It is a stretch to call the MAXes a new product, even though it turned out to require more extensive work than envisioned, but the bit about actively hiding the differences is right on point.
Boeing 737 MAX 7 is 138,699 lbs vs 737 800 @ 90,710lb vs 737 100 @ 61.994 lbs. Hell the new 737 MAX 10 is ~203,000 lb.
Boeing was trying to pretend scaling the aircraft again and again wasn’t significant due to regulations and physics eventually disagreed.
In addition, the door-plug issue is tied in here on account of the 2021 deferred prosecution agreement, which also followed from Boeing's duplicity over the MAX issue.
You’re skipping over the first half of my statement. If the unexpected difficulties had been handled openly they would have needed to go through more regulatory hurdles. Physics didn’t put them into some kind of catch 22 situation the aircraft could have been safe, it just couldn’t be safe while playing games with regulators. That’s where criminal liability shows up.
The point I have been making all along is that, regardless of what led Boeing to the point of choosing to hide or misrepresent the situation, it is the choice to do so that turns this into a potentially criminal matter. With the same physical/technical problems but proper and timely disclosure of the issues during development, by far the most likely outcome would have been a delayed program delivering MAXes substantially similar (in both construction and operation) to the ones which are certified and flying today. After that, even in the unlikely event that the crashes had occurred, criminal prosecution would be unlikely, and certainly not on the basis of the facts for which it is currently being considered.
Except they aren’t beside the point.
> substantially similar (in both construction and operation)
The physical aircraft would have been similar, but airlines would have spent 10’s of millions more on training which makes a real difference to them and thus sales.
Boeing could have released the aircraft on exactly the same date while complying with the spirit of relevant relations though at higher costs, but the product would have been meaningfully worse from a sales perspective. Even today regulators have allowed Boeing and the airlines to treat the 737 MAX family as much more closely related to earlier 737’s than they actually are.
In addition, even if it is true that regulators have now allowed Boeing and the airlines to treat the 737 MAX family as much more closely related to earlier 737’s than they actually are, this is not the basis of the DOJ's investigation, either.
Regulators aren’t at issue, but trying to avoid regulatory scrutiny is. Or as is often said it’s the coverup that they get you for.
I won't dispute the implicit claim that this was an important factor in Boeing running into development difficulties, but running into development difficulties is not a crime. Materially misrepresenting the state of the development process (specifically (IMHO) the magnitude of the high-AofA handling problem, rather than merely weight issues) to the FAA is a crime, and it is this, not the fact that Boeing ran into technical difficulties, that is the point of DOJ's investigation, the article, and the discussion here of it.
So when it failed and pilots had no idea what the issue was people died. The crazy thing here is telling pilots about it could have prevented those crashes even with an absolutely identical aircraft being released.
The second omission from this summary is any mention of Boeing's interaction with the FAA staff having the responsibility for certifying the MAXes as airworthy (together with the adequacy of the flight manuals and training materials), and yet, in all other accounts I have seen, Boeing misrepresented (to put it mildly) the extent to which MCAS was modifying the handling characteristics of the airplane and therefore the consequences of its failure and the need for pilots to know about it. No-one else, as far as I am aware, disputes the fact that the DOJ's investigation is centered on this dissembling (together with similar dissembling relating to the plug door incident, which is being included on account of the MAX issue being in a deferred prosecution status.) Once your account here is augmented with this missing information, it becomes clear that this pattern of dissembling is what the DOJ is investigating as a possible crime, as I have been saying all along.
Now you want to extend this disagreement by disputing my characterization of Boeing's difficulties in developing the MAXes as being, well, development difficulties! It is not clear to me what point you are trying to make by doing so, but to be clear, I am most certainly not dismissing the tragedy as merely a matter of development difficulties. On the contrary, I am saying that this became a criminal matter precisely when Boeing went beyond treating the matter as an above-the-board technical problem, and started misleading the FAA.
The problem with the Max is aerodynamics: Civil airplanes are designed with negative aerodynamic feedback, so the nose-down torque (“pitching moment”) increases as the AoA increases. But on the Max at very high AoA this feedback torque becomes somewhat smaller due to interaction of airflow around the engines and the wing. That by itself is not a problem because the nose-down torque still exists and airframe is still stable.
There is a regulatory requirement that the amount of pilot’s control force required to maintain a given AoA must be a non-decreasing function of AoA[1]. Due to the Max’s aerodynamics, this requirement is not met.
Boeing’s MCAS was a bandaid to make the plane meet regulations by applying nose-down trim while at high AoA. The trim results in a higher yoke force, so the plane meets the requirement. A better method would have been a “stick pusher” (which have been used as stall prevention devices for over 50 years, though not on the 737) or addition ventral fins (like on the Beech 1900). But either of those would have probably required recertification
[1] The purpose of this is to reduce pilot-induced oscillations: see what happened with AA flight 587, where the lack of a similar requirement for rudder pedals and yaw led to PIO which ultimately resulted in the tail falling off an Airbus.
No, you are confusing the empty weight of the 737-800 with the mass gross takeoff weight of the 737 max 7.
The correct comparison of MGTW is 174,200 (-800) vs 177,000 (max 7).
Similarly, the -100’s MGTW was 110,000, not 61,994. Also, the only source I can find for the max 10 is 197,900, not 203,000.
Edit: so the plane grew by 80%, not 320%