World of Aviation: 737 MAX

How the world’s most infamous commercial airliner came to be

Fundamentally, much of Boeing never really wanted to build the 737 MAX, and spent the latter half of the previous decade deciding that what it really wanted to do was build the FSA, the replacement for its nearly 50-year-old 737 programme.

The problem was, the engine and materials technology for a new aircraft wasn’t entirely there — and, of course, an all-new aircraft is very expensive indeed, especially when airlines seemed happy to keep ordering the increasingly venerable 737.