Originally Posted by
.Scott
We don't know how long the MAXs will be grounded. Perhaps 3 months. Aside from lots of missed new orders, what will that cost Boeing?
But I agree, the reengineering and deployment of the fix will not be financial killers. The most financial damage will likely come from the time it takes to work through the process.
At least two other major contributing factors must be addressed as well. And they require that both the FAA and Boeing admit fault.
(1) Why was MCAS not described in sufficient detail in the FCOM/ AFM?
(2) Why was there no training mandated for malfunctions of this System? And not just the failures that potentially caused these crashes, but what about failure of the MCAS system entirely? In that case the aircraft would handle differently, would it not? Given the lack of redundancy in the AOA sensors and possibly elsewhere in the MCAS system, MCAS failure/ inhibition should be a training event, or at least included in the ground school syllabus.
So far Max pilots have been given about 4 hours of CBT and a firm hand shake as their differences training. That will obviously have to change.
Even when the aircraft is deemed “fixed”, (1) the manuals will have to be updated and approved, and (2) the crews and engineers will still have to all be properly trained. That will take some time, as that training cannot commence until the problem is officially identified.