> The agency’s chief, Stephen Dickson, signed an order Wednesday formally lifting the grounding [...] “I am 100 percent comfortable with my family flying on it.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_5cpPGEj1Q
I'm looking forward to seeing a video of him and his family on this plane, unless this is just marketing speak. It sure would help raise the public image of the FAA and Boeing slightly if they put their money (family?) where their mouth is.
After a series of accidents in coal mines in China, bosses are required to spend a certain amount of hours each year underground or they face huge fines and losing their job.
> The regulation has yielded questionable results, however. Last month in Guangxi, mine bosses visited a pit for a routine inspection. Shortly after, seven assistants were promoted to managerial roles to complete their bosses' former obligation in the mine, according to local news reports.
> After a series of accidents in coal mines in China, bosses are required to spend a certain amount of hours each year underground or they face huge fines and losing their job.
It's not like every other MAX fell out of the sky. There were two accidents out of 42000 flights. 2/42000 is a decent risk to take if your job depends on it and absolutely terrible for normal everyday flying
Yes, in the video I linked he speaks about it, this is the full quote
> After that, I flew the aircraft for about two hours to evaluate its handling qualities and the functionality of the flight control system. Now, based on all the activities that we've undertaken during the past 20 months, and my personal experience flying the aircraft, I can tell you now that I am 100 percent comfortable with my family flying on it
So, he done 2 hours of what pilots will do for more hours, every single day they work. He also haven't trusted other pilots, let's say from Ethiopian Airlines, with his family.
What? How is funding a executive and the current administrator of the FAA a good cause? Now I know people in general like capitalism, but to fund the very people on the top with your money? He surely get free travels as the admin for the FAA, but if he doesn't, he can surely afford travelling many times over with his family without making a dent in his own economy.
Maybe your comment was sarcastic and I missed that. Sorry if that was the case.
I can hardly miss the point if I started the thread, can I? :)
I'm not against my idea of putting this man and his family on a flight. I'm against starting a gofundme (basically raise money for him) to fund this adventure, when he or his employer should be able to pay for this just fine.
The fundamental reason these planes have killed so many people is because of structural problems at boeing and the FAA. Technical band-aids have fixed none of the factors that caused such an unconscionably unsafe aircraft to be produced and rammed through certification in the first place. Engineers are still taking a back seat to MBAs on critical design and safety decisions. Every step of the way in this saga Boeing has shown itself to be a bad faith actor unworthy of the public's trust. They know they are too big to fail, and are cynically exploiting their position.
> They know they are too big to fail, and are cynically exploiting their position.
They aren't going to bust over this, sure, but this has still been a very costly black eye for them, no? Even if they get their FAA approval, I imagine fewer airlines will be buying Boeing. (Discounting the enormous impact of the pandemic, that is.)
Probably. And we all know what Boeing will prioritise to minimise these losses when faced with the chance of these two options: making a demonstratively better and safer plane which increases profits or reducing costs.
FAA, EASA, Transport Canada and ANAC have all not only re-certified the planes but also checked all each others work. I'm sure the 737 Max is as safe as any other plane to fly in.
What's still troubling to me is that the FAA was allowing Boeing to parlay it's way into 2017 using 1967 certifications.
"The 737 was first certified by the FAA in 1967. Like every new 737 model since then, the MAX has been approved partially with the original requirements and partially with more current regulations, enabling certain rules and requirements to be grandfathered in. Chief executive Dai Whittingham of the independent trade group UK Flight Safety Committee disputed the idea that the MAX was just another 737, saying, "It is a different body and aircraft but certifiers gave it the same type rating."
You can look up the aircraft used for last 7 flights of a particular flight on flightradar24.com. The aircraft type serving a route typically stays fixed.
Additionally you can look up an airline's fleet on Wikipedia and avoid ones with the Max.
I would be 100% comfortable flying the MAX if they either added a third AoA sensor or removed MCAS altogether (introducing a new type). They did neither.
I also want ALL pilots trained on the differences on this plane. It is not the same as a 737 and we need to stop pretending it is. People should be in jail over this.
Exactly. Any half-decent pilot could keep the 737Max in the air without MCAS. It would just "feel" slightly different than a previous 737. The problem with MCAS is that it lies to the pilot in about four different ways.
Why is this being downvoted? It is entirely correct. The MAX is an entirely safe plane to fly without MCAS. It stalls more easily, but the safe flight regime is not in any way remarkable -- there are plenty of aircraft that stall even more easily than the MAX in wide use.
The problem was never that the plane's flight characteristics were unsafe, it was that they were different enough from the older 737's that it wasn't reasonable to fit them under the same type certificate. So MCAS was added not to make the plane not stall, it was added to make the plane not stall if flown like any other 737.
This is both why a failure of this magnitude could slip past the regulators (MCAS was never described as critical for flight, so it could do with less redundancy. In a failure condition, the crew could always just turn it off and fly without.), and why it's failure is so goddamn galling (a barely-tested computer program that was not needed for safe operation was given the controls to literally fly the plane into the ground for reasons that were best described as marketing).
The MCAS tries to help save a plane that has already gotten in a bad situation. To need it, the pilots have already let the plane get into a dangerous flight regime, your odds of recovery at that point even without MCAS are not ideal.
> your odds of recovery at that point even without MCAS are not ideal
That's why they added MCAS. Based on the FAA's testing, it helps when it works.
I understand the temptation to lean into anti-intellectualism when a plane crashes. But there is sunlight between criticizing an agency in general and playing armchair aerospace engineer.
This is incorrect. Both 737Max crashes took place during normal flight regimes, and they happened because of faulty AOA sensors. Pilots have multiple ways of determining AOA and would never have been fooled by a single bad sensor.
Finally, recovering from a stall (even if one happened, which it didn't in either crash) is Day 1 of every flight training course. It is probably the most basic and thoroughly-drilled skill in all of flying.
> Both 737Max crashes took place during normal flight regimes
I expected to see this fallacy.
MCAS does not operate normally during any flight regime routinely encountered. It should remain entirely inactive until things get more exciting than they should ever get on a passenger flight. What you are talking about is a malfunctioning MCAS, which isn't operating by design.
> recovering from a stall (even if one happened, which it didn't in either crash) is Day 1 of every flight training course
Yes, of course it is. It is also very rarely encountered by passenger jets, and when it does happen things are very exciting indeed. Your odds of hitting the ground have already gone up quite dramatically at that point, MCAS or not.
> MCAS does not operate normally during any flight regime routinely encountered.
I'm aware of this. I'm also aware that it failed twice within a couple of months -- which is far too frequently -- and the consequences of each failure were complete loss of the airframe. Anybody who has ever done risk analysis can see that MCAS was improperly designed and poorly implemented and the people who signed off on it should probably go to jail.
No new system whose failure could result in all souls lost and is known to have a single point of vulnerability should ever have been added to a commercial passenger aircraft. Period.
Boeing needs to do some publicity stunts to get the public interested in flying on these. Best thing they could do I put their Board of Directors and their families one one and fly it around the world.
If I were in charge of PR for Boeing, I'd do exactly the opposite. I'd quietly get them back into production and I'd happily pony up for every last plane to have the paint scheme altered so it didn't say MAX anywhere on it.
My plan is to not fly on these for 6 - 12 month; see if any more crash. On the one hand, I would be terrified because, obviously! But on the other, they must now be extremely safe, with all the scrutiny, right?
They crashed because they made an unstable airframe and tried to make up for it with sensors and software. They've presumably improved the sensors and software, along with training, but the airframe is the same.
I'd much rather ride some boring old design that's been flying safely for decades without needing fancy software to keep it in the air.
My understanding is that the airframe wasn't unstable in a way that's particularly unusual for commercial aircraft, and these sorts of things are regularly handled just fine with pilot training.
The problem was that it was unstable in a way that wasn't exactly like previous 737 models. Except actually that probably wasn't a problem so much as an annoyance. The problem was that, since retraining pilots for the MAX's quirks would have been unpalatable for customers, they decided to try and use software to sweep it under the carpet. Except perhaps the even more fundamental problem was that the FAA was so deeply asleep on their post that this glaring snow job apparently flew past them without notice.
No. The MAX is basically a boring old design that's been flying safely for decades, and it is perfectly stable. The only problem was a small handling issue that appeared at very steep climbs because of the new engines. And because they wanted to keep the same type certificate, the MAX had to handle exactly the same as the "old" 737, so they introduces MCAS to adjust the "maneuvering characteristics" automatically. Which was so badly designed that it led to the crashes. So the problem is not with the basic 737 design, the problem is that the new MCAS was much worse than the problem it was supposed to fix.
Was thought to be perfectly stable. Turns out it wasn't, in their new edition.
> problem is that the new MCAS was much worse
It's common in airplane industry to never blame users nor the instruments, but the process. Things should be able to fail, and pilots should be able to recover. Now both Boeing and the FAA failed catastrophically in their certification process, leading to missing vital information about the MCAS.
Overall the core problem wasn't the MCAS but the process (or lack of process) that didn't find out the edge-cases where it didn't work.
As with most aviation accidents, you always have a chain of things that have to fail. If memory serves, any one of the following would probably have prevented the accidents:
- if Boeing would have designed MCAS better
- if anyone inside Boeing or the FAA would have flagged the bad design before the accidents
I've gotten fed up of trying to explain this to people. The tldr is that the most reasonable interpretation of events is that the 737 Max without MCAS is not certifiable without MCAS (or at least a better thought out modification to the control feel system). There is no particular requirement for aircraft on the same type certificate to "handle" the same way. For an extreme example look at the Cessna 500 series. The CJ4 has a note in its pilot operations hand book that it is high performance and is basically at the limit of what a single pilot can handle.
That's precisely contrary to my point. The available evidence is that the 737 Max did not meet the certification requirements for force vs pitch. As such no amount of extra training would have sufficed to make it a certifiable aircraft.
I appreciate that Boeing themselves have made this difficult by their PR line that MCAS makes it fly like other 737s. If you have ever been involved in something like this being managed in the public perception you'll understand this is pretty typical of how technical issues are dumbed down for public consumption. In this case it also happens to be technically correct, in that other 737s have certifiable behaviour in this flight regime, so MCAS makes it fly more like them.
The control forces have to to always increase linearly into a stall, theres no amount of training that will allow for anything otherwise. The aircraft is not certifiable without MCAS.
Now the question is ... how long are people's memories? This isn't the first time Boeing has been in this position, and they came back just fine.
My guess is that people will forget very quickly. The planes will be rebranded to de-emphasize the MAX name, and flying will return to normal in 2021. Boeing will benefit from the cluster of a year 2020 has been. People have had plenty of distractions since the crashes.
I won't fly on it and I don't care how safe it is. The precedent it sets is terrifying. I know people say Boeing got a "black eye" from it, but in reality getting out of this that easy sets them up to a dangerous advantage over competitors in my perspective. Competitors can't compete on safe terms and will have to reduce safety to stay competitive, which ignites a very bad spiral...
Just to be clear: No, it is not cleared to resume flights yet, airlines still have to approve their supplementary 737MAX training with the FAA, and they have to take the planes out of storage, which requires some maintenance work.
Plus I think air traffic was picking up in the US, but in Europe, with all the new lockdowns, there cannot be a huge appetite to get those planes out of storage.
The storage/maintenance issue is of greatest concern to me. It's an easy way to cut corners for smaller airlines during a pandemic. And if a plane goes down due to faults in that process, Boeing may again see criticism if it just happens to be one of theirs (even if it was an airline maintenance fault). I really don't feel like flying for a while.
Boeing has an interesting relationship with many Agencies and the US Government. They're like part of the Family. Their failures are overlooked and even rewarded. The MAX could crash again and the circus will continue, they will pretend to fix it and move on. Their Starliner Space Craft was a failure and they were given more Government funds and time. People should have went to jail, massive fines or Boeing should have been forced to scrap the entire fleet of 737 MAX and never allowed to create an abomination like that again.
This Companies products are designed by clowns, who are in turn supervised by monkeys.
The hot take is "I won't fly on these anymore", and I totally get it. However, this is a plane with a ton of recent scrutiny from the FAA, and the product of Boeing cultural failings.
Is the better version of this take "I won't fly Boeing anymore"? With the possible exception of this plane given its recent scrutiny.
The other planes in use are updated on a rolling basis, they've had "minor" changes here and there, potentially the same level of "minor" that the Max was – and we know how that performed.
And I think the take would be different for a regular flyer than occasional flyer.
Even before the fix, the probability of an occasional flyer getting in a crash was already negligible. For someone taking the same flight twice a week, or worse for the cabin crew spending half of the year in this plane, the risk was unacceptable.
So unless you fly very often, it is rational to not worry which model you board. One dodges small risks all day long, crossing the street, eating food, being exposed to animals or germs, etc. It’s just one more.
I've decided that once the pandemic is over and it'll be safe to fly again, I'll be flying Spirit exclusively because they operate an all-Airbus fleet.
I'm not risking ever getting on a Boeing ever again.
And usually old and beat to hell. Plastic interiors melting from contact with people's heads, creaking interiors, creaking structure (actually had one make a terrific crack that reverbrated through the airframe during some turbulence on my last flight). I'm not really a fan of the CRJ either.
I honestly don't think an unstable airframe 100% relying on proper pilot education synchronized with software feels great. But I must also admit that I'm not sure if this is the norm nowadays as aircraft keep being pushed for higher efficiency (and the Max simply had poor education and software), or if this indeed is a very special aircraft.
Pilots have been relying on software to fly commercial planes for ages.
When a pilot is given clearance to land they punch numbers into the flight computer corresponding to the airport and approach. The plane will automatically line up with the correct runway. The glideslope will also tell the plane where it needs to be as it is descending.
The planes are also able to land themselves. Pilots are there to make people feel comfortable and handle rare edge cases. They will be monitoring the autopilot at all times.
My cynical take is they know they're going to get the planes back in the air eventually, so do it during a pandemic so when one does go down again it will presumably have fewer casualties.
I’ll fly it as soon as we’ve fixed the legal/regulatory issues that led to its initial certification. Until the process is fixed, I refuse to accept its conclusions.
They don’t need to be boycotted, they simply have a bad design addressed with a software workaround. The bad early track record is enough to keep a large chunk of people terrified of flying on them that airlines would probablty invest into different planes. Not sure what would happen to the current fleet, they would probably continue to fly successfully having that pilots are now aware of the shortcomings but I don’t see this plane making any further success in sales
I wouldn't mind flying on it if I was the pilot, because I'd know how to disconnect the stupid MCAS and fly the damned plane. But as a passenger I have no idea how well the pilot has been trained or whether he/she has sense enough to disconnect the MCAS and rely on piloting skills.
Although in reality it's kind of hard to imagine any qualified pilot missing the 737Max memo, so I'm probably awfulizing.
It's still a poorly-designed plane built by a poorly-managed company with its flaws spackled over by software, and that alone makes me want to avoid it.
Agree fully. While the US never been 100% trustworthy, the election of Donald Trump, the handling of the pandemic, the handling of the 737 Max fiasco and the handling of this years election are very embarrassing and has made the trust hit rock bottom for the nation.
I'm looking forward to seeing a video of him and his family on this plane, unless this is just marketing speak. It sure would help raise the public image of the FAA and Boeing slightly if they put their money (family?) where their mouth is.