What happened after the 737 MAX crashes

When the final history of the Boeing 737 MAX is written, one of the most vital topics for scrutiny — and likely one of the greatest lessons learned — will be how and why the industry reacted in the way that it did during the four months between the 29 October 2018 crash of Lion Air flight 610 and the 10 March 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302.

Many aspersions were initially cast on Lion Air, its pilots, its training, its maintenance and its standards. Since its operations began in 2000, the airline had experienced five major safety incidents prior to the crash of flight 610:
– on 14 January 2002, flight 386, a Boeing 737-200 taking off from Pekanbaru overran the runway on an aborted landing, with no fatalities
– on 30 November 2004, flight 583, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, overran the runway on landing at Surakarta, with 25 fatalities
– on 4 March 2006, flight 8987, also on an MD-82, overran the runway on landing at at Surabaya, with no fatalities
– on 2 November 2010, flight 712, a Boeing 737-400, overran the runway on landing at Pontianak, with no fatalities
– on 13 April 2013, flight 904, a Boeing 737-800, landed short of the runway in the ocean at Denpasar, with no fatalities