The New Yorker:

The basic outlines of the Boeing 737 MAX tragedy are already well known—or should be well known. Even so, a detailed new report that the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure released on Wednesday morning is a remarkable document. In two hundred and thirty-eight pages of clearly written prose, it goes a long way toward explaining not only what went so wrong at Boeing but what has gone badly askew with the American corporation in general, and with American governance.

With the connivance of the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing developed, built, and delivered hundreds of passenger jets that were a potential danger to anyone who stepped onto them. It wasn’t until after there had been two deadly crashes, which killed three hundred and forty-six people, that the U.S. government grounded these planes. Even then, Boeing claimed it had done nothing wrong. In fact, it had rushed an unsafe passenger plane into service, failing to alert its airline customers and their flight crews to the existence of a new piece of safety software that could override the pilots and push down the nose of the plane. This software—known as a Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS—was designed to head off possible stalls, but it also had the potential to cause a catastrophe.

Thanks to the official crash reports and some excellent investigative journalism, this much we already knew. Based on an eighteen-month investigation, the new report adds a wealth of new details—and it points the finger in the right places. It illustrates how Boeing’s management prioritized the company’s profitability and stock price over everything else, including passenger safety. Perhaps even more alarmingly, the report shows how the F.A.A., which once had a sterling reputation for independence and integrity, acted as a virtual agent for the company it was supposed to be overseeing.

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