Interstices in the Certification of Safety Critical Avionics Software: Boeing 737-MAX MCAS Case Study

Two Boeing planes of the same model were crashed in October 2018 and in March 2019. All the passengers and crew onboard were killed. Investigations showed that an external failure in the newly installed critical software Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was responsible of these two fatal accidents. In this paper we reviewed the reasons behind the failure of MCAS that installed in Boeing most selling airplane and investigated engineering and certifying such software systems. The case study revealed an urgent need to clarify the certification elements in a more practical way and to be linked to advancements in software engineering,