35 ms·

Boeing 737 Max cleared to fly again 'too early'

255 points by dustinmoris 6y ago

shaoonb 6y ago
Given the scrutiny on this plane, do you think Boeing would be able to survive as an organisation if another one crashes? I'm surprised they're willing to risk it.
- Guthur 6y ago
  The source of this claim is entitled to an opinion but it does seem in the minority.
- Traster 6y ago
  The failure at Boeing wasn't just some individual s/w issue. It was an organisational problem that caused them to make decisions to expedite release out of a plane that wasn't safe. The question isn't have they fixed the issue or not. The question is have they made the organisational changes to ensure that their complex hierarchy of management can't overrule technical experts about whether safe procedures have been followed. In my opinion, given the timescales and what people are reporting, the same people who pushed to get the 737Max out the door in an unsafe manner in the first place in order to meet over-ambitious targets, will probably have also been motivated to push through sign-off on these changes too. The question is less about whether Boeing can afford another crash, it's more about whether all the individuals in the hierarchy can afford to tell their boss the 737Max isn't ready- or as is likely, that it cannot ever be made safe in an economical way.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  I'm 100% certain Boeing would be able to survive as an organization. Boeing is an extremely large defense contractor and for that reason alone too big to fail.
  - StreamBright 6y ago
    Yes, the government created yet another situation where it does not matter what happens on the market the company does not fail. This is why capitalism does not work as people think it works, governments actively circumventing the basic rules of markets.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      What do you mean "the government created" - some markets naturally have a tendency to create monopolies because they are winner takes all. Governments have to actively interfere with that process and break them up - just look at bit tech.
      - Guthur 6y ago
        Come on, which ones are you talking about FB, Twitter, Netflix, Google, MS, Amazon, Oracle, Intel, AMD, Nvidia and on and on. How many companies does there have to be for the monopoly record to stop? Frankly at this stage I'd have to say that word doesn't mean what HN thinks it means.
        ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        Do multiple cosecutive indictments by the ECJ not prove to you that Google has a monopily? What does it take to convince you, sacret gospel?
        Guthur 6y ago
        Those are for anti competitive behaviour, it's actually not the same thing. One may led to the other but that's not equivalency. If you want to say Google and other companies may engage in anti competitive behaviour, sure. It's a somewhat subjective line though because most companies are in competition and trying to take or guard share from others, is that anti competitive?
      - curryst 6y ago
        Them being a defense contractor creates a situation where their airplane business can't be allowed to fail for national security reasons. Even if another business takes their place, it will take time to ramp up, which may not be acceptable. That's the part the government created. There is a secondary problem in the duopoly that is Boeing and Airbus, but the government didn't necessarily cause that (that I'm aware of).
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  > Given the scrutiny on this plane, do you think Boeing would be able to survive as an organisation if another one crashes? I'm surprised they're willing to risk it. Did you think that after the first one crashed? If a third one crashes, will your logic become even stronger in the aftermath of that?
- M2Ys4U 6y ago
  >do you think Boeing would be able to survive as an organisation if another one crashes? The US government will not let Boeing die, even if it should.
- calyth2018 6y ago
  In a pay-to-play industry, where Boeing make things other than commercial aircraft, and knowing that American administration, regardless of political persuation, will keep it alive? Sure.
dataflow 6y ago
> Investigators believe both accidents were triggered by the failure of a single sensor. Reminder that the 737 was far, far, far more than a "software failure": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19414775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19414775 The entire point of MCAS was to mask the reality that the plane needed a recertification due to its inadequate aerodynamics. How are they still pinpointing MCAS as the root of the problem rather than the plane's physical instability?
- mtgx 6y ago
  Didn't they actually blame the pilots initially?
  - dataflow 6y ago
    Yeah. But at least initially maybe things were still unclear to some folks. Why are they still ignoring the root cause now?
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    The criticism of the pilots on HN was hella racist.
    - Majestic121 6y ago
      Can you substantiate this statement ?
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        Sure go back an read the threads after the first and second crashes and half the people were blaming the pilots being incompetent because they were Indian and Indonesian. And then same for the second crash. Specifically saying that the planes were safe in the hands of American and European pilots. It was very disgusting all around.
        _ph_ 6y ago
bjarneh 6y ago
All confidence is lost in that plane at this point. The more they keep pushing to get that aircraft back on its wings, the less keen we will all be to fly with anything named 'Boeing'
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- overscore 6y ago
  Ryanair, which is by far the world's safest airline, has ordered 210 of the Max, having recently increased their order by 75 aircraft. So there is confidence in the aircraft in industry, at least.
  - dashdot 6y ago
    Some call it confidence, I call it bargain shopping.
  - brnt 6y ago
    Ryanair buying thing is no sign of confidence, but a sign of O'Leary smelling a bargain (and of course, the MAX qualifies at this point). He's counting on this being worked out one way or another, not necessarily the MAX being actually a good plane.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    which is by far the world's safest airline Not even on the list: https://www.airlineratings.com/news/worlds-safest-airlines-named-for-2019/ https://www.airlineratings.com/news/worlds-safest-airlines-n...
    - overscore 6y ago
      Ryanair has a significantly better safety record than all of the "safest" airlines on that list, and have never had a fatality or serious accident, which is more than most of them. It's own safety rating system puts Ryanair at the same "7 stars", but their history speaks for itself. https://www.airlineratings.com/ratings/ryanair/ https://www.airlineratings.com/ratings/ryanair/
akie 6y ago
I will go the extra mile to avoid flying on that plane.
- rplnt 6y ago
  You'd be a negligible minority.
  - nicolas_t 6y ago
    Anecdotally, the people I know who say they won't fly in a 737 max in the future and who know how to check (or ask the staff booking their plane tickets for them to check) for that are also the frequent flyers who fly in first class/business class. I wonder if it might be a minority that is significant to the bottom line.
    - rplnt 6y ago
      If you look at the top of the list of Max buyers, there' a lot of low cost airlines. So at least those won't be affected by this type of customer.
  - franklampard 6y ago
    What are you even talking about? I will do that not to protest against Boeing, but to save my own life. I don’t care if I am a negligible minority in Boeing’s or yours eyes
    - rplnt 6y ago
      We're discussing Boeing as a company and their grounded fleet. Sorry I assumed you sharing this was somewhat relevant.
    - MrsPeaches 6y ago
      Off topic but sorry about the job, mate. We were all backing you, but the Roman army rolls on...
Glawen 6y ago
anyone got any details of what changes Boeing needs to make in order to fly a 737Max again ? I have read SW update, but also ongoing changes. It looks like there are others changes in the pipeline, but the 737Max can fly without these changes.
dustinmoris 6y ago
We need a website which will list all airlines which have at least one 737 Max in stock or on order and make it easy for customers to find out what % of the fleet is the 737 Max, so customers can take that into account when booking flights and so that airlines know that having a Boeing 737 Max has a direct negative impact on their sales figures. Even if Boeing truly fixes the plane, they should never get away with this. The sheer ignorance and negligence which led to the unnecessary death of so many passengers is mass murder in my eyes.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  You can usually see the aircraft being flown when booking a ticket.
  - dustinmoris 6y ago
    They can change it last minute and will certainly do so if they know that people look for it during booking. I rather book only with airlines which don't even have a 737 max in their hanger.
    - FearNotDaniel 6y ago
      Many airlines will have a fleet page like this one [1] so you can tell exactly how many they have of each model/variant. If somebody less busy than me wants to find all these and scrape them into a "howmany737maxesdoesyourairlinehave.io" app, knock yourself out. [1] https://www.lufthansagroup.com/en/company/fleet.html https://www.lufthansagroup.com/en/company/fleet.html
    - cm2187 6y ago
      It may be rational to try to minimise your use of the Max, particularly if you fly frequently (though not convinced myself). But I think it is irrational to refuse to board the plane on the rare events when there is a last minute change of plane. Even before the fixes, the accident rate relative to the flight hours was extremely low. Unacceptably high for the crew flying these all year long, but not something worth worrying about for an occasional flyer. Worrying about it after the fix is worrying about “winning the jackpot at the national lottery” level of low probabilities. There are many other things you will do during that day that carry orders of magnitude more risk to hurt or kill you.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
afrnz 6y ago
Pieter Levels' https://airlinelist.com https://airlinelist.com has the a filter for 737 Max fleets ...
- kzrdude 6y ago
  (See the Airplanes category) The fatality odds bring to mind that correlation does not imply causation. But still useful. Also, MCs surprise me. Space shuttle is a bit sad too.
petre 6y ago
Good luck getting the airline industry going after the pandemic with a liability like the 737 Max in their fleets.
- rutthenut 6y ago
  Getting the airline industry going again will definitely be tough. I think that having the 737 MAX on the fleets will really make very little difference to the majority of customers, who book holidays based on destination and price. Many will be concerned about the MAX incidents and Boeing sharp practices, but not enough to hurt the airlines running them
  - firebaze 6y ago
    I'm not so sure. I think this depends on the price difference between a flight with a Boeing and any other plane. Almost everybody has heard from the issues with Boeing, and if they can spend a few $ more to "feel safe", quite a few will do so I suppose. And with the already very small margins in the large-volume-budget-price segment, it'll be hard to reduce prices even more to counter that effect. As soon as Boeing stays out of news for some period of time or if another airliner brand has a significant, newsworthy accident it will be forgotten though, I'd guess.
varispeed 6y ago
It looks like they still have the element of greed in their ranks that lead to this fiasco. At this point I feel that everyone involved in this project from top to bottom should be sacked and they should dispose of 737 Max plans and start over with a completely new team.
- avh02 6y ago
  I'd love to see the same, but I'd also think that the institutional knowledge and experience this would lose on (safe?) aircraft design and manufacturing would probably be many more steps backwards.
WalterBright 6y ago
This article has the usual inaccurate reporting, such as: > Ultimately each aircraft was pushed into an unrecoverable dive. This is false. The dives were all recoverable if the pilots had: 1. trimmed the stabilizer back to normal with the thumb switches 2. then turned off the stab trim system > creating a tug of war between the aircraft and its crew Which is the reason for step 2. See Boeing's Emergency Airworthiness Directive: "Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are moved to CUTOUT." https://theaircurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/B737-MAX-AD-1107.pdf https://theaircurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/B737-MA...
- Jonnax 6y ago
  Does it matter? They said pilots could learn the difference with some iPad training. Two planes full of people were killed due to Boeing wanting to save money on their aircraft design. If the same pilot error caused their deaths, then maybe the manufacturer is to blame.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Yes, it does matter. If the EA crew had followed the two steps described in the Emergency Airworthiness Directive distributed to all MAX crews, they wouldn't have crashed. > save money The problem was the poor design of the MCAS system, not its existence, nor the reason for its existence. The reason for the 737MAX is it has 15% less fuel burn, which is an enormous savings for airline operations, and a big reduction in CO2 emissions. > If the same pilot error caused their deaths Boeing is responsible for the faulty MCAS design. Pilot error is caused by the pilots, their training, or their procedures. The whole point of having pilots on an airliner (rather than having it fully automated) is to respond to emergencies.
    - Jonnax 6y ago
      Right. The poor design that was as a result of cost saving as well as time to market pressure. 15% less fuel burn than what as well? They competitors? Their older plane? Was the deaths of so many people worth that reduction in CO2 for the period of which it was flown? This article is about it being cleared to fly too early. That's 100% less fuel burn whilst it's grounded.
redis_mlc 6y ago
I've corrected a batch of HN comments below in this one post. Please upvote. > I'd choose to fly on a 737 Max over any other plane, personally. Because no other plane in operation has ever received the amount of scrutiny the Max has. That is a logical fallacy. It received scrutiny because it's misdesigned and miscertified. The corrections have not been done transparently. That doesn't inspire me at all. The outsourced software could be a whole can of worms on its own. > Investigators believe both accidents were triggered by the failure of a single sensor. Yes, because it was using a single sensor instead of 2 or 3 as expected for a life-critical system. The sensor was also external to the plane, subject to impact by birds and ladders. Facepalm. > Didn't they actually blame the pilots initially? Yes. I can speak about Indonesia, which I am very familiar with. Indonesia has a poor safety record, both because of pilot performance and maintenance issues, so calling out Indonesia aviation safety is not "racist." The Indo NTSB ruled that pilots, maintenance and Boeing shared blame equally. > Quantas has not had a fatality since 1951 (Ryanair was founded in 1984); so that cannot possibly be true. I think the layman opinion of an airline being "safe" if there's no fatal accidents is silly, since it really depends on volume of flights, etc. Qantas used nitrogen instead of supplemental oxygen on many flights, which would have resulted in many deaths in case of a depressurization. Also, QF32 (A380 uncontained engine failure) was a close one. > do you think Boeing would be able to survive Yes, because it's a defense contractor, is USA's largest exporter and makes half the world's airliners, which Airbus can't build incrementally. Airline crashes do close airlines, though. > anyone got any details of what changes Boeing needs to make in order to fly a 737Max again ? The complexity of v1 was too much to fix until v2. Also, nobody has talked about their outsourced flight control software yet. MCAS involves too many domains for many people to wrap their heads around (hardware, software, FARs, compliance, flight manual, training, aerodynamics, cost.) > The reason they were chasing fleet commonality is because it would massively reduce adoption costs for airlines by making expensive training for existing 737 pilots unnecessary. Yes, but more specifically, Boeing promised Southwest $1 million per plane for pilot retraining. So a single Excel cell monitored by the executive suite drove the entire MCAS debacle. This story has not been fully told yet, although another accident will bring it to light. Source: commercially-rated pilot, followed MCAS in detail. Predicted MCAS solution would take more than a year, and that v1 wasn't it.
Ice_cream_suit 6y ago
If it is Boeing, I am not going.
nercury 6y ago
This is basically scaremongering at this point. The system that failed is well understood now, and the whole aircraft has been scrutinized. But no, let's dump all these planes. Very ecological. Let's do a complete redesign using a new parts. Because those won't have any problems. /s
- piva00 6y ago
  The system that failed is well understood. Have the mechanisms in the organisation that allowed for such a failure-prone system to be installed and cleared for production been changed? That's the opaqueness of all of this that bothers most, yeah, as an engineer I can say with some confidence that this specific problem has been thoroughly dissected and analysed. What about the issues that aren't in the engineering-realm but in the business-realm? Have processes that allowed this failure to happen been fixed? Where was the root cause?
  - randomNumber7 6y ago
    > Have processes that allowed this failure to happen been fixed? I'm pretty sure they also screwed up somewhere else. Most undergraduate engineers would not control a plane with a single sensor. It's completely ridiculous and it was definitely a management decision to do that (there have to be somewhat decent engineers at boeing, because they build planes after all). If you do something so fundamentally wrong, chances are you screwed up more than once...
tmoravec 6y ago
You can quickly check if your flight is 737 Max on this website: https://maxornot.com https://maxornot.com
_LordGodd 6y ago
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/westjet-boeing-max-1.5884347 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/westjet-boeing-max-1.588434... The problems with this jet are institutional. Boeing is a menace to public safety.
noncoml 6y ago
> The FAA, meanwhile, insists it only approved the return to service of the Max, following a "comprehensive and methodical safety review process" Trust in FAA has been broken so no matter what they say it’s difficult for people to be convinced
MeteorMarc 6y ago
I guess Ed Pierson had no stock options left to convert. Not to dispute his integrity, on the contrary, it is still a hard call on him being a whistle blower.
Waterluvian 6y ago
I've never been one of these people before, but I sure as !@#$ won't fly on the 737 Max. I no-longer trust the certification and safety authorities. I believe this is in dangerous realm of, "this company is too big to fail and human lives really aren't worth that much..." I think we need to let big corporations die on occasion, otherwise important things like safety just become factored into the cost of doing business.
- paulovfc 6y ago
  So true...time for new administration to reform the FAA altogether.
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  > I sure as !@#$ won't fly on the 737 Max Be warned then, when you book a flight, you get no guarantees of what airplane you'll actually fly on. You can be switched onto a different aircraft at the last moment, making your only choice to refuse to board, lost the cost of your ticket, and have to find another flight with the same risk.
  - Waterluvian 6y ago
    Yup. A very fair warning and unfortunate reality. Luckily I fly like twice a year and it's never a plane that large. As for irregular flights, I have had luck picking my route and carrier. It's possible to greatly minimize the chance you'll get a certain plane. I heard some carriers will make special rules to let you refuse.
dzonga 6y ago
a nice trick on your mind, to make your bowels shift when you fly on a Boeing plane. look up it's safety record while you're on the taxi. 777 can be quite a shocker. they usually break in half.

255 points by dustinmoris 6y ago

Given the scrutiny on this plane, do you think Boeing would be able to survive as an organisation if another one crashes? I'm surprised they're willing to risk it.

Guthur 6y ago
The source of this claim is entitled to an opinion but it does seem in the minority.
Traster 6y ago
The failure at Boeing wasn't just some individual s/w issue. It was an organisational problem that caused them to make decisions to expedite release out of a plane that wasn't safe. The question isn't have they fixed the issue or not. The question is have they made the organisational changes to ensure that their complex hierarchy of management can't overrule technical experts about whether safe procedures have been followed. In my opinion, given the timescales and what people are reporting, the same people who pushed to get the 737Max out the door in an unsafe manner in the first place in order to meet over-ambitious targets, will probably have also been motivated to push through sign-off on these changes too. The question is less about whether Boeing can afford another crash, it's more about whether all the individuals in the hierarchy can afford to tell their boss the 737Max isn't ready- or as is likely, that it cannot ever be made safe in an economical way.
jacquesm 6y ago
I'm 100% certain Boeing would be able to survive as an organization. Boeing is an extremely large defense contractor and for that reason alone too big to fail.
- StreamBright 6y ago
  Yes, the government created yet another situation where it does not matter what happens on the market the company does not fail. This is why capitalism does not work as people think it works, governments actively circumventing the basic rules of markets.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    What do you mean "the government created" - some markets naturally have a tendency to create monopolies because they are winner takes all. Governments have to actively interfere with that process and break them up - just look at bit tech.
    - Guthur 6y ago
      Come on, which ones are you talking about FB, Twitter, Netflix, Google, MS, Amazon, Oracle, Intel, AMD, Nvidia and on and on. How many companies does there have to be for the monopoly record to stop? Frankly at this stage I'd have to say that word doesn't mean what HN thinks it means.
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        Do multiple cosecutive indictments by the ECJ not prove to you that Google has a monopily? What does it take to convince you, sacret gospel?
        Guthur 6y ago
        Those are for anti competitive behaviour, it's actually not the same thing. One may led to the other but that's not equivalency. If you want to say Google and other companies may engage in anti competitive behaviour, sure. It's a somewhat subjective line though because most companies are in competition and trying to take or guard share from others, is that anti competitive?
    - curryst 6y ago
      Them being a defense contractor creates a situation where their airplane business can't be allowed to fail for national security reasons. Even if another business takes their place, it will take time to ramp up, which may not be acceptable. That's the part the government created. There is a secondary problem in the duopoly that is Boeing and Airbus, but the government didn't necessarily cause that (that I'm aware of).
wombatmobile 6y ago
> Given the scrutiny on this plane, do you think Boeing would be able to survive as an organisation if another one crashes? I'm surprised they're willing to risk it. Did you think that after the first one crashed? If a third one crashes, will your logic become even stronger in the aftermath of that?
M2Ys4U 6y ago
>do you think Boeing would be able to survive as an organisation if another one crashes? The US government will not let Boeing die, even if it should.
calyth2018 6y ago
In a pay-to-play industry, where Boeing make things other than commercial aircraft, and knowing that American administration, regardless of political persuation, will keep it alive? Sure.

dataflow 6y ago

> Investigators believe both accidents were triggered by the failure of a single sensor. Reminder that the 737 was far, far, far more than a "software failure": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19414775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19414775 The entire point of MCAS was to mask the reality that the plane needed a recertification due to its inadequate aerodynamics. How are they still pinpointing MCAS as the root of the problem rather than the plane's physical instability?

mtgx 6y ago
Didn't they actually blame the pilots initially?
- dataflow 6y ago
  Yeah. But at least initially maybe things were still unclear to some folks. Why are they still ignoring the root cause now?
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  The criticism of the pilots on HN was hella racist.
  - Majestic121 6y ago
    Can you substantiate this statement ?
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      Sure go back an read the threads after the first and second crashes and half the people were blaming the pilots being incompetent because they were Indian and Indonesian. And then same for the second crash. Specifically saying that the planes were safe in the hands of American and European pilots. It was very disgusting all around.
      - _ph_ 6y ago

bjarneh 6y ago

All confidence is lost in that plane at this point. The more they keep pushing to get that aircraft back on its wings, the less keen we will all be to fly with anything named 'Boeing'

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
overscore 6y ago
Ryanair, which is by far the world's safest airline, has ordered 210 of the Max, having recently increased their order by 75 aircraft. So there is confidence in the aircraft in industry, at least.
- dashdot 6y ago
  Some call it confidence, I call it bargain shopping.
- brnt 6y ago
  Ryanair buying thing is no sign of confidence, but a sign of O'Leary smelling a bargain (and of course, the MAX qualifies at this point). He's counting on this being worked out one way or another, not necessarily the MAX being actually a good plane.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  which is by far the world's safest airline Not even on the list: https://www.airlineratings.com/news/worlds-safest-airlines-named-for-2019/ https://www.airlineratings.com/news/worlds-safest-airlines-n...
  - overscore 6y ago
    Ryanair has a significantly better safety record than all of the "safest" airlines on that list, and have never had a fatality or serious accident, which is more than most of them. It's own safety rating system puts Ryanair at the same "7 stars", but their history speaks for itself. https://www.airlineratings.com/ratings/ryanair/ https://www.airlineratings.com/ratings/ryanair/

akie 6y ago

I will go the extra mile to avoid flying on that plane.

rplnt 6y ago
You'd be a negligible minority.
- nicolas_t 6y ago
  Anecdotally, the people I know who say they won't fly in a 737 max in the future and who know how to check (or ask the staff booking their plane tickets for them to check) for that are also the frequent flyers who fly in first class/business class. I wonder if it might be a minority that is significant to the bottom line.
  - rplnt 6y ago
    If you look at the top of the list of Max buyers, there' a lot of low cost airlines. So at least those won't be affected by this type of customer.
- franklampard 6y ago
  What are you even talking about? I will do that not to protest against Boeing, but to save my own life. I don’t care if I am a negligible minority in Boeing’s or yours eyes
  - rplnt 6y ago
    We're discussing Boeing as a company and their grounded fleet. Sorry I assumed you sharing this was somewhat relevant.
  - MrsPeaches 6y ago
    Off topic but sorry about the job, mate. We were all backing you, but the Roman army rolls on...

Glawen 6y ago

anyone got any details of what changes Boeing needs to make in order to fly a 737Max again ? I have read SW update, but also ongoing changes. It looks like there are others changes in the pipeline, but the 737Max can fly without these changes.

dustinmoris 6y ago

We need a website which will list all airlines which have at least one 737 Max in stock or on order and make it easy for customers to find out what % of the fleet is the 737 Max, so customers can take that into account when booking flights and so that airlines know that having a Boeing 737 Max has a direct negative impact on their sales figures. Even if Boeing truly fixes the plane, they should never get away with this. The sheer ignorance and negligence which led to the unnecessary death of so many passengers is mass murder in my eyes.

MattGaiser 6y ago
You can usually see the aircraft being flown when booking a ticket.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  They can change it last minute and will certainly do so if they know that people look for it during booking. I rather book only with airlines which don't even have a 737 max in their hanger.
  - FearNotDaniel 6y ago
    Many airlines will have a fleet page like this one [1] so you can tell exactly how many they have of each model/variant. If somebody less busy than me wants to find all these and scrape them into a "howmany737maxesdoesyourairlinehave.io" app, knock yourself out. [1] https://www.lufthansagroup.com/en/company/fleet.html https://www.lufthansagroup.com/en/company/fleet.html
  - cm2187 6y ago
    It may be rational to try to minimise your use of the Max, particularly if you fly frequently (though not convinced myself). But I think it is irrational to refuse to board the plane on the rare events when there is a last minute change of plane. Even before the fixes, the accident rate relative to the flight hours was extremely low. Unacceptably high for the crew flying these all year long, but not something worth worrying about for an occasional flyer. Worrying about it after the fix is worrying about “winning the jackpot at the national lottery” level of low probabilities. There are many other things you will do during that day that carry orders of magnitude more risk to hurt or kill you.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

afrnz 6y ago

Pieter Levels' https://airlinelist.com https://airlinelist.com has the a filter for 737 Max fleets ...

kzrdude 6y ago
(See the Airplanes category) The fatality odds bring to mind that correlation does not imply causation. But still useful. Also, MCs surprise me. Space shuttle is a bit sad too.

petre 6y ago

Good luck getting the airline industry going after the pandemic with a liability like the 737 Max in their fleets.

rutthenut 6y ago
Getting the airline industry going again will definitely be tough. I think that having the 737 MAX on the fleets will really make very little difference to the majority of customers, who book holidays based on destination and price. Many will be concerned about the MAX incidents and Boeing sharp practices, but not enough to hurt the airlines running them
- firebaze 6y ago
  I'm not so sure. I think this depends on the price difference between a flight with a Boeing and any other plane. Almost everybody has heard from the issues with Boeing, and if they can spend a few $ more to "feel safe", quite a few will do so I suppose. And with the already very small margins in the large-volume-budget-price segment, it'll be hard to reduce prices even more to counter that effect. As soon as Boeing stays out of news for some period of time or if another airliner brand has a significant, newsworthy accident it will be forgotten though, I'd guess.

varispeed 6y ago

It looks like they still have the element of greed in their ranks that lead to this fiasco. At this point I feel that everyone involved in this project from top to bottom should be sacked and they should dispose of 737 Max plans and start over with a completely new team.

avh02 6y ago
I'd love to see the same, but I'd also think that the institutional knowledge and experience this would lose on (safe?) aircraft design and manufacturing would probably be many more steps backwards.

WalterBright 6y ago

This article has the usual inaccurate reporting, such as: > Ultimately each aircraft was pushed into an unrecoverable dive. This is false. The dives were all recoverable if the pilots had: 1. trimmed the stabilizer back to normal with the thumb switches 2. then turned off the stab trim system > creating a tug of war between the aircraft and its crew Which is the reason for step 2. See Boeing's Emergency Airworthiness Directive: "Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are moved to CUTOUT." https://theaircurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/B737-MAX-AD-1107.pdf https://theaircurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/B737-MA...

Jonnax 6y ago
Does it matter? They said pilots could learn the difference with some iPad training. Two planes full of people were killed due to Boeing wanting to save money on their aircraft design. If the same pilot error caused their deaths, then maybe the manufacturer is to blame.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Yes, it does matter. If the EA crew had followed the two steps described in the Emergency Airworthiness Directive distributed to all MAX crews, they wouldn't have crashed. > save money The problem was the poor design of the MCAS system, not its existence, nor the reason for its existence. The reason for the 737MAX is it has 15% less fuel burn, which is an enormous savings for airline operations, and a big reduction in CO2 emissions. > If the same pilot error caused their deaths Boeing is responsible for the faulty MCAS design. Pilot error is caused by the pilots, their training, or their procedures. The whole point of having pilots on an airliner (rather than having it fully automated) is to respond to emergencies.
  - Jonnax 6y ago
    Right. The poor design that was as a result of cost saving as well as time to market pressure. 15% less fuel burn than what as well? They competitors? Their older plane? Was the deaths of so many people worth that reduction in CO2 for the period of which it was flown? This article is about it being cleared to fly too early. That's 100% less fuel burn whilst it's grounded.

redis_mlc 6y ago

I've corrected a batch of HN comments below in this one post. Please upvote. > I'd choose to fly on a 737 Max over any other plane, personally. Because no other plane in operation has ever received the amount of scrutiny the Max has. That is a logical fallacy. It received scrutiny because it's misdesigned and miscertified. The corrections have not been done transparently. That doesn't inspire me at all. The outsourced software could be a whole can of worms on its own. > Investigators believe both accidents were triggered by the failure of a single sensor. Yes, because it was using a single sensor instead of 2 or 3 as expected for a life-critical system. The sensor was also external to the plane, subject to impact by birds and ladders. Facepalm. > Didn't they actually blame the pilots initially? Yes. I can speak about Indonesia, which I am very familiar with. Indonesia has a poor safety record, both because of pilot performance and maintenance issues, so calling out Indonesia aviation safety is not "racist." The Indo NTSB ruled that pilots, maintenance and Boeing shared blame equally. > Quantas has not had a fatality since 1951 (Ryanair was founded in 1984); so that cannot possibly be true. I think the layman opinion of an airline being "safe" if there's no fatal accidents is silly, since it really depends on volume of flights, etc. Qantas used nitrogen instead of supplemental oxygen on many flights, which would have resulted in many deaths in case of a depressurization. Also, QF32 (A380 uncontained engine failure) was a close one. > do you think Boeing would be able to survive Yes, because it's a defense contractor, is USA's largest exporter and makes half the world's airliners, which Airbus can't build incrementally. Airline crashes do close airlines, though. > anyone got any details of what changes Boeing needs to make in order to fly a 737Max again ? The complexity of v1 was too much to fix until v2. Also, nobody has talked about their outsourced flight control software yet. MCAS involves too many domains for many people to wrap their heads around (hardware, software, FARs, compliance, flight manual, training, aerodynamics, cost.) > The reason they were chasing fleet commonality is because it would massively reduce adoption costs for airlines by making expensive training for existing 737 pilots unnecessary. Yes, but more specifically, Boeing promised Southwest $1 million per plane for pilot retraining. So a single Excel cell monitored by the executive suite drove the entire MCAS debacle. This story has not been fully told yet, although another accident will bring it to light. Source: commercially-rated pilot, followed MCAS in detail. Predicted MCAS solution would take more than a year, and that v1 wasn't it.

Ice_cream_suit 6y ago

If it is Boeing, I am not going.

nercury 6y ago

This is basically scaremongering at this point. The system that failed is well understood now, and the whole aircraft has been scrutinized. But no, let's dump all these planes. Very ecological. Let's do a complete redesign using a new parts. Because those won't have any problems. /s

piva00 6y ago
The system that failed is well understood. Have the mechanisms in the organisation that allowed for such a failure-prone system to be installed and cleared for production been changed? That's the opaqueness of all of this that bothers most, yeah, as an engineer I can say with some confidence that this specific problem has been thoroughly dissected and analysed. What about the issues that aren't in the engineering-realm but in the business-realm? Have processes that allowed this failure to happen been fixed? Where was the root cause?
- randomNumber7 6y ago
  > Have processes that allowed this failure to happen been fixed? I'm pretty sure they also screwed up somewhere else. Most undergraduate engineers would not control a plane with a single sensor. It's completely ridiculous and it was definitely a management decision to do that (there have to be somewhat decent engineers at boeing, because they build planes after all). If you do something so fundamentally wrong, chances are you screwed up more than once...

tmoravec 6y ago

You can quickly check if your flight is 737 Max on this website: https://maxornot.com https://maxornot.com

_LordGodd 6y ago

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/westjet-boeing-max-1.5884347 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/westjet-boeing-max-1.588434... The problems with this jet are institutional. Boeing is a menace to public safety.

noncoml 6y ago

> The FAA, meanwhile, insists it only approved the return to service of the Max, following a "comprehensive and methodical safety review process" Trust in FAA has been broken so no matter what they say it’s difficult for people to be convinced

MeteorMarc 6y ago

I guess Ed Pierson had no stock options left to convert. Not to dispute his integrity, on the contrary, it is still a hard call on him being a whistle blower.

Waterluvian 6y ago

I've never been one of these people before, but I sure as !@#$ won't fly on the 737 Max. I no-longer trust the certification and safety authorities. I believe this is in dangerous realm of, "this company is too big to fail and human lives really aren't worth that much..." I think we need to let big corporations die on occasion, otherwise important things like safety just become factored into the cost of doing business.

paulovfc 6y ago
So true...time for new administration to reform the FAA altogether.
oarsinsync 6y ago
> I sure as !@#$ won't fly on the 737 Max Be warned then, when you book a flight, you get no guarantees of what airplane you'll actually fly on. You can be switched onto a different aircraft at the last moment, making your only choice to refuse to board, lost the cost of your ticket, and have to find another flight with the same risk.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  Yup. A very fair warning and unfortunate reality. Luckily I fly like twice a year and it's never a plane that large. As for irregular flights, I have had luck picking my route and carrier. It's possible to greatly minimize the chance you'll get a certain plane. I heard some carriers will make special rules to let you refuse.

dzonga 6y ago

a nice trick on your mind, to make your bowels shift when you fly on a Boeing plane. look up it's safety record while you're on the taxi. 777 can be quite a shocker. they usually break in half.