"The MAX was otherwise a very safe plane was it not?" Huh? The MAX was the most unsafe major new plane in ... something like decades. You can't make a statemen

"The MAX was otherwise a very safe plane was it not?" Huh? The MAX was the most unsafe major new plane in ... something like decades. You can't make a statement excluding all the bad and then trying to say it's good. The bad is exactly what you're getting at here. And even apart from that, the 737 is an obsolete, decades-old design. The only reason they're still making new iterations of it is because of type ratings requirements; if you actually wanted to make a great plane, you'd never base it on the 737. It has ancient analog gauge displays (which are now simulated digitally), doesn't use electronic flight controls, is too low to the ground leading to increased potential of foreign object debris into the engines, and as a consequence of this the newer more efficient jet engines don't even fit underneath the wings properly and hence had to be shifted forward into an unstable position that necessitated MCAS. There's no two ways about it, there's nothing good about the 737 MAX, even apart from all the crashes.