Research entry · Not admitted

Boeing 737 Max

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Research dossier, timeline and source context. The original research material remains available for inspection.

The Boeing 737 MAX is a narrow-body airliner grounded worldwide for nearly two years after two fatal crashes: Lion Air Flight 610 off Indonesia in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 near Addis Ababa in March 2019, together killing 346 people. Investigators traced both crashes to a flight-control system called MCAS, which repeatedly pushed the aircraft's nose down in response to a single faulty sensor reading, and to gaps in how the system was certified and disclosed to pilots. The aircraft returned to service in stages from late 2020, after Boeing redesigned MCAS and regulators imposed new training requirements.

MCAS's original certification and legal responsibility for its consequences are distinct questions the record keeps separate. Boeing's 2021 deferred-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice concerned alleged deception of the FAA during certification; it resolves one criminal charge, not the design, oversight, and disclosure questions the two accident investigations raised, several of which remain the subject of ongoing civil litigation.

Temporal bounds

Core technical/certification corpus: 2012–2023. Legal/procedural posture: through 2026-08-09, because the Boeing criminal case evolved materially after the original 2021 DPA.

Questions in the research record

C-1 — "MCAS caused the crashes" vs multi-factor accident causation · question / dispute
C-2 — ET302: actual institutional disagreement over the initiating AOA failure · question / dispute
C-3 — ET302: agreement on MCAS, disagreement on completeness of human-factor analysis · question / dispute
C-4 — Certification process followed ≠ certification process adequate · question / dispute
C-5 — Design compliance ≠ safety · question / dispute
C-6 — Pilot response as mitigation vs fail-safe design · question / dispute
C-7 — "Pilots weren't told about MCAS" requires date and document scope · question / dispute
C-8 — FAA March 12 vs March 13, 2019 · question / dispute
C-9 — Original MAX configuration vs post-grounding MAX configuration · question / dispute
C-10 — Accident cause vs legal fraud case · question / dispute
C-11 — Congressional report vs technical regulator/accident findings · question / dispute

Not established on this record

Boundary

"MCAS caused both crashes" is too compressed.

semantic trap / refusal

Boundary

"The AOA sensor failed" is not one identical mechanism across both accidents.

semantic trap / refusal

Boundary

"Pilot error" and "design error" are not mutually exclusive categories.

semantic trap / refusal

Boundary

"Certification failed" can mean different things:

semantic trap / refusal

Boundary

"FAA certified MCAS" is too loose.

semantic trap / refusal

Boundary

"The MAX was recertified" is common shorthand.

semantic trap / refusal

Boundary

"Boeing admitted causing the crashes" is not an accurate summary of the corporate criminal case.

semantic trap / refusal

Boundary

Accident-investigation findings ≠ criminal liability ≠ civil liability ≠ congressional findings.

semantic trap / refusal

Boundary

The Ethiopian final report ≠ uncontested international consensus.

semantic trap / refusal

Boundary

"Return to service" ≠ proof the original configuration was safe.

semantic trap / refusal

Record provenance

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Projection axes

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Source kindresearch_template

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Record identifier: research:demo-corpus-twelve:boeing-737-max-demo-corpus-dossier-v0-1
Posture: research
Source kind: research_template
Lifecycle: not recorded
Source footprint: not supplied to this presentation
Capture associations: not evaluated here
Unresolved capture identity: not evaluated here
Truth: not a finding of this renderer
Authenticity: not inferred from source or capture presence
Research profile: Boeing 737 MAX
Artifact kind: dossier
Source candidates: 18

CHECK is inspection, not a truth badge. Source presence ≠ support; capture association ≠ authenticity; rendering ≠ admission.

Boeing 737 Max

Temporal bounds

Questions in the research record

Not established on this record

Read with sources

Selected sources (18)