> Photos have emerged of a repainted 737 Max in Ryanair colours outside Boeing’s manufacturing hub, with the name 737 Max replaced by 737-8200 on the nose.
Now I'm worried about boarding any 737
Now I'm worried about boarding any 737
[1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Diane_Vaughan_...
The older the better.
At this stage I'd be unhappy to be on a modern Boeing but I don't know what I could do about it, except cross my fingers and hope I won't be the next victim. I don't know what rights I'd have to claim a refund or demand a different model plane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296
* - official reports blamed the pilot, but the pilot blamed the new software in the plane. Airbus was also accused of tampering with evidence to blame the pilot. These are also some parallels to Boeing's involvement in the initial MAX crash...
In the end, software didn’t bring down that flight (as in, the software didn’t pitch the plane down into the ground). Disabled safety features stopped the plane from correcting a situation it would normally be protecting pilots from. And the pilots where unaware of any obstructions past the runway. Coupled with long spool up times for jet engine (any jet engine, I might add), and that flight was basically doomed once it was over the runway.
Mind you, I’m not trying to put the blame on anyone here, but to compare that crash with the recent MAX crashes is just not right. More comparable would be something like Qantas Flight 72, where the autopilot did in fact result in an uncommanded pitch down. Although the pilots recovered from that situation and the plane landed safely.
>to compare that crash with the recent MAX crashes is just not right
>More comparable would be something like Qantas Flight 72, where the autopilot did in fact result in an uncommanded pitch down
These seem like very unnecessary distinctions. "In the end", the plane had software that was supposed to do one thing but failed to do that, resulting in the plane crashing. These are very apt and natural comparisons.
For instance there was this crash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XL_Airways_Germany_Flight_888T
which practically seemed like the people involved were trying to make it crash.
What exactly was the software supposed to do in this instance? They were flying at 30 feet, with idle engines and suddenly demanded full power while pitching up. It takes a good 8 seconds to spool up a jet engine, that's a lot of time to continue travelling forward. At the same time, due to their low speed, climbing steeply away from the ground just isn't possible because it would stall the plane.
It's a shitty situation, but physically the software can't do anything here. I guess you could make a case that the software shouldn't have allowed the plane to even get into such a dangerous flight envelope. But there are a lot of aural warnings from the GPWS (ground proximity warning system) to tell the pilots to climb away from the ground. But if you disable those warnings, can you really blame the software?
Given how much of its functionality is embedded in electronics and software, how can you know? Would a passenger be able to recognize if it suffered from the same flaws as the 737 MAX?
Marketing, mostly.
I have thought a lot about this for personal reasons, and I increasingly think the biggest failing is not grounding the fleet after the Lion Air crash. The Ethiopia Air should never have happened in any company that prioritized safety and risk appropriately.
The 737 MAX and the 787 Dreamliner were both designed after the acquisition and are full of issues. The 777 predates that, so it's fine.
Doubt it.
For you perhaps, but the short memory of the general public, rebranding, and Boeing rebates (probably some generous amounts of heavy wine'n'dine), mean they will definitively show up at an airport near you.
If that is indeed the case, it’s unlikely the 737 Max’s flaw is the last one (in fact, we know it isn’t, and that the FAA discovered something else, which is why it was sent back to Boeing).
What low-cost carriers in the US fly Airbus exclusively? There's Spirit, which is notoriously horrible, and I saw someone mention JetBlue elsewhere in this thread. Any others?
Spirit also gets an unnecessarily bad rap. Yes, their seats are tight, but they fly very few true long-haul flights, so it's not that big of a deal, and the Big Front Seat is probably the best value "premium economy" experience in the US. Prices for food and drinks in flight are more reasonable than they would be in the airport. In my experience, the only really unpleasant things about flying Spirit are:
1. Long lines to check bags (solution: don't check a bag, just pay the $5 extra to carry it on)
2. Other passengers that disregard plane etiquette (listening to music without headphones, etc.) or just complain a lot.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/allegiant-air-the-budget-airlin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiant_Air#Fleet
I think the company's startup plan was to use cheap/old fuel-guzzling aircraft to get the business off the ground: it's cheaper to pay for fuel than interest payments on new jets. Now that they've built a stable-enough business they've transitioned to newer planes. Wikipedia says the company's first brand-new jet was purchased in 2017, which was 20 years after the company was founded.
Many of the issues Allegiant was cited for were also not only due to the plane being old, but also because Allegiant's maintenance crews (which apparently are very understaffed and underequipped) totally missed the issue and erroneously cleared the plane to fly.
Allegiant's issues may have been partly due to old planes, but as evidenced by Delta/American, if Allegiant had a decent maintenance operation the old planes would not have been a problem. The fact that they still had issues does not speak well of their overall safety program, which is more than just the types of planes they fly, and also affects their current fleet.
In 2010, Al Jazeera presented an investigative report about Boeing subcontractor Ducommun's substandard manufacturing practices for critical support structural ribs and door frames that Boeing installed on 737 NG (-600/-700/-800/-900) airframes and management subsequently covered up an internal safety investigation. As a direct consequence of these choices, several 737 NG's have broken up on hard landing and runway overruns, killing passengers, whereas in the past, fuselages survived intact under similar conditions.
Also, the 787 is a disaster waiting to happen.. anyone who steps foot on this clusterF deserves what they get.
Compare pilots to drivers or cars to planes.
I would guess that somewhere north of 90% of crashes are human error mainly or completely.
But if you die, it doesn't matter whether it's human error or not, so it might be better to compare overall risk from all causes?
Driving encompasses both mechanical and human risks. Here we are talking about just the mechanical, so I don't think the comparison is particularly fair.
On the ground, it's the opposite. There's very little process around driving your car, but there's a lot of infrastructure. How roads and intersections are built, what signage is used and where, how and how much different modes are protected and isolated from each other, all have an enormous impact on road safety.
This is one of the key tenets of "Vision Zero", that blaming driver error is not an acceptable answer for why people die on the road. People make mistakes all the time, including while driving, and we have a moral responsibility to design systems and infrastructure that eliminate or minimize human death and suffering, even in the face of human error.
Comparing the two is drawing a false equivalence. Yes, flying and driving are both modes of transportation, but they're radically different in terms of methodology.
Once again, my issue is that you appear to have falsely compared flight safety to car safety despite the fact that the two operate in very different ways.
The reason I'm talking about car safety is that driving or riding in a car is probably the most risky thing that most people do all the time. And yet, we accept the risk. So this seems like a good baseline for what should be considered an acceptable risk.
So I can understand not wanting to encourage airlines you don't like. I also understand wanting to encourage airlines to be safer, because improving safety is a good thing to do.
But that's different from not flying in a certain kind of airplane because you think you might die, while meanwhile taking other risks that are much worse. That's just inconsistent. We're all inconsistent sometimes, but it seems weird to object so strongly to someone pointing it out.
It's like comparing the mortality rate of heart surgery to that of psychotherapy because they're both performed by doctors.
If I died from talking to a therapist then, yes, I would see that as a major problem. The mortality rate of brain surgery wouldn't factor in to my decision making in this regard, because it's unrelated.
If I died on a Boeing aircraft with an inherently dangerous design flaw that makes it relatively more dangerous than other planes then, yes, I would see that as a problem.
The sad fact that driving is more dangerous does not mitigate that... because it's unrelated.
I think you're arguing that the relationship between activities doesn't matter, but when it comes to expectations, I'd argue it's the only thing that matters.
They are completely different playing fields. In a plane your life is in the hands of a pilot or two and a computer. On the road, the risk is amplified by every other driver.
Also, skies aren't nearly as full of traffic as roads.
There is no 'acceptable baseline' that reaches across fields that isn't zero. I think this is the main point here. I doubt anyone today would consider the number of deaths we experience on the road to be an acceptable risk, either.
For cars.
I'm very glad the FAA and airlines don't think the way you do about risk. They have their own standards. And it's perfectly consistent.
I sometime commute by skateboard, but I am NOT ok with my airlines or car companies using this choice as some sort of "acceptable risk baseline" for me.
The objection is obvious and very easy to understand; it tries to compare apples with oranges, and here you are trying to argue that they are both fruit.
There are lots of statistics comparing deaths from different causes. Why not use them to make informed choices about risk?
No it's a reference to comparisons that don't make sense.
You can compare as many apples you'd like with oranges, just as you can compare air travel with roadway traffic, but you'd be making absurd and meaningless comparisons.
All I'm getting out of this is that you don't like it.