Just an anecdote, but I'm a traveling consultant for a pretty big tech company, and the manager of the consulting group told us when the 737 Max issue started (but before it was grounded) that we did not have to fly on that plane and if we were put on that plane we could change flights and bill the change fee back to the company without any complaints.
There's been no further guidance so far on what we'll do when the 737 Max is back in service, but the message was clear: the safety and comfort of the employee is worth a $200 change fee, compared to being forced onto a plane that the employee feels is unsafe. I've never heard that mentioned for any other plane. As much as air travel has sucked this summer with cancelations and delays caused by the grounding of this plane, I don't foresee that model having much luck if/when it's put into full service.
An interesting part of the history of the 737 is that when it launched it originally had a serious rudder design flaw that contributed to several fatal crashes where a lot of folks lost their lives:
However, Boeing did fix the problem, and the 737 went on to be one of the best selling airplanes in history.
This MCAS issue is eerily similar in that it has also resulted in two fatal crashes. But if history is any guide, the problems will be fixed, and the memory of MCAS and MAX issues will likely fade from the public as well.
The Boeing of those days was a different company than Boeing today, and the public knows it. That Boeing was driven by engineers with safety as their highest priority. Today's Boeing is driven by suits with profit as their highest priority. This Boeing has lost the public's trust. Even if they fix MCAS, how do we know there aren't other safety corners cut in the design just waiting to kill somebody?
I'm not so sure about that. Besides what was already mentioned about news getting around much faster in 2019 vs 1991, the problems with the Max are harder to fix.
It's a fundamentally unstable airframe. The engines are too big and too far forward. They can't fix that without a major redesign of the fuselage to lengthen the landing gear. At which point it may better to simply design and build a whole new airplane.
A part of me joins you in this pessimistic view, but the other side of me recognizes that the rudder issues took place in 1991 and most likely the vast majority of the public was never made aware of those issues. I had never heard of it, though that doesn't mean much as a statistical sample.
I know a lot of people are now aware of this particular design flaw and I would put money on it being more generally known now then then.
The difference between them is that the rudder flaw could be fixed; once the problem was identified it was a trivial fix. They replaced a single part the size of a soda can.
The 737 Max can't be fixed. The engine location unbalances the plane. Full stop. Huge changes to the entire plane must be made to fix that. Software fixes are bandaids and any time the software either fails to activate when it should, or activates when it should not, people die. Unless you think software is 100% infallible, this plane is going to be much less safe than it could have been, forever, unfixably.
You may refuse to fly on 737 Max, but how do you feel about 737-8200? Boeing will likely not use the "Max" name when the plan is put back into service. See: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48995509
That might very well have the opposite effect of the one intended. By making it harder to identify the MAX version of the 737 people might end up refusing to fly in 737's altogether.
What happens if that 737-8200 crashes? It doesn't even need to be due to a fault of the plane, people will simply not trust the FAA and Boeing's explanation.
It may bring down the Boeing entirely, together with the operators who use Boeing aircraft. "If it's Boeing I am not going" can turn into a real thing, drastically reducing the occupancy of the flights. These businesses operate on thin margins, not being able to fill the aeroplanes may give rather short runways before their collapse.
There have been plenty of design flaws in commercial jetliners and in most cases, reputation is recovered. But there hasn't been design flaw quite like this one.
Especially one that the FAA tried to pooh pooh as long as it could. It was amazing to watch the goodwill and trust accumulated over decades crumble to nothing in a few hours as the European countries one by one banned the airline from their airspace but did not ground them. It was the EASA telling the FAA to do the right thing. They didn't and then finally the EASA did ground the plane. I really can't remember any other time when the EASA and the FAA disagreed especially this big.
Like a lot of tragedies, it's really hard to tell how much the side effects of something like this are attributed to the mistake itself and how much can be explained through modern communication networks (social media) amplifying everything.
Is the Boeing mistake really that bad, or is it because this is the first such aviation design mistake to happen in our post-2010 everyone-is-online world? Remember that the tails on 737s used to just...fall off back in the '90s.
For the record, I don't think the 737 MAX should have ever been cleared to fly with the current version of MCAS. But I can't help but believe that there had to be some boneheaded designs in the past that cost hundreds of lives that we just don't think about today.
In any case, I hope Boeing has learned from this and revised its engineering processes to go back to its previous prestigious roots. I also hope against hope that we will finally see some executives go to prison for approving this.
There’s also clearly a serious design flaw in FAA regulations and how the certification process works. Like most rules, I’m sure they meant well when it was implemented but as the regulations/process has iterated it’s created a perverse incentive where Boeing wasn’t optimizing for safety in order to pass the safety certification.
Boeing bears a lot of responsibility but taking Boeing to task without taking a look at the system in which it operates seems short-sighted.
Has software had its materials science moment? The pioneering DeHavilland Comet failed due to unexpected stress fractures. The aviation industry changed markedly because of it with years of testing preceding the introduction of any new material or process. Boeing took the lead, DeHavilland never recovered.
My cynical view is that little will change in this era.
The A330 in the crash of AF 447 certainly had a design flaw like that. Due to that flaw, they entered a high altitude stall and crashed into the ocean.
Same thing for me in a megacorp. Group manager said “no requirement to travel on a 737 Max” without higher approval... he said he’d just eat the cancellation fees from his own budget.
Having looked carefully into what Boeing has been doing with the 737 Max, I have no intention of flying on one ever again, even if it gets rammed through FAA again.
Though I am absolutely certain that all the sleazy airlines (or perhaps Boeing) will soon begin a rebranding project, changing the name to something that people will not immediately recognize.
Unless you boycott Boeing 737-max similar airplanes, you may fly with one without knowing it. The name is really badly burnt and the only plausible way out of it for Boeing is renaming it to something that doesn't ring the bell.
IIRC I read that they've already done that for the airplanes that are being delivered since the grounding.
I believe that several carriers (for sure United and I think others) will let you change for free on a Max. The issue for you is going to be the impact to your time, which is likely more valuable than the change fee to begin with. On the standard consultant route of Monday morning/Thursday afternoon there are many times not alternative flights for hours (or possibly days) later -- especially if a Max gets "subbed in" at the last minute and you cannot plan ahead. The change fee will be inconsequential compared to you not showing up on a client site for a day or at all.
With the amount of planes already ordered and in the production pipeline, it will be near impossible to not fly with a 737 MAX within a few years, if you are a heavy flier. The alternative for a given route may be a train, bus, or another aircraft with a schedule that won't meet yours.
A bit tangential but I'm curious: if you fly that much, does your company compensate the CO2? From their statement about changing flights being no problem, it sounds like there would easily be budget for such a thing, but I have no idea if companies are starting to do this yet.
You'd hope so, but I know from traveling for a large multinational that it was up to the individual to pay for their own offsetting and I think most are the same. I tend to just try and video conference with people to alleviate the exhaustion of traveling (I live in New Zealand, going to a workshop in Europe is a 30-40 hour endeavor) and the carbon that flying generates.
I think what was ridiculously through this entire process was Boeing blaming someone else. That's pretty much been the issue right from when it surfaced. Initially it was the bad pilots, bad airlines, bad countries and lately it's been the bad software consultants.
However, it's been evident from the beginning this is a fundamental design flaw that Boeing was trying to, inappropriately, use software to make work. Something no software would be capable of doing because software could not make up for the lack of necessary information in the case of certain sensors failing.
Certain sensors? Plural?
They only checked ONE single sensor (which is a glitchy one at best) because their software infra didn’t support multiple checks. There should be three AoA sensors to check to see if one is faulty in flight (of course the grand old 737 only HAS two, so that’s yet another issue).
Instead they checked just one and come what may sent the plane to hell based on that one sensor read-out.
You only need two sensors to determine if one is faulty. You need three if you need the correct measurement. For this application, all that is required is a warning that the AoA sensors aren’t providing correct information.
It doesn't matter what group was materially at fault, internal or external. It says "Boeing" on the tin. It's Boeing's responsibility to ensure integrity of all supply inputs, hardware or software.
Disclosure: I was a Boeing employee in the early 90s, and wrote software to control test systems that exercised electronic subsystems. The subsystems were supplied by vendors, and in some cases some of the test hardware too.
Also, I have read many comments on previous articles placing the blame on changes to the Boeing corporate culture. Not accepting responsibility is surely another sign of that fault.
Right after the first crash I was surprised on how much aggressive Boeing came out blaming the pilots.
It felt weird, usually these companies wait for a good initial investigation, take some pressure and then start spreading their message through more discreet channels.
I think as a corporate entity, they will never admit wrongdoing because they're terrified of lawsuits. As long as they never say "it was our fault", even if it was, I think that places (at least some of) the burden on the plaintiff in a wrongful death suit.
Boeing PR has been pushing these "oh no Boeing will have to halt production", with supposedly dire consequences for the whole US economy, for months. I have seen them at least 3 times now.
This is just another effort to pressure politicians and regulators to get the Max back in service.
It also shows yet again the sad state of media. This almost reads as a Boeing press release, lacking any reflection or substantial commentary.
I have the same feeling. as we know, Boeing is the one of the two biggest plane maker, and there is no hardware issue 737 Max, just a software issue. anyway, the politicians have to show a pose that they are careful about the monitor process than before.
I've also had the same feeling about all of the articles referring to this as a "software problem".
Regardless of how they're trying to address the issue, the whole idea of not installing redundant AoA sensors as the default base option was a manufacturing, engineering, and management problem in my book.
To protect their long-term reputation they should consider cutting the programme, taking the multi billion dollar loss and start anew with a narrowbody range that is actually from the 2000s not warmed up 1960s.
But that would ‘never fly’. So we will get a software-upgraded, mandatory “training” aircraft where pilots will have to be on full-alert every second of the flight, it will somewhere crash again and pilots faulted for being “trained but not paying enough attention” and there’s that.
You're right, it would never fly, but probably not for the reason you think. A company like Boeing is good at writing off large losses, after all. However the problem is the customers. By the time they design and build an entirely new narrow body plane, the customers would have long since modernized their fleets with planes bought from other manufacturers like Airbus.
Any MAX production changes could carry significant implications for the U.S. economy. Boeing’s inability to deliver the aircraft during the prolonged grounding has already weighed on the nation’s trade deficit.
The quoted statement is highly speculative, but it's a good indication of why supposedly reputable news outlets and others in positions of societal authority seem to be hand-waving away the seriousness of the entire issue.
Planes have fallen out of the sky, and civilians were killed. These planes should never fly again, regardless of whatever random macro-economy professor says.
That and a bunch of jobs. The Seattle area isn’t as exposed to Boeing cut backs as it used to be, but I guess it would still be felt.
Of course, they would have to replace this with something, either previous specced 737s, a new spec 737, or a new plane. While they are developing that market share will fly to Europe and possibly China.
As a consumer, there are a lot of things a company can fail at and still get me to give them another try by saying, "We fixed it, you totally won't get burned this time." Chipotle and salmonella outbreaks being one example.
It's a much harder sell when the product in question is an aircraft. If Chipotle is wrong, I get food poisoning. If Boeing is wrong, I get to learn what it feels like to be in a plane falling out of the sky.
Killing off the 737 Max seems awfully expensive.
For a more traditional business, I would guess that the failed product would be fixed, renamed, and then released as something brand new. I'm not sure if that's possible in the aerospace industry, but I'm curious to see what Boeing does here.
On the other hand, food poisoning kills many more people than plane accidents. Despite that, I have heard a lot more from the media about fatalities from plane accidents than from food poisoning. And I suppose that's simply because fear sells.
In proportion to the exposition, badly stored eggs kill way less than the overall history of the Boeing 737-800Max. Cars also kill proportionally less.
Last time I looked at the numbers, riding a motorcycle on the city killed more. by a small margin.
Of course, that is extrapolating from the small number of flights and deaths that occurred. I don't think the sample is statistically significant enough to compare with cars... but the eggs are on a quite safe territory.
If you get food poisoning, your chance of living is still pretty good. If your plane crashes, you might live, but your odds are much worse than if you get food poisoning.
Many more people eat meals each day, than fly in a plane.
Food poisoning is not very exciting. Anything involving large things falling from the sky and blowing up will get hugely more media coverage for the same number of deaths.
I'd fly it if they fix the automatic gizmo that caused the crashes. Flying remains statistically pretty safe. I was thinking the other day on my flight to Siem Reap as they did the saftey demo they'd be better dropping the stuff about life vest of which the chances of being useful are roughly zero and giving some tips on not being involved in a vehicle accident after landing which is maybe 10,000x more likely.
Hopefully this is this beginning of the end to the entire 737 family. The MAX has revealed to me just how dated and obsolescent this aircraft is, in all its forms. It persists because it allows airlines to shamble on without investing in the changes necessary to adopt better designs. Perhaps they'll be forced to do so as the MAX and possibly the rest of the 737 family finally get phased out of first world passenger service, the latter if for no other reason as they are not competitive in their non-MAX form.
The original 737 is a fine 60's design. It is long past time for the industry to break out the capital crowbar and pry some funds from the industry tuches to support some evolution. As the cost of that appears in ticket prices people will have to think harder before obligating themselves to bounce around the world. I care not.
Interestingly, the MAX is a completely new aircraft. If Boeing had just admitted that and certified it as such that would have had significant effect on the required training and certification costs but it would have at least recognized the truth. The 737MAX is much less of a 737 than the NG.
I think that even though the engines are bigger a lot of things are still really old. I read that starting the plane requires 7 steps, where in Airbus you press a button and the computer does it for you.
Also in Airbus the computer tells you what is wrong and in the 737-max you get an error code that you need to look up in a book. All to make sure pilots need as little additional training.
The problem is it's not quite enough of a new aircraft. If they'd fitted longer landing gear (along with all the changes that imples), they could have put the new larger engines under the wing, where they should have been in the first place, rather than stuck out in front of it, and then they wouldn't have needed MCAS.
> Interestingly, the MAX is a completely new aircraft.
For some value of 'completely new.' The design isn't new. A new design would accommodate modern, large diameter high by-pass turbo fans without compromising pitch behavior. The 737 was designed to be powered by much smaller diameter low-bypass engines that prevailed in the 60's.
Also, the cockpit is deliberately designed not to require changes in training; the now ancient controls and instruments are significant contributors to the 737 MAX problems.
I used the term 'design' several times because I do indeed understand there is much new in the 737 MAX, but the fundamental design is obsolescent.
Readit News
There's been no further guidance so far on what we'll do when the 737 Max is back in service, but the message was clear: the safety and comfort of the employee is worth a $200 change fee, compared to being forced onto a plane that the employee feels is unsafe. I've never heard that mentioned for any other plane. As much as air travel has sucked this summer with cancelations and delays caused by the grounding of this plane, I don't foresee that model having much luck if/when it's put into full service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues
However, Boeing did fix the problem, and the 737 went on to be one of the best selling airplanes in history.
This MCAS issue is eerily similar in that it has also resulted in two fatal crashes. But if history is any guide, the problems will be fixed, and the memory of MCAS and MAX issues will likely fade from the public as well.
It's a fundamentally unstable airframe. The engines are too big and too far forward. They can't fix that without a major redesign of the fuselage to lengthen the landing gear. At which point it may better to simply design and build a whole new airplane.
I know a lot of people are now aware of this particular design flaw and I would put money on it being more generally known now then then.
The 737 Max can't be fixed. The engine location unbalances the plane. Full stop. Huge changes to the entire plane must be made to fix that. Software fixes are bandaids and any time the software either fails to activate when it should, or activates when it should not, people die. Unless you think software is 100% infallible, this plane is going to be much less safe than it could have been, forever, unfixably.
It may bring down the Boeing entirely, together with the operators who use Boeing aircraft. "If it's Boeing I am not going" can turn into a real thing, drastically reducing the occupancy of the flights. These businesses operate on thin margins, not being able to fill the aeroplanes may give rather short runways before their collapse.
but none quite like this one.
https://www.thejournal.ie/us-ireland-boeing-4538567-Mar2019/
The DC-10 cargo door issue is probably the closest thing. Took two accidents, 346 fatalities and a House of Representatives investigation to get the flawed design fixed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Cargo_...
Is the Boeing mistake really that bad, or is it because this is the first such aviation design mistake to happen in our post-2010 everyone-is-online world? Remember that the tails on 737s used to just...fall off back in the '90s.
For the record, I don't think the 737 MAX should have ever been cleared to fly with the current version of MCAS. But I can't help but believe that there had to be some boneheaded designs in the past that cost hundreds of lives that we just don't think about today.
In any case, I hope Boeing has learned from this and revised its engineering processes to go back to its previous prestigious roots. I also hope against hope that we will finally see some executives go to prison for approving this.
Boeing bears a lot of responsibility but taking Boeing to task without taking a look at the system in which it operates seems short-sighted.
My cynical view is that little will change in this era.
Deleted Comment
Though I am absolutely certain that all the sleazy airlines (or perhaps Boeing) will soon begin a rebranding project, changing the name to something that people will not immediately recognize.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/15/boeing-737-...
IIRC I read that they've already done that for the airplanes that are being delivered since the grounding.
However, it's been evident from the beginning this is a fundamental design flaw that Boeing was trying to, inappropriately, use software to make work. Something no software would be capable of doing because software could not make up for the lack of necessary information in the case of certain sensors failing.
Instead they checked just one and come what may sent the plane to hell based on that one sensor read-out.
Disclosure: I was a Boeing employee in the early 90s, and wrote software to control test systems that exercised electronic subsystems. The subsystems were supplied by vendors, and in some cases some of the test hardware too.
Disclaimer: I know nothing.
It felt weird, usually these companies wait for a good initial investigation, take some pressure and then start spreading their message through more discreet channels.
The former is understandable. The latter is far more worrying.
This is just another effort to pressure politicians and regulators to get the Max back in service.
It also shows yet again the sad state of media. This almost reads as a Boeing press release, lacking any reflection or substantial commentary.
Regardless of how they're trying to address the issue, the whole idea of not installing redundant AoA sensors as the default base option was a manufacturing, engineering, and management problem in my book.
But that would ‘never fly’. So we will get a software-upgraded, mandatory “training” aircraft where pilots will have to be on full-alert every second of the flight, it will somewhere crash again and pilots faulted for being “trained but not paying enough attention” and there’s that.
The quoted statement is highly speculative, but it's a good indication of why supposedly reputable news outlets and others in positions of societal authority seem to be hand-waving away the seriousness of the entire issue.
Planes have fallen out of the sky, and civilians were killed. These planes should never fly again, regardless of whatever random macro-economy professor says.
Of course, they would have to replace this with something, either previous specced 737s, a new spec 737, or a new plane. While they are developing that market share will fly to Europe and possibly China.
Not defending Boeing's behavior, just noting that the grounding of the MAX indeed materially affected GDP.
It's a much harder sell when the product in question is an aircraft. If Chipotle is wrong, I get food poisoning. If Boeing is wrong, I get to learn what it feels like to be in a plane falling out of the sky.
Killing off the 737 Max seems awfully expensive.
For a more traditional business, I would guess that the failed product would be fixed, renamed, and then released as something brand new. I'm not sure if that's possible in the aerospace industry, but I'm curious to see what Boeing does here.
Of course, that is extrapolating from the small number of flights and deaths that occurred. I don't think the sample is statistically significant enough to compare with cars... but the eggs are on a quite safe territory.
Many more people eat meals each day, than fly in a plane.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
The original 737 is a fine 60's design. It is long past time for the industry to break out the capital crowbar and pry some funds from the industry tuches to support some evolution. As the cost of that appears in ticket prices people will have to think harder before obligating themselves to bounce around the world. I care not.
Also in Airbus the computer tells you what is wrong and in the 737-max you get an error code that you need to look up in a book. All to make sure pilots need as little additional training.
For some value of 'completely new.' The design isn't new. A new design would accommodate modern, large diameter high by-pass turbo fans without compromising pitch behavior. The 737 was designed to be powered by much smaller diameter low-bypass engines that prevailed in the 60's.
Also, the cockpit is deliberately designed not to require changes in training; the now ancient controls and instruments are significant contributors to the 737 MAX problems.
I used the term 'design' several times because I do indeed understand there is much new in the 737 MAX, but the fundamental design is obsolescent.
If a company would book a ticket for me at one of these I would rather get fired or quit my job rather than board a MAX plane.
Never ever, am I going to travel with this model and I will be highly suspicious for future models they produce.