Boeing 737 Max - can I avoid travelling on one?

Ganga

IvanOpinion said:

Just a thought ... given the scrutiny that these planes have had and the amount of testing they have had to undergo, could you not argue that the likelihood is that they are one of the safest planes?

Would like to see all the directors /owners and the design staff fill one of the new planes and fly around the world for a few months ,would be interesting to see if any refused to do it.

Murphy_The_Cat

Ganga said:

IvanOpinion said:

Just a thought ... given the scrutiny that these planes have had and the amount of testing they have had to undergo, could you not argue that the likelihood is that they are one of the safest planes?

Would like to see all the directors /owners and the design staff fill one of the new planes and fly around the world for a few months ,would be interesting to see if any refused to do it.

Is this the type of thing that you'd like to see ?

Tokmon

Ganga said:

IvanOpinion said:

Just a thought ... given the scrutiny that these planes have had and the amount of testing they have had to undergo, could you not argue that the likelihood is that they are one of the safest planes?

Would like to see all the directors /owners and the design staff fill one of the new planes and fly around the world for a few months ,would be interesting to see if any refused to do it.

Surely most people would refuse because who would want to be flying on planes around the world for months? 

martindow said:

It's an awful story and has parallels with Grenfell Tower.  When you take away independent inspection and testing to allow companies to certify products themselves, financial pressures lead to short-cuts or falsification of documents and ultimately tragic results.

One hopes that after this, inspection regimes will be much more active in overseeing and checking what is going on at Boeing and elsewhere.

What evidence do you have that short-cuts or falsification of documents happened and caused the issues seen here?

From my personal experience there is certainly no short-cuts or falsification of documents no matter how much pressure there is and things like that are taken extremely seriously with people being fired for any hint of doing something wrong.

bagand96

Tokmon said:

Ganga said:

IvanOpinion said:

Just a thought ... given the scrutiny that these planes have had and the amount of testing they have had to undergo, could you not argue that the likelihood is that they are one of the safest planes?

Would like to see all the directors /owners and the design staff fill one of the new planes and fly around the world for a few months ,would be interesting to see if any refused to do it.

Surely most people would refuse because who would want to be flying on planes around the world for months? 

martindow said:

It's an awful story and has parallels with Grenfell Tower.  When you take away independent inspection and testing to allow companies to certify products themselves, financial pressures lead to short-cuts or falsification of documents and ultimately tragic results.

One hopes that after this, inspection regimes will be much more active in overseeing and checking what is going on at Boeing and elsewhere.

What evidence do you have that short-cuts or falsification of documents happened and caused the issues seen here?

From my personal experience there is certainly no short-cuts or falsification of documents no matter how much pressure there is and things like that are taken extremely seriously with people being fired for any hint of doing something wrong.

Whilst I don't recall seeing anything about falsification of documents in the 737 MAX, it is clear that financial and time pressures had led to a very questionable culture at Boeing and certain processes could have been far more thorough (i.e. Shortcuts) 

The Seattle Times coverage of the MAX saga was superb and won them the Pulitzer Prize. 

Ganga

Murphy_The_Cat said:

Ganga said:

IvanOpinion said:

Just a thought ... given the scrutiny that these planes have had and the amount of testing they have had to undergo, could you not argue that the likelihood is that they are one of the safest planes?

Would like to see all the directors /owners and the design staff fill one of the new planes and fly around the world for a few months ,would be interesting to see if any refused to do it.

Is this the type of thing that you'd like to see ?

One 57 minute flight is not the same as i meant!

Tokmon

Ganga said:

Murphy_The_Cat said:

Ganga said:

IvanOpinion said:

Just a thought ... given the scrutiny that these planes have had and the amount of testing they have had to undergo, could you not argue that the likelihood is that they are one of the safest planes?

Would like to see all the directors /owners and the design staff fill one of the new planes and fly around the world for a few months ,would be interesting to see if any refused to do it.

Is this the type of thing that you'd like to see ?

One 57 minute flight is not the same as i meant!

If they thought the plane was unsafe they wouldn't fly on it at all; just like the OP who sounds like they wouldn't even do a 57 minute flight due to their concerns.
Your idea of asking people to fly for months and months on a plane is ridiculous because people would refuse like most people simply due to not wanting to spend that much time on a plane but then you would take it as them thinking it was unsafe!!

martindow

Tokmon said:
What evidence do you have that short-cuts or falsification of documents happened and caused the issues seen here?

From my personal experience there is certainly no short-cuts or falsification of documents no matter how much pressure there is and things like that are taken extremely seriously with people being fired for any hint of doing something wrong.

I was referring more to the Grenfell cladding, but I think it is always a danger if oversight of safety issues is not independent.  It does seem that a poor culture developed in both Boeing and Arconic.

If you know there are unlikely to be inspections or questions asked there will be a tendency to cut corners and it makes it very difficult for individuals to raise concerns.  Most mistakes or design decisions don't end up in life or death incidents, but they can do.

Apart from design issues - relying on a single sensor for instance - there appears to have been pressure on the production line.  This man reportedly tried to raise issues regarding the quality of construction

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/boeing-737-max-whistleblower.html

As I said, hopefully there is more independent oversight at Boeing and other manufacturers.  It must have made people in charge of overseeing safety look closely at what they had been doing (or not).

richardw

I don’t see the substitute aircraft providers buying them, so avoiding this aircraft family with a bit of research isn’t going to be that difficult.

531063

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b94ouECqsc&feature=youtu.be

CKhalvashi

silvercar said:

I feel your pain. There is always a risk of a substitution, I would suspect that if you phoned up an airline (other than the low cost carriers) and pleaded your case they may move you to another flight.
I’ve flown on a 737 Max, brand new aircraft, lovely flight, 2 days before they were withdrawn from service. The thought of what could have happened makes me nervous to get back on one.

I flew on one of LOT's into Warsaw from Heathrow, however I feel a little nervous knowing what happened to others.

The issues were predominantly with Boeing's lies and a lack of pilot training caused by Boeing's lies. I know the A320 family reasonably well from a technical standpoint, but not any of Boeing's products.

I'd say it will be safe to assume that the flaws in the coding have been sorted out as part of the re-certification, and that adequate pilot training (still waiting for one major European customer to start complaining loudly about 2 type ratings for their crew and legally 2 aircraft types) will be part of the deal, however it will be as simple as if they don't want to pay for this, they don't fly the type.

Give them 6 months in service in reasonably large numbers and see what's happened in this time will be my advice at this time.