Ethiopian Airlines

CHICAGO — The fatal crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, just months after the Lion Air Flight 610 crash in Indonesia, has led to governments and airlines around the world grounding their Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft amid concerns that, after two crashes killing 346 people, the model is unsafe to fly. Airlines are attempting to cancel their orders of the aircraft, citing public-safety fears.

Savvy readers of 21st Century Wire will know that automated flight control systems have been scrutinized far more outside of the mainstream news coverage than within it. Case in point, 21WIRE Associate Editor Shawn Helton’s investigative report on Boeing’s ‘Uninterruptible Autopilot System’ published back in 2014.