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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is nothing Boeing can do now to save the MAX short of firing the whole executive suite and the board. The longer they stall, the worse for the stockholders.
Boeing's problems are much much worse and complex than that.
Firing them all is a no-brainier, but they need to be replaced with competent ones willing to take the reigns of a slowly but surely nose diving plane on fire.
Unfortunately the cancer spread to lower levels of the company too, so it's no easy to turn this around and tragically politics and geopolitics it's what will "saved" them for now but I'm almost sure it's a pack with the devil and they'll pay dearly for it.
To me, the first concrete step they could take to regain trust would be to admit the mistake, scrap the max program including produced planes, and double down on a totally redesigned successor.
I imagine it will be safe in the future, but doomed because of PR.
Maybe they could help their PR if they made it actually comfortable to fly in. I was avoiding it before the grounding because it sounds like a sardine can they want to use for 5 hour flights like LAX-DCA.
But none of the executives are going to prison right? That's what should actually happen. They deliberately and systematically short-changed the engineering in order to make more money, to the point where hundreds of people died.
Thankfully none of us on this forum are in charge at Boeing. We would certainly do the wrong thing in response to the MCAS debacle. An observation is that the overall environment is relatively healthy but we must never let the MCAS incident be repeated. Identify why MCAS was so poorly coded and how it passed QC and I think you’ve solved the most pressing issue.
It seems unlikely, at least to me, that Boeing will ever restart 737 Max production. The decision by Boeing executives to bet the company on this deeply flawed aircraft will have serious economic consequences for the employees, suppliers, and investors who trusted them.
For the rest of us, no big deal. Airbus will happily take up the slack.
Don't they already have deals in place? Unless they could fulfill those orders with 737s at mightily discounted rates, I would think it would really be up to the customers at this point.
[+] [-] freehunter|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nrau|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] petilon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcurve|6 years ago|reply
but none quite like this one.
[+] [-] jubble|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwr|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] StreamBright|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fred_is_fred|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laydn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdjdjjsjs|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ulfw|6 years ago|reply
Instead they checked just one and come what may sent the plane to hell based on that one sensor read-out.
[+] [-] a3n|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Smoosh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PedroBatista|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] eyegor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_duke|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] liudoutang|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kjaftaedi|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ulfw|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] metalliqaz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgingahead|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] chii|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nknealk|6 years ago|reply
Not defending Boeing's behavior, just noting that the grounding of the MAX indeed materially affected GDP.
[+] [-] lapsley|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] foobar_fighter|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ulfw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] topspin|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jacquesm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mscasts|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ncmncm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PedroBatista|6 years ago|reply
Firing them all is a no-brainier, but they need to be replaced with competent ones willing to take the reigns of a slowly but surely nose diving plane on fire.
Unfortunately the cancer spread to lower levels of the company too, so it's no easy to turn this around and tragically politics and geopolitics it's what will "saved" them for now but I'm almost sure it's a pack with the devil and they'll pay dearly for it.
[+] [-] holler|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bookofjoe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BurnGpuBurn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trimbo|6 years ago|reply
Maybe they could help their PR if they made it actually comfortable to fly in. I was avoiding it before the grounding because it sounds like a sardine can they want to use for 5 hour flights like LAX-DCA.
https://thepointsguy.com/news/cruel-and-unusual-aa-puts-pann...
[+] [-] 0xffff2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|6 years ago|reply
But none of the executives are going to prison right? That's what should actually happen. They deliberately and systematically short-changed the engineering in order to make more money, to the point where hundreds of people died.
[+] [-] neonate|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheBillyMania|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chmaynard|6 years ago|reply
For the rest of us, no big deal. Airbus will happily take up the slack.
[+] [-] Havoc|6 years ago|reply
Clearly Boeing has a company culture issue, not a 737 issue. Well both I suppose.
[+] [-] KoftaBob|6 years ago|reply
There should 100% be a prison sentence for the decision makers that OK'd that move. That's negligence to the highest degree.
[+] [-] ncmncm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rco8786|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbob45|6 years ago|reply