737 Max
Thread Starter
737 Max
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.
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.
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.
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
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
Paxing All Over The World
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.
All major companies grow fat, lazy and complacent. But not many kill people in this way.
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Thread Starter
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.
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.
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/internati...an-deaths.html
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-po...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.
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/internati...an-deaths.html
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-po...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.
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Ahh yes it's all the pilots fault - not the people who carefully avoided building the plane to modern specs
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.
Last edited by MechEngr; 24th Jul 2023 at 08:41.
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...
Last edited by meleagertoo; 25th Jul 2023 at 12:50.
Gender Faculty Specialist
Paxing All Over The World
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.
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.
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.
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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…
"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
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
Son of Slot
Super Senior Moderator
Super Senior Moderator
Wholesale accusations against a country are not welcome here. Give details but not broad sweeps.
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.