What you need to know about Boeing if you’ve been living under a rock

Another 24 hours filled with developments in the Boeing 737 MAX story -- including a dramatic tale of survival in the skies over Indonesia.

1. A day before a fatal crash off Indonesia, an off-duty pilot helped save the same Boeing 737 MAX 8, according to Bloomberg News. Bloomberg cites unnamed sources as saying the off-duty pilot was riding in the cockpit during a flight from Bali to Jakarta. As the plane began to fight the crew, he figured out what was wrong and told the crew to disable a new flight-control system. The jet then continued on safely.

The very next day, Oct. 29, a different crew faced the same problem in the same plane.

Reuters cites sources saying the cockpit voice recorder shows the crew checking an emergency handbook while struggling to keep the plane from diving. But the plane did ultimately crash, into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people aboard.

An Indonesian report last year on the Lion Air crash says mechanics had tried several times to fix problems with the plane. The pilots on the Oct. 28 flight that landed safely reported having instrument trouble but not the scope of the problem.

2.Boeing has shaken up its engineering leadership in response to the two fatal crashes. The vice president of engineering at Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes division was replaced, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.

The company said the move would let him focus on the accident investigations.

"Don't forget that they're launching the 777 X and they need to get that airplane certified in the next coming months,” said Andrew McIntosh, a reporter for the Business Journal. “And they're also considering launching a new mid-size airplane, which will involve considerably more engineering resources."

3.Companies that supply parts for Boeing's 737 MAX jets are worried.

Those jets were grounded after the March 10 crash in Ethiopia, but Boeing said last week that it would continue its current production pace of 52 planes per month at Renton.

McIntosh said some suppliers complain that Boeing isn’t telling them enough.

"All they're being told is, 'Keep shipping, keep shipping,'” McIntosh said. “These suppliers crank things out for 50 airplanes a month and they ship over to Boeing on a daily basis, so they're feeling kind of out of the loop. One of them said to me, 'We're trying to get ahead of this. Do you know how hard it is to do that when people aren't talking to you?'"

4.Boeing has said it will have a software fix for the 737 MAX within weeks. But some analysts have said the trouble-shooting could take longer. Air Canada said Tuesday that it’s keeping those models of aircraft grounded until July 1. And if other airlines or countries follow suit, that could complicate Boeing’s production schedule.