Two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes occurred before the aircraft was grounded worldwide.
The first was Lion Air Flight 610, a 737 MAX 8 that crashed into the Java Sea shortly after departing Jakarta on October 29, 2018. All 189 people aboard died. The second was Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which crashed near Bishoftu, Ethiopia, on March 10, 2019, killing all 157 people aboard.
The two accidents shared important similarities involving erroneous angle-of-attack sensor data and the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. MCAS could command nose-down movement, and investigators identified weaknesses in the system’s design, pilot information, training, and certification process.
China grounded the aircraft the day after the Ethiopian crash, and other regulators followed. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued its grounding order on March 13, 2019, after initially maintaining that the aircraft remained airworthy. By then, two—not three or four—fatal MAX crashes had occurred. Together they killed 346 people and triggered one of aviation’s most consequential worldwide groundings.