On Mar. 10th, the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 malfunctioned only moments after take-off from Addis Ababa resulting in the simultaneous deaths of all 157 passengers. Nevertheless the current tragedy, eight months prior a similar travesty occurred in Indonesia in October. The Lion Air Flight 610 also crashed, killing its 189 passengers and crew. Although these two events occured in seperate locations, connections of both planes being Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliner has raised cause for suspicion, which led to its inevitable grounding as investigations are being handled.

Criticism, spearheaded by the recent news coverage, blared towards the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), which is the government organization responsible for overseeing civil aviation in our nation as well as international water. The approval of the Boeing 737 Max 8, even with its acclaimed self destructive system with faulty sensors causing the aircraft to nosedive, has been acknowledged as baffling by the public eye. Even with such a detrimental reason for the FAA to not put the “go head” on its distribution with five pilots reporting not being able to control the plane in critical situations, pilots were even found to have been improperly trained. Unlike the usual simulations for pilots to get confident in flying distinct models, they were taught utilizing a 56 minute video on Ipads by the company as sufficient lessons (video lessons were not mandatory to watch within the workplace). However, Boeing countered with a statement that the video was appropriate as the Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliner were quite similar to the previous older models. Nevertheless, experts corrected that the business did not proceed with simulations because they were too costly.

The FAA, even though they are held accountable for the public’s safety, is facing complications of their own when trying to enforce. Due to experiencing a lack of funding, FAA has not been able to do their own evaluations as they have previously; therefore, they take the results of the manufacturers as truth. Unless more funding is put towards the FAA, there are limitations to the actions they can take.