stabilizer. it's probably the fastest way to kill yourself in an airplane, is to have the stabilizer malfunction. ♪ ♪ >> my spine literally tingled when i saw the traces from the black box.

the plane continually tried to push the nose down, anthe pilots were trying over and over again to stop the plane. and in the end, they lose that battle. ♪ ♪ >> narrator: what boeing had not told airlines or their pilots was that it had put a powerful software system on the new airplane. >> in the lion air crash, this system was receiving incorrect information, and that made the plane dive straight downward and destroy itself. ♪ ♪ >> narrator: inside boeing, they quickly diagnosed the problem and began working on a fix. but they stood by the max as hundreds of them took to the air around the world, carrying thousands of passengers. the company alerted pilots about handling a potential malfunction. >> boeinand the f.a.a. today warned airlines that sensors on 737 max 8 jets can malfunction. >> boeing are calling this a formal advisory, and it's been issued to the pilots. >> the reporting showed boeing knew

that it was risky, but their response was to blame the pilots. >> pilots did not hit two cut-off switches. boeing says that action was part of well-established protocols for all 737s. >> and that led to a series of decisions that kept the plane in the air. and then we got another crash. >> breaking news out of ethiopia, where a plane went down... >> narrator: it was ethiopian airlines flight 302, on its way to nairobi from addis ababa. >> ...where a new 737 max 8 jetliner crashed minutes after taking off. >> narrator: two crashes, the same plane; 346 people killed; an iconic american company's reputation in tatters. the story of the boeing 737 max would end up exposing corporate deception and a broken regulatory process. but at the center was a software system supposed to keep people safe that instead led to their deaths.

>> the black boxes from the ethiopian crash have been recovered. >> it's the second disaster within five months involving the boeing 737 max. >> that's the same kind of aircraft that crashed back in october in indonesia. ♪ ♪ >> 157 people, including passengers and crew members on board, all are dead. >> the first thing you get to see at the site is a very big hole. and then to only imagine this is the place that they were last alive. ♪ ♪ >> we learned that there were no survivors on the plane. and then our objective was to go and

bring my daughter's body home. >> now you're in close proximity. you're able to see the fine details. you're able to maybe think these are personal effects belonged to carol, my sister, or my mom. or... this bone, whose bone is this? ♪ ♪ >> and they told us that there was no part of a human that was bigger than a femur that was left. >> that whole experience is just a jumble of images and painful thoughts and blankness, really, to me. i don't really... i can't really make sense of it. >> narrator: the crash of ethiopian flight 302 was the second time in five months that a boeing 737 max had gone down. ♪ ♪

as families gaered at the crash site, across the world, reporters at "the new york times" were investigating what had been going wrong with boeing's new commercial jet. >> statistically speaking, the likelihood that these two accidents were not in some way connected was extremely low. it suggested that there was something going on with the plane, and obviously we were determined to find out. ♪ ♪ >> it was clear from the get-go that boeing was in full crisis mode. >> as the facts from the accidentecome available and we understand the necessary next steps, we're taking action to fully reassure airlines and their passengers of the safety of the 737 max. >> this was going to be an existential crisis for the company if these two events were related.

>> china grounds the plane first. other international regulators ground the plane. then the european union grounds the plane. >> but in the u.s., the f.a.a. says it's not grounding the plane. >> boeing and the f.a.a. all were saying that they were sort of waiting for the facts before they rushed to judgment and grounded such an important new plane. >> narrator: but for months, the "times" was reporting there was something wrong with the 737 max itself: the software system that pilots had not known existed. >> the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, or mcas. ♪ ♪ the function of this previously undisclosed system was to save the plane when it believed that the plane might go into a stall and fall out of the sky. and so this system was designed then to sort of take over the stabilizer and push that nose back down, in case the pilot gets in trouble.

>> narrator: then, a major setback for the company: radar showed the two planes' flight patterns were eerily similar. >> days after the rest of the world had reached the same conclusion, they finally grounded the plane. >> narrator: for the "new york times" reporters, all the signs pointed to mcas. >> we knew that mcas was the beginning, and we knew that we needed to start with this system. >> this was a really problematic software system in the way it was designed. okay, well, then, how the hell did it end up in the plane this way? ♪ ♪ >> narrator: boeing declined to be interviewed for this film. in a statement, the company said safety is its top priority and it has worked closely with regulats, investigators, and stakeholders "to implement changes that ensure accidents like these never happen again."

>> this story really begins in 2011. (jet engine roaring) >> the 2011 paris air show officially opened monday. >> boeing and airbus had been going head-to-head for at least a decade. but air... airbus had been quickly catching up and really nipping at boeing's heels. >> it's the best air show ever for airbus in terms of aircraft numbers sold. >> in 2010, airbus introduced the a320neo, a more fuel-efficient version of its stalwart a320. >> the a320 is the direct competitor to the boeing 737. airlines wanted an airplane that was more fuel-efficient than the airplanes then in service. airbus chose to re-engine the a320 into what they call the "neo," the "new engine option." >> it's a record 200 orders for its a320neo. >> it was one of the fastest-selling programs

of aviation history. >> and it placed enormous pressure on boeing to respond. ♪ ♪ boeing, frankly, was caught flat-footed. within a couple of weeks, airbus and american airlines have the preliminary workings of what would become the first deal for american to buy airbus planes in more than a decade. gerard arpey, the c.e.o. of american airlines, calls jim mcnerney, the c.e.o. of boeing. it's a courtesy call at this point, just letting their longtime supplier of airplanes know they're going to go with the competition. >> and that is essentially a dagger in the heart of boeing. >> and within 48 hours, boeing had decided to pull the trigger on launching the re-engined 737, which later became branded as the max. >> from the very beginning, from its birth, it was marked by competitive pressure.

♪ ♪ >> narrator: within days of the second 737 max crash, another investigation was underway in washington, d.c. >> we started getting information in from whistleblowers, from people, both current and former f.a.a. and boeing employees. >> narrator: doug pasternak was leading a congressional investigation. this is his first interview about what he found. >> as soon as the second accident occurred, we started our investigation, and our focus was on the design, development, and certification of the max. we got hundreds of thousands of pages of documents from boeing. one of the things that really struck me from speaking to a lot of boeing employees was that they were so excited to go to work at boeing. ♪ ♪ boeing is a tremendous engineering company

and a technical marvel, but, almost without failure, they point to a degradation of that mindset and that safety suffered as a result. looking backwards, i think you can clearly see the trajectory to tragedy along the way at, at boeing. ♪ ♪ >> narrator: boeing publicly said the max went through a deliberate six-year development process. but in their first stories, the "new york times" reporters found insiders who said that boeing executives had been putting the pressure on to design the new 737 quickly and cheaply. >> one specific engineer we spoke twas rick ludtke. he helped design the cockpit in the max, and he talked a lot about how there was an oession in limiting changes. >> this program was a much morer

than i've ever been in. the company was trying to avoid costs... minimum change to simplify the training differences, and to get it done quickly. it put what had happened in the context of this broader corporate narrative. >> yeah. >> speed was what they seemed to desire. there was a lot of decision-making that was somewhat arbitrary and didn't involve as much of the, of what engineering considers healthy debate. the challenge to the boeing designers was that any designs we create would not drive any new training that required a simulator. >> narrator: in his recorded interview with the "times," ludtke said boeing management was so determined to avoid the expense of new training, they made a bold promise. >> sales had made a commitment with southwest that for any airplane they delivered

that had a new level d differences training, boeing would pay the company $1 million per every airplane delivered. >> if the max required simulator training, it would rebate southwest a million dollars per plane. and there's that incentive. that's why it was so important to boeing that pilot training be kept to a minimum. all of this comes out of trying to give airlines the most fuel-efficient version of a plane that they can spend as little money training their pilots on. ♪ ♪ >> that meant boeing had to do a number of things to make this plane fly like the old one, and that was because the max had much bigger engines on it to make them more fuel efficient. >> but because the 737 was a a 50-year-old airplane at this time, practically, when it came time for boeing to put those engines on the wings,

the engines were so darn big, they had to mount them further forward on the wings. >> they were testing in this wind tunnel, and they were discovering the ple was handling just a little bit differently-- but they didn't even have a plane built yet, so this wasn't, you know, happening in real flight-- this is something you have to fix. and they leaned on a system that they had used once before in a military tanker. it was designed as a system on the plane to really just smooth out the way the plane handled. >> narrator: it was mcas. >> it was designed for these extremely unusual maneuvers. situations that, hopefully, the plane would never get in. and to prevent the nose from getting too high, the system would move the stabilizer on the back of the plane to push the nose back down.

>> narrator: but inside boeing, there were early signs of trouble. >> one of the first documents we found was from november of 2012. a boeing test pilot was flying the max in a flight simulator and trying to respond to an activation of mcas. and that resulted in what he described as a catastrophic event. ♪ ♪ it showed that if that had been in real life, he could have lost the airplane. they realize from that moment on, even a boeing test pilot may have trouble responding to mcas. >> narrator: the company kept quiet about the simulator experience and appeared to have discounted the test results. still, in the following months, some boeing employees suggested simply removing l references to mcas from training manuals.

>> boeing from almost the very beginning realized the significance of mcas, and the significance mcas would have on pilot simulator training. "if we emphasize mcas is a new function, "there may be a greater certification "and training impact. "recommended action: investigate deletion of mcas nomenclature." what that meant was that if they said mcas was a new function, the f.a.a. was going to scrutinize it a lot more. ♪ ♪ >> narrator: boeing told congress it kept the f.a.a. informed about mcas's development and final configuration. but boeing has a complex and close relationship with the agency that oversees it. >> the airplanes are part of the story, but so are the regulators.

the f.a.a. regulated boeing, in part, with a handful of boeing employees whose paychecks came from boeing, but whose jobs were to represent the interests of the f.a.a. >> narrator: it's a decades-old arrangement known as "delegation" that allows federal agencies to give oversight powers to the comnies they regulate. >> in the beginning, there was a really good reason for this. the f.a.a. was certifying things that made no sense to have them certify-- every single exit sign or bathroom sign or paint. the issue that many of the f.a.a. employees that we talked to had was that it went way beyond bathroom signs. over time, congress passed laws that pushed the f.a.a. to hand over the responsibility for more

and more tasks to the company, to boeing. >> with this level of delegation between the company and the f.a.a., it became hard to understand who was working for who. >> narrator: in the design of the 737 max, many things would be delegated to boeing. that included mcas. >> under the impression that this was a relatively benign system, the f.a.a. agreed to delegate it, as is the custom with the f.a.a. and boeing. and that's what happened in this case. it handed it over. ♪ ♪ >> narrator: in a statement, the f.a.a. blamed ineffective coordination and said it had not focused on mcas when it certified the max, because boeing had not identified mcas as significant. under the orders from congress, the f.a.a. has

since made changes to the delegation process. ♪ ♪ after years of going through design and development, the 737 max prototype was rolled out of boeing's renton factory for its maiden flight. >> look at all the excited faces, wouldldn't miss . >> ed wilson is in the cockpit. he's the new chief pilot, and he takes off. >> and let's just take a listen as this airplane gets ready for its very first takeoff. (engine roars) ♪ ♪ >> a short time after this first maiden flight, ed wilson, he and his co-pilots start to realize that the 737 max is not handling as smoothly as it should in certain low-speed situations. it's shortly after takeoff, you know, it's still kind of climbing to ascent. it's not going full speed. >> narrator: boeing engineers had an idea for how to deal with this. >> they know about mcas and they know that mcas was actually used

for a similar situation in these high-speed maneuvers, and so theoretically, mcas could also be used in these other situations to also smooth out the handling. crucially, it's already been created, it's already been approved, and it's something that we could just apply, you know, to a different phase of flight. it's actually a pretty easy fix. this ends up being an extremely fateful decision. they enable the stabilizer to move much more-- actually, four times as much. now the system's designed for low-speed situations, like just after takeoff. and after takeoff is when the plane is still only a few thousand feet over the ground. that means you have much less room for error. it's happening in an automated fashion and a repeated fashion. this fundamentally changes mcas. it makes it much more aggressive, muchore risky.

it's a far more dangerous system. ♪ ♪ >> narrator: boeing was doubling down on the system, expanding it, despite the earlier catastrophic result in a simulator test. >> narrator: the "times'" reporting on mcas focused on a former boeing pilot. >> i started to hear about a pilot at boeing whose name was mark forkner, the chief technical pilot for the 737. >> he was this key liaison between the company and the f.a.a. >> he was the person who personally emailed the f.a.a. asking for mcas to be removed from the pilot manual. that was an important piece of this, because we understood that the f.a.a. really didn't know that mcas became more powerful.

>> he was speaking absolutely on behalf of the company. this was not some low-level employee. and he was asking for something that was really quite substantial: that a new piece of software, that made the plane behave in ways that it previously hadn't, be concealed from the pilots. this is where the commercial pressures from the executive level come right down to the development of the airplane. >> mark forkner certainly was not a lone actor in what he did. he was following through on a policy by boeing to ensure that the program did not have to put pilots in a flight simulator. >> it got to the point where mark forkner got an award for keeping training on the 737 max to a minimum. >> narrator: nearly eight months after requesting that mcas be removed from pilot training manuals,

forkner texted a colleague with a shocking realization. >> this appears to be the moment where mark forkner learns that mcas has been expanded. he writes in that message, "i basically lied to the regulators, unknowingly." >> but he never went back and corrected the record. he never went back and fixed the error. >> narrator: mark forkner wouldn't speak to us. he was indicted for lying to f.a.a. investigators about mcas, but later found not guilty of all charges in federal court. his lawyer told the "times" reporters that his communications with the f.a.a. were honest and that "he would never jeopardize the safety of other pilots or their passengers." ♪ ♪ when boeing engineers expanded the mcas system, they included a feature that would make it particularly dangerous. >> planes have millions of parts in them.

and there's one little one on the 737 that sticks out of the fuselage. >> see that little black circle there? that is called... >> ...the angle of attack sensor. >> on the 737 max, it had the power to trigger mcas. >> it's the a.o.a. sensor that is one of the crucial parameters to the computer to tell the plane that it's in a perilous condition. >> the angle of attack senr would activate mcas by telling the system that the plane's nose was too high and then mcas would try to push the nose down. >> but if this sensor is broken, for whatever reason, mcas never realizes, and so it keeps pushing the nose of the plane down, over and over again. >> narrator: congressional investigators would later find documents showing that boeing engineers

had raised this very concern. >> an engineer asked, "what if we have a faulty a.o.a. sensor?" because a.o.a. sensors are known to be faulty. you know, what happens to the airplane? so you have those concerns raised, and the response is, again, from boeing engineers, was to essentially dismiss those. ♪ ♪ >> three, two, one... >> narrator: boeing began delivering the new 737 max in mid-2017. >> at the outset, 737 max was arguably one of boeing's biggest successes. it had become its best-selling jet ever. >> narrator: advanced sales were estimated at $370 billion. american had orders for 100, southwest airlines for 200. boeing had focused especially hard on selling to developing markets in asia, where lion air's parent company became the first customer to fly the 737 max,

signing an agreement worth more than $20 billion. >> airlines loved it. there was a yearslong waiting list to get one. >> but boeing's signature new jet had a fatal flaw. >> breaking news-- the search for wreckage is underway after a passenger jet with 189 people on board crashed. >> a lion air boeing 737. >> a nearly brand-new boeing... >> narrator: investigators from the u.s. national transportation safety board contributed to an analysis of what led to the lion air crash. >> leading up to the lion air accident, the angle of attack probe itself was mis-calibrated. the maintenance crew was not able to properly identify this miscalibration. >> an angle of attack sensor sent bad data to mcas. >> t plane thought it was in a stall because of bad information. >> and as a consequence of this angle of attack data error,

the mcas activated when it really shouldn't have. >> five months later, almost the exact same thing happens halfway across the world. >> new 737 max 8 jetliner crashed today. >> investigators say that flight had similar problems to the lion air crash. >> once again, the angle of attack sensor is malfunctioning. >> there is this question now about systems within the aircraft. >> if mcas hadn't been on those planes, those planes wouldn't have crashed-- it's that simple. >> the world mourns 157 people killed in the sunday crash. >> on the flight of 737 max crash, we, we lost five of our family members. we had our mom, anne karanja; our dear sister, carolyne karanja, her three kids, ryan njoroge, kelli wanjiiku,

and rubi wangui. it's not like there is a manual of how you need to react. you're just there. it's like motionless. you justeel infuriated by anyone and everyone at that point. i remember the boeing coany blaming what they call the "foreign pilots," and deflecting blame to, to them, saying they are the cause. ♪ ♪ >> all of us at boeing are deeply sorry for the loss of life in the ethiopians airlines flight 302 and lion air flight 610 accidents. >> narrator: boeing c.e.o. dennis muilenburg latched onto findings that inexperience and lack of training were part of a chain of events that led to the crashes. it was a controversial position. >> understand that these airplanes are flown in the hands of pilots, and in some cases

our system safety analysis includes not only the engineering design but also the actions that pilots would take as, as part of a, a failure scenario, right... >> boeing's contention from the beginning was that even though the pilots did not know that mcas existed, that they did not need to know that. >> and in some cases, those procedures were not completely followed, so... >> boeing believed that the pilot should have been able to realize that it was very similar to a runaway stabilizer situation. >> narrator: "runaway stabilizer" is an aviation term for a malfunctioning stabilizer. after the lion air crash, boeing hadssued a directive to pilots to be aware of this possibility, and told them what to do if it happened. >> when that part of the tail was not acting the way that it should be, you take manual control of it. >> the pilots could have stopped their rollercoaster ride by turning these two switches off.

>> to shut off power to the stabilizer, you stop it from moving on its own. and then you start cranking a wheel in the cockpit that literally will manually move the stabilizer back to where you want it to move. >> the issue was, were there things happening inside the cockpit that might have made that harder to do? that's what we were asking. ♪ ♪ >> when we finally got the preliminary black box data from the ethiopian crash, we called up dennis tajer, an american airlines 737 pilot, and sent him the data, and we read through it together. >> my mission was to provide th, "i'm in the cockpit, i see what's happening now." so we walk through each line. and i had no idea what was in it. i knew that the crew had an experienced captain and a lesser experienced first officer.

>> we go, second by second, through the few minutes of this flight. >> going through the sps that the pilots had taken and saying, "yep, i would have done that. yep, i would have done that." >> as soon as they lift off the ground, all these different alerts started popping up: the airspeed was unreliable, the altitude was showing unreliable. there were alerts related to that, but they bring the gear up and they continue to climb out. >> narrator: two minutes into the flight, based on faulty data from the a.o.a. sensor, mcas kicked in and began pushing the nose down. >> (computerized)" don't sink. >> and i have... very clear memory... of noting a time mark where the first officer is quoted as saying, "stab trim cutout switches." which takes the weapon away from mcas,

which is what boeing told us do. and i have to confess... i probably swore, i said, "the kid got it right. the kid got it right!" >> what had happened was the pilots did do what they were supposed to do. they had cut the electricity off. >> (computerized): don't sink. >> they hit these switches, and they tried to take manual control. >> the first officer is reaching to this large wheel on his left. and that's the manual trim wheel, and trying to turn it. it's like lifting up a ten-ton bucket of cement out of a deep well. >> the problem was at that point, the plane was going so fast, that even after they took manual control, they could not physically get the plane to right itself. they shouldn't have been going that fast. >> (computerized): too low. terrain. >> and they're continuing to accelerate towards the ground.

>> (computerized): pull up. >> the ground is approaching them. >> narrator: then, with no apparent recourse, the pilots reached for the stabilizer switches. >> i'm yelling into the cockpit, "don't do that!" but i don't know what they're facing. >> (computerized): caution: terrain. >> narrator: mcas was reactivated. >> mcas says, "hey, i'm back on, here we go... zzz," and now the airplane is in near full nose-down trim, and you can pull back forever and there's not enough metal in the back of the airplane to make that airplane come up to a nose-up. >> (computerized): terrain, terrain, pull up, pull up, pull up... (birds chirping) >> she died when she was 24. it's unbearable that she's not wh us. and the only thing i can do

is try to prevent this for other people. >> narrator: about four months after the ethiopian airlines crash, the family of samya stumo was about to receive new they would find bewildering. >> we were eating dinner, and i hadn't looked at my phone for a long time. and it was blowing up. >> the federal aviation administration now in the hot seat in washington over its certification of boeing's 737 max planes. >> we are joined today by ali bahrami, the associate administrator for aviation safety. >> we continue to evaluate boeing's software modification to the mcas. in addition... >> narrator: f.a.a. official ali bahrami had been called before congress, where he was questioned about revelations the f.a.a. had known there was a risk of another max crashing after lion air. >> if the agency's own analysis found mcas

to be an unacceptable risk, why did the f.a.a. not take immediate action to address those risks? >> the families hadn't known that before. they didn't know that the safety agency gambled with passenger lives. >> we knew that eventual solution would be to have the modification, and based on our risk assessment, we felt that this... we had sufficient time to be able to do the modification you know, and, and get the final fix. >> narrator: after the lion air crash, the f.a.a. had conducted an analysis of the likelihood of another 737 max crashing. the worst-case scenario was grim. >> they looked at the probability that there could be another crash of a 737 max if the f.a.a. didn't do anything to mcas,

and just let the plane keep flying. and what thaassessment showed was that f.a.a. predicted there could potentially be 15 more fatal accidents of 737 max aircraft over the lifespan of the fleet. about one crash every other year. >> narrator: but in explaining its decision not to ground the plane, the f.a.a. said in its statement that the actual risk at the time, considering the number of planes in the air, was as close to zero as their calculations allowed. the agency had given boeing 150 days to fix mcas and issued official directives to pils. >> they were gambling. they werbetting against time that they would have a fix to mcas before the next crash happened. and, unfortunately, they lost that bet.

>> narrator: not everyone within the f.a.a. agreed with the agency's gamble. >> people too quickly jumped to that conclusion: that the pilot should have been able to figure out what's going wrong and be able to intervene properly. >> narrator: f.a.a. engineer joe jacobsen examined the data from the lion air crash and quickly raised concerns about the safety of the max. this is his first on-camera interview. >> i was pointing out a design flaw. it was purposely designed and certified to use only one a.o.a. input to drive mcas, to move the horizontal stabilizer at a high re. i talked to three managers, said this a design flaw. they were skeptical, not really buying in, saying the pilot should have been able to intervene. it's a failure. our job is aviation safety, and when airplanes go down we feel a, a real personal sense of loss and remorse and failure.

and it affects a lot of people. ♪ ♪ >> narrator: in the fall of 2019, with the max having been grounded for seven months, congressional investigators released internal communications they found during their investigation. >> test pilots working for boeing write about problems with the mcas system two years before the first fatal crash in indonesia. >> narrator: it was further evidence of the company's attempt to avoid pilot training for the max. >> did that ever cross their minds? that they were going to let something go into the air that could potentially kill people? ♪ ♪ >> narrator: boeing c.e.o. dennis muilenburg appeared before congress. >> boeing's c.e.o. is expected to acknowledge that his company made mistakes... >> and here's the first time this guy's in the hot seat. >> we appreciate the opportunity to be here. >> narrator: by then, he'd become the face of the 737 max crisis. >> i've been on this a committee a long time.

we have never undertaken an investigation of this magnitude. we intentionally put the families close to the witness. they're the victims here, and it should be like, you know, a trial in court, where you get to face the person who, you know, who committed a violent act against you. >> nartor: the committee confronted muilenburg with an array of internal boeing documents. >> next slide. this shows that boeing became aware that the disagree alert wasn't working. >> it does appear from this that boeing understood how... >> that the pilots didn't know about this is unacceptable... >> boeing's marketing representatives emphasized to potential customers that f.a.a. had reced the length of pilot training that... >> "slow reaction time scenario, ten seconds, found the failure to be catastrophic." >> for those families, the pain of this was accentuated because this evidence that was going up on the screen was information that they felt that mr. muilenburg

could have used to inform his decision about keeping the plane in the air or not. >> we do know that boeing engineers actually proposed placing a mcas annunciator in the cockpit. "are we vulnerable to single a a.o.a. sensor failure... now, as you emphasized, "flight control will now compare inputs from both a.o.a. sensors." and i guess the question is, why wasn't it that way from day one? >> mr. chairman, we've asked ourselves that same question over and over. and if, uh, if back then we knew everything that we know now, we would have made a different decision. >> nadia milleron, she was radiating with anger over this. >> it's come to the point where you're not the person anymore to solve the situation. i want to say it to you, directly, because i don't think you understand what we're saying. >> she was right in front of him. and here you have the c.e.o. of what is one of the most important american companies,

one of the most important companies in the world... >> in the end, it's about safety, and i-- >> even if you're not capable of doing that? >> looking in the eyes of the mother of a young woman who died on his airplane. >> i know that she wasn't afraid of flying at all, until the last six minutes of her life. that's just a horrible betrayal that boeing and the f.a.a. caused for this person, the last moments of their life, and it kills me that that trust was betrayed. >> boeing's really kind of stuck in a hard spot here. >> dennis muilenburg was blasted on capitol hill... >> narrator: two months later, with the company's stock plummeting... >> boeing stock has been dropping all day... >> but it's down 22% since the 737 max jet was first grounded... >> narrator: ...and the max still grounded, dennis muilenburg was out.

(engine roaring) ♪ ♪ in march of 2021, families gathered in washington, d.c., for the second anniversary of the crash of ethiopian airlines flight 302. boeing had recently settled a criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the united states, brought by the department of justice. >> we have some breaking news on boeing. >> narrator: in the settlement, boeing admitted to "misleading statements, half-truths, and omissions" about mcas. it agreed to pay $2.5 billion-- $500 million to the families of the victims, and most of the rest to compensate the airlines. (engine humming) after 20 months of being grounded, the 737 max was approved by the f.a.a. to fly again. (whooshing) ♪ ♪ (radio static)

>> (indistinct radio communication) (static) >> (on radio): yeah, we're about to go down. 1282, we're declaring emergency. we're descending down to 10,000... (static) we have 177 passengers. >> narrator: a 737ax, flown by alaska airlines, had taken off from portland, oregon about seven minutes earlier. >> at an altitude of 16,000 feet, there's a very loud bang. a piece of the plane's body is blown out at row 26. >> i opened my eyes to. a giant hole in the plane, and i could see the city lights. >> your son is okay. >> there's a deafening wind howling through the plane. the cockpit door flies open. one of the pilots loses her headset, another pilot almost loses his after his head slams into a display. there's just chaos. >> his shirt was pulled off of him. >> a boy's shirt was sucked off him and out of the plane. and his mother was holding onto him.

>> i saw half of his body was getting sucked out... and then i was like, "oh, my god." >> and i look over and there's a hole on the side of the plane, and in that moment, i'm just like, "oh god, i'm gonna die." >> yes, we are emergency, we are depressurized, but we do need to return back to... (indistct) >> narrator: the plane was able to make an emergency landing back in portland. >> whoa! >> narrator: but the incident resurrected concerns about boeing and the max. >> we were very fortunate we didn't have a third crash on january 5. >> we need everyone to remain seated with their seatbelts fastened right now... >> narrator: joe jacobsen has continued to monitor the max since retiring from the f.a.a. in 2021. >> alaska 1282 could have very easily been a fatal crash. higher altitudes, some passengers may have lost consciousness. pilots could have lost consciousness. >> narrator: this time, the f.a.a. immediately grounded similar max 9s so that each plane could be inspected.

>> hundreds of flights are canceled across the u.s... >> 737 max... >> pulled out of service, forcing hundreds... around the world... >> i honestly wasn't surprised when i saw the news. it had direct echoes of everything we had been reporting on years ago as we tried to unpack what happened during the max crisis. >> narrator: at the "new york times," a new team was picking up the reporting on the max and what it meant for boeing. >> the real mbshell moment comes in early february when the national transportation safety board releases its preliminary report on the incident. what the ntsb's report makes clear is this was a problem on boeing's factory floor. this was boeing's problem. >> narrator: the ntsb focused on a piece of the plane that replaced an unused emergency exit called a door plug. boeing workers fa to install four bolts that secured it to the plane. the company later said it had

no documentation of the work. >> where was the oversight? where was the redundant checks for someone to come back to make sure that the most critical pieces to it were there? >> nothing in plane design or plane production is done without several layers of redundancy, without frequent inspections, without frequent checks. and the idea that something as important as a part of the plane's body could leave the factory without the bolts needed to hold it in place is shocking. >> this was supposed to be one of the most highly scrutinized planes in the world, and here you are with another incident that was risking passengers' lives. >> narrator: boeing c.e.o. dave calhoun was quick to own the failure in a series of appearances. >> we're going to approach this... number one, acknowledging r mistake. i want everybody, everybody on every airplane to know that boeing owns it. boeing is accountable for what happened.

an event like this simply must not happen. we own it. there's not... there's no other answer i can give you. ♪ ♪ >> narrator: the door plug was a production failure; mcas was a design flaw. but both raised questions about boeing's safety culture and the f.a.a.'s oversight. >> the shocking thing about the max is the, the sheer number of... of problems, design problems, manufacturing problems. >> narrator: joe jacobsen is now working with families of the victims of the 737 max crashes to bring other safety concerns to the f.a.a. >> and this is after, you know, the supposedly most comprehensive recertification in the history of aviation. >> i think what's most scary is that you have both kinds of accidents happened at the same company. that, to me, reveals a culture inside the company--

i mean, i know we keep coming back to this word "culture," but it's right at the root of what happened in both sets of accidents. >> narrator: in a statement, boeing said it is dedicated to transparency, and it is "implementing a comprehensive plan to strengthen safety and quality." less than seven weeks after the alaska air incident, the executive running the max program was out. ♪ ♪ in early march, the f.a.a. said it had found multiple quality control issues with the max. the agency also released a report that found boeing's safety culture has been "inadequate and confusing." and now, the justice department is investigating the company. >> cultural change doesn't happen overnight, especially at big corporations like this. and it doesn't happen just because you got slapped with a fine. it's the product of millions of decisions. whatever it might mean in terms of lost profits that impact the share price

in the short term. but if boeing wants to get back to that place of grandeur where it was, for so long, one of the most important american companies, it's gonna take not four years, but it might take 14. >> narrator: more than 170 max 9s were grounded by the f.a.a. after the alaska airlines incident. nearly all are now back in service. >> go to pbs.org/frontline for more reporting from our partners at “the new york times.” >> here you are with another incident that was risking passengers' lives. >> where was the oversight? where was the redundant checks? >> i think what's most scary is that you have both kinds of accidents happened at the same company. >> connect with frontline on facebook, instagram and x, formerly twitter, and stream anytime on the pbs app, youtube or pbs.org/frontline.

>> 22 year old jack teixeira plead guilty to all six counts he faces. >> talking to jack's friends, the internet was a huge part of his life. >> we spoke about conspiracies and how we distrusted government. >> should the military vetting preshave caught all of these aspects of his personality? >> the vetting system is pretty robust, but it's not perfect. >> there were countless missed opportunities and as a result, we have one of the worst leak cases in modern times. >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for publ broadcasting. additional support is provided by the abrams foundation, committed to excellence in journalism... park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues... the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world.

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