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This would all be solved if the engines were out in front of the plane like podracers.

That wouldn't work because the Cg would be too far forward and the mechanical moment of pylons would be far too great. What needs to happen is proper redesign of the CFM56-7B engine cowl to contain fan, LP, and HP failures.

And both were Boeing 737s ... (albeit different variants)

The Alaska Airlines flight that had a door fall off was also a Boeing 737

I was going to reply that I thought the Boeing 737 was also hands down the most popular commercial airplane model in current use, so of course it would have more high profile issues. Then I did a quick web search and apparently the Airbus A320 is actually more popular since 2025, otherwise they’re fairly close to even. Yet these things only seem to happen to Boeing.

So yeah, never mind, fair game to blame Boeing actually.

The CFM56 cowl redesign to prevent fan blade off uncontained failure is still unfixed. The FAA gave Boeing/CFM an unreasonable amount of time (July 31, 2028) to address the issue. This is similar to the bungled handling of MCAS.