Lion Air's 737 Max Crash Hot Potato

Amongst the crash data lies some truth of why Lion Air's new 737 Max-8 crashed killing 189 trusting souls. The tragedy is real but who’s to blame? Or better yet who has the most to lose finding answers? 

Boeing would like Lion Air operational incompetence to headline the investigation. Lion Air would like Boeing to shoulder the blame and customers placing a claim against those with the deepest pockets. So the investigation remains in no-man’s land where Lion Air threatens to cancel its huge order with Boeing with many, many, more Max on the order cancelation line. 

The airplane flew successfully for several months before any indication there was a flaw or mishap was about to happen. It is also known that a prior flight had indicated a problem, but the crew was savvy enough to conduct work-arounds mitigating flight behavior problems before safely landing. Into the shop this 737 Max went. The maintenance crew, who were newly introduced to the advanced 737 replaced a sensor part. The flying crew were not fully aware of the problem or how to do a work-around as the prior crew had managed when it flew into the same behavior of rapid nose down descent as the later flight was directed by software or a system failure went it crashed.

Whose fault was it? That is the big multi-billion dollar question. The answer will come in time and much more time as if time will dilute the impact for either Boeing or Lion Air. By the way, Boeing will offer a further discount to Lion Air before it can cancel its order and Boeing delivers its backlogged order from Lion Air. But blame has to be assigned first and that's what time is for, assigning blame where no one is driven out of business over the loss of 189 passengers. 

The time is 2019, the blame goes to an unprinted a manual update and sloppy maintenance or training for the 737 Max no one else seems to chime in about having any problems. Unless a news report has been missed the Max keeps flying without any indication of a problem Lion Air experienced. The dangerous game is afoot. Assuming it was a one-off mishap, which there is blame to go around to everybody having some kind of consequential impact in the investigation. Lion Air will cancel its threat to cancel its Boeing order. Boeing will give Lion Air further discounts on its order when it pays out to injury family members who lost somebody on that flight. No one wants to go out of business and no one wants not to be compensated and finally no one wants to take the blame.

Let's just say the crashed Lion Air flight problem has been found in many levels throughout the aviation market chain and only the dead cannot feel the pain at this time.  I'm so sorry that, “to error is human" and bad things happen to everyone at some point! The biggest dog in this situation will pay with little fanfare demonstrated. It's a hot potato no one wants to handle.