Cold Open

It’s just after 6:20 AM, on October 29th, 2018, at an airport in Jakarta, Indonesia.

On the flight deck of a passenger airliner, 31-year-old Captain Bhavye Suneja and his co-pilot guide their jet up off the runway and into the skies above the Indonesian capital. It’s a beautiful clear morning - perfect weather for flying.

Captain Suneja has logged over six thousand hours in the cockpit, so a short trip like today’s to nearby Bangka Island should be a breeze. Especially as Captain Suneja is at the controls of a brand-new jet. The Boeing 737 MAX is powered by modern fuel efficient engines, and its systems are all cutting edge.

But only moments into Lion Air Flight 610, Captain Suneja’s control yoke starts to shake.

It’s a warning from the jet’s onboard systems. The plane is going to stall. Captain Suneja is confused. The take-off was perfect, there’s nothing wrong with their speed or altitude. He looks over at his co-pilot, who can’t work it out either.

More alarms sound. Their instruments are picking up different, contradictory readings. Nothing makes sense. Captain Suneja tries to continue their ascent, but now he finds that he can’t raise the aircraft’s nose. Something keeps forcing it down, and every time he manages to gain some altitude, the plane shudders, shakes, and drops.

Nothing like this has ever happened to Captain Suneja before. He can’t understand it. He can’t control it. The plane seems to have a mind of its own.

Lion Air Flight 610 will never reach its destination. Only twelve minutes after take-off, the aircraft will crash into the Java Sea, killing Captain Suneja and the other 188 people on board. This accident will raise questions about everyone involved, from the pilot to the airline to the Indonesian authorities. But the reputation damaged the most will belong to the American manufacturer Boeing. Its 737 MAX aircraft is supposed to be state-of-the-art, but the company will be consumed by scandal after the aircraft’s first fatal crash on October 29th, 2018.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is October 29th, 2018: The Crash of Indonesian Air Flight 610.

Act One

It’s June 30th, 2000, at Jakarta airport in Indonesia, eighteen years before Lion Air Flight 610.

36-year-old Rusdi Kirana watches through a window of the terminal building as a Boeing 737 jet pulls gently away from the gate. It’s a momentous day for Rusdi. Several months ago, he and his brother founded their own airline, and today, Lion Air is set to take to the skies for the first time.

Owning an airline is a world away from Rusdi’s roots. He and his brother started their careers in aviation by hustling for work at Jakarta airport, carrying bags and holding up signs to greet arriving passengers. Then they set up their own travel agency, selling discounted last-minute tickets to travelers looking for a bargain. But they always had ambitions to take their business off the ground, and in early 2000, Rusdi got the opportunity he’d been waiting for. The Indonesian Government deregulated their airline industry, opening the door to new routes and airlines.

Rusdi and his brother have leased two passenger jets for the launch of their new venture, but they have plans for rapid expansion. Over the next five years, Rusdi and his brother meet surging passenger demand in Indonesia by expanding Lion Air’s fleet to 24 aircraft. Their airline may suffer from delays a little too often, but it’s one of the cheapest and that makes it popular with customers - by 2005, 600,000 passengers are choosing to travel with Lion Air every month. And as long as profits continue to rise, Rusdi doesn’t care too much about the occasional complaints about his airline’s poor punctuality.

But it’s not all good news for Indonesian aviation. Following the deregulation of the industry, there is an alarming rise in the number of air accidents in the country too. With the rapid growth in passenger numbers, there’s considerable pressure to recruit more pilots. But worrying stories begin to circulate about how inexperienced some of these pilots are. They all claim to have completed the necessary training to fly passenger jets, but many are suspected of falsifying their records, counting hours spent simply observing other pilots in simulators as time behind the controls themselves.

And it’s not only in the cockpit where corners are being cut. Corruption in airline maintenance departments is rife. Faulty components and poor workmanship are often overlooked. And it’s only a matter of time before tragedy strikes.

On New Year’s Day 2007, a plane owned by one of Lion Air’s rivals takes off from Jakarta on a routine flight. But 154 defects with the aircraft have been reported in the last three months. And an hour into the flight, it crashes, killing all 102 people on board.

This tragedy is quickly followed by another. In March 2007, another Indonesian plane overshoots the runway before crashing and bursting into flames. 21 passengers and crew are killed and, by this point, air authorities in other countries have had enough. Only a few months later in June 2007, the United States and the European Union both issue bans on Indonesian planes entering their airspace.

But despite this setback, Lion Air chief Rusdi Kirana remains set on growing his company. Later in 2007, he orders 40 new 737-900 jets from American aircraft manufacturer Boeing at a cost of $3 billion. But that deal is dwarfed four years later when Lion Air returns to Boeing for another 230 planes. At $22 billion, Rusdi’s order is the largest in aviation history and makes headline news all around the world.

Most of this huge order consists of the newly designed 737 MAX model. The 737 is one of Boeing’s biggest success stories. In production since the late 1960s, this passenger jet has been repeatedly redesigned and upgraded as aviation technology has improved. And the MAX model is the fourth generation of the 737 - and the most advanced yet. But only around a dozen of the planes have been delivered to Lion Air before Flight 610 crashes into the Java Sea on October 29th, 2018.

Fingers are immediately pointed at lax standards in the Indonesian aviation industry as the reason for the crash, and the 737 MAX keeps flying. But this time, the real cause of the accident isn’t corruption or incompetence. Only after a second tragedy occurs will the 737 MAX be grounded and responsibility for the crash is traced - far from Indonesia, but across the Pacific Ocean, to the factory headquarters of the Boeing Company.

Act Two

It’s morning on March 10th, 2019, outside Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia in East Africa, five months after the crash of Lion Air Flight 610.

Farmhand Gadisa Benti wearily lays down his shovel, stretches his arms skywards, and breathes in the morning air. Taking a small break, he chats briefly with his fellow laborers and is about to pick up his shovel again when he hears a loud rattling noise coming from somewhere overhead.

Gadisa squints into the bright morning sun as he searches for the source of the sound. And for a moment, all he sees is blue sky, but then he spots it. A large passenger jet. Gadisa is no aviation expert, but even from this distance, he can tell the plane is in trouble. The jet is losing altitude and trailing white smoke. Gadisa is rooted to the spot as the aircraft comes closer. Then the nose lifts, and for a moment Gadisa thinks it’s all going to be alright, but suddenly the plane tilts downward again as if fighting against itself. It roars low overhead and Gadisa can only watch as the jet streaks over fields and houses before plowing into the ground and exploding in a ball of flames.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 has crashed just six minutes after take-off at a speed of almost 700 miles per hour. The impact is so forceful that wreckage has been driven 30 feet down into the soil, and all 157 people on board are dead.

This is the second Boeing 737 MAX to go down in only a matter of months. After the first crash in Indonesia, questions were asked about whether a system on board had malfunctioned and caused the disaster. But Boeing and the US Federal Aviation Administration insisted the plane was still airworthy. Now though, passengers and industry insiders alike are left wondering whether the 737 MAX is really safe. At first, the FAA reiterates that it does not believe the Boeing plane is dangerous. But only two days after this second crash, it’s forced to revisit that position. Flight recorders from the downed craft in Ethiopia are found. And the data suggests that a system fault may have contributed to the accident.

Once that becomes known, aviation authorities around the world act fast. By March 18th, 2018, all 387 Boeing 737 MAX planes in service are grounded, pending the results of full investigations into both accidents.

The impact on Boeing is devastating. This century-old company may be the most famous aerospace manufacturer in the world, but it’s locked in fierce competition with its European rival, Airbus. Boeing had pinned its hopes on the 737 MAX to compete with Airbus’ popular A320neo aircraft. But now airlines start to refuse delivery of completed 737 MAX planes. And they cancel orders for more. By April 2019, Boeing is forced to announce that production of the aircraft is to be cut by 20%.

But that’s not the end of the bad news for Boeing.

In October 2019, the Indonesian National Transport Safety Committee releases its final 353-page report on the Lion Air crash.

The investigation into the accident identifies nine factors that led to the loss of Flight 610. These include problems with maintenance, faulty parts, and the flawed response of the plane’s crew. But the report determines that the crash was principally caused by an automated software function known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. This is a system that is unique to the 737 MAX and is designed to stabilize the aircraft in flight. If it detects that the plane is flying at the wrong angle, the MCAS system automatically attempts to correct the error. But on Flight 610, the MCAS was receiving incorrect data from a malfunctioning sensor, and it repeatedly forced the nose down until the aircraft entered a dive from which it never recovered.

For many industry observers, the idea that a single faulty sensor could result in such a catastrophe is shocking enough. But the investigation also reveals that Boeing deliberately omitted any mention of the MCAS system from the plane’s manual. The pilots of Flight 610 did not seem to be aware the system existed, much less how to respond to it malfunctioning.

The investigation into the second crash takes longer to conclude. But early results suggest that the Ethiopian Airlines flight was also brought down by the MCAS system responding to faulty data.

The findings are a blow for Boeing. The company finds itself in the spotlight as never before, with regulators and politicians asking how these accidents could possibly have happened. And as investigations continue, the scandal will only grow. In time, it will bring down the company’s top executive, wipe billions of dollars off its balance sheet - and leave Boeing’s reputation in ruins.

Act Three

It’s October 29th, 2019, at the Capitol Building in Washington DC, a year to the day after the crash of Lion Air Flight 610.

In a committee room, Dennis Muilenburg sits before a panel of US Senators. Dennis is the CEO of Boeing, and he’s here today to be grilled on the safety issues plaguing the company’s 737 MAX aircraft.

For the last eight months, every 737 MAX in the world has been grounded, while Boeing engineers work to address the flaws that led to two fatal crashes. But this Senate committee doesn’t just want to hear about what Boeing is doing to fix the problem - these politicians want to know how it happened in the first place.

Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut pulls no punches in his questioning. He calls the crashes the result of a deliberate pattern of concealment by Boeing. He cites evidence including emails between Boeing staff dating back to 2015, almost three years before the first crash. Among these exchanges were concerns about the dangers of faulty data, and warnings from Boeing’s chief technical pilot, highlighting problems he’d experienced in a simulator with the MCAS system. But nothing despite all these warnings had been done.

Other senators allege that Boeing favored profit over safety. The company’s desire to bring the 737 MAX to market as quickly as possible meant that Boeing’s factory workers were left exhausted by the pace of production. And to attract business from cost-conscious airlines, it’s suggested that Boeing also downplayed the amount of training pilots would need to fly the plane and that Boeing deliberately omitted features like MCAS from manuals. This meant many pilots thought the MAX would perform just like the previous generation of 737s, and when it didn’t, they didn’t know how to react.

The hostile questioning from lawmakers goes on for two days, and Dennis is forced to admit that Boeing got a lot of things wrong. Two months later, Denis Muilenburg is fired, and Boeing will go on to declare estimated losses for the year of over $18 billion.

But the company’s rush to get the 737 MAX into the skies cost far more than just money. This was a scandal priced not in dollars but in lives - the 157 passengers who died in Ethiopia in 2019, and the 189 people who were killed in Indonesia, in the very first 737 MAX crash on October 29th, 2018.

Outro

Next on History Daily. October 30th, 1811. After a long struggle to find a publisher, Jane Austen releases her first novel: Sense and Sensibility.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Rob Scragg.

Edited by William Simpson.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.