The real reason Boeing's new plane crashed twice

This is an airplane engine.

It's sitting in a field in Bishoftu, Ethiopia— part of the wreckage of Ethiopian Airlines

Flight 302, which crashed on March 10, 2019.

157 people died.

This was just a few months after another flight, Lion Air 610, crashed in Indonesia and killed 189 people.

These two flights were operating the same plane: The Boeing 737 MAX 8.

And its engine is the key to understanding why this particular plane

has caused so many problems.

But there's nothing actually wrong with this engine.

In fact, airplane manufacturers raced to put them on their new planes.

That's where the problem started.

The two biggest airplane manufacturers in the world are Airbus and Boeing.

And they have a fierce rivalry.

If one of them can offer a better plane, the other could lose a lot of money.

That's exactly what was about to happen in

Airbus announced that they would update their most popular model, the A320, a single-aisle