You're focussing on facts, regulations and engineering. ManInTheBar is talking about PR, confidence and customers. Sure they could get the fleet flying like you say, but you'd be flying empty planes around.

As regards Boeing grounding the fleet - legally perhaps they can't force a fleet to be grounded. But if they said "hey guys, we're not happy about the safety", then it would be a pretty ballsy operator who would go against that. And again they would be flying a lot of fresh air around in those cabins.

Agree, that pretty much sums it.

So who will progress and succeed when all is said and done,Science or emotions?

Some of us like our jobs and are willing to succeed and win and that goes for all manufacturers and regulatory bodies

If you book with Kayak you have a good chance of not needing to worry about your plane ticket and travel plans.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/travel/kayakcom.html

Pretty much.

Nobody wanted to fly post 9/11 in Europe. Ryanair launched 1 penny / euro fares but they never caught on, oh wait they flew 140 million people last year.

You'd be surprised what some operators ignore from the manufacturer. Boeing has three classes of Service Bulletin - 'normal', 'significant' (that's not the term they use but I can't recall the exact term off hand), and "ALERT". Years ago I saw some statistics on fleet incorporation within the recommended time (S/B usually say something like 'next 'x' check', 'within 12 months', etc.). For normal service bulletins it was barely over 50%, and for ALERT (which by definition are safety related) it was in the mid 80% range unless it was AD'ed (which most are, especially now days) in which case it was in the mid 90% (but not 100%).

As for passengers shunning the MAX, racedo's post 9/11 comment is spot on. I recall several people who stated at that time, categorically, they would never travel by air again but were flying again within a year - most probably don't even remember they said that. Given that probably half the traveling public don't know what kind of aircraft they are on, and will give up 5" of leg room for 3 hours to save $5, the MAX won't have to keep it's nose clean for too long before most people pretty much forget the whole thing.

I see it differently: If Boeing chose to issue the highest level of service bulletin asking operators to not operate the aircraft for safety reasons, pending resolution, and then asked the FAA to make it mandatory by AD, I expect that there would be an AD issued to ground the FAA regulated fleet within hours, and much of the world's fleet would be similarly regulated shortly thereafter. What regulator would decline to ground a fleet at the manufacturer's request with good cause?

Yes, Boeing, as any manufacturer, is required to technically support their product, after they have taken any action necessary to assure safety.

Agree that in most cases such a recommendation by Manufacturer would get the attention of the Faa towards mandating an emergency AD (BTDT), but the FAA has additional requirements to live under before taking an action to ground a fleet. After all the manufacturer must have provided what they thought was a good enough fix else they wouldn't have offered it for an AD. In the end it's the operators who resist groundings as they convince the FAA that there pilots feel the fix will work for them.

When I thought a product fix was not available I could ask the FAA to restrict fleet operations under specific condition and the operators would push back to the point where they promised their own fix without an FAA restriction..

Lots of people in this decision process

The brand certainly did not carry on.

In neither 9/11 nor the Germanwings tragedy were the brands implicated.

Here both the type and brand are central.

Boeing needed and still need to 'own' this

The vast majority of the travelling public will not have a clue or even care which airline let alone aircraft they will be travelling on.

A strange comparison. There isn't much risk anyone is going to end up flying with the cause of that accident.

We are frankly in uncharted waters in terms of how the public react if/when it is returned to service. It's the first time something like this has happened in the social media age. And the coverage of it has been more thorough in terms of technical details of the aircraft than anything I've seen before.I suspect there could be a significant prolonged effect on passenger preferences. The fact that an engine like Kayak is allowing passengers to filter out specific aircraft will have a few people sweating, since there's only 1 aircraft I can imagine anyone choosing to filter out...

Considering I've received jokes from my completely non-aviation interested friends describing anything dysfunctonal as a MAX I on't think this is the case this time. One friend said with all the Brexit chaos Britain is currently the MAX of countries. I'd say some pretty big damage has been done.

One might argue that if the engineering is so poor that even your GP can make well-founded comment on it, the engineering was indeed.... rather poor.

However, as with many aviation incidents, the industry is once again using this to get better. The all-too-comfy relationship between manufacturers and certification authorities are exposed by the media, and rightfully so. The poor engineering is being addressed and serves, unfortunately once again, as a reminder that redundancy is necessary on passenger aircraft.

Personally I would have no problem to fly the MAX in the future. Not so much because because I'm a B-fanboy, but because they learned a very, very expensive lesson (both in terms of lives lost as well as monetary damage), which makes this lesson one they will not forget any time soon.

In a different career I once observed a mechanic making a very expensive mistake, causing a small manufacturing company tens of thousands of dollars. He thought he was going to get fired, but his boss saw it from a different angle. The company just paid for a very expensive lesson, so the mechanic was now worth more than before as it is highly unlikely that he would ever make that mistake again. Obviously in a company like Boeing this does not translate 1:1 as eventually the bean-counters will take over again. But for now, engineer depts will have a bit of leverage against their bean-counter counterparts in their wishes to provide quality, not cheap products.

I would happily fly on one, so long as it wasn't a third world airline, which I avoid anyway.

Re-engine the Max, then it isn't a Max any more.

I intend to avoid the Max when it comes back on line, but my decision has nothing to do with the MCAS, grounding etc etc. The reason I am going to avoid the MAX is because of the crap low profile, hard as a rock, massively uncomfortable seats everyone is putting in them. :ugh:

Nailed it.