Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January
wsj.com
wsj.com
Airlines operate on razor-thin margins (~1 to 2%), and several users of the Max 8 have had significant portions of their fleet out of service as a result.
Westjet [1], for example runs 124 planes currently. 13 of which are the Max 8. Over 10% of their fleet. Southwest Airlines [2], for example, runs 748 planes, 34 of which are Max 8s (with an additional 246 ordered), ~4.5% of the fleet.
The lawsuits that are surely incoming are going to pile-drive this company into the ground.
edit: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WestJet#Current_fleet edit 2: [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_fleet#Curre...
Legally, everyone is indemnified up the wazoo.
Strategically, airlines are in a worse position if Boeing goes under. Not only do they lose the planes on order. They also lose their service and replacement-parts provider. The survivors would, in the medium-term, face an Airbus monopoly and, in the long-term, a Chinese-European duopoly.
As emotionally-satisfying as it may be to see Boeing go under for its arrogance, it's neither helpful nor likely. (A well-managed break-up, on the other hand...)
It is an interesting situation for airlines.
Boeing is kind of a leaky abstraction layer on flying. End users deal with the airlines, not so much Boeing directly.
For example, if Amazon ships your package and it comes 4 days late because FedEx screwed up, you're going to likely think negatively of Amazon not FedEx. Because from your POV it's "Amazon said it will be here today but it's not".
Likewise if a major US airline's plane went down due to Boeing's fault it would probably ruin the entire airline. It gets even more weird when you think about airlines making questionable decisions to push Boeing into making poor decisions or knowingly operate when captains of those airlines are aware of the faults but the airline still flies them anyways and this is where it leaks.
I don't think that's true. Everyone I know seems to have a favorite of {UPS,FedEx} and thinks the other one is garbage. And people pretty universally hate the USPS. Amazon is trying to get into the delivery business, but people still recognize that there's usually a third-party shipping company that actually puts the box at their door.
Thanks free market economics!
Per unit. Lifetime revenues could likely be higher given the heft of Airbus’ marketing machine.
Agree, however, that it compounds Boeing’s image as a distracted company.
See also: Bombardier.
We are way way far from that and if it does come close I would bet on bailouts and government intervention Boeing isn’t going to go under
Boeing "going under" just means that shareholders will get wiped out, not that they cease operations.
In this case, it would be Boeing going bankrupt, and authorities stepping in to buy the assets to keep operations running if no other entity stepped in to do that. Then selling on the reformed company on the open market afterwards.
Or Bombardier leads a Canadian aerospace resurgence.
Do we have enough tax dollars to finance such an event </s>
"We're from the Government and we're here to help," indeed.
There are a lot of complaints about China's "State Owned Enterprises" taking advantage of their ties to the CCP and government.
Boeing/Lockheed/Raytheon etc are the same but with the pretense that they are public companies with shareholders that have a say in how the company is run.
Unlikely. The Chinese is currently competing with Embraer (E-Jet E2) and Bombardier (C-series/A22x) with the Comac C919 which has problems with production. Since its first flight in 2017, there has only been 5 built.
Tech transfers has also slowed to trickle since the HSR fiasco with foreign rail technology absorbed and then re-exported. Nobody trusts the Chinese to play fair.
What's more likely if Boeing run into difficulties from the MAX damages is that it will restructure under Chapter 11 and re-emerge with the existing shareholders wiped out. This may involve a breakup, with the defence business separating from the commercial airliner business, but that's also unlikely due to how aerospace companies are run these days.
AKA Boeing and Airbus.
Also also, even if China does pull off the airframe, they'll still rely on Western jets to power it. China's first modern turbofan, the CJ-1000A, is not scheduled to go into service until 2030 (!) and even that is geared only for the C919: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACAE_CJ-1000A
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure China will get there sooner or later, as they've already demonstrated with high-speed trains and many other things. But timeframes for going from concept to a serious competitor in this business are measured in decades.
Also let’s be clear if the C919 actually works out they will be a serious competitor. The market for wide body aircraft is the one that captures all the imagination and attention but the narrow body sales are the bread and butter. They absolutely do not need to succeed in this market right away to put a big dent in the duopoly.
That's a pretty large if. Head west a bit to Russia and see how they're doing in the international market. The Sukhoi SuperJet is, by most accounts, a great plane. Sukhoi managed to sell to the Mexicans (Interjet) and Irish (CityJet) and both got rid of them quickly. Being a threat to Boeing/Embraer and Airbus/Bombardier goes well beyond the complex task of building an airliner.
Sukhoi and Comac are still hugely dependent on the west to build these planes. Avionics and engines especially. The metallurgy required to build a modern turbofan engine is incredibly exotic — outside of France, England, and the US it's simply not there. The Superjet didn't fare well -- the Russians collaborated with Safran and the result was a unreliable engine that was hard to find replacement parts for. The Russians are also currently peddling the PD-14 that competes with the 20+ year old CFM56. Comac skipped that step and went straight to GE.
Comac abandoned carbon fiber for the wings in favor of aluminum. While the C919 wings are built in China, I believe they're a European design (Comac's previous stillborn attempt at an airliner used Ukraine's Antonov for the wings).
They absolutely do not need to succeed in this market right away to put a big dent in the duopoly.
Sure they do. Network effects are huge with airliners. If your Embraer breaks down away from your maintenance base chances are you can buy / borrow parts from another airline. If you're the only one around flying, you're entirely reliant on the manufacturer — and Comac doesn't have any sort of international support network.
Bombardier and Embraer both developed competitors to the 737 on the small side, both nearly went bankrupt, and both were eventually acquired. Unfortunately when you're a widget salesman like McNerney everything looks like a damn commodity. While McNerney's actions set Boeing back quite a bit, Comac is a far smaller threat than he thought. If Boeing can deliver on a MAX replacement it's doubtful that Comac will move the needle much in the next 10-15 years.
Nitpick: in Bombardier's case at least, these were separate events. The acquisition wasn't to deal with bankruptcy (they got a Canadian government bailout for that), but rather to gain access to Airbus's US manufacturing facilities to avoid import tariffs on US deliveries, which became necessary following a Boeing anti-dumping complaint that would have made the C-Series prohibitively expensive to US carriers.
My recollection is that Bombardier made (rejected) overtures in Boeing's direction before the trade spat. In either case BBD has gotten out of the commercial aircraft business completely, in large part due to the cost of developing the C-series.
Let’s also remember there’s a government entirely willing to subsidize the growth of a native product. Russia already has an 80 year history of taking wildly diverse and frankly oddball aircraft designs and turning them into things that actually fly. Anyone who thinks that them partnering with a Chinese company can’t build a widebody isn’t paying attention. Who knows if it’ll be any good, it may not be competitive. But will they be able to make something that flies?
I’d happily bet on it.
Well that's changing the goalposts just a bit. It's likely that the Chinese can churn out a widebody, but Comac couldn't even pull off a warmed over DC-9. They've got less experience than any of the Russian companies and it's pretty much a given at this point that they won't be successful.
Boeing and Airbus don’t build their own engines. I don’t expect COMAC to try that in their first rodeo.
The metallurgy required to build a modern turbofan engine is incredibly exotic — outside of France, England, and the US it's simply not there.
If you’re betting on metallurgy to be the barrier to keep western technological advantage alive I think you’re in for a surprise.
Comac abandoned carbon fiber for the wings in favor of aluminum.
So they have gone back to using the material used to build every other narrow body plane on the market in this size category. I admit, a new design should use carbon fiber, but given that no one else is yet...
Sure they do. Network effects are huge with airliners. If your Embraer breaks down away from your maintenance base chances are you can buy / borrow parts from another airline. If you're the only one around flying, you're entirely reliant on the manufacturer — and Comac doesn't have any sort of international support network.
First off, airlines have purchased a ton of E175 family aircraft.
Second off, while a large international distribution is important, you don’t need to compete in the wide body market to get it.
Third off, COMAC can focus on the Chinese market to start and take it region at a time slowly expanding across Asia. From there South Asia and SEA is easy and both are big markets, Russia would welcome it with open arms and then they can take a whack at the middle eastern market and also be competitive anywhere Airbus and Boeing aren’t really playing that hard anyway. (Africa, etc.) All this well before getting around to Europe or North America.
If Boeing can deliver on a MAX replacement it's doubtful that Comac will move the needle much in the next 10-15 years.
Let’s see Boeing deliver the MAX again first.
I think it would be easy to win a bet that COMAC delivers C919 to commercial airline customers before Boeing delivers a new narrow body design to replace the 737 family.
It's worked out well for the past 70 or so years. Industrial espionage can only go so far, that's more or less why the Russians dominate the rocket market.
So they have gone back to using the material used to build every other narrow body plane on the market in this size category. I admit, a new design should use carbon fiber, but given that no one else is yet...
The MC21 and C-series use carbon fiber wings and the MC21 also uses a CF wing box. Comac is targeting planes from 20-30 years ago. Even if it were perfectly reliable, it's nowhere near competitive with what's on the market now. If that extra few percent of fuel burn weren't important there'd be no market for the NEO or MAX.
First off, airlines have purchased a ton of E175 family aircraft.
That's the entire point. Without that scale support becomes that much more difficult and expensive.
Third off, COMAC can focus on the Chinese market to start and take it region at a time slowly expanding across Asia.
Yeah they've tried. The ARJ went over like a lead balloon. The domestic airlines haven't warmed up to Comac, and it's highly unlikely the C919 will move the needle much.
From there South Asia and SEA is easy and both are big markets
With a strong anti-Chinese sentiment (Malaysia, Vietnam). Perhaps more importantly SEA sees a lot of short-range widebody service which the C919 doesn't help with.
Russia would welcome it with open arms
Russia would welcome a direct competitor to its homegrown offerings? That seems unlikely for the C919 and unlikely even if we're talking about a hypothetical plane built in a Sino-Russian joint venture. Although why would they partner? Russian avionics aren't going to be accepted internationally, Russian engines are woefully inefficient. Comac struggled with the Ukranian wings on the ARJ. Maybe a carbon fuselage, but are the Russians anywhere near being able to do that?
and then they can take a whack at the middle eastern market
The shrinking middle east market? Emirates/flyDubai (who's got both Airbus and Boeing wrapped around their fingers is scaling back their growth (to put it delicately).
and also be competitive anywhere Airbus and Boeing aren’t really playing that hard anyway. (Africa, etc.)
How welcoming will Africa be as they slowly come to terms with how screwed they are by the Belt & Road initiative? Sure, maybe CCP applies pressure to make sales. That's not going to translate to any sort of European or American success though.
Let’s see Boeing deliver the MAX again first.
I suspect that's not going to happen.
I think it would be easy to win a bet that COMAC delivers C919 to commercial airline customers before Boeing delivers a new narrow body design to replace the 737 family.
Boeing began working on a 737 replacement before the MAX program was begun, meanwhile Comac pushed the EIS target for the C919 back to 2022. As Aviation Week pointed out last year the C919 needs about 33 hours per month of flight testing for a 2021 EIS, in practice they're seeing about 5 hours per month. So, maybe.
They're all (C-Series/A220, C919, 737, A320) roughly the same size, but the C919 is antiquated and struggles to compete with the NG and CEO. Meanwhile the C-Series sets the benchmark. Even so, the C-Series was extraordinarily difficult to sell until Airbus stepped in. Comac, with dramatically less experience than Bombardier, will have an even more difficult time trying to unload the C919 (outside of China).
The C919 is specced out at 168 people in a one class layout with an overall length of 38.9 meters, the CS300 seats 160 with an overall length of 38.7 meteres. That puts both between the 737-700 and 737-800 (or A319 and A320) in capacity. Range-wise the CS300 and CEO do well over 6,000 km. The C919? Even with current generation turbofans it can only do 4,000-5,500 km. The NG slots in between (but closer to the C919).
The C919 is at least a generation behind the C-Series and NEO and is not a threat to either Boeing or Airbus. Hell, Comac doesn't even have a western cockpit for the C919 where Bombardier was toying with a stretch of the C-Series.
The bigger issues I expect for the C919 will be fuel-efficiency, and trust that it is a safe plane. The fact that they're building it from scratch when the main competitors are using refreshed old designs of the 737 and A320 might help it achieve competitive fuel-efficiency, but it remains to be seen. Safety trust will be hard to make up, but a possible pathway would be to have Chinese airliners and cargo companies use it first to establish a track record free of major accidents before getting sales to international airliners.
I wasn't aware that China had built much of a reputation for international customer support.
The fact that they're building it from scratch when the main competitors are using refreshed old designs of the 737 and A320 might help it achieve competitive fuel-efficiency, but it remains to be seen
There's not much to see. The C-series is the one to beat and so far the assuredly optimistic, published specs (per Wikipedia) for the C919 don't come close to the CS300.
If you think of Airbus as a multi-national consortium (as it rightly is: French, British, etc.) then a Chinese/Russian hook-up is not totally daft. You could make the same argument about "a great recipe to delay everything even further" about Airbus versus Boeing and yet Airbus appears to be doing okay.
Don't we think competition is good? What happened to cheering on free markets? Why exactly do we want a Western duopoly to continue to exist in perpetuity? If Western countries believed their own rhetoric they'd be helping Russia and China to compete on the world stage – it would be a win for the entire globe.
You make it sound like 2030 is a lifetime away. It's only 10 years. It's been less than a century since the last huge global conflict and it looks like China and Russia will be toe-to-toe with the West (ignoring that Russia is already largely Western) in commercial aviation, space-flight, nuclear power, possibly semiconductor production, you name it.
The West does not have some God-given or divine-right to remain on top of the heap – China (and India) are going to eventually catch up, it's just a matter of time, the only thing up for debate in my mind is whether it's sooner rather than later, and I believe in China's case it's going to be upon us sooner than we expect.
Here's a recent doc about the most technologically advanced aircraft they've manufactured, the A350: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yutzg2NLwcU “Giant Aircraft: Manufacturing an Airbus A350 | Mega Manufacturing | Free Documentary”
And FWIW, if you read up on Airbus's history, you'll see that their unusual structure and resulting internal politics have caused a lot of pain over the years (eg. the A380 superjumbo program). Ironically enough, Boeing got a taste of this too when they decided to outsource all the things when building the 787, which consequently went way over budget.
No? Not really? Obviously competitions is good when it drives innovation, which is beneficial for domestic industry as a whole. Competition is not good for competition's sake. It's not good competition when Western players fall behind. This isn't some kind of hypocritical failing of free-market doctrines. You either don't understand what it intended to accomplish, or are deliberately misrepresenting it. I suspect the latter.
> Why exactly do we want a Western duopoly to continue to exist in perpetuity?
... Why wouldn't we want our own players to dominate the industry? I don't think any kind of monopoly/duopoly is a good thing, but I don't really think that's your point. Your use of the word 'Western' betrays your intent here.
> If Western countries believed their own rhetoric they'd be helping Russia and China to compete on the world stage – it would be a win for the entire globe.
Um... no? China's exports becoming more competitive would not be a win for the entire globe, it would be quite the opposite.
> The West does not have some God-given or divine-right to remain on top of the heap...
Of course not, God didn't put us on top of the heap either.
> China (and India) are going to eventually catch up, it's just a matter of time, the only thing up for debate in my mind is whether it's sooner rather than later, and I believe in China's case it's going to be upon us sooner than we expect.
I wouldn't hold your breath.
Not Likely is the key word here. They are large and have a strategic value to the US and hence Too Big To Fail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail
I'd bet the US Government steps in to re-structure and backstop as required to save the company. There are numerous ways we've discovered to do so post 2008.
All of them bad. Companies should fail and keeping bad companies alive via artificial means is bad. You get zombie companies and eventually a zombie economy (see Japan).
(And "Too big to fail" is a phrase meant to identify a problematic ideology, not a bailout excuse).
Boeing failing doesn't necessarily mean that the USA loses their technology and production facilities. It does mean some substantial losses to investors in the company, but that should be part of the risk of investment.
Maybe too strategically important to fail is more apt.
Really? Are you sure boeing is, given the cost-savings that not being insured would make (I mean the mgmt is clearly penny-pinchingly stupid enough).
But even if boeing is insured, you can bet your butt the insurers will have an explicit or implicit clause that voids the insurance on 'reasonable grounds', and they will argue (correctly) that knowingly producing flawed products (when it became evident at least) matches that getout perfectly.
Even if they lose the insurers will basically move into a courtroom, sleeping bags and all, to tie things up forever. It's cheaper than paying out.
My opinion anyway.
737 MAX is impacted but there's still 737 NG which doesn't have these issues
And then there's 747, 767, 777, 787 which are still under production
This is just the commercial plane side of the business, there's the huge defence side as well
Finally, Boeing has been playing this game a long time, very well connected in gov and congress, and its business impact many states and employees. Boeing is basically too big (and too well connected) to fail; even in the worst possible case, they'll probably get a bailout.
I'm sure the lawsuits are coming, but we're talking about Boeing here. "pile drive them into the ground" might be a bit of an overstatement. Worst-case scenario, they have to be bailed out by the government.
Boeing, as well as many other firms, are just too big to fail suddenly.
Also known as "a systemic risk".
This is the downside of allowing the concentration of economic power in too few hands. It's like other large scale systems. Yes there's a lot of redundancy; but that redundancy serves a purpose.
Are we sure it's a pillar? Perhaps if you take all of the suppliers and partners it represents, sure. But by itself, I don't think it really look all that impressive.
After The War, the US government was careful to keep domestic manufacturing 'healthy' which turned into 'fat and happy' which has now turned into I-don't-know-what, but I wonder if subsidies-as-defense-policy should be putting more energy into other industries.
We'll be fine.
Also, who cares about the Dow plunging if it's for such a clear and explicable reason - it's usually used by politicians to gauge mysterious impacts on the economy, when you know the cog that broke to cause the numbers to swivel it's a pretty useless metric - you already know the thing.
It's sort of like not wanting to go into maintenance mode to deploy a big infrastructure patch because being forced into maintenance mode is bad - yea, it is, and if you can avoid taking servers offline go ahead and do that - but if you can't then just eat the outage as it's probably better to upgrade things than to refuse to upgrade due to the fact that it will expose the fact that you had to upgrade.
The enormous fraction of people who have their retirement savings tied up in the stock market, that's who.
Boeing is one of the most heavily subsidized companies in the world -- right alongside Airbus. They are a strategic asset to the United States far beyond their market value. The market knows this, hence why their stock is not being hammered.
I don't want to see it wind down as a going concern, but I wouldn't mind a bankruptcy and seeing the executives and board of directors fired with their compensation clawed back.
The already perilous union jobs, with good benefits etc, in Seattle would be lost and there would be a race to the bottom by other states to claim the production facilities.
Instead of a race to the top where people can just say five infinity dollars?
What is the logic for this? why is this the case?
“They are a strategic asset to the United States far beyond their market value.”
”the airlines know that Boeing will never go under because the US government would (justifiably) never let that happen for strategic reasons“
Imagine the US military going to another country hat-in-hand to buy aircraft.
That's why.
You mean like with the Harrier or Eurocopter? Or more like the KC-30 where Boeing protested until Airbus dropped out?
Boeing also ensures American interests dominate the skies around the world. There just aren't that many manufacturers of aircraft, and Boeing spreads American influence / values across the globe as an essential part of infrastructure. Airbus does the same for the EU.
Even if Boeing wasn't fine, it would be fine, because the government would just bail them out.
Investors know this and ignore the drama.
Good thing for the proponents of the supposed 'wisdom of the market'. Nice of US to help keep that 'wisdom' alive.
But if you look at their 50 year chart, it had recent run up of 3-4x in just past 4-5 years.
It's quite possible there's some serious downside, but only through series of bad news like this.
"Our 2019 third quarter financial results reflect net earnings of $119.4 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.02, representing our second most profitable third quarter and our overall third best quarterly performance in our 23-year history."
Also according to their own report their fleet numbers 180 airplanes.
FInally:
"We continue to adjust our flight schedule through the end of 2019 as a result of the ongoing closure of Canadian airspace forthe Boeing MAX series aircraft impacting our fleet. Our contingency planning and proactive schedule adjustments enable us to reduce last minute flight cancellations and unexpected travel disruptions, however, certain routes have been temporarily suspended as a result of aircraft inventory shortages."
Wanna bet they suspended certain routes that were not very profitable like interior, non-hub routes?
https://www.westjet.com/assets/wj-web/documents/en/investorM...
Boeing stock is down about 3% today which lines up with the numbers above. Boeing is not going anywhere. Maybe shave another 10% for them to remake the MAX (new 7x7) and fix their image problem and by mid decade no one will remember how to spell MCAS
First you made a plane that doesn't require the massive gantry cranes to construct. Smaller portable equipment does a lot of the work. You can build new, cheaper facilities. Then you move things more or less to the opposite corner of the country, but closer to the new headquarters.
Yeah, not suspicious at all.
The implication about the headquarters is factories closer to the HQ can be easily controlled and execs can fly down and sort out problems. Chicago to Charlotte is < 2 hour flight, Chicago to Seattle is 5ish hours. Also, moving manufacturing out and away from Seattle means the existing unions have a harder time recruiting or setting up sister unions.
All of this can be seen within the wider context of the "financialization" of Boeing, with the company moving more towards a business focus and less of an engineering led company.
Apologies for the long post, lots going on here.
Unions produced decades of incredibly reliable plans, so it seems like a huge leap to assume that they're the cause.
Difficult to overstate the enormity of this to the industry.
The AI throughout the thread survives for long enough to see Humanity evacuate the Earth given Sol's transformation to swallow the inner planets.
Copies of the Original AI had been spread across intersolar Human civilization, but the original technically speaking had to remain on Earth. That chapter was titled something along the lines of "Will the last human please turn off the sun" or similar [it's been at least 5 years for me on the reading].
"whatever it takes they will fix it".
I'm personally glad this model is getting shelved. You'd just have a bad taste flying in one of those regardless of tweaked the design is or how good the software is going to be.
I'm also glad this is happening because it's a win for humanity and a loss for bureaucracy.
I have full confidence that the next model will be rock solid and much better overall.
An airplane is a tremendously complex machine, and building them is a well honed process with lots of checks and balances built in which protect the investment the company is making in building such a complex device.
So no doubt there are many many root cause analysis meetings which are going on to root out the failures in the process that let the plane get to this point.
But historically, the company has made modifications to the 737 airframe to provide new models and those changes have gone well. Certainly in the sense that they produced a viable airplane that was safe to fly.
I would speculate that due to the history of the 737 airframe, and the track record of creating new variants that are safe, and the challenge of stopping the manufacturing line for such a plane which literally has thousands of suppliers making parts on a schedule that has years of deliveries in it, it took this long to get through the various options that would not require stopping the production of the plane. Stopping production is literally the second worse scenario[1] for Boeing.
[1] The worst is scrapping all existing planes.
There's a point where its no longer due diligence, but decision paralysis. I don't know if were anywhere near that point with the 737 MAX, but at some point we will be, and we shouldn't ever get there.
The problem is that this will hurt tons of small businesses and suppliers more than it will hurt Boeing. It will hurt the machinists who assemble the aircraft, the network of suppliers in the Seattle area. But for the suits in Chicago it will be a metrics miss and maybe less of a bonus.
If Boeing were just one in a field of aircraft manufacturers, this wouldn't be half as catastrophic, since that whole supply chain would have everyone else to supply.
But that isn't the case anymore, and it is about time overconsolidation bit something in the arse.
This smacks of some incompetence on behalf of the FAA, since if they had a clear idea of what the requirements were for re-certification, they would also have a clear idea of how long it should take, and the last 6 months have been delays and "we will be done when were done".
I'm also not too keen on the machisimo of the FAA Administrator insisting on testing the aircraft himself.
Everyone here on HN wants this to be drawn out to punish Boeing, but its really punishing everyone, including the wallets of people buying airline tickets. Ticket prices have been high with many airlines because of their grounded fleet.
Up to the second accident FAA left much of the certification process up to Boeing(!) alone. No wonder that they discovered now that they need more time:
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2019/12/11/faa-...
They also demonstrated to the whole world that they aren't serious about safety after the rest of the world grounded the planes but they still just repeated whatever Boeing told them.
The current weakness of FAA is of Boeing's making:
https://www.economist.com/business/2019/03/23/regulatory-cap...
"Since 2001 [Boeing] has lobbied vigorously to perform more of its own safety tests. In 2005 the FAA began to allow Boeing to do more self-certification. “It’s like putting children in charge of the sweet shop,” says a former Boeing adviser. An investigation by the transportation department in 2012 found that the FAA had not done enough to “hold Boeing accountable”. It quoted FAA employees who had reported retaliation for speaking up about problems with Boeing’s previous designs."
For the 737/A320-size plane, it's now easy to tell:
- If the plane has a nice, spacious interior, it's an Airbus. The flight will be quiet.
- If the plane is crampt, it's a Boeing, and it will be a bit noisier.
I still don't really think about it when booking the flight. Schedule and price are more important.
To be honest I do: I often fly MIL-PMO and when possible I book Alitalia and easyJet flights, or Air Italy since they've been leasing two A319s from Bulgaria Air to replace their MAX 8s, rather than Ryanair specifically because their fleet is composed of Airbus aircrafts instead of Boeing (and also because Ryanair won't stop selling you stuff during the whole flight, worsening the noise situation)
I'm in MXP right now to catch a Ryanair flight and I just hope my ANC headphones won't abandon me mid-flight.
As other commenters have mentioned, the order backlog is still long, so as long as you can easily store the planes, it makes sense to keep building them.
It's really that while production operates without deliveries, it's a machine that turns cash into airplanes. Sooner or later, even Boeing is going to run a little low on cash.
They have taken just-in-time delivery to an extreme to make that money->airplane pump as efficient as possible.
There are billions of dollars of raw materials in various states of becoming airplanes across the Boeing sites. It’s impressive they were able to run as long as they did without a delivery.
I assume it is not just one or two months until it can fly again otherwise they wouldn't stop production. But if it is long time then life and people will go on. They will find other engagements and other things to do, they have to. Could and will they be able to throw away that other engagement they started to resume this operation? I bet not easily, not all. Airlines will need something to fly, they might look for other alternatives. Lots and lots of difficulties and loss, lots and lots of money and time to restart this. I believe.
And of course, if they fail to get the MAX flying again, it’ll be ruinously expensive. Massive write-offs, lost revenue, endless lawsuits. Probably not enough to end them outright, but it’ll be some tough times.
I know plenty of airline customers who intend to never fly a segment that utilizes one.
As soon as this is out of the news cycle, everyone will forget.
That's wrong by an order of magnitude. 737 series had a total of 478 incidents, 213 of which is resulted in hull loss [1].
[1] https://aviation-safety.net/database/types/Boeing-737-series...
I fully expect websites to pop up that will take a flight number as input and tell people if there is a MAX plane involved.
They won’t shake this one off easily.
I highly doubt the average consumer will think twice about flying on a Boeing 737-8200, presuming they can avoid more scandals.
Nevertheless, while the flying public and Boeing may get past the MCAS issue, the next accident may be just around the corner.
The 737 Max is likely dead, forever, for passenger traffic.
There's just too much for every stakeholder, but Boeing, to lose.
Most likely Boeing will need state help (like the auto company bailout) while it transitions to some new post-737-Max reality.
The 737 Max rise and fall will likely become a popular business school case study.
(I could be wrong, but I just don't see this plane ever being palatable for much of the flying public. The fear of flying is just to visceral, to simply act like none of this ever happened.)
they could attempt rebranding the max and all the college aged people looking for deals might pile onto them indiscriminately
but I think a lot of people will notice. like if third party apps and website said Model B (Formerly 737 Max), then there is still high chance people will notice and demand something else.
I have no problem at all with flying and do it regularly (as recently as yesterday, on a 737-800 no less) but I wouldn't set foot on a MAX, even if I was assured that the fault was fixed.
Before the MAX 8 was grounded, it had well over 2,000,000 hours of flight time on 387 aircraft performing 8,600 flights/week for 56 airlines [1]. Two out of 800,000+ flights crashed due to MCAS taking input from a broken AoA sensor, related to the poor maintenance of the airlines, and poor training by the airline and possibly pilot error.
Imagine the level of detail of scrutiny the MAX 8 is currently undergoing. I'll wager it'll have been the most scrutinized aircraft to have ever flown once it's re-certified, if not the safest. Plus, everyone knows about MCAS now so a crash due to it misbehaving in the case of a _double_ AoA vane failure is incredibly unlikely now.
So I think the fear is still illogical.
[0] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2013/02/14/danger-o...
calling it time travel
Too soon
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/boeing-will-suspend-737-max-...
Boeing's official statement:
https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2019-12-16-Boeing-Statement-Reg...
The relevant part:
"Safely returning the 737 MAX to service is our top priority. We know that the process of approving the 737 MAX's return to service, and of determining appropriate training requirements, must be extraordinarily thorough and robust" ...
"Throughout the grounding of the 737 MAX, Boeing has continued to build new airplanes and there are now approximately 400 airplanes in storage."
"As a result of this ongoing evaluation, we have decided to ... temporarily suspend production on the 737 program beginning next month.
We believe this decision is least disruptive to maintaining long-term production system and supply chain health."
Note: temporarily. It's still just a pause button.
Either that or they go all in on a new medium-range aircraft, the market is already disrupted in Airbus' favour.
The first approach is that taken by the Boeing 717. Do a T tail with rear engines. Bombardier, Gulfstream, and Embraer commonly do this.
The second approach is that taken by the Boeing C-17. Mount the wings high. Although usually done for turboprops and military cargo, passenger jets have been done in this configuration. The British Aerospace 146 is an example.
There are many more unusual options as well.
In this case, the jobs are much higher value per person, and the supply chain much more dramatic -- big factories and machinery idled. But the Samsung battery disaster probably affected 10s of thousands of workers, and caused Samsung a reported $15B (?) writedown of value.
But then thinking again, Boeing has experience with bad batteries too... Maybe the two companies should share PR disaster recovery playbooks.
The real question is will Boeing re-design it as doing so will be an admission of guilt.
production is a huge machine of suppliers delivering parts on demand - e.g. the chairs arrive exactly on the day that the chairs need to be mounted inside, otherwise is much more expensive to store, shelf, un-shelf, etc... expand thousands of times... and each supplier has its own suppliers, etc
also the tooling and all additional bits need to be correctly conserved, e.g. you can't leave sensitive measuring and calibration equipment out unused
this huge mechanism has a huge inertia. having it stopped in 2 weeks is amazing - but probably the supply chain was already working on how to stop the machinery in a way that's possible to start it again in some months
They didn't before, you say? It appears that they did not. But they have shown signs of waking up lately. It seems at least somewhat reasonable to hope that they are no longer just a rubber stamp.
But I don't think it will work, because it takes time to engineer such a modification, and more time to get FAA approval.
The 8200 is a customized MAX variant for a single airline’s requirements, Ryanair.
Figure out how their processes become vulnerable to corruption and attempt to change them.
The problem is of course the FAA doesn't want to hurt Boeing or the industry over this. But that strongly conflicts with their job.
The hope at this point seems to be to drag it out until people forget.
That's going a bit too far. Banning MCAS and requiring pilots to undergo MAX-specific training and certification seems more reasonable (and less wasteful) response to the issues.
I would support criminal charges against the chief decision-makers that led Boeing into this mess, going all the way up to the top. Examples need to be made to reset the priorities of corporate decision-makers.
Airlines will have serious reason to consider other manufacturers if they can’t just throw pilots behind the stick with minimal training.
Hopefully the regulators will seriously investigate if it is safe to assume that the retraining is not needed even with modified MCAS.
Just claiming that pilots will easier deactivate MCAS, or that, after the "fix", MCAS will deactivate itself if there is some problem should not be enough: without MCAS running the plane just doesn't behave as the one for which the pilots were trained.
That's what Boeing wanted, but that doesn't mean they should get it.
Anyway, I think "doomed" is overstating it. I would assume whatever training an existing 737 pilot would need to fly and MCAS-less MAX would be far less that what they would need to fly an Airbus.
Everyone else has stated that the reason for MCAS is so that MAX could be certified as a previous generation of 737 and therefore not require training for an established 737 pilot to fly.
If they want to remove MCAS then they need to enlarge the undercarriage to give the aircraft more ground clearance, so that the engines can be placed further back. Such a major change to the aircraft's design would mean the 737 MAX could not share a type rating with the other 737s or at least would require significant differences training (not an iPad lesson)
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the...
Yes, you are correct in that part of the reason for it was to mimic the control forces of older 737's for avoiding the burden of simulator training.
However, you have to look at why it was a manufacturer would take the risk to make such a boneheaded implementation in the first place. Nothing goes into a mass-produced highly complex system without being very carefully thought through. It wasn't some "accident". It was a calculated act of value engineering. On the one hand, someone had wind tunnel results that said there would be a divergence from the old 737 force curves. On the other, you had a pile of solutions capable of fixing the problem, each with varying degrees of cooperation with regulators, time taken, and a price tag attached.
The FAA (if provided with the benefit of a doubt that they aren't covering their asses which I'm not necessarily willing to give given reports from the IG) has signalled that if they'd known what MCAS was, they'd have demanded more intense scrutiny and testing.
There was whistleblower testimony alleged in the 60 Minutes expose on the MAX, that Boeing intentionally engineered the system in such a way as to minimize outside scrutiny of the system (I.e. regulator attention) in order to get development done, and planes out the door.
What this signals is that there was pressure from management to get things done, which meant minimizing external exposure and exploiting every trick they knew to get a rubber stamp out of the regulator.
Now in terms of not being certifiable, I offer a brief bit of Boeing history. The D.P. Davies interview w.r.t the the certification of the 727 by the U.K. CAA. As a well-known test pilot, Davies goes into great detail to describe how the U.K. regulator was very particular about control forces on approach to stall for that aircraft; to the point that the 727 only got conditional airworthyness certification for civil transport via the addition of a stick pusher; a device intended to make it very clear the pilot was approaching a stall.
https://www.aerosociety.com/news/audio-the-d-p-davies-interv...
Some people at Boeing knew, or were in a position to know the behavior they were dealing with was of a type previously uncertifiable. Someone knew that if they could sneak the plane past the FAA, that reciprocity would shield the plane from further scrutiny unless something catastrophic happened.
I don't know who it was, nor do I know whether the paper trail will be enough to bear it out. American management nowadays tends to go out of their way to minimize paper trail and maximize "fill-in-the-blank" style communication to facilitate plausible deniability.
I would suggest at this point, the ...creative documentation... that Boeing's been doing to keep the "737" a "737" has reached the end of the line.
We can fix these things.
We should not be approaching engineering problems with emotional reactions to crashes. The airline industry is so incredibly safe because each crash is analyzed, the problems identified and solved. If two crashes mean we should scrap it, does that mean we just stop flying because every major aircraft type has had serious incidents.
No, we fix the problems and keep flying. You don't get better at something by giving up the first time you make a mistake.
From what I've read the engines that were the whole point of the plan just didn't work physics wise because they were too big for the 737 frame that their required placement moved the center of gravity to a bad spot.
Instead of scraping the idea as they should've they did a software fix. You can't solve a bad aircraft design with software. You can patch it but it leaves you open to all sorts of issues.
Issues we've now clearly seen have killed people. Issues that people have claimed were known about (how would the engineers not know?) but were sweep under the rug in the name of profits.
When people knowingly endanger other's lives in the name of profits they should face a trial and be judged.
1. poor detail software design of the MCAS (single point of failure)
2. poor pilot training (2 crews couldn't remember how to operate the trim system)
Both are easily fixed.
I am not a nervous flyer, I even used to do paragliding but I am pretty determined to wait few years before flying on one of those. One thing I learned about paragliding was that you must trust your equipment or don’t fly.
The same goes with the transportation, you can greatly reduce your risks by picking your equipment. Not All cars are 50X safer than paragliding and you can choose on which side of the average you will be.
How is this even a reasonable, thought out argument to work against? I downvoted you (and a lot of the other over-the-top reactionary nonsense from armchair “aviation experts”) but I figured I’d at least explain why.
Why is it every discussion on this site that involves any large company full of such over-the-top vilification? It’s so predictable and eye rollingly childish....
Hundreds of people died, Boeing repeatedly tried to deny the existence of the problem, the responsibility and at the end, the CEO only lost his seat in the board and nothing else. A deeper look unveiled multiple scandals about Boeing and FAA and you are complaining that I am vilifying this company? You have to be kidding me.
Why is it every discussion on this site that involves any technology that is a nerds childhood dream needs to be whitewashed? It’s so predictable and eye rollingly childish
Like, does anybody here understand the engineering and business trade offs in airplane design? I doubt it. Just a bunch of dunning Kruger affected people who think knowing to program equates to expertise in every other field.
You are being unreasonable here.
I see you have an emotional investment in this but let's not pretend that this is a witchhunt. HN is a very positive community that supports good work and attempts, but in this case, we are literally talking about a company that did very bad job by producing a craft unfit for use by humans that cost the lives of hundreds. How positive and supporting you are expecting me to be to the work of a giant corporation that cost so much and tried to defer blame? If anything, scrutiny is what would keep the repetition of this. This is not a mom and pop store that made a mistake and asking for forgiveness, it is a giant malfunctioning structure that created big trouble and is resisting to change.
Not killing off the product.
They will of course not be paying the tens of thousands of workers that work on that product while production is suspended.
If the Max doesn't return to service or even if its grounding is prolonged this represents an existential threat to the likes of Southwest as part of the way they maintain their low margins is by having a fleet with one and only one type rating.
Other airlines (eg American) that bet on the Max (instead of, say, the A320neo) may suffer in the short to medium term too but at least they're better equipped to deal with this as they already deal with having a heterogeneous fleet.
Personally I never wanted to fly on the Max even before the crashes because (at least on American) they're even more cramped the the A321s and older 737s and 767s. I mean, who want that to shave off a few dollars? It's already uncomfortable enough. After the crashes? Why would I?
The leadership of Boeing needs to be ousted and, honestly, the DoJ should see if there was any criminal wrongdoing here as the response from Boeing (ie trying to blame the pilots and refusing to ground the plane) was abysmal. The fish rots from the head and if CEO pay is justified by the results they get (cough) then they're also responsible when it goes horribly wrong, which it did.
The big winner here is Airbus.
And yes, I fully expect Boeing to attempt to rebrand and salvage the Max. Personally, I hope it never flies again.
EDIT: removed EasyJet as they operate an Airbus not 737 fleet. Southwest and Ryanair however fly only 737 variants.
The 737 MAX has the same rating as every 737 that Southwest and others fly. Part of the MCAS controversy stems from the fact that Boeing did not discuss it to avoid needing a new type rating. See https://www.aviationlawmonitor.com/2019/03/accident-investig... for more information.
Buying brand-new, less-efficient 737NG planes when competing airlines gradually have more and more A320neos could allow Southwest to keep growing, but might not be a great long term investment. Southwest can keep flying their existing NG fleet for a very long time, however, so they can (and have to) wait for new planes.
Southwest isn’t forced to stay with the 737. It’s all about costs. Buying new NGs probably would cost more in the long run than (years from now when the backlong is reduced) starting to operate the A320neo, but far cheaper than either is if the MAX returns to service and they get hefty compensation from Boeing.
Now their fleet is entirely Airbus A32x, which are fly-by-wire and unlikely to run into the type certification issues that the 737 did.