'Passengers are afraid of this airplane': How Boeing is handling 737 Max problem | Hacker News Reader

'Passengers are afraid of this airplane': How Boeing is handling 737 Max problem

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149 pointspseudolus205 comments

"We'll do everything possible to earn and re-earn that trust and confidence"

Empty promises. Will they fly 10 empty aircraft 24/7 for a year on realistic routes to demonstrate that they've resolved the problem? Will they integrate a third AoA sensor and retrofit it for no charge? Of course not.

They'll model the scenario and conclude that it is fixed.

It’s a colloquialism and means whatever is possible [and necessary].

When a company says they will do “everything possible,” the statement is not wrong because you can find anything they theoretically could have done but didn’t. English language is not set theory.

It's more like whatever we think appropriate. Why don't they say so? Because it has a clear meaning, while everything possible suggests they will go out of their way, without actually promising it. I think it's only fair to call them out on these weasel words.

Yet if they said "we will do what we feel is appropriate" then people would be bitching and moaning about them not doing "everything possible". There is no winning when making a statement to the public in a situation like this.

Right. Most of the public can't handle hard truth, so the de facto job description of "spokespersons" is now to obfuscate with such skill that we all get as little hard truth as possible.

Let's be clear, when they say "everything possible" they actually mean "the absolute minimum necessary to appease". The reality is that "possible" is contextualized by business constraints of costs and profits, not the hypothetical money is no object "possible". The purposefully use ambiguous language with the intent to mislead most people into a pie-in-the-sky interpretation rather than one with constraints.

The English language is highly contextual, ambiguous, and open to interpretation which is why there are subsets (lexicons? dialects?) of the language used by difference disciples with clearly defined terms to avoid these ambiguities.

They will rebrand and eventually everyone will forget about it.

To rebrand will be acknowledging that this is not a 737, at which points pilots will be required to recertify anyway and there is less need for the MCAS to mimic 737 flight characteristics.

Rebrand to 737 BIG. Same type, different name

737 FYAE (fifty years anniversary edition)

That they didn't add a third AoA sensor does not fill me with confidence that they've done all they can to fix this fatal issue that's already claimed over 300 lives. I'm skeptical that a software-only fix is good enough.

Airbus planes, by contrast, have three AoA sensors. How can Boeing justify doing fewer given how critically important these sensors are for preventing crashes?

> How can Boeing justify doing fewer given how critically important these sensors are for preventing crashes?

Money, as adding a third would likely require recertification as has been mentioned in some articles about the sensors in the past few months.

If the FAA had any balls they'd say that the 737 MAX is a new type anyway, thus allowing necessary safety improvements to be made.

Let's wait and see what other regulatory agencies have to say on the issue.

I see a political thunderstorm brewing in the not very far future.

Lol! The engine placement on the Maxx so fundamentally alters the physics of the plane, that it’s a totally different beast. Even if it flew the same in common flight scenarios (aka passed all it’s unit and integration tests) it will perform very differently in uncommon situations. It’s the uncommon situations that require pilots anyways, since so much otherwise is automated for safety. There will need to be retraining and hopefully recertification involved. Even then, I think the plane is fundamentally unsafe for passenger flight and cannot be fixed without massive redesign.

As I now reread your comment, I’m no longer convinced you meant it in the contrary way I read it. I agree there’s a thuderstorm coming, and I hope all regulators involved can have the conviction to stand up to the pressures from both sides and rule based on the design merits of the plane (even if they are able to conclude differently from my armchair engineer opinion).

Airbus aircraft require three AoA sensors because they're considered safety critical. On the 737 Max they weren't safety critical right up until they added MCAS, at which point that changed, and the regulators should have required it but failed to (in part because Boeing mislead regulators about how much MCAS could adjust the deflection in the horizontal stabilizer, doubling it after regulators had already sign off on it[0]).

The fact that Boeing is able to skate by with two and a software off-switch if they disagree, while Airbus continues to be required to have triple redundancy says a lot about their respective regulators (EASA Vs FAA). I'm sure "cost" was discussed given the 350+ aircraft already produced and how impractical it is to add a third AoA sensor, but that's literally putting cost over safety.

[0] See "Inaccurate limit": https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faile...

> Airbus continues to be required to have triple redundancy says a lot about their respective regulators (EASA Vs FAA)

Remember the 737 MAX has both FAA and EASA type certificates, issued separately.

EASA relied on the FAA certification. Just like any other agency.

That was based on FAA's stellar reputation, they built up in decades.

And essentially fucked within three days. (That's a simplification, but essentially true).

I'm not sure that other certification agencies will rely on the FAA's rubber stamping in the future and see a political storm brewing here.

Given the time taken between FAA and EASA certification, was it really just based on the FAA certification?

https://airwaysmag.com/industry/easa-transport-canada-to-see...

The FAA fucked its reputation in three days, but this was a VERY good thing. It was a completely compromised body for years, and their behavior on the 737 Max is what alerted the world and the public to this fact. If they had grounded immediately, they would have preserved their unearned reputation to the detriment of long term aviation safety.

but that's literally putting cost over safety.

Which seems to be fully in line with Boeing's business model and their behavior after the Lion Air crash.

Even after the Ethiopian crash they did just about everything to deflect, blame and obfuscate until this behavior was just no more maintainable based on the known facts.

Switching then to a "We apologise if your dead" marketing shtick.

I find it hard to believe, based on all the evidence, that this company put lifes before profit.

>The fact that Boeing is able to skate by with two and a software off-switch if they disagree, while Airbus continues to be required to have triple redundancy says a lot about their respective regulators (EASA Vs FAA). I'm sure "cost" was discussed given the 350+ aircraft already produced and how impractical it is to add a third AoA sensor, but that's literally putting cost over safety.

Looking at this image here: https://qz.com/1461400/pilots-werent-informed-of-risks-of-bo...

My biggest doubt is regarding the symmetrical left-right placement of the AoA vanes. Isn't it realistic that they may freeze in the same position, thus not disagreeing, but still wrong?

I'm not in aviation, so I'm not sure about this, but without deeper knowledge this seems like a realistic reason to ask for a 3rd sensor with a different placement at least.

Theoretically it’s possible that both AoA vanes could ice over, but that would mean failure of both vanes’ heating elements.

(Not a jet pilot myself but I teach instrument and charter pilots, and I’m in the clouds a lot!)

That Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic had all its pitots freeze. No amount of redundancy will help with that sort of situation -- the sensors were not designed correctly, specifically they did not have heaters with enough power to keep them not frozen.

While Boeing should have to add a third AoA sensor, it's important that the system have some additional fail-safes, such as using gyroscopes to estimate AoA relative to the ground -- a poor estimate of actual AoA, but a decent sanity check.

Alarming and proper pilot training should be able to take care of the remaining risk. Indeed, alarming and proper pilot training would have been sufficient to avoid the two MAX crashes (I know, that's not a popular opinion around here).

Proper pilot training of course it's important. From what I've heard it's a very difficult process though, so there's definitely some room for improving the UX here.

Using disparate sensors for plausibility is of course also useful and would be possible with a software update.

For MCAS there's a button to turn it off.

From the articles it seemes like you needed to perform an esoteric sequence of 4 things to switch off MCAS and it wasn't clear if you succeeded or not, until it reenabled with a 20s time delay.

Just for background: the Air France flight referenced (AF447) did in fact have the kind of software fail-safes you're describing, the aircraft entered alternate law (ALT2) when the bad sensor input was detected and several automated flight systems were disabled (including envelope protection). The pilots were notified of this.

There's actually a lot of reasons why AF447 crashed[0], so I won't attempt to [badly] summarize it here, but I will say it wasn't simply an equipment malfunction or computer problem. That's just what started the entire chain of events that ultimately lead to the crash.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Final_re...

IIRC the biggest problem was cascading alarms -- that and the system's inability to either determine (I forget) or alert about the pilot stalling the craft over the din of all the alarms.

So, on the topic of misleading regulators, is Boeing being taken to task for that? I'm following the mainstream media coverage, so I may not be privy to details, but is that being made into a big deal. It feels like it should be because regulators signed off on their impression, then Boeing changed the control authority of MCAS without informing regulators.

If this isn't illegal and fineable, I hope the outcome of this makes misleading regulators in this way a criminal act.

I'd like to read more on this, do you have any article sources that go into a deeper dive on how they changed the configuration after certification/testing?

If you look at the comment I replied to, their cited source has a section on the change in MCAS control authority to the rear stabilizer.

That article seems inconclusive to me. The FAA said the software change was news to them but Boeing said the FAA considered the final configuration in their analysis.

Either somebody is mis-remembering, outright lying, or they didn't consider the software change a true configuration change.

Nobody needs to remember anything. The phrase "if it's not documented, it didn't happen" means something.

Fair enough from a QA standpoint, except the FAA authorities (according to the article) gave them a pass on not documenting it (at least, not documenting it until later). It seems like the FAA was too trusting in this case.

It won't just be the FAA that signs off on the Max this time - the review process is to be a collaborative international one. In part, this probably indicates how much the FAA's credibility has been damaged by the 737 Max:

https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKCN1RV1A1

While it's sad and unfortunate that it's come to this, hopefully it will be for the best. Other countries rely too heavily on the US regulatory bodies and as those regulatory bodies are becoming more and more compromised by business interests and interference, it's becoming more important that other countries step up and provide redundant regulatory bodies.

I wonder if the 737 Max will ever be allowed to fly again in Europe, if they don't add a 3rd AoA sensor, that is.

In these crashes though removing the sensor would have prevented them. The entire issue is that the plane could override pilot controls without pilots knowing and/or not knowing or being able to turn it off.

This sensor isn’t that important. You can fly the plane fine without it. The problem is when the sensor gives a bad reading and the system trusts it.

Two sensors are enough to overcome that. If they disagree, ignore them both. The problem wasn’t that they only had two sensors, it was that they didn’t use them both simultaneously and ignore them when they disagreed.

The question is if MCAS is safety critical or not. To me it looks like there are two options:

1. Keep claiming the MAX has the same flight characteristics as previous 737 models, keep the type certification (=minimal pilot retraining) and classify MCAS as safety-critical and require a third AoA vane

2. Classify MCAS as not safety-critical, disengage it on a disagree between left and right, and require pilots take simulator training on MCAS failure modes and how to fly the plane without MCAS (in situations where it differs from previous 737 models)

My guess is they'll take the 2 tack. At this point 1 might not even be an option - regulators would probably require MCAS training no matter what.

There's still a potential failure mode where both vanes get stuck at the same anomalous reading, so therefore still feed bad data to MCAS. There's more likely a threshold of equality rather than exact equality in measurement going on I'd imagine, but I'd have to see their code to know for sure what their definition of "equal" is.

> They'll model the scenario and conclude that it is fixed.

You're so right. From the article:

Existing customers such as Westjet and Air Canada are being run through simulations of the changes to the 737 Max

Not exactly a phrase to inspire confidence. The scenario as we're seeing it give me a strong sense of deja vu as I recall the DC-10 disasters of the 1970's - many people refused to fly that aircraft ever again and I don't believe the brand ever fully recovered.

I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned the DC-10, because the line from that song has been going through my head every time I read about this ("She's like a DC-10, guaranteed to go down").

I'm just wondering what the artists are going to do to immortalize the MAX...

Onecthing I have learned from institutional molestation scandals is never trust anyone who states their first goal with a problem is restoring trust. It is a sociopathic Freudian slip that they don't care about the actual problem, only that it is making it harder to manipulate people.

I advise treating it as a shibboleth for people so callous they think trust is the most important thing as opposed to the problem which they deliberately avoid mentioning.

It's an admission that the public's trust in them has been damaged as a result of the two crashes and that they understand that they need to work to regain that trust, in addition to the technical measures they will be implementing to the airframes and design.

That is a highly naive statement to make. Per the parent comment, look at Wells Fargo as another example. They've been caught massively stealing from their cusomters multiple times, yet each time they come back with the same boilerplate mea culpa. Sokoloff is absoutely right, these companies are mostly concerned with getting back to status quo; they care about customer 'trust' only as far as it negatively impacts their bottom line.

It seems that Boeing now is in a series of quality issues that started with the 787 Dreamliner. This is the first plane that was developed after the merger with McDonnell Douglas and a major change in their engineering and production processes, see e.g. the Al Jazeera Investigation on https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/boeing787/ (from 2014)

> Safety lapses at the North Charleston plant have drawn the scrutiny of airlines and regulators. Qatar Airways stopped accepting planes from the factory after manufacturing mishaps damaged jets and delayed deliveries. Workers have filed nearly a dozen whistle-blower claims and safety complaints with federal regulators, describing issues like defective manufacturing, debris left on planes and pressure to not report violations. Others have sued Boeing, saying they were retaliated against for flagging manufacturing mistakes.

> While Boeing has nurtured generations of aerospace professionals in the Seattle area, there was no comparable work force in South Carolina. Instead, managers had to recruit from technical colleges in Tulsa, Okla., and Atlanta. Managers were also urged to not hire unionized employees from the Boeing factory in Everett, where the Dreamliner is also made, according to two former employees.

It seems to be an issue of company culture.

So the question is: What would it take for them to regain my trust?

Maybe a decade of restructuring, including punishments of managers that are responsible for breaches of safety protocols. They took the risk. And if even in the worst case (people die) there is no consequence, they will loose trust even more. Heads have to roll!

And then we can talk about the systemic issues with time pressures on the production line and managers getting all the wrong incentives.

> Will they fly 10 empty aircraft 24/7 for a year on realistic routes to demonstrate that they've resolved the problem?

That seems like a complete waste of time. If we were dealing with a situation where these planes randomly fell out of the sky and we had no data as to why they did so, so any proposed fixes were based on guesses as to what might have gone wrong, that might be a useful and even necessary way to see if they really found the problem.

But that is not the case here. They have the flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders from both crashes. They have radar and transponder data on both flights. There is no guessing involved as to what went wrong. They can easily force the same thing to go wrong on test flights, either in simulators or in actual flying aircraft, and test any fix.

The problem is largely fixable. Interconnect the two AoA sensors so they can validate each other and add some logic to detect failures like we've seen where the AoA suddenly jumps to an extreme position and add an indicator or audio alert for that situation. Also modify the cutout to only disable the MCAS inputs so pilots can fix the MCAS trim adjustments using the electronic trim instead of having to use the manual wheels. Finally limit the total trim amount like they originally had in the FAA approval process.

Those together should prevent more crashes. It doesn't fix the underlying problem that the MAX8 has fundamentally different handling properties during climbs that were papered over by a black box but they should prevent it from causing crashes with training.

You're assuming that MCAS has physically/logically discriminated inputs, and that the electric motor driver is capable of filtering which ones to acknowledge based on a switch that no one knew would need to exist at design time.

Odds are, when looking at the avionics network traffic, signals from the trim switches and MCAS are indistinguishable. Running an extra wire to represent the input to the microcontroller would also be a hardware change, which likely means swapping out hardware boards, and running new cable/wire/etc, which will require new schemata, new boards to be sourced from the manufacturer, more paperwork and testing, more maintenance install/refurb procedures, so on and so forth.

From my understanding, Boeing is desperately trying to squeak by with just a software change to avoid all that.

Personally, I'd prefer they take the time to do it right and change the hardware. It's what should have been done in the first place.

I didn't mean run a switch to the motors but either to the MCAS itself or whatever does the mixing between the MCAS and the other trim adjustment sources. Is the MCAS system even a separate box or just a software routine running on the main flight computers taking the AoA data?

Most likely a software routine, which is why I don't think there's any way to disable MCAS without running a new input to the microcontroller board. Not close enough, but my mental engineering department simulator suggests a monolithic approach seeing as it would be cheaper hardwarewise.

Wild ass guess mind, to the point of being useless. I couldn't give any concrete insights without access to design docs and specs.

The only thing that would make this right is:

(1) Add a third AoA sensor, with voting among them.

(2) Add an easily visible "AoA disagree" warning for pilots.

(3) Reduce the maximum stabilizer deflection to its design levels, instead of the 4x levels it shipped with.

(4) Add specific MCAS training for pilots.

(5) Have the whole thing re-certified - by FAA, not by Boeing itself.

All of this should be at Boeing's expense, of course. I'm still trying to make up my mind on how big a fine they should pay on top of that, and whether specific individuals should be barred from the industry. There should be serious consequences for this level of malfeasance.

Afaik FAA does cannot certify anything because the engineers are all hired by the manufacturers because they pay much better. The FAA can just trust the manufacturers (more details here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-...).

Behind paywall. Here's an investigative piece from 2016 on Boeing engineers representing the FAA:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/regulators-complain-u...

It's interesting to add a disagree warning.

I wonder how many of those there are currently. When I read crash reports (granted this is a very specific group of reports that don't apply to every day flight) it is interesting how often there are "too many / confusing alarms" and at the same time the fundamental instrument "disagreement" is sometimes not one of those alarms. Often in those reports a pilot(s) simply didn't recognize the instrument "disagreement" and / or didn't know what to do when that type of situation occurs (granted some in the reports were proven to be poor pilots and so I'm not generalizing about all).

I don't know if it would really help to have those types of alarms too as a misbehaving instrument often has it's own alarm due too, sometimes even the "right" one goes off too ... granted considering the situation with this aircraft it might be a different situation and worth adding even as a one off.

Lots of complicated decisions.

I know little about flying, so I'm not sure if this would be useful, or even if it's done already, but I wonder if it isn't possible to arrange the flight warnings/alarms into some kind of heirarchy or order them by priority?

The thing I find interesting is that even in the military, people who fly planes frequently are selected for their ability to fly the plane over understanding the plane.

Which generally works fine up until your design becomes so complex the pilot can't reliably map control/environmental inputs to plane behavior/outputs.

Given this natural limitation, I find it interesting we keep escalating avionics complexity beyond the point a pilot can reasonably model the plane mentally. In fact, I'm surprised we've gone the route of doing away with flight engineers entirely in day-to-day operations. I get the attractiveness in cost savings, but you're just running into too much information to parse while simultaneously having to fly the plane. It's two completely different mental regimes that eventually will start to interfere with each other.

But hey that's the market for ya. Local optimization or bust right?

> (1) Add a third AoA sensor, with voting among them.

Interestingly enough, poor software 'voting' was one of the things that lead to Qantas' A330 suddenly diving downwards mid-flight a few years back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

> In the usual case, when all three AOA values were valid and consistent, the average value of AOA 1 and AOA 2 was used by the FCPCs for their computations. If either AOA 1 or AOA 2 significantly deviated from the other two values, the FCPCs used a memorised value for 1.2 seconds. The FCPC algorithm was very effective, but it could not correctly manage a scenario where there were multiple spikes in either AOA 1 or AOA 2 that were 1.2 seconds apart.

They never did actually determine why the sensor data was corrupted.

> (5) Have the whole thing re-certified - by FAA, not by Boeing itself.

I don't think that the rest of the world will trust the FAA on this anymore.

> Add a third AoA sensor

Ignorant question time. Why stop at 3? Why not 5? Why not more? If the plane literally crashes when they mess up, and apparently they mess up somewhat frequently, wouldn’t you want a lot of them? And then implement voting across all of them? Are they incredibly expensive or incredibly big or something?

I think that each AOA sensor has consequences. It's a bit of additional weight, it's a bit of additional drag, it's another hole through the skin of the plane that has to remain relatively sealed, it's another item to maintain.

While in principle more is better, in practice it doesn't always work that way.

Depends on the failure rate of the AoA indicators, but this seems like a reasonable question based on the current rate of failure. At least 2 failed in ~10,000 flights, so you'd expect simultaneous unrelated [0] failure roughly every 10,000,000 flights. There are 100,000 scheduled flights a day worldwide, so that's 3 catastrophic crashes a year if those were all 737s.

That seems a bit too high for comfort, but if they got another order of magnitude of reliability on the AoA sensor it would be OK. Alternatively, they can reduce the incident severity so that everyone doesn't die when the sensors fail.

[0] If there are multiple related failures, on the other hand, adding redundant sensors doesn't fix that.

Would it be possible to completely remove MCAS, and simply train pilots that this version of the plane stalls more easily? Stalls are a known phenomena that all pilots are very competent to manage.

If I understand correctly, no. Once you cross a threshold, it takes less and less force on the controls to move you closer and closer to a stall. That's completely not acceptable, with or without training.

Yes. That works great. There are however two troubles:

1. it would definitely be a different aircraft with different training

2. the more-difficult flight behavior is prohibited for commercial passenger planes

I think this is about right. (1) and (5) will be really costly -- enough that a fine may not be necessary as such, but still, set a minimum total cost, and if they don't exceed that then the balance must be paid as a fine, that way Boeing has a decent incentive to spend that much money fixing the problems correctly.

(3) is obvious once you accept (2) and (4).

(2) and (4) would have been very cheap by comparison to the cost of all the above. Even all of the above would have been much cheaper done up front than it will be now.

What about

(6) Investigate how the decision of letting unsafe flight was made.

(7) Anyone who signed off on the aircraft would be reprimanded or go to jail for some time.

I'm not trying to get blood sacrifice out of this, but thus far the story seems like corporate malfeasance and somehow with 300+ dead there is no talk of anyone who signed off on the project being held responsible.

Totally agree. Punishing people has some value as a warning to others, but it's secondary here. The primary point IMO is that the people who made or signed off on these decisions have proven themselves unsuited to those roles. The most important thing is to get them out of those roles, so that people who have the right priorities or temperament can be moved in.

I'd add to that having a cutout that disabled just the MCAS system from the electronic trim system. It seemed part of the problem in the crashes was that after the MCAS applied it's huge trim the forces were too high to manually recover so they turned the trim back on and MCAS started forcing the dive again.

But after the second crash of the revamped Max model, a poll conducted by Business Insider suggested 53 per cent of American adults never want to fly on a 737 Max, even once it's deemed safe to do so

It's Business Insider using the results of a Survey Monkey poll to make wild claims about the views of more than 100 million American adults.

Most people don't even know the name of the plane, those who know rarely remember to check for it, and the rest that do will have forgotten in a few months.

Sometimes that's how it goes, and sometimes the mud sticks.

In six months or two years or whatever, e.g. Emirates has to confirm or cancel a 737max order. How will Emirates forecast the future public perception? Is the Boeing aircraft so much cheaper than Airbus (Emirates has both) that it's worth a risk to Emirates if the mud sticks?

I've decided never to fly Boeing ever again (not just the 737 max). I'm pretty sure I'll remember just fine and stick to my decision. Everyone I have had discussions with about this issue is also not willing to fly 737 max and for some this extends to Boeing as a whole.

I will book Airbus whenever possible in the future, and already did so just a week or so ago. I am unlikely to book on a MAX in the future, even if I think they're safe, more as a boycott because Boeing needs to suffer.

This seems excessively limiting. The standard 737 has an impeccable safety record and I much prefer it as a passenger to the A320 (the Airbus is noisier IMO). I wouldn't think twice about stepping on board any modern aircraft no matter who the manufacturer, but I have to admit that that attitude doesn't currently extend to the MAX.

Personally, I find Airbus to be more comfortable.

I'm doing what I can to make the changes I want to see. I don't reward bad businesses with my money if I can help it.

> The standard 737 has an impeccable safety record

This is simply not true, Boeing has had safety problems with every generation of 737

Original: thrust reverser problems early in life, engine crack causing fires late in life,

Classic: changes to the instrument UI caused problems early in life (eg, the vibration gauges being reversed causing the kegworth disaster), rudder and empenage failures late in life,

NG: the wings randomly catching fire caused a grounding that required preventative maintenence policies to be required on the leading slats, early metal fatigue appearing a couple of years ago (on <10 yo aircraft)

MAX: see current post.

due to how airlines have fitted their planes, i will unfortunately be flying 787 dreamliner exclusively after multiple horrible airbus flights. especially the god awful BA A380 and the absolutely horrific Emirates 777.

Isn't it the same for every opinion poll ever, though?

Even with a small sample(1100 according to the article at BI), does it really matter if it's 60% or 40% instead of 53%, to show that people would be worried of flying on this plane?

That's how opinion polls work. The article in question has the following at the bottom:

> SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn't try to weight its sample based on race or income. Total 1,178 respondents collected March 16-17, 2019, a margin of error plus or minus 3.07 percentage points with a 95% confidence level.

This isn't some random internet voting widget, there is discipline behind it.

I don't see the discipline you refer to. There's no description of the questions, how people were directed to the forms, or even if the survey was anonymous. We don't know if people took the survey after reading a negative story about the 737 MAX, or whether they were truthful about the demographic information they were asked to provide.

For the CBC or Business Insider to conclude the poll "suggested 53 per cent of American adults never want to fly on a 737 Max" is a very irresponsible claim, in my opinion.

"There's no description of the questions"

> We asked more than 1,100 respondents "If you had a flight on a Boeing 737 Max next week, and the FAA decided to clear the aircraft for flight, given the issues the plane has experienced, what would you do?"

"how people were directed to the forms"

> We recruit US survey respondents from the 2.5 million people who complete SurveyMonkey surveys daily. They volunteer to join our panel, SurveyMonkey Contribute.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/audience/our-survey-responde...

"whether they were truthful about the demographic information they were asked to provide"

Should Survey Monkey ask people to submit a copy of their passport with their responses? This is why polls have a margin of error, to take things like this into account.

On twitter I would get non-stop ads from Boeing pitching their military hardware. I don't understand this, I'm not exactly in the market for buying $1 billion military airplanes and missiles. I've never seen a single ad pitching the quality of their civilian aircraft.

The economics of the situation do mean most passengers won't have a choice in this. Unless airlines cancel their 737MAX orders and continue to run their older 737 NGs for longer while they wait for a new Boeing aircraft or to get A320s at the back of a very looong queue of Airbus orders.

Otherwise that queue of 5,000 or so 737 MAXs is going somewhere. If there's real fear of flying on them then 737 MAX flights will be cheaper and A320/757/etc. flights will be more expensive. Price sensitive flyers will have to choose between flying and not flying.

I had this when the F-35 was in the final stage of the aircraft renewals competition for the Belgian Air Component. I let you guess where I live...

I haven't seen a single ads since the decision has been made.

You're not the market YET. Let's talk after a few more ads :-D

> I don't understand this, I'm not exactly in the market for buying $1 billion military airplanes and missiles.

Where do you live? You're probably a voter in an area that Boeing needs a helping hand in Congress.

If OP is on a work VPN by way of northern Virginia, that might explain it.

I always love how surreal it is to ride the metro through the Pentagon station. Anywhere else, the ads are perfectly normal. But at that station? Adverts for tanks and fighter jets.

I get the same thing walking through San Francisco - ads for Cisco routers and "Network Security Solutions" obviously aimed solely at executives.

> If there's real fear of flying on them then 737 MAX flights will be cheaper and A320/757/etc. flights will be more expensive

Have you noticed how when you buy the ticket there's no mention of the plane you'll actually fly in and no guarantee that it won't be swapped 45 minutes before takeoff?

I'm saying that looking from a different perspective. As a tall person I would rather fly in planes I know to have better leg room or where I can pick an emergency exit seat. So many times the plane was changed just before boarding and my "emergency exit seat" turned into a regular cramped one because of the different seating arrangement.

So I'll be skeptic of the fact that the market can actually support tickets prices based on the plane model. Unless an airline guarantees the plane model you book your flight on or exclusively uses a specific model then pricing based on the plane used is about as achievable as pricing based on the revision of circuit breakers used in the cockpit.

There are airlines that have an Airbus only fleet, easyJet for example.

"Airbus only" fleet in easyJet's case means Airbus A319-100, Airbus A320-200, Airbus A320neo, and Airbus A321neo.

A Boeing only fleet could have 737NG and 737MAX. This doesn't help if you are completely against flying in the MAX.

I think the point was that youre guaranteed to not fly in the MAX if you go with an airline with an airbus only fleet

Good point. But then you wouldn't really avoid "737MAX" you'd be avoiding "Boeing". If the price increase theory is correct then you'd end up paying a lot more since you restrict the options of planes a lot more.

Every time I've bought tickets it has shown me what plane I'll be flying in for each leg of the trip, and so far they've never switched planes on me either. Sample size is ~10.

Google Flights shows the make and model of the plane. Sometimes the actual airline webpage doesn't though so I use the info from Google to check seatguru since the airlines usually have pretty terrible seat selection charts.

> Have you noticed how when you buy the ticket there's no mention of the plane

I haven't noticed that.

I can't recall ever booking a ticket on a carrier where the [scheduled] plane type wasn't readily available to me before purchasing. Typically looking at the seat map or details of the flight will show you the type (and sub-type). I wouldn't buy a ticket on a site that didn't preview that information.

I just checked the major legacy US carriers and Delta and United show it in either the Details or Seats fold-outs. American shows it directly on the schedule. For non-legacy carriers, Southwest only flies 737s [and doesn't assign seats], but shows the specific revision in a fold-out when you click the flight number. JetBlue shows it without the need for a click (as American above). If you care about the in-flight experience at all, you surely shouldn't fly Spirit, but they show it as well in the seat map.

For aggregators/OTAs, Expedia shows it in the details fold-out, Kayak in the flight fold-out, Google Flights in the results fold-out, ITA Matrix same.

I tried and couldn't find a way to book a flight where I couldn't readily see the scheduled aircraft. There's no guarantee that your aircraft won't be switched out for operational necessity, but in that event I'm sure you could decline the switch and book on another flight if you had an operational, safety, convenience, or other concern with the switch.

How do you book tickets where you don't and can't see the aircraft model before booking?

Any airline reserves the right to swap the plane model and reassign your seat with no notice at all.

That also goes for Asian and European carriers, which usually have a much higher service level than US carriers.

Source: My own experience being assigned a seat on a Bombardier C100 (Airbus 220 now), which was swapped for an Airbus A320 with Swiss. This happened about three times and the moment you learn about it is at the gate.

Yes, those terms are right in the airline tariff/conditions of carriage.

Exactly happened to me over this Easter - normal jet airbus swapped for some slower turboprop one (the one with long blades sticking out).

Normally I wouldn't care so much, engines weren't that noisy, but the effin' plane was much much slower, meaning huge delay, missed train and forced sleepover in a place I really didn't want to spend any time.

No warning or announcement whatsoever. Not even apology from crew for massive delay (Austrian airlines)

Let me be a bit more explicit although I don't understand why people skip the relevant details just to make a point. When you buy the ticket no airline I ever used (anecdote) shows a visible mention of "you'll be flying Boeing 737MAX" which may ring some alarms. You see "flight number LH2053" (random example). You can investigate and see that it's usually flown by Airbus A321s, you may even dig into the details of your purchase before committing (something 99% of customers never will because they are relatively hidden and not at all obvious unless you're looking for them). And then you run into the next issue I mentioned: The difference between "readily available" and "guaranteed" is pretty big.

I have been on just under 500 flights in my life. As an estimation I'd say that at least 50 of those ended up with a plane change right at the gate (no idea about the reasons - maybe technical issues; but mostly they were downsized so perhaps it's about capacity). In my case this meant for example that row 12 was no longer the emergency exit but right behind it which made me more likely to remember the occurrence.

If flying the MAX actually influenced the ticket price you can bet this would become standard practice. Since the airline does not guarantee anything there's no obligation from their side. Can you honestly tell me the price would actually be influenced in such a way?

If by investigate you mean "click on the seat map", sure I agree that you could investigate and dig into the details.

> I don't understand why people skip the relevant details just to make a point.

You were the one who said you had a body type that made you more prone than most to want to choose a specific seat (as do I). I took that to mean that you were more prone than most to use the seat map before purchasing, making it all the more unusual to think that you'd not been shown an aircraft model prior to booking previously.

You've had extraordinarily bad luck given that 10% of your flights had equipment changes at the gate. That's a level of chaos for airline operations that is unheard of in the industry.

I don't think the 737-MAX is going to suffer from negative margins because customers will be afraid of it. I flew yesterday and will fly again on Monday. I'd get in and would put my family on a US-carrier 737-MAX right now, without any software or hardware fixes in place. (Yes, Boeing made errors here. I also don't think that an AA, Southwest, or Alaska crew would have crashed the second one.)

> you mean "click on the seat map"

The seat map is presented at check-in, after you buy the ticket.

But you can see the plane model also before purchase by googling the flight number or by digging into the flight details on the purchase page. Both are things that most passengers won't do.

And in the end you're still at the mercy of the company which can decide to change the plane at any time until the boarding starts.

> That's a level of chaos for airline operations that is unheard of in the industry

I seriously doubt it. They happened with most major European airlines. Unless the implication is that EU airlines provide a much lower level of service then at most we can attribute it to bad luck.

> The seat map is presented at check-in, after you buy the ticket.

How do you usually buy tickets? I am offered a seat map before booking on every carrier I checked (except Southwest who doesn't issue seat assignment).

It's different in Europe I guess. As far back as I can remember you buy the ticket whenever and check-in at the counter or online 24h before the flight to pick a seat.

But this won't help even when the airline gives you information about the plane used (not buried in menus, not hidden by services they try to sell you, etc.) if on the day of the flight they switch. And if the price is indeed dragged down by the choice of plane then you can bet the info will disappear completely and/or plane switching will happen as a rule, not an exception. Can you honestly underestimate an airline's willingness to squeeze money from passengers?

Delta specifically tells you the plane before you purchase. It's literally right there when you go to pick your seat, it doesn't require any digging whatsoever. As others have said, on a full service airline where you can pick seats ahead of time they obviously know what they're planning on flying because they give you the seat map.

> Have you noticed how when you buy the ticket there's no mention of the plane you'll actually fly in

Yes you can. The scheduled aircraft type and seat layout is in the scheduling system and you can see it on any system I've used, up front before selecting the flight. (You wouldn't be able to pick your seat if it wasn't.)

Go to Kayak for example, punch in one way PDX to PWM for May 1st, pick one of the non-spam flights that show up (i.e. a listing from a real airline). Click to expand the details and it'll list the flight number and airplane for each leg, it'll look something like:

> American Airlines 658 · Narrow-body jet · Airbus A321-100/200

> American Airlines 6032 · Narrow-body jet · Embraer 175

> Delta 2974 · Narrow-body jet · Boeing 737-900

The same applies through the actual airline's booking system (and you're usually advised to book directly through the airline's website after finding your best flight option on a tool like Kayak).

> and no guarantee that it won't be swapped 45 minutes before takeoff?

This is true, but anecdotally it's happened to me only rarely due to a mechanical failures or some other reason.

The ads are there so you buy stock in Boeing.

> Ali Bahrami is now the FAA's Association Administrator for Aviation Safety. But six years ago Bahrami worked for the aircraft manufacturers lobby, and he argued before Congress to fight foreign competition by delegating more regulatory authority to the plane-makers to help them get new products to market faster.

It’s endlessly puzzling to me how lobbyists that spend their lives advocating for an industry are expected to be able do an about-face and advocate for the public once on the FCC/FAA/whatever. Even stranger is that it sometimes works, like with former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler.

How many job openings do you think there are for experts in aircraft regulation? It's a pretty specialized skillset; it shouldn't be so surprising that in an industry with three or four players, people who worked for one then go on to work for another.

It wasn't really strange with Wheeler. When he was the head of the main cable trade association (over 30 years before the FCC appointment) it was at a time when cable was the scrappy upstart fighting against the big, entrenched broadcast networks to bring more options to consumers.

Later, when he was head of the main wireless trade association it was when wireless was the upstart, bringing an alternative to the big, entrenched wired services.

In short, he worked for the cable and the wireless industry groups at a time when being pro-cable and pro-wireless, respectively, was pro-consumer.

> "We'll do everything possible to earn and re-earn that trust and confidence from our airline customers and the flying public in the weeks and months ahead."

So re-certify it as if it were a new airplane, which it actually seems to be.

And pay to re-certify the pilots. That was the underlying reason for this disaster.

But I think this is just the beginning for Boeing. The recent complaints about sloppy 787 manufacturing seem to point to deeper cultural problems.

> He predicts a multimillion-dollar campaign through both traditional and social media.

I predict that the campaign will spook the bejesus out of the consumer. Nothing says "beware" like a big corporation insisting, repeatedly and loudly, that all is well.

Given that this will be Boeing's first foray into direct-to-consumer marketing, they're going to make big mistakes.

They'll do anything in their power* to restore customer confidence.

* Anything that doesn't hurt the bottom line dramatically, such as doing any kind of large scale recalls and updates or simply changing the classification of the plane as "not a 737".

I suspect they'll add some software fixes and do isolated testing. This doesn't restore my confidence. I'll still fly in the damn thing though.

> I'll still fly in the damn thing though. Why?

Because I’m economical and it’s typically quite expensive to be picky about which planes to fly. I’m also not panicking at the odds - even a plane with 10x the average risk of crashing has a low risk of accidents. The problem here is the rather small sample size given how young this plane is. A 100x risk would be hard to swallow.

It all comes back to that Reddit comment [1] which pretty much sums it up: Boeing is internally a dumpster fire, and they have zero regard for actual safe engineering.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19671611

Listen carefully to this interview, might be interesting as well regarding the problems at Boeing. Problems with the dreamliner as well, told by a whistle-blower, former quality manager, at Boeing.

https://overcast.fm/+LHycFpjoo

The only way they can re-earn my trust is if they address the managerial problem, not the technical problem. The dirty ugly solution was not a result of stupid engineering, it was a result of profit over safety mentality in the highest layers of management.

What happened to the criminal investigation ? More then 300 hundred lives are lost just because they wanted to compete with another company.

As a Person with slight fear of flying, i will not set a foot into a Boeing for some time.

I don't a have a slight fear of flying. My refusal to set foot on a Boeing airplane is just common sense. Especially after that former Boeing employee posted how their corporate culture basically does nothing to promote airsafety.

Never boeing again. I'll rather take the train.

I think we need to execute and verify the engineering process. If there are problems, let's discover them. We'll improve safety across the board. Fear mongering is useless for advancement and is to the point where people are getting superstitious.

The beginning of your sentence send a shiver through my spine. I thought you were advocating for a radical solution, like the Saudi Kingdom just did with 37 protesters.

In both cases, Saudi Justice and Plane engineering, the main problem is that the regulatory body is not independent, and its focus is not the public interest.

Listen to this NY Times podcast and tell me you're comfortable flying in these planes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/podcasts/the-daily/boeing...

Passengers were also afraid of the DC-10.

People will forget

I don't know, has there been anything of this sort in the age of Twitter and social media outrage? Seems like the unprecedented ability that we have for information to quickly disseminate could allow the 737 Max issue to live on a lot longer in the public consciousness.

Trust humans' short-term memory loss

First the humans will respond to "$49 tickets from NYC to SF!!", then they will forget.

Humans might, but computers don't.

I had no idea what the DC-10 was until I read your comment, so you are totally right on that people will forget, but it might take a generation for that to happen.

Your personal mortality is a funny thing. If you're 25+ today I don't think you'll forget about the 737 MAX.

DC-10 are not transporting passengers anymore. Neither MD-11. Perhaps because they’re known?

An MD-11 crashed because it was too long and the pilot didn’t know whether it was landing or already boucing.

The Concorde crashed because of a piece lost by a DC-10.

The DC-9 lost 4 times the same door, crrating 4 times the same crash.

It goes all the way to the DC-3, where overfilling the tank would overflow into the aircon system, pulverizing droplets of jet fuel into the cabin. No need to picture the rest.

Perhaps that’s why no-one knows this brand anymore. Same as De Havailland. Too many crashes. Bad engineering and management shortcuts.

> The Concorde crashed because of a piece lost by a DC-10.

That was never proven and is kind of beside the point in any case. Aeroplanes are supposed to survive a tyre bursting on takeoff; a design that can't is unsafe, regardless of what runway debris did or didn't cause the burst tyre.

I'd like to point out that Concorde had a perfect 30 year safety record up until this incident.

It made so few flights in those 30 years that this is irrelevant. That one crash gave it the worst fatality rate in the industry, by far, just because the denominator was small.

What do you think that proves? Remember that the number of Concordes flying was a tiny fraction of most aircraft types you've heard of.

AIUI the part of the fuel tank at the front where the tyre debris hit withstood the initial hit (as it was designed to), but the shape of the tank focused the pressure wave from the impact so that it ruptured the rear of the tank. Bad luck? Yes. An understandable oversight? Yes. But there's still no way to see it as anything other than a Concorde design flaw.

I'd like to point out that the airport failed to complete the required FOD check of the runway before takeoff (required only because of the Concorde's failure mode when having a flat tyre).

DC-9s kept operating with mainstream airlines until long after they were obsolete and the DC-3 is by some measures the most successful aircraft of all time,

Even the Douglas brand was considered to have enough value for Boeing to merge logotypes.

DC-9's direct descendants still operate as the 717 with a number of European, Australian, and even American companies like Delta.

There are a handful of MD-82/83 still operating in Europe.

The DC-10 and MD-11 still operate for cargo, and are the backbone of UPS, Lufthansa Cargo, FedEx, and several other smaller cargo airlines

> DC-10 are not transporting passengers anymore. Neither MD-11. Perhaps because they’re known?

They were up until the 2010's. The design problems that led to the crashes had long been solved.

The reason they're not flying anymore isn't because they were unsafe or because people are scared of them, but because over time it eventually becomes impossible to find replacement spare parts, and because 3 engines are more expensive to run and maintain than 2.

Possibly, but there are counterexamples. In particular, the Lockheed Elektra.

No, all Boeing need do is change the name. It'll become the 737-1000 or something.

After a few DC 10s fell from the sky it quickly earned nick names like Daily Crash, Death Contraption and Death Cruiser.

Not long after that the DC 10 was relegated to flying nothing but cargo.

That is an exaggeration. The DC-10 was operating with tier-1 (example: Northwest, KLM) carriers up until the late 2000s/early 2010s.

The DC-10's design problems were largely resolved in its first decade of service in the 1970's. Since then it has had a safety record comparable to other jet aircraft of its era and vintage such as Boeing 747 classic models (-100/200/300) and Airbus A300.

http://www.boeing.com/resources/boeingdotcom/company/about_b... - see page 19

These may well be exaggerations, but the fact is the DC 10 earnt these nick names:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Death%20Crui...

The reality is, early on the plane had a bad safety history which resulted in it's bad reputation and early demise:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-26259236

Yeah, just like they forgot about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues

I haven't forgotten. I was on a DC-10 on my first flight to California from the east coast, in the mid-1970s.

One audio channel included pilot-to-tower communication, a thrill for me since that was a relatively new thing.

Shortly after takeoff, I heard a loud bang. The pilot said, "We've lost an engine. We've got to go back." The tower asked, "Do you want 'equipment'?" Pilot: "No. That would just make them nervous. But have it ready."

They should just scrap it. Start over like they should have done.

How many people check which type of plane they'll be on when making a booking? I've never done that. Then again, even when, say, 10% of people do that, it'll be a devastating dent in revenue for most airlines.

I only check when I'm travelling with a no name company in Asia.

From now on I definitely will.

I doubt I’ll ever fly on a 737 Max again. I already cancelled one work trip because of it. Told my boss, “two have crashed, FAA isn’t doing anything, not risking orphaning my kids for this meeting.” He agreed with my logic.

I hope you mentioned your reason for cancelling to the airline.

I think Boeing should fire (or demote) some high managers.

Witch hunting or randomly attributing blame is never a good idea.

Highly disagree. Strategic firings can help with culture issues.

You are right but this shouldn’t be triggered by bad events.

I think a wise move would be to rename the thing?

"737 Ultimate", "737 Safejack", or whatever?

The could put a sticker on the door stating, "this plane has not crashed".

"xxxx days since last serious crash"

“You’ll arrive safely at your destination, or double your money back!”

B320-737

The way I see any future problem in the Boeing 737 max problem go is this:

- Pilot notices plane going down

- Pilot radios Tower: "We are having the Boeing 737 max problem. How do I solve that again?"

- Operator looks at post-it note on his monitor: "Well, you do <step 1>, <step 2> and <step 3> to disable the faulty MCAS

- Pilot: Thanks

Joking aside, I think almost every pilot has by now at least heard about the problem, and will at least read up on it when they find themselves in a cockpit of a 737 max. If I understood correctly the biggest issue was that pilots simply didn't understand what was going on with their plane and why it was dipping it's nose. Now the MCAS is probably the first thing they will check.

I am not saying that the way Boeing is handling this is ok, just that realistically this issue is probably not going to cause another crash.

I think the Boeing 737 Max Problem is now safely solved simply due to the popularity it got.

That would be nice.

My problem with trusting that plane is that they essentially tried to fix a 50 year old design with software kludges.

That's not what inspires confidence really and that fundamentally doesn't change.

Weren’t the Ethiopian Air pilots also aware of the problem? Awareness wasn’t enough.

> If I understood correctly the biggest issue was that pilots simply didn't understand what was going on with their plane

No. This is not what happened.

The Ethiopian pilots followed the new procedure that Boeing published after the Indonesian crash, where the MCAS was already suspected. The Boeing procedure was not sufficient to save them. The detailed facts about this have been supplied by the flying data that was recovered from the crash, then sent to a French specialized investigating team, then announced by Ethiopian authorities. There are numerous reports about this from reliable sources, including most newspapers.

The simple fact that some people still believe in a proven-wrong scenario is worrying. I suspect the cause is often a mix of the contempt for Southern countries, and idealization of the big firms and their technology. Of course, the American authorities and the initial Boeing claims have also helped biasing the public view. And the modern alternative sources of information probably contributed. Though I remember that, long before social networks replaced newspapers, 75% of Americans believed the absurd theory that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

I’m not just afraid of this airplane, I’m now afraid of all Boeings. I can’t avoid them entirely (I fly a lot), but definitely find myself preferentially booking travel on flights listed as Airbus.

At this stage I will not board any Boeing 737MAX or Dreamliner (see the stories posted on Reddit)

Flying Delta exclusively, then? Considering the same here.

Unfortunately, Delta is expensive enough that flying them would mean flying less.

A large part of why I was able to start flying again last year was when I discovered Southwest. I loved flying with them, but once the MAX goes into service again, I'll be very hesitant to do so.

Are there any low-cost carriers in the US who use Airbus exclusively?

Not exclusively but they have some Airbus:

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/our-aircraft

I am not in the US so it is much easier to avoid.

Hard pass.

These passengers are still driving cars, even though they're much less safe.

The solution is simple: subsidize ticket prices. The cheapest ticket always wins. People would literally fly standing up if they could get a ticket for $1 less. Just ask Ryanair.

When it comes back online, the 737 MAX 8 will probably be the safest passenger plane in the world.

A second wave of issues would present an existential threat to Boeing, they are aware of this and you can be sure that every design element is being triple checked to make sure nothing at all is missed from the MCAS issue or anything else.

Even the greediest capitalist executives imaginable would not take a gamble on there being a second wave of problems with that plane.

Downvotes? HN is using downvotes as a silent disagree button? We are reddit now? At least come out and post a reply explaining why you think this warrants a downvote.

It still not clear for the general public (i.e. me) what will happen when MCAS gets disabled due to a faulty sensor. Will there be an increased chance of stall in some difficult situation (low visibility combined with other issues, etc)? If no, then why have MCAS at all? If yes, then does it mean there is still a safety issue overall?

Pure speculation, but I expect they will have to lose the equivalence certification with 737 (one of the key elements of the MCAS fiasco). Pilots will need to undergo additional training on the 737 MAX to understand the flight characteristics without MCAS.

That additional training will cause some cash bleed but is not a huge deal.

To be clear, multiple pilots have come out saying that flying without MCAS doesn't present any additional stall risk. It just requires additional training to handle the plane. MCAS only existed to allow for this equivalence certification and bypass the need for pilot training. Maybe they will remove MCAS entirely since training is now likely to be required no matter what.

It’s possible that the plane is safer to fly without MCAS and that the deadly system was only added to exploit an FAA loophole to reduce the rollout costs.

IMO this would paint Boeing in the worst possible light, and result in the maximum possible legal liability at the end of the day.

Even the greediest capitalist partakes in mental gymnastics to justify to cheapest course of action. There's no such thing as rational actors.

Cynical, but I agree. Plane crash rate always seems to decrease after high-profile malfunctions. Not to mention pilots flying those planes will presumably be on extra alert.

And ready to hit STAB TRIM CUTOUT on a moments notice.

Edit: typo

"When it comes back online, the 737 MAX 8 will probably be the safest passenger plane in the world."

Until they cheapskate the next airplane design and cause the deaths of hundreds of people.

That assumes that the fundamental organizational/lack of oversight issues that led to the MCAS fiasco, didn’t lead to other, more fundamental problems that cannot be resolved (and worse, could not be identified on review).

This is my concern as well. It's terrible that the 737 MAX got into service with these flaws.

But I'm more frightened that this shows major shortcomings in our regulatory system, with no clear indications that they'll be addressed.

The cultural changes that led to this being possible in the first place took decades to occur. It will take longer than the time 737 MAX will be grounded for Boeing to heal itself, assuming the current leadership is even capable of doing so.

Only after Boeing can fully own the systemic failures which led to this tragedy can this work begin.

IMO we will know that process has only just begun after several very high ranking resignations or firings.

Decades to occur? Huh. Boeing bought Macdonnel Douglas in 1997.

Well that IS two decades ago.

> A second wave of issues would present an existential threat to Boeing, they are aware of this and you can be sure that every design element is being triple checked to make sure nothing at all is missed from the MCAS issue or anything else.

Sort of like how Samsung recalled the note 7 when it started catching fire? They did "extensive testing", claimed to have fixed the issue and then re-released it with a green battery icon in the header only to have them catch fire again?

No, I call bullshit. Companies aren't always as smart or as cautious as you give them credit for. Especially when they're bleeding money because of a recall. The pressures internally to patch and release are huge. If it's safer when it comes back it will be solely due to the FAA's work.

Aviation in general and the new commercial aircraft market in particular is just a little bit more safety conscious than the cheap end of the consumer electronics market...

This assumes MCAS is not painting over a more fundamental flight characteristic issue, such as the larger engines causing undesirable stall behavior.

I have no idea if this is the case, but if it is I can totally see Boeing trying over and over to paint over the issue, as they would probably lose way too much if they had to scrap the project.

That's absolutely the case.

> Now, when the pilots applied power to the engine, the aircraft would have a significant propensity to “pitch up,” or raise its nose. This propensity to pitch up with power application thereby increased the risk that the airplane could stall when the pilots “punched it”

> Worse still, because the engine nacelles were so far in front of the wing and so large, a power increase will cause them to actually produce lift, particularly at high angles >of attack. So the nacelles make a bad problem worse."

https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/boeing-737-max-unsa...

Not sure how you can make an airplane safe if it is by design cannot be made safe. Adding more software updates wont fix the fact that the turbines are too big for this body.

The real issue is whether it's going to require recertification and extra training for pilots. Not needing those two things were a major competitive advantage for the 737 Max, and if the FAA doesn't require recertification, I'm not so sure other airline authorities are going to take its word for it.

I highly doubt that it'll be the safest passenger plane in the world, the entire reason they added MCAS was because the airframe design is fundamentally prone to stalling. So now they have an aircraft that's prone to stalling with a software anti-stalling system that works most of the time. The "fix" didn't even add triple redundant AOA sensors with a voting system like Airbus uses.

As I understood from previous discussions is that the MCAS is there to compensate for a physical design flaw. This plane should never been accepted by the IATA.

> Even the greediest capitalist executives imaginable would not take a gamble on there being a second wave of problems with that plane.

Well I guess the downvotes happened because this statement seems to be totally unsubstantiated.

Did you see any signal of transparency and accountability at Boeing so far? Any personal consquences?

In my opinion this shows again a flaw of late-stage capitalism. No one in Boeings leadership gains anything from transparency or really "fixing" Boeing´s problems and culture. In the opposite, these steps would cost lots of money and would probably cost the current leadership their job (and bonus). This really is a principal/agent problem and a problem between (not-measureable) long-term goals and (financial) short-term rewards.

From my point of view, its absolutely not understandable how Muilenberg still has his job. Even if the whole development happened before his time, at least the second crash is 100% his responsibility and there is no way a manager with his record would still be in charge in all other western countries (e.g. Europe or Japan).

nope. the design of the plane was already flawed from the start due to the placement of the engine, and that's why they needed MCAS to fix it.

if MCAS is taken away, the plane goes back to being flawed. but since MCAS itself is a flawed solution, it's a lose-lose situation.

I wouldn't fly in a MAX 8 if you paid me to.

Doesn't change the fact that they essentially tried to fix an ancient design, no more suitable for this day and age, with a lot of software. Instead of a clean sheet engineering of something really good.

And all this based on purely commercial objectives.

Based on some of the things, written by far more competent people than me, the airframe, due to the different placement of the larger engines is inherently aerodynamically instable.

I'm not sure that it's physically possible to turn this into the safest passenger plane in the world.

> When it comes back online, the 737 MAX 8 will probably be the safest passenger plane in the world.

Completely unfounded opinion here. Past success of a corporation does not contribute to future success. My presumption is they fired all the valuable engineers, outsourced as much work as possible, and they are simply functioning as a large financial firm rather than an engineering firm.

To put it bluntly, the people in charge of Boeing are stupid and not trustworthy. They didn't invest to modernize their manufacturing and hire the best engineers, they cut costs and their quality is suffering.

Hopefully passengers will be able to successfully sue airlines for flying Boeing's junk.

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