Documentation and the Boeing 737 Crashes

Poor or missing documentation is one of the factors that I've seen mentioned in connection with the recent Boeing 737 crashes. In this post, Tom Johnson looks at the issue of what needs to be included in documentation when you're documenting something that has changed or is different from competitors' products.

Although I'm not familiar with FAA-regulated flight manuals, when I read about the Boeing disaster and the lack of information around the controversial MCAS feature, my two takeaways from a documentation perspective are to ask these questions: How does this product differ from other products? and What does the customer need to know? These are challenging questions in any documentation project.

In relation to the 737 crashes, I think only the second question is relevant. From what I've read, it seems that the pilots didn't know about the troubled MCAS system and couldn't turn it off when it was overreacting. That is clearly both an issue with their training and the documentation.

What bothers me more than that is the fact that the MCAS system depended on the input from only one sensor. I'd like to know why the system wassn't designed with at least three, given that a malfunctioning sensor could bring down the plane.