Despite setbacks, aviation is changing fast

ON MARCH 10TH a Boeing 737 MAX, the latest version of that firm’s bestselling narrow-bodied airliner, fell from the sky in Ethiopia. All 157 souls on board were lost. This followed the crash off the coast of Java, less than five months earlier, of another 737 MAX. The death toll then was 189. The immediate cause in both cases seems to have been a faulty sensor feeding false data to an avionic flight-management system that had, in turn, had new software which pilots had not been briefed about. The flight-management system insisted on overriding the actions of the pilots, who did not know how to respond. This precipitated a stall rather than, as intended, preventing one.