Is my plane a 737 MAX?

Absolutely. There have been several airline explosive decompressions in the past 50 years. The fatal ones have each had one fatality, even with crazy damage to the plane (look up Aloha 243) If you figure this incident "should" have had one fatality, if you figure 100 passengers per flight, that's a 1/150,000,000 chance of dying. Your odds of death are way worse on the drive to the airport than from this.

> quick search seems to indicate that Boeing certainly makes campaign donations

Of course they do [1]. They're a defence contractor. They give to a lot of electeds. But far from every elected. (I'd be shocked if they weren't giving to everyone on those subcommittees.)

What's bunk is believing someone receving $5k from Boeing is in their pocket. They're not. They've likely never spoken. This is all nonsense used to justify inactivity. Which is baffling, since it seems to require as much effort as (albeit less social interaction than) engagmeent.

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/boeing-co/recipients?id=d00...

I call it representative democracy.

> giving government officials lots of money to take anticompetitive actions that personally benefit you

Give a specific case. Because almost all of them, with Boeing, involve on one hand a $5k donation, and on the other hand, a factory in the district. Guess which one gets you an urgent meeting with the Congressman.

Tech, in particular, has this cartoonish totem of how politics works. This usually ends hilariously. But in this case, it’s being used to justify inaction, which is conveniently self fulfilling.

and the manufacturer can be held liable for lost revenue so even if the AC is grounded, you can get some $$$

Makes sense!

> But pilots have legitimate concerns about these recordings.

They have concerns. Legitimacy is a matter of opinion.

> Those concerns need to be heard and addressed so this change can be made safely.

Actually, they don't. Pilots trying to hide evidence are free to find another job that isn't as safety critical.

That's crazy. I would venture to say that most workplaces have security cameras, many with sound recording, that can be accessed at any time by management or building security. But commercial airline pilots can't be recorded?

I'm not calling their concerns illegitimate, heck I probably agree with most of them. Some people are way too happy to record everything and use it however they like, even suggesting the recordings should be used to to blame pilots (!).

They deserve to put forward their concerns regarding the use of the recordings. They may have to concede the point on the length of the recording though, that one is hard to justify if it impacts a legitimate and reasonable investigation. And if these recordings are abused then their length is not the most damaging aspect.

> people want to vote with their feet, and inflict damage to Boeing for abhorrent behavior

People want to express outrage. That’s understandable.

Most flight revenue is from frequent travellers, and they understand the business enough to know histrionics won’t change Boeing’s incumbency. A couple people who fly twice a year swapping airlines isn’t going to move the needle. And I doubt a material fraction of them are likely voters who would bother their electeds about this.

> what's irrational in not believing that 737 Max is safe?

The millions of miles they've flown without incident.

The key difference this conversation demands is a design versus fabrication or maintenance error. MCAS was a design error. It called into question the entire 737 Max fleet. This looks like a fabrication or maintenance mistake. That calls into question all of the planes similarly fabricated or maintained--those have been grounded. It doesn't affect a 737 Max of a different type, that has been flown for years and been through routine inspections, including of the very bolts suspected to be the cause of this accident.

Caveat: I strongly suspect more than the type 9 need to be looked at. But we do not have evidence that they are unsafe.

> Everybody agrees that FAA is not what it used to be, these days the Boeing engineers are basically self-certifying their planes.

I think Boeing /engineers/ would argue that statement and instead tell you that Boeing /management/ is self certifying the planes.

Thankfully, the US is not the world and there are other authorities beyond the FAA.

Except Airbus doesn't have planes falling apart in midair even if they are using the same supplier. This is clearly an issue during assembly regardless of the supplier of the parts.

The blame could be with a single individual, a group of people, the politics at Boeing or the engineering at AeroSystems.

The point is that none of the Airbus planes had the same sort of in-flight extreme ventilation as the Boeing plane just had, nor are any entire series of airplanes from Airbus currently grounded because of lose bolts.

As I said, it's not logical, it's not based on reason nor numbers. It's just a feeling.

Yes, that's right, that's my current feeling which may or may not change in the future.

Thanks for the summary!

Edit, as you added more content to your comment rather than just a one-liner snark:

> Even with flexible tickets, most carriers don't allow you to cancel less than 24 hours prior to departure

I guess my typical airline isn't in your personal category of "most carriers" as they allow me to change any dates for my ticket up until I've boarded the first flight. YMMV obviously.

> you'd rather lose a few hours of your life waiting at an airport, than losing a few minutes of your life over the risk of dying from a 737 Max

I’ve chosen a less-than-ideal itinerary for comfort (e.g. lay-flat seat or direct flight).

Flying is stressful for a lot of people. As OP admits, it’s irrational. But if it means you avoid spending the flight in a panic, it’s not unreasonable to swap planes or even eat the ticket cost. (It might be a sign to talk to someone about anxiety.)

> Even with flexible tickets, most carriers don't allow you to cancel less than 24 hours prior to departure.

They definitely do! It's usually until just before departure - but some flexible tickets you can just no-show and get a refund. In some cases, there may be some no-show penalty, but definitely not universally. I can't think of any US carriers that impose a 24 hour cancelation restriction. I'm sure there's some international ones.

> Also, airlines would most likely charge you the difference between the fare price, which for a last minute ticket is might be a significant price difference.

Usually within the US, you can do a same-day change or same-day standby for some nominal, fixed amount of money on any ticket (free with status) and swap to any flight within ~24 hours (specific restrictions vary).

Here's American's policy on same-day changes [1]. Here's Delta's [2]. United's [3].

> So you'd rather lose a few hours of your life waiting at an airport, than losing a few minutes of your life over the risk of dying from a 737 Max? Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

On this we completely agree. I ran the numbers and your likelihood of dying on a 737 NG is 1/400 the risk of dying in a car on a per-mile basis. Based on the median distance from home to a US airport of 17 miles, you're more likely to die on the road to and from the airport than a 16,500mi flight on a 737. And infinitely more likely to get injured.

[1] https://www.aa.com/i18n/plan-travel/extras/same-day-travel.j...

[2] https://www.delta.com/us/en/change-cancel/same-day-flight-ch...

[3] https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/travel/trip-planning/flight...

Point of order, because this is HN and I get to be pedantic here: the 737 Max is cursed; the 737 and 737NG are proven good by their long track record of reliability through thousands of units produced and in service

There are not plenty of alternatives, basically onoy one: A320Neo. The A220 is too small eith not enough range in most cases.

Boeing stock is down substantially. That will get their attention.

> willing to sacrifice a little of your personal convenience

It's not convenience, it's that the ONLY reasonably priced flights are non-refundable ones, and not everyone can afford another flight ticket just to prove a point. Another idiotic thing that we need to change.

Although I really do wish there were an "Airbus only" option when booking flight tickets. And as much as I don't normally like to stereotype things, when it comes to safety I feel I've consistently seen much better safety standards in EU than the USA. Safety seems more drilled into the European culture. I just somehow have this gut feeling that some random dude at Airbus crimping some wire probably actually did everything correctly and to specifications.

Not to mention they have stricter work hour limits in Europe, so I don't have to worry about someone doing a shoddy job due to lack of sleep.

Per mile traveled but not per trip.

For you, maybe. Not for me. The trains between my airport and my home have a pretty much perfect safety record.

My kid is a huge fan of flightradar so we spend way too much time watching it. I don't know the exact timing, but it is a consistent behavior that planes pop onto flightradar only a little bit before pulling out of the gate. But I'm not sure if there's a standardized point in the sequence when they turn it on or it's up to each pilot.

But you're right, watching the incoming plane to that gate would be a good way to know earlier!

Multiply all these probabilities together and you have a better chance at winning a billion dollars in a lottery you didn't buy a ticket for.

You can board with some crutches and they probably shift you away from the emergency exit seat right away.

They tend to be sold at a premium these days due to slightly more legroom.

There is a strong correlation between current state and future outcomes. Especially with physical objects that are, in average a decade old.

> Driving is safer on a per-trip basis.

You can’t make this blanket statement and I would bet on average it’s the opposite still.

- Flying in the US is on average ~750x safer per mile than driving according to 2000-2010 data (it’s likely even larger a difference in the modern era).

- I would venture to guess that most US flights are in the 1000-2000 mile range and most US car trips are easily more than the equivalent 2-3 miles.

- Most fatalities from flying occur during takeoff and landing, so longer flights are actually safer per mile. Relating this back to the thread, the risk of catastrophic failure from your choice (or non-choice) of airframe only really affects the off-ground danger and not the higher danger you face on a taxiway/runway.

- All of these numbers are based purely on fatalities but I’m guessing your definition of “safety” includes being maimed or otherwise seriously injured. You have several orders of magnitude higher chance of being seriously injured in a car crash compared to flying since accidents in aviation are much more likely to end in death.

> We are in a trend where risk is increasing

Is there any data supporting this? From what I can tell, the trend from both IATA [0] and ASN [1][2] data appears to be down. Any small YoY increase [3] in 2020 being attributable to PS752 shot down by Iran and an Embraer EMB-120RT shot down over Somalia. This downward trend seems to go for fatal and non-fatal accidents.

I completely agree with the need for oversight in this situation where corners appear to be cut and the FAA seems to be abdicating responsibility, but changing personal behavior requires some real data which I simply don't see.

[0] https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/pressroom/fact-sheet...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-fatalities-from-av...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-m...

[3]

Not sure what your comment really adds except a thinly veiled attack on my ability to empathize. Of course reasonable people desire increased safety all around. My point is that even with this disaster (in which nobody was harmed), aviation safety is the best it's ever been and is continuing to improve.

Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about ways to improve or hold Boeing accountable. But it's not a rational reaction to stop flying due to this incident.

Now do car-centric infrastructure that kills 50k people per year.

Adding a date of travel and checking the scheduled tail number would be much more accurate.

I think airlines are a lot more responsible for verifying design flaws in their airplane than I am in my car. First, they are a giant business which has way more resources to do this. Second, they are selling a service.

If I was running a US taxi service and bought a fleet of flawed Indian cars that caused crashes, I think I would be partially responsible.

Umm, yes? This website is obviously on the front page because of the recent mishaps so that's literally the most on topic possible topic to discuss lol

This is like someone trying to argue the reason they like looking at breasts and sucking on nipples has nothing to do with being breast-fed as a child, and they are completely separate things and the correlation between them is irrelevant to bring up.

I am taking issue with the question implicitly begged by the submission.

If it was a subcontractor, wouldn't they want to not fly on planes made by that subcontractor?

Can't wait to see what the MAX 10 has to offer!

Damn. Too late to edit this comment.

The MAX 8 had the crashes due to MCAS problems. The underlying MCAS issue affected all 737 MAX variants.

Oh yes but that's a different type of MAX though ! No, not the one with the engine nacelle falling potential issue that we don't have a fix but want the FAA to ignore, the other one !

Out of the 3 current MAX types, one killed people two times and the other two have unresolved issues (one that make it fail FAA certification, and the other that make it lose parts of fuselage in flight ...). And then Boeing ask for fast track certification on the 4th type, because they've been doing such a great job so far.

This submission isn't on the front page because of incidents 4-5 years ago. It is on the front page because of the news this week.

This type of delay is of strategic value to the status quo.

"We need to wait until all the facts are in," "investigations take time," "We're still looking at root causes and it is premature to..." These statements may be factually true, but the time it takes allows people to be distracted by something else, passions to cool, and urgency to dissipate.

It's no brainwave for Boeing or anyone else (e.g. the NTSB, on Boeing's behalf) to realize that the slower and more methodical the investigation, the lower the final penalty (of whatever kind) will probably be, at least for one-off incidents. When the track record gets long, the actual quality of the investigations may start weighing against them...eventually.

You don't know if this issue was due to a cultural problem at Boeing, because you don't know the reason the doors came off.

> People are applying a heuristic and for many the outcome (correct in my opinion) is that Boeing should not be trusted.

That's how I see it. Boeing has already demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice safety and even human lives in exchange for greater profits and stock price increases. They then showed a willingness to lie and try to cover up their actions after it came to light that they caused the deaths of hundreds of passengers. They've also shown that they'll fight to avoid taking responsibility for the lives they took (https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-737-max-crash-victims...)

Why should anyone trust them now?

Sounds a lot like "yeah sure, fear over 737 Max is overblown, but the fact that I was thinking about it in the first place says something about the current state of affairs".

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah

Many airlines allow same day changes. If everyone scheduled on a Max reschedules for alternative flights consistently, they'll get the message soon enough. Refusing to board a Boeing plane at all is perfectly reasonable at this stage.

That's not true, and we'd get to a much, much worse place if we relied on that. The industry put the current system in place because it could see that airlines would make gruesome compromises if consumer choice was the only thing driving safety.

You're missing his point entirely. People are trying to make flying out as getting more dangerous, but that's factually incorrect.

> only reason nobody was injured this time was nobody was sitting in the seats next to the door plug

This was a serious fuck-up. But it remains that there was at risk no more than one, maybe two, fatalities. That isn’t enough to justify the claim that “safety is getting worse.”

I don’t think we can even remotely say that.

From all photo evidence I’ve seen, some cushions were sucked off the seat. These cushions are designed to be removed. If a passenger was seated and wearing their seat belt, I have every faith that they would have been fine. Uncomfortable as hell but ultimately fine. I’ll bet money the NTSB report will say as much.

And the point stands that the only reason this story is noteworthy is because of airlines’ spotless safety record over the past two decades. Incidents like this are exceedingly rare.

Because other countries have—in general—a demonstrably poorer track record than major airlines in the U.S. for a wide variety of factors, including poorer training programs, maintenance regimes, operational expectations, and sometimes cultural norms that interfere with good CRM (crew resource management).

I'll address the elephant in the room and say that I don't think it's coincidence that the two airframe losses in the MAX 9 were with Indonesian and Ethiopian carriers and not American or European ones, despite American and European carriers having received—as far as I can tell—the bulk of the deliveries of this airframe and at least a plurality (if not majority) of hours in use (if someone else can find good data on this I'd be grateful). I suspect that more resources put toward pilot training played a meaningful difference here. For example, the first officer of the Ethiopian flight had less than 200 hours of flight experience. This would be completely unacceptable for a U.S. major.

I want to be clear that I am not saying that it's the pilots' fault, but that the swiss-cheese model relies on multiple overlapping failures. The additional resources spent on training, maintenance, operations, and CRM at American and European airlines in general ensures fewer overlaps and thus fewer incidents.

I have concerns, but not enough not to fly.

Everything I do in life is a calculated risk. If you told me my toaster was 3 times as likely to kill me today I would still probably toast my bread knowing that the base rate was already pretty low.

If anything, knowing that all of the headline grabbing incidents has been confined to one product line at one company, and watching the amount of scrutiny they are receiving for it makes me feel safer overall.

> But, we're seeing fatal issues with one specific company over and over again. Knowing that there is some systemic failure within Boeing must change your priors, no?

"systemic failure within Boeing" isn't necessarily inconsistent with "air traffic safety continues to improve". For instance, better pilot training and safety regulations might make flying even safer despite Boeing creating more crashes.

> But, we're seeing fatal issues with one specific company over and over again.

We aren't. There were fatal issues with one system (MCAS) on one line of planes. This was addressed, and since then there have been zero fatalities (or injuries) caused by design and/or engineering issues by this manufacturer. Their safety record is not substantially different from that of Airbus (who have their own design issues, IMO, such as non-linked pilot controls which has also contributed toward hull loss and passenger deaths). The MCAS issue was, to be clear, completely inexcusable and both regulator and management heads should have rolled over this. I am not happy with our anemic response to this incident.

And yes, one or two people could have potentially died due to this latest incident. It should be investigated and fixed. Beyond that there are wider aspects of the MBA-ification of Boeing that ought to (and I hope but don't expect will) drive regulatory and business change in this country.

But the fact remains that once the issues with MCAS were resolved, Boeing-designed and -assembled airframes have resumed a track record of safety that eclipses that of any other transportation industry. Again, we can, should, and are expecting that every issue is a learning moment to improve the practices of the industry as a whole.

Even "safe" drivers who aren't speeding, driving recklessly, or consuming alcohol are at greater risk of death and injury than on any major U.S. air carrier.

So you do have control, and can put yourself into a safer cohort of drivers, but the best you can do still falls wildly short of the state of aviation safety.

This isn't an argument about control, it's about safety. Control is completely irrelevant to the absolute probability of dying when taking one form of transportation vs another.

You may be 100% in control of a scenario where you are highly likely to die, and 0% in control of a situation where you could essentially live until you die of natural causes.

In this case, even if you exercise 100% of the control afforded to you by driving a car, you are more likely to die in a car than you are in an airplane.

You don't have control over drunk-driver-in-heavy-pickup-truck-who-is-browsing-instagram-while-speeding crushing into you on the road.

We do, and there has been one death due to an incident on a major U.S. airline since November 2001.

You can maybe argue two, where a woman was killed after exiting an Asiana plane after it crashed at SFO. She was hit by an emergency vehicle responding to the scene.

eh. To a certain extent you should compare based on distance traveled, maybe. But total miles driven in the USA are quite high compared to other countries. Lots of driving simply doesn't need to happen, but occurs because we induce it by the way we design the places where we build.

I don't really care how safe driving is per mile, I care if I'm going to be dead at the end of the year.

There's a big difference between an unsafe airframe and pilot error/poor-training though.

For example the recent crash in Japan. Airbus isn't getting railed for that one.

I know several 737 pilots on US flag carriers. Even at the time they were saying that neither crash would be possible for their fleet as they had done simulator training of exactly those sorts of scenarios.

From wikipedia: While defending the pilots' actions, Sullenberger was also highly critical of allowing someone with only 200 hours of flight experience to be first officer.

I hate sounding like a Boeing apologist, but I do think it's worth being very clear about where blame lies for things so that we can both asses risk accurately and make appropriate corrections.

I forgot to say 'in the united states'. Thanks for the correction. The car statistics would go up massively if they were worldwide and getting those is harder (and less accurate) than in the US alone. Additionally, the regulatory framework for aviation isn't the same everywhere so it is a bit apples to oranges to compare outside the US although it is clear that the issues leading to the two MAX crashes were design and training in nature and directly point back at Boeing as a root cause.

Literally any way you slice it, flying a major airline in the U.S. is safer than any other form of transportation, including walking.

But we can't be sure unless we know the actual stats. A lot of news operates by driving sensational stories, the more hysteria and doom they invoke, the more views they get. Are we talking 1% more likely or 0.00000001% more likely to get in an accident?

>I think a pretty fair response is to try and avoid entering that car regardless of the ratio of incidents when driving that car, and when biking to the dealership to get it

"avoid" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here though. If doing so doesn't cost me anything, then avoiding that car is a non-brainer. However in real life nothing is really costless. Avoiding that car at the very least would cause you to wait longer. If that car is your daily driver, and you don't have a backup, then avoiding that car might cost you hundreds per month. That's why you need to factor in statistics and figure what the absolute risk is, and whether it's worth "avoiding".

Again, that number is almost certainly an insignificant risk for an individual taking a random flight to worry about. That does not imply or relate to being an insignificant number airline safety regulators should not worry about or force improvement on. Air safety has been successfully held to a much higher standard than the vast majority of other safeties, and we should definitely try to maintain that, but that's unrelated to whether it's reasonable to be personally concerned about which plane model you take your flight on due to personal risk avoidance.

It doesn't work that way. When I fly, it's typically the only feasible option. I've never in my life sat down and calculated flying vs driving. It's more something like >400 miles, then fly, otherwise drive.

I would argue that aircraft are massively inefficient. Lets just look at the biggest cause, pilots. When flying the aircraft has to deal with cruse and takeoff and landing. Basically, the less you have to re-work the aircraft for takeoff/landing the more you can optimize it for cruse. Looking at just one thing, flaps, it becomes obvious how much aircraft could be improved by radical changes. When taking off, flaps are set much less aggressively than when landing. This is because most of the additional lift and subsequent reduction in stall speed, come with just a little flap extension. In landing however the flaps are extended considerably more. This is not for stall issues, but just so the pilots can see the runway. By increasing the flaps we are increasing the angle of attack of the aircraft and that allows the pilots to drop the nose, so they can see the numbers better. Land flaps are a huge change to the configuration of the aircraft and require a lot of structural changes to happen, just so pilots can see. Those changes cost cruse performance massively. There are many other things like this in air frame design, materials, etc. Just look at the experimental aircraft world compared to certified designs. The differences in performance are massive but they don't come to market because the industry is so stuck in its rut.

100 years is not a long time. Compare a railroad now to a railroad we had 100 years after the invention of railroads.

There are massive improvements still possible in the engine. Like the currently in design RISE engine. And other engines as well. And if you combined the technology you can get even further. We are not close to the end on any of this. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkHKet7rp4o

There are various aero-dynamic concepts that have not yet been fully or even partially explored. Trust brace wings, blended wings or my personal favorite, Prantdl Wing. A Prantdl wing might allow you to remove the whole tail, another huge potential boost. You can even combine all these concepts potentially.

I would guess we can get 40% more efficiency just based on those things.

Nope I was hoping to point out what is to me a failure of logic, that since previous versions of the plane flew safely, newly manufactured max 8 and 9s somehow have trillions of miles of safe flight. Should we combine all ford mustang car miles driven since the 80s to calculate the safety of the newest version?! Obviously the analogy doesn't hold completely, but the versions of the 737 are different. If I put a jet engine on a ford mustang, is it still a ford mustang? It's the same car, but I mounted a bigger engine!

Ah, so regulatory capture? I can see that.

It also seems like the ATC system is stretched thin, as well as the airlines themselves in terms of pilots. Though I may be biased since I'm much more aware of ATC problems given the various YouTube channels I watch covering aviation.

Aviation is in a rut. Boeing isn't all of aviation. Rut busting generally happens from something new. Electric aviation has all the hallmarks of that thing. Basically, everything about designing and operating an electric aircraft is at a lift-off point (pun only partially intended). We are nearing break-even at short distances and likely within a few years long distance aircraft will be possible. When that happens jet engines will die, quickly, and the entire economic structure of every part of aviation will change. (Don't bet on big airports and massive cattle car planes in that new world) This is a recipe for rut busting if I ever heard one. But I can (easily) be wrong and the change may come from other places. I highly doubt however that the change will come from Boeing. They aren't implementing the strategies needed to bust ruts in their practices so they aren't likely to be the source of the change and quite possibly will fail as a company when that change hits.

On the off chance that this is genuine, it’s a sketch. A very famous comedy duo. Unfortunately one passed away a while ago.

It's a satirical interview about a real event: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirki_(tanker)

They (the comedians) posted similar comedic takes on politics for many years; eg this one about Australia's energy market https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ELaBzj7cn14

> I would certainly not buy a car from a company that's clearly disregarded safety so badly, and would prefer avoiding being in one for any other reason (friends/rideshare/whatever).

That's a lot of cars. The standard in the auto industry is to design specifically for regulatory tests, and/or popular industry tests, in a specific region. All major automakers sell cars that intentionally lack safety features in regions that don't explicitly require them, if it will give their vehicle a price advantage in that market.

e.g. you can still buy vehicles without airbags made by major auto manufacturers.

Airbus will profit because the site went up.

> People not wanting to fly this plane will change airlines purchasing decisions.

It actually may not, much, unfortunately; there's only one real competing line of products, and they're so massively backlogged that people will buy this anyway.

What has you focusing on this aircraft over, eg, the Airbus A330, which has killed a similar number of people?