Boeing 737 MAX
The grounding decision
By Rehearsal Pedagogy Initiative
Examine leadership responsibility when safety evidence is incomplete. Students distinguish Boeing’s internal information from publicly established facts, defend a grounding recommendation and determine what the company should disclose to airlines and regulators.
- Format
- Reflective case
- Discipline
- Leadership
- Duration
- 75-minute session, with pre-class reading
- Length
- 28 pages
Teaching materials
Teaching notes and complete teaching materials require approved teaching access.
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By 12 March 2019, China, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia had grounded the 737 MAX after an Ethiopian Airlines crash killed 157 people, and the FAA had not. Since the Lion Air crash in October 2018, Boeing had maintained that the aircraft was safe with trained pilots following the FAA's emergency directive.
Boeing's nearly finished update would make MCAS, the software that pushed the nose down automatically, read both angle-of-attack sensors instead of one. In November 2016, Mark Forkner, the programme's chief technical pilot, messaged a colleague "so I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)", and by late February 2019 Muilenburg knew the Justice Department had the messages. The unapproved draft statement mentioned neither MCAS nor the messages.
The argument for keeping the aircraft flying until the investigators' data arrived was that it preserved the norm that only the FAA decided when American aircraft flew. Muilenburg had not decided what to do about the fleet or the messages, and American airlines were still flying the 737 MAX. Learners write in this edition as they read.
Includes an interactive artefact or workbook to support the learner’s thinking.*
*Some artefacts need AI access, available through Rehearsal OS.
Learning objectives
- Distinguish what counted as evidence on 12 March 2019 from what counted only as confidence, in Boeing's public position and in your own verdict.
- Locate the parts of your judgement on keeping the 737 MAX flying that depended on facts nobody knew at the time.
- Justify your decisions on the 737 MAX fleet and on the Forkner messages by naming the one reason that decided each.