Boeing told neither Southwest Airlines, the biggest 737 MAX customer, nor the Federal Aviation Administration when it omitted an emergency alert system meant to tell pilots when sensors are malfunctioning in newer models of the plane.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the alert told pilots when a sensor was misreading issues with the pitch of the plane’s nose, a malfunction directly linked to the two deadly crashes a few months back.
Southwest officials reportedly did not know about the lack of warning system until more than a year after the planes starting being flown in 2017, since Boeing did not update them that the newer models omitted the feature. Even the airline’s manuals contained the erroneous information.
