Why The 737 MAX Has Been Such A Headache For Boeing

Since it first flew in 1967, the Boeing 737 has been one of the greatest success stories in commercial aviation. With a small, narrow-body (a single aisle between the seats) plane with short- to medium-range, it was perfect for flights of just a few hours in length, which covers the majority of domestic routes. That led to thousands of these aircraft being delivered, making it the most popular plane in the world. In fact, at its peak, nearly a third of all flights were flown with a 737!

Sadly, starting with the 2017 launch of the latest generation, the 737 MAX, it’s all gone nose-down. Production and sales have plummeted, allowing rival Airbus to eclipse it with their A320 range. The company is also embroiled in legal troubles, and worst of all, there have been multiple mid-air disasters — some of them fatal.

What happened? The simplest explanation is the same one that plagues many companies: Boeing wanted to cut costs. Eventually, that mentality led to bad decisions, rushed designs, and slashed safety budgets. The results have been, well, terrible. Far from flying Boeing into a new era, the 737 MAX has become the manufacturer’s biggest headache.

The MAX’s biggest innovation over earlier 737s was its improved engines, with better fuel efficiency and range. However, those engines were also physically larger, so large that, placed under a 737’s wings, they would have scraped against the ground. Really, Boeing should have built an entirely new plane to attach them to, but that apparently would have been too expensive. So instead, Boeing decided to just keep using the same old 737 airframe but mount the engines forward of the wing rather than under.

This design decision had one extremely important consequence — it unbalanced the plane. Boeing devised a software solution for this, a system that would automatically make flight adjustments to correct for the imbalance. Tragically, in the span of just a few months in 2018 and 2019, two separate crashes were caused by this automated system fighting with the actual pilots and hundreds of people died.

The entire 737 MAX fleet was grounded after this, but after some upgrades, the planes were recertified to fly. Since then, a whole host of other issues with lax safety standards have emerged. Famously, in January 2024, a panel blew off one in mid-flight – the likely cause was a manufacturing error.

As part of regaining flight certification for the 737 MAX, Boeing and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reached an agreement whereby the planemaker would pay a $2.5 billion fine and set up a compliance and ethics program. While that’s not pocket change, it was a settlement to avoid a potentially much steeper fine.

Then, the powers that be at Boeing decided to cheap out on their own settlement. They never did set up a compliance and ethics program, which is the sort of shady business practice that might have been stopped by, say, a compliance and ethics program. So the DOJ came back, and this time, they got Boeing to actually plead guilty to criminal fraud. Somehow, the fine for becoming a corporate felon was actually smaller at only $487 million. Even that deal is now imperiled, however, since a conservative-leaning judge struck it down for including a DEI provision. 

Even after all this, the 737 MAX has fresh headaches to inflict on its maker. Two new variants of the MAX, the shorter seven and the longer 10, still have yet to receive flight certification. Issues with the engines filling the cabin with smoke after a bird strike and with the anti-ice system overheating those same engines have yet to be resolved, putting production years behind schedule. As you might imagine, the current Boeing leadership is trying to solve this legally instead of technologically, by asking the FAA for exemptions to safety regulations. So far, they thankfully haven’t gotten them.

This has all been a feast for rival Airbus, which has seen orders soar for its similar, but less problematic, A320 series of aircraft. In fact, the A320 is on track to surpass the 737 as the best-selling plane of all time later this year, which is yet another issue for Boeing.