737 Max

[25F]

It's been done to death, I know, but not from the point of view of SLF. AFAIK.
Have you, would you, take a MAX flight?
Seems to me there's two possible takes:
1) Inherently unstable and dangerous aircraft
2) All airliners require careful management and by now the max is thoroughly understood, all crews are trained, and the software defects have been fixed.
I'd rather not, but if flight crew and CC are happy to ride it on a daily basis, I'll do so four / six times a year.

[Sea Plane Driver]

1) Inherently unstable and dangerous aircraft

That would be any aircraft in the wrong hands.

[DaveReidUK]

Have you, would you, take a MAX flight?

You won't see the Max branding anywhere on the aircraft nowadays.

A sizeable proportion of passengers have no idea they're flying on one, or even on a 737.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/491x485/ryanair_737_8200_b096a5dd3c0574f9a0417fb0e6538ca4b0dddedc.jp g

[SWBKCB]

I'd rather not, but if flight crew and CC are happy to ride it on a daily basis, I'll do so four / six times a year.

This - I work on the basis that the crew want to get home just as much as I do, and know a damn sight more about it

[Asturias56]

Your chances of being killed in a flight operated by almost airline that is properly registered is extremely low

And if you exclude certain parts of Africa and certain airlines it is infinitesimal

If you been flying for over 30 years it's something like 10 -20 times safer than it was when you started flying

[PAXboy]

I agree that the aircraft is - now - safe. I will never travel on one. My single protest at Boeing and the companies that supported them is irrelevant - but I have no wish to use this machine that was the result of so much compromise from the start. We know why Boeing did this and I hope they continue to pay the price for years to come. Obviously, they will not be allowed to be submerged by the law suites but Airbus has proved it's corner and approach.

All major companies grow fat, lazy and complacent. But not many kill people in this way.

[25F]

That would be any aircraft in the wrong hands.
I think the MAX is a bit special.

[25F]

This - I work on the basis that the crew want to get home just as much as I do, and know a damn sight more about it
Although, pressure to conform, and so on.

[tdracer]

I think the MAX is a bit special.
Look at is this way:
The 737 MAX in it's current configuration is probably the most scrutinized commercial aircraft design in history.
ALL aircraft have compromises of some sort - it's the nature of the business. For example, you want it really strong, but you also want it really light - so you have to compromise one for the other (the trick being to get the best compromise).
Personally I'd have no qualms about flying on a MAX.

[MechEngr]

I observe that people expressing worry have never examined the three events or the flight data records graphed in the reports. More, they ignored that the government that owned, operated, and trained the pilots, and continued to fly knowing there was a software defect also killed at least 1000X more of their own civilian population while people fixated on the misreporting about a brave crew who did every step exactly as specified - the data shows they avoided every possible step in the procedures and did the opposite nearly every time.

Honestly, there is far more money to be made going after an American corporation than can be gained going after those responsible for the clearly botched operation of an aircraft, never mind the 300,000 to 600,000 who died in a genocide. That is what makes the MCAS story a source of such great fiction.

https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-01-27/ethiopias-forgotten-war-is-the-deadliest-of-the-21st-century-with-around-600000-civilian-deaths.html
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraine-understandably-focus-ethiopias-tigray-conflict-worlds-largest

But, hey, they had a shiny new airplane and used the crash to provide a lot of cover for their military buildup in readiness for the war, a plan that was in place before the crash.

Somewhere between 3X to 8X died of starvation every day for nearly 2 years as died on that flight. Imagine for 2 years 3 airplanes crashing every day. That's more than 2,100 crashes worth of death. Not one peep on the news of so many people wasting to death.

Boeing predicted that a crew would handle any MCAS malfunction - Crew #1 did and wrote up the symptoms for maintainers to look at. Crew #2 Captain managed with the same plane and symptoms as Crew #1 had until the newer guy got the controls. Crew #3 made every effort to do the opposite of every relevant procedure even after reading an Emergency AD, the flight manual update, and the preliminary report for the first and second events before their participation in the third. For some reason Boeing and the FAA did not anticipate a 100% reversal of procedure elements.

[Asturias56]

Ahh yes it's all the pilots fault - not the people who carefully avoided building the plane to modern specs

[MechEngr]

Ahh yes it's all the pilots fault - not the people who carefully avoided building the plane to modern specs

Another person who didn't read the reports. I am unsurprised. By the way, an Airbus suffered the exact same problem of the computers controlling the trim to drive the nose down. The pilot in that case had to pull the circuit breakers from 2 of 3 flight computers to stop the trim because there is no other method to stop unwanted trim in an Airbus.

Now - with that information about a modern plane to modern specs nearly killing everyone - does that shift the opinion? I suspect it can't because disaster was averted by a pilot doing what he was trained to never do and saved the plane, as opposed to the first MAX incident where the pilots did what they were expected and trained to do and not the crashes where the pilots did not do what they were trained to do.

In the second crash it was the owner, the operator, the flight instructors, the chief pilot for the airline, and the pilot's shared fault for not bothering to read any information that was sent to them. That information was exactly what the first pilots did to safely fly the plane to an uneventful landing. Tell me what dumb thing the first crew did and I'll know you read the first report.

As an aside, if AF447 had been equipped with MCAS they would have lived, except for the part where the Airbus stall warning system didn't feel like reporting the plane was stalled. Another modern plane to modern specs killing people.

[meleagertoo]

Ahh yes it's all the pilots fault - not the people who carefully avoided building the plane to modern specs
Not all, no. Of course the company (and FAA) must take blame and severe flak for many of its background procedures and practices but MechEngr is quite right, the direct result of both crashes was entirely with botched and grossly unprofessional crew procedures. Both aircraft were perfectly flyable by a trained and disciplined crew until crew action/inaction rendered them not so.
To me the two incredible omissions in the entire fiasco were Indonesian's inexplicable absence of engineering reaction to the first event and then the apparent total unawareness of the Ethiopian crew of the nature of the problem (every other Boeing operator's crews, and probably 95% of the world's professional pilots too had dissected, researched, analysed and discussed the first accident exhaustively for months, yet Ethiopian Airlines allegedly hadn't promulgaed Boeing's essential publications on the subject to their pilots (how???), nor issued any guidance and the crew in question were apparently blissfully aware of what they were dealing with, quite apart from displayng some of the most astoundingly fundamental lapses of the most basic flying skills ever seen. Worst of all perhaps was that the Ethiopian crew seemed quite unaware of the MCAS problem - how could any Professional pilot in the world not have discussed that matter to the Nth degree? It was almost as if they were living in complete isolation from the rest of the aviation world, where was their interest, their curiosity, their basic survival instinct? Quite bizarre.

As said above the Max or whatever it's called this month is undoubtably the most tested and examined aircraft in history. There is no reason to be remotely concerned about it. Given suitable pilots, of course...

[Chesty Morgan]

You won't see the Max branding anywhere on the aircraft nowadays.

A sizeable proportion of passengers have no idea they're flying on one, or even on a 737.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/491x485/ryanair_737_8200_b096a5dd3c0574f9a0417fb0e6538ca4b0dddedc.jp g
Tui, at least, still have Max on theirs.

[PAXboy]

I agree that the aircraft is very safe - now. Had they have spent the money up front then I would use it. But now, they have had to spend even more money to recover the situation. Sadly, this is what humans do. There are countless examples of where corners have been cut to save/make money and all warnings ignored until Bang.

[tdracer]

To me the two incredible omissions in the entire fiasco were Indonesian's inexplicable absence of engineering reaction to the first event and then the apparent total unawareness of the Ethiopian crew of the nature of the problem (every other Boeing operator's crews, and probably 95% of the world's professional pilots too had dissected, researched, analysed and discussed the first accident exhaustively for months, yet Ethiopian Airlines allegedly hadn't promulgaed Boeing's essential publications on the subject to their pilots (how???), nor issued any guidance and the crew in question were apparently blissfully aware of what they were dealing with, quite apart from displayng some of the most astoundingly fundamental lapses of the most basic flying skills ever seen.

I'm more than a bit surprised that - on a pilots forum - this two issues didn't get more discussion. Especially the first one - how many pilots out there can readily deal with dispatching in a non-airworthy aircraft (which is exactly what was done on the first crash).
As designers, we know we have to design for pilots who are not all Sully's - heck the law of averages says half the pilots out there are below average - and we need to design for the 3-sigma 'bad' pilot, not just the good ones. But we also assume that the aircraft is built and maintained properly. When we do FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) and FHA (Failure Hazard Assessment), we assume that the aircraft is built per drawing, not dispatched in a non-airworthy condition, and faults (unless they are potentially latent) are properly dispatched via the MEL.
Yes, the design of MCAS was poorly executed - and Boeing has paid mightily for that. But the Indonesian and Ethiopian operators screwed the pooch equally badly.

[bobbytables]

Yes, the design of MCAS was poorly executed - and Boeing has paid mightily for that. But the Indonesian and Ethiopian operators screwed the pooch equally badly.

Spot on. The Lion flight was a test flight with unwitting passengers on board. A maintenance engineer was on board to “observe” in case the issue which happened on the previous flight happened again.

More sensible than avoiding the MAX is to avoid all Indonesian-regulated airlines. The kind of incidents that come out year after year show that the regulatory system is completely ineffective at ensuring safety, and those are just the ones you hear about…

[Asturias56]

"More sensible than avoiding the MAX is to avoid all Indonesian-regulated airlines. "

bit tough if you need to get around Indonesia and it's 17000 odd islands of course................. and the road, rail and ship systems are far far more dangerous

It's better than it was and, give the number of daily flights, probably roughly equivalent to flying in the USA in the '80's IMHO

The place that frightens me is parts of Africa

[S.o.S.]

I'm more than a bit surprised that - on a pilots forum - this two issues didn't get more discussion.
The topic got thousands of comments and MUCH debate but not in the SLF forum. If you look around the whole site, you will see the discussions. This thread was started to ask about Pax attitudes to the Max.

Wholesale accusations against a country are not welcome here. Give details but not broad sweeps.

[meleagertoo]

As designers, we know we have to design for pilots who are not all Sully's - heck the law of averages says half the pilots out there are below average - and we need to design for the 3-sigma 'bad' pilot, not just the good ones.

Already done.
At the start of my 737 conversion (when the yo-yo trim recovery method was still in the manual) our vastly experienced Head of Training told us that Boeing's design philosophy on the 737 was that it should be operable by an averagely capable professional pilot and an (insert name of nototiously aviation-unsafe continent) PPL.

[PAXboy]

meleagertoo
I strongly suspect that is also a significant proportion of Airbus' design philosophy. By 'significant' I mean 99.9%.

[25F]

This thread was started to ask about Pax attitudes to the Max.
Thanks. The technicalities have been done.
I think the flying public are under-rated by the pprunerati who claim that they are only interested in the price. I know plenty who refuse to fly certain airlines.

[Asturias56]

The numbers out there suggest differently - we talk to other people who are interested in what they fly in - the vast majority don't care. Look at Ryanair and other MAX operators - no sign of any passenger push-back

[bobbytables]

I don’t know any non-avgeek who pays much attention to the aircraft model they’re flying on beyond widebody/narrowbody and cabin fitout. I really doubt there is any meaningful number of passengers refusing to fly the MAX.

[PAXboy]

Yes, I agree. Most don't know and don't care. They might have particularly carriers they don't like but not, I think, particular aircraft.

[25F]

Maybe my local watering hole has a disproportionate number of aviation geeks in it!
Or maybe they're the people I get to talking with, on the subject.
But I do have a visitor later this summer who refused to fly FR at the cost of an extra 90 minutes ground travel once on UK soil.

[Mr Mac]

Well I don’t want to fly on a Max and try to avoid the 787 as well as I am not happy how Boeing have conducted themselves as a Business since the merger with MD. As a result I try to stay away from those two aircraft.

There are a number of airlines I would also choose not to fly as well for similar reasons though necessity sometimes makes this unavoidable though an uncomfortable experience for me mentally. Air France we are talking about you in that regard for clarity.

Cheers
Mr Mac

[PAXboy]

I am just about the only person in my circle who willingly pays more to travel on certain aircraft and carriers. Madam Pax has got used to this and agrees to pay the extra as she does have some anxieties around flying but knows that I choose carefully.