The FAA is investigating a software glitch in some Boeing 737 Max jets that could prompt an automated flight guidance system to disengage during an aborted landing.
Page T2From§Eachthe late evening edition — 26 September 2026
FAA investigates 737 Max flight-guidance glitch, seven years after final report blamed its software for two fatal crashes.
As it ran on the front
The Federal Aviation Administration said this week it is investigating a software glitch in some Boeing 737 Max jets that can make the automated flight-guidance system disengage during an aborted landing. The agency used the word "investigating." It has used that word on this jet before.
Seven years earlier, on March 12, 2019, the ground stopped moving under the plane. The European Union, Australia, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Turkey grounded every 737 Max 8 in their fleets that morning; Indonesia and China had grounded theirs the day before. Between the two waves, 40 percent of the global 737 Max fleet was sitting on tarmacs. Boeing said a software update was coming within weeks.…
…(cont) The update did not stop the lawyers. Just over five months later, on August 27, 2019, Avia Capital Services — a Russian leasing firm with 35 Max jets on order — sued Boeing in an Illinois court, the first 737 Max customer to do it. Avia's lawyers argued Boeing had negligently designed the jet and made negligent representations to the same FAA now looking at a new glitch, and asked for damages and a canceled order.
Two months after that, on October 25, 2019, Indonesian investigators closed their case with a 353-page final report. It found the crash was caused by flawed software design from Boeing, a carrier that kept flying a jet it had reason to ground, and pilots handed an emergency the manual hadn't covered.
That is the file the FAA reopens this month. Not reopens, exactly — opens a new one, on a new symptom, in the same jet's automation, checked by the same agency that certified it the first time. The airplane is not new. The regulator is not new. The word is not new.
You don't get the 353 pages. You get a seat, an aborted landing you may never hear announced, and a manufacturer now investigated twice over automation in the same aircraft by the same agency. There is always room at the top for another production run. The bill for the fix has been due twice and paid neither time by the company that owes it.
“Same plane, same company, same regulator, same word — "investigating" — used twice seven years apart, and the only thing that changed in between was how many people were already dead when they said it. They fixed the paperwork, not the airplane, and the patch bought Boeing seven years before the next one showed up. You're not paying for a redesign; you're renting a seat on the same bet, and the bet's had two losing rounds already.”
“Boeing certified the fix years ago, the FAA cleared the fleet to fly, and pointing at a decade-old report every time a new bug turns up isn't oversight, it's — well, it is oversight, that's literally the word for it. The agency investigates things; that's its job; the fact that it keeps finding things to investigate is not itself a finding. I should probably stop there.”
The receipts
· Indonesian investigators conclude their probe of the disaster with the release of a 353-page final report. The report states the crash was caused by a combination of flawed software design by Boeing, from the morgue, 25 Oct 2019
· Russian aircraft leasing firm Avia Capital Services, which has ordered 35 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, sues Boeing in an Illinois court in the first legal action taken by a 737 MAX customer in the wake of from the morgue, 27 Aug 2019
· The European Union, Australia, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Turkey ground all Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets. This means 40% of the global fleet is now grounded, with Indonesia, China and several airlines g from the morgue, 12 Mar 2019
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.