GAS TURBINE LABORATORY SEMINAR
DATE: Thursday, 9 March 2023
TIME: 4:00pm
LOCATION: 31-270
SPEAKER: Javier de Luis, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus
TOPIC: 737 Max Crashes: Ethical Questions and Responsibilities
ABSTRACT:
The two fatal crashes of the 737-Max within months of each other resulted not only in the deaths of 346 people, but also in an unprecedented and ongoing indictment of the way American commercial aircraft are being designed, tested and certified. The crashes lead to the grounding of an entire class of aircraft for 20 months, something that had never happened before, with economic repercussions that spanned the entire country. While the technical causes of the crash were quickly identified, the investigation into how these flaws were allowed to be incorporated and deployed yielded troubling questions about the management and certification processes that have been put in place over the last twenty years.
Dr. Javier de Luis lost his sister on Ethiopian Flight 302. In the years since the crash, he has taken on a role of providing technical support to the victims families in their dealings with the FAA, EASA, and other agencies and organizations. This talk is a “case study” on the failures of the 737 Max, how we got to this point, and what can we, as individual engineers, educators, and technical managers, do to prevent it from happening again.
BIO:
Dr. Javier de Luis earned BS (1983), MS (1985), and PhD (1989) in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, as well as an MS (2003) from the Sloan School of Management. His professional interests are in the fields of safety, aerospace research and operations, engineering design and analysis, and technology management. Dr. de Luis joined Payload Systems Inc. in 1989 as a staff scientist, and later as the Chief Scientist and CEO at the company, prior to its merger with Aurora Flight Sciences. While at Aurora, he was Chief Scientist and Vice President for Research and Development until 2016. Presently, he holds a Lecturer appointment at MIT.
Dr. de Luis has served as the principal investigator/project manager for multiple aerospace research projects, including the Middeck 0-gravity Dynamics Experiment (MODE) and Middeck Active Control Experiment (MACE). He has published papers on such diverse topics as piezoelectric actuators and intelligent structures, structural control, distributed sensing and computing, and design and development of spaceflight systems. He authored the seminal paper in the field of Smart Materials, “Use of Piezoelectric Actuators as Elements of Intelligent Structures”, which has been referenced over 3541 times (as of April-2022) by subsequent journal and conference publications.