Each crash involved Boeing's 737 Max 8 aircraft, which went into service in 2017. Pilots recorded at least nine complaints about the aircraft in the Federal Aviation Administration's incident database in the months before the second crash.
The Lion Air flight crashed 13 minutes after takeoff, while the Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed six minutes after takeoff. Both flights displayed erratic flight patterns before they crashed, The New York Times reported.
Investigators are looking into the possible role played in each crash by the 737 Max's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which points an aircraft's nose downward if the plane is flying at too steep an incline.
Boeing installed the system on 737 Max aircraft because they feature larger engines that had to be mounted in a different way than those on prior 737 aircraft. The new engines created a tendency for 737 Max aircraft to tilt upward, which makes it more likely that they will stall in mid-air. The MCAS was designed to counter this tendency.
Evidence from both incidents indicates that the pilots on each flight struggled against the MCAS before their planes crashed, and speculation from observers has suggested that the sensor that causes the MCAS to point the plane downward may have activated in each case due to an error.
Investigators have found pieces of stabilizers from both flights in unusual positions, Reuters reported. The stabilizer piece found in the Ethiopian Airlines wreckage indicated that the plane had been set to fly downward, according to Bloomberg.
After the Lion Air crash in October, Boeing said it would update the software for its 737 Max fleet by the end of 2018, but failed to meet that deadline, The New York Times reported. Two days after the Ethiopian Airlines crash, Boeing said the update would arrive in the following weeks.
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