Originally Posted by
artee
An article on Bloomberg:
‘Not Suitable’ for Certain Airports
...‘Challenging Airports’
Boeing stated in a brief filed in the trade case that the “737 Max 7 has greater performance capabilities at challenging airports. In particular, the 737 Max 7 can serve certain ‘high/hot’ airports and has a greater range operating out of constrained airfields.” The brief then cites a number of such airports -- the names of which are redacted -- that the Max 7 can fly into that “the 8, 9 and 10 cannot."
“Larger 737 variants cannot be used at what are referred to has ‘high/hot’ airports,” the brief stated. Certain U.S. airports are unsuitable for the Max 8 “due to a combination of short runway lengths, elevation, temperature, humidity and other environmental conditions."...
That's just a red herring. It talks about "short runways". Nobody in their right mind would think a 3700 m runway was short. It is a sales pitch for the MAX 7, and it has nothing at all to do with this accident or the one in Jakarta.
Documents in the trade case referred to at least 16 U.S. airports considered “high and hot” and therefore unsuitable for the Max 8, though the names of those facilities weren’t made public. Asked during a trade commission hearing to specify which airports, an expert witness for Boeing replied that “sometimes Denver would qualify as that.” The expert, Jerry Nickelsburg, an adjunct economics professor at UCLA, added that “Mexico City certainly qualifies as that.”
Yes, Denver could sometimes be called "hot and high", but would never fall in the category of "short runway". The same goes for Mexico City.
The manufacturer provides rules (usually computer software and long tables) telling the crew the required runway lengths for takeoff for a given combination of weight, elevation and temperature. These values contain ample margins for uncertainties in actual weight, temperature and wind variations and various failures including an engine failure. If the runway is long enough it is long enough.
Yes, there will be some airports, where the MAX 7 can operate with higher payloads than the 8/9/10. So what?
They are probably rather talking about small regional airports such as
Telluride.
The Ethiopian airport’s altitude hasn’t been cited as a factor in the downing of Flight 302 and likely didn’t cause the crash. But it could have exacerbated the situation because an airplane’s performance degrades at higher altitudes, said a 737 pilot who flies into high-elevation airports such as Denver ,
This shows how disingenious this article is. "It is totally irrelevant but we'll blurb on about it anyway. And look, we even found a pilot who said something totally unrelated!". There certainly was no problem with aircraft performance in either accident, except perhaps there was too much of it.
Denver will not be on this list. Neither will Mexico City, Jakarta or Addis Ababa. They are all big International Airports with very long runways. The "expert" is an "adjunct economics professor". I rest my case.
Bernd