A Boeing spokesperson defended the company’s policies. “Boeing is committed to delivering the most cost effective solutions. That’s why we offer small regional and national airlines that don’t have unlimited budgets the choice between our standard Mostly Won’t Crash package and the more economical Only Crashes Sometimes option. Sure, once in a hundred flights or so, the whole $100 million dollar aircraft augers in like a cheap lawn dart and you have to spend the next nine months picking tiny chunks of metal and passengers out of three square miles of farmland … but you have to balance that against the important cost savings that come from not paying our inflated prices for a handful of electronic components and a quick software patch to tell you when one of the AoA sensors is futzing out again. The popularity of the Crashes Sometimes package proves that many airlines think that’s a saving worth making.”
The spokesperson also responded to criticism of the MCAS, the fly-by-wire software system whose interventions may be responsible for two recent fatal crashes. In response to comments from professional pilots who pointed out that the MCAS tends to act unpredictably at precisely the times when any error is most likely to be catastrophic — while the aircraft is traveling at low speed and low altitude —the spokesperson said angrily “What the hell do they want, anyway? The whole thing is like a poorly balanced brick. If we didn’t have software continuously rewriting the laws of aerodynamics in our favor, it wouldn’t clear the perimeter fence, let alone make it to its destination most of the time. You’d think that pilots would appreciate that, but oh no. It’s all ‘waah waah waah, the nasty old MCAS trimmed the nose down sixty-five degrees while I was lining up on final in a seventy-knot headwind’. Well, nobody’s perfect, let me remind you, and I think the least pilots can do is show a little gratitude for all the times the MCAS has stopped the whole shebang from cartwheeling ass-over-tit through the control tower window. Which, our tests have shown, seems to be the MAX 8’s natural inclination when left to its own devices.”
The crew and passengers of Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian Airlines 302 could not be reached for comment at press time.
