Originally Posted by
FlightCosting
One thing is clear amongst all the scuttlebutt, the 737 MAX is a new type not an ng with a few tweaks and a slightly different cockpit layout.
Buying a new aircraft type is a big undertaking for any airline and expensive getting their existing pilots certified on the type while still operational on the existing 737 fleet. This makes it more difficult for Boeing to sign up customers for big orders so they tricked customers into buying the MAX by certifying the aircraft as a variant so that current ng type rating applied with only new cockpit familiarity checks.
Precisely.
As year after year business schools pump out MBA graduates the only thing they conceive is cost and lowering it.
Labour unit cost is the single most controllable cost an airline has.
Manufacturers heard the drum beat a long time ago.
Regulators heard it too.
In the never ending battle of short term expense versus long term safety, the latter finishes a long way behind.
Consumers hear it too.
Our hubris as a species is incredible. We convince ourselves time and again absence of evidence is evidence of absence until again the 'unforeseen' appears again just to be re-learned as it was since long forgotten.
The normalisation of deviance.