MCAS

Boeing 737 MAX-8 Makes History With Ethiopian Airlines And Lion Air Crashes.

That’s because this aircraft has a “crash into the ground” feature. This is an inadvisable feature to have in a jet.

It’s a system called MCAS that with but one (!) sensor failure, the horizontal stabilizer is automatically adjusted to pitch the nose down repeatedly with a fairly-complicated procedure being required to halt this behavior. I am not aware of any other feature in any other modern commercial airliner where only one (again: !!) sensor failure can cause low-altitude flight into terrain.

I am not a pilot, but I have read a whole lot about airliners, including their flight manuals, and if there is such a consequential and dangerous non-redundant and unverified (by other sensors) feature I’ve never heard of it nor read about it. I don’t believe it exists except in this new aircraft.

I’d advise anyone not to fly in this jet until the issue is resolved.