Boeing 737 Max to Resume Flying U.S. Passengers Today

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/business/boeing-737-max-return.html

by mhb • 6 years ago

60 77 6 years ago

8826618303• 6 years ago

I’ve noticed both Google flights and Southwest both have removed the generation number from the plane description. Now it just lists 737, without -300/700/800/Max etc

Dirlewanger2• 6 years ago

I booked Southwest recently and it said Boeing 737-800 for me.

8826618303• 6 years ago

Is that after you’ve paid ? Trying the booking workflow on mobile now I don’t see it anywhere

jasoncartwright• 6 years ago

This doesn't appear to be true? https://ibb.co/sWTWsnb

8826618303• 6 years ago

Maybe depends on what data the airline provides or desktop vs mobile https://ibb.co/3pdMY7m

dotancohen• 6 years ago

This is deceptive, intentionally.

No matter if the vehicle is safe to fly or not, some people may not feel comfortable flying on one. The only justification of overturning 80+ years of airliner industry precedent in eliminating the specific vehicle type from the descriptions is to deceive.

edoceo2• 6 years ago

Or maybe it's just some designer fiddling with screen real-estate and negative space.

tyingq9• 6 years ago

I don't think anything changed. Is there some compelling evidence that it did?

Here's the a/c type on southwest.com desktop, right now: https://imgur.com/a/B6PxsbB

I don't see it on mobile, but I don't think it's ever been there.

powvans• 6 years ago

You can avoid the airlines that fly the Max altogether. Unfortunately it looks like Delta is the only major US airline that does not own any. Spirit and JetBlue also do not have any. United, American, and Southwest all operate the Max. I would avoid those airlines for routes that could be serviced by the Max.

exhilaration• 6 years ago

Is there a listing or database somewhere where I could look up other airlines? There's a few more regional and discount airlines I'm curious about.

rawgabbit2• 6 years ago

How to ID a MAX.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-identify-boeing-737-max-l...

tyingq9• 6 years ago

I don't think Southwest removed anything. From what I recall, it's always been on the flight status pages for both mobile and desktop. For the flight shopping pages, it's always been on desktop, but never on mobile.

slumdev4• 6 years ago

You can look up the plane by its tail number.

But you're still at the mercy of the airline. If they do an equipment swap, you're not entitled to change or cancel. You'd only have the option not to fly, forfeiting the cost of your ticket.

As someone else in this thread said, just fly Delta (domestically).

tyingq9• 6 years ago

Southwest doesn't have change fees, so long as you cancel at least 10 minutes before the scheduled flight time. Assuming they had all their aircraft flying, the MAX aircraft are about 5 percent of the fleet.

jerbs2• 6 years ago

Your second line is simply not true. Both American [1] and United [2] have committed to waiving change fees if you don't want to fly on a 737 MAX. Southwest is farther away from bringing the MAX back into service, so they have less detail on their site [3], but it sounds like they'll do something similar.

[1] https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/737-MAX-return-to-servic...

[2] https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/travel/inflight/aircraf... (under "What if I don't want to fly on a MAX?")

[3] https://www.southwest.com/737-max/#return-to-service-plan (under "What are Customers' options if they don't want to fly on a 737 MAX?")

laydn• 6 years ago

So the findings in this Senate report are just going to be ignored? ( https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/18/22189609/faa-boeing-737-... )

To quote: ""Boeing “inappropriately coached” some FAA test pilots to reach a desired outcome during the re-certification tests, and some were even performed on simulators that weren’t equipped to re-create the same conditions as the crashes. ""

Pfhreak• 6 years ago

What are a few hundred lives compared to millions of dollars? /s

Boeing cares, first and foremost, about the bottom line. It doesn't surprise me that money beats safety for them.

mentos• 6 years ago

“In one particular FAA test performed on the right simulator, a whistleblower says Boeing officials were present and told the test pilots when to hit the switch that killed MCAS.

When these actions were reported by whistleblowers, they were often ignored or retaliated against, according to the report.”

Boeing can’t seem to help itself from disaster

buran772• 6 years ago

Boeing can’t seem to help itself from disaster

It obviously can. As long as it has regulators and legislators on a leash all this will always just be the cost of doing business.

mannykannot3• 6 years ago

I would have preferred Boeing to be required to redo the test, and be dinged by the airlines for the delay, just to make it clear that this sort of nonsense is not tolerated.

The fact is, however, that everyone going into the test was aware of what the issue was, so it could only give information about best-case response times (which is not useless information, at least if done on suitable simulators.) For a while, every Max pilot is also going to be primed about this issue.

sokoloff5• 6 years ago

I still don't understand why the pilots of ETH302 weren't primed about this issue. I seem to recall it being common knowledge within the aviation community that there was a likely trim system fault that downed LNI610. With that backdrop, I'd expect anyone sitting in the front seats of a 737-Max to be aware of the recent crash of the type and reasonably fresh on the systems procedures/memory items to remedy.

It's certainly true today, but I suspect it was also true on 2019-03-10 and being primed wasn't enough.

VSerge• 6 years ago

I was not planning to fly on a 737 Max for at least a few years without crashes, just because there's no point taking what still seems to be a risk when there are so many alternatives.

Reading the Verge article and the senate report findings (linked in laydn's comment) just confirms that there is still cause for caution.

raverbashing2• 6 years ago

Edit: I was incorrect

But not only the FAA recertified the plane and the MCAS cutoff seems to be more robust regardless

So the findings in this Senate report are just going to be ignored?

They certainly are relevant for litigations and judgements against Boeing relating to the accidents.

agency• 6 years ago

Did you even look at the link? The Senate report in question concerns the recertifications.

tboyd47• 6 years ago

Congressional hearings rarely make a difference on policy. They are bully pulpits used to inform or persuade the public at large.

Your question is more appropriately directed at us, air travel consumers. Are we still going to board Boeing planes, knowing what we now know?

sokoloff5• 6 years ago

I would have no hesitancy to fly on a 737-Max operated by any of the US-majors.

ashtonkem2• 6 years ago

Yet another American institution/system that has failed. The FAA has demonstrated that they care about Boeing profits above passenger safety, and Congress has lost the ability to actually use their branch’s prerogatives to bring the executive to heel.

rossdavidh• 6 years ago

Well, I mean, we have a critical shortage of airline flight capacity right now, so of course they had to.

Oh, wait...

josefx• 6 years ago

The 737 Max does not provide additional capacity, it provides cheaper capacity. It has modern engines that use less fuel and wouldn't fit on the existing lineup. Right now the ability to cut costs at the cost of a few hundred passengers a year is probably the kind of news the airlines need to keep investors happy.

Beldin• 6 years ago

It [737 Max] has modern engines that [...] wouldn't fit on the existing lineup.

That's the problem in a nutshell.

If I had an actual choice, I'd choose to fly in a plane whose airframe was designed around the engines its using.

breitling• 6 years ago

In a few months time, it will be interesting to see the data showing the differences in bookings for 800-Max vs other planes.

I imagine many people will try to avoid the Max and book other planes.

ygra• 6 years ago

I'd imagine many people just don't know or don't care what plane they fly on. The number of enthusiasts who want to fly (or not fly) on a particular plane model isn't that large.

mannykannot3• 6 years ago

Not everyone feels that the Maxes will still be significantly more risky than the alternatives. I suspect that risks from other factors dominate, and few people choose not to fly if the weather is bad. It would probably be more useful to know how long the flight crew has been on duty, or where the airline gets its maintenance done, than what airplane is being used.

jillesvangurp• 6 years ago

I doubt this will be a factor. Some people will care but most people will continue to be unable to tell the difference between an Airbus and a Boeing and generally not have type numbers, incident history, etc. memorized. Most of the bad press is already ancient history for the general public.

Of course, there's not a lot of flying happening currently anyway. So, good moment to do this. By the time traffic picks up again, the fixed model will have months/years incident free flights behind it.

But I agree, it will be interesting of the general public cares at all for anything else than $/flight, which is the reason why cattle class is a thing: people are happy to sacrifice comfort, dignity, etc. to save a few dollars on a flight.

ubermonkey• 6 years ago

The problem is that carriers don't "marry" equipment to itineraries at booking. You could book something that was theoretically planned for one variant of plane, and then delays or mechanical issues happen and end up on something else.

tyingq9• 6 years ago

The revenue management systems will add more discounted fares to underbooked flights to drive bookings. So you would likely have to watch average fare as well. Certainly there's a large portion of the public that don't care or don't know.

amyjess• 6 years ago

...and once the pandemic is over and I start flying again, I'm going to fly exclusively with Spirit from now on.

qzw• 6 years ago

So, death by a thousand cuts instead of by a single blow?

sokoloff5• 6 years ago

I'd rather punch myself in the face than fly Spirit again. (They're as safe as any other US airline; they just operate like a worse-Ryanair.)

brnt• 6 years ago

Worse than Ryanair? Ouch!

tyingq9• 6 years ago

The 27 inch seat pitch just plain doesn't fit a lot of people's femurs.

franczesko• 6 years ago

Out of curiosity - was anyone from Boeing held accountable for the decisions that led to the 737 max catastrophes?

tyingq9• 6 years ago

They fired the CEO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Muilenburg

A "criminal probe/investigation" is supposedly ongoing. I haven't heard of anyone being charged.

briandear2• 6 years ago

One of my best friends is a 20,000 hour 737 captain (and check pilot) at United and spent the past several weeks getting training on the new Max. He says the primary win for the new MCAS is that there is no longer a single point of failure (in the prior version the system only took data from a single AOA source even though there were two AOA indicators already on the airplane. At least on the United versions of the plane.) The new version uses both AOA sources. Additionally, the MCAS system now has limits on the amount of “correction” to prevent extreme compensation by the system. My friend is just a single anecdote, but I trust pilots highly experienced in type more than articles written by journalists who don’t actually fly or even bureaucrats who have never spent significant time with the airplane in real world conditions. If mainline airline pilots are confident in the system, so am I. Even with the old system, no US (or major European) airline ever had problems with the old system because European and US have far higher pilot experience requirements to fly in the bigger jets. For example, at United, you need at least 3000 hours before even being allowed in the right seat of a 737. For RJs, you have to have 1500 hours before being allowed in the right seat. That is a significantly higher standard than Ethiopian which has right seaters with less than 250 total flight hours. At Ethiopian or Lion Air 5000 hours is an “experienced” captain. At United that would be a rookie first officer. I don’t know anyone at Southwest, but they have very high entry level minimums as well. The first 737 Max had flaws, no question, but statistically, why didn’t any American carriers have any crashes despite flying an order of magnitude more hours in the airplane compared to Ethiopian or Lion Air? The US and European airlines are simply far more rigorous in training and pilot requirements as well as maintenance requirements. Fixing the Max is not addressing the bigger, far more significant issue of pilot training in non-US/Euro airlines. I have almost 1000 hours and am commercial and instrument rated but I am barely qualified to fly FedEx feeder Cessna 208s or perhaps right seat in a King Air. If I were outside the US/Canada/Europe, I could be flying 737s with 150 passengers.

We still have the significant issue of “fake pilots” [1] and all sorts of chicanery that has yet to be addressed. Despite flaws inherent in any government agency, the fact is the FAA has made American skies among the very safest in the world, at least according to the data. If US and Euro airlines start crashing, then we can revisit that theory.

[1] https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/680358-why-has-eu-never-ban...

lefrenchy• 6 years ago

I get what you’re saying, and your friend is likely very trustworthy. But the fact still remains that the previous planes that crashed were flown by pilots too, and people trusted them with their lives.

I won’t trust this plane for a while, especially given the behavior i’ve seen from Boeing.

LatteLazy2• 6 years ago

In fairness, every pilot who's even mediocre should be well aware of MCAS, its issues and how to turn it off.

The real question is what else have Boeing half arsed?

AnimalMuppet2• 6 years ago

The investigation turned up a few non-MCAS-related things, and required that they be fixed. I don't recall specifics - something about a wire that could become damaged?

LatteLazy2• 6 years ago

It appears they need to change which wires are bundled together to avoid an "unlikely" crossed circuit issue.

I wonder if that is done or if pilots have been warned that "in rare occasions button X can activate system Y and if that happens you must do Z". Or maybe they'll wait to see if there is another crash before highlighting it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/business/boeing-737-max-w...

zeristor• 6 years ago

How many total 737 MAX MCAS events occurred?

If two ended in crashes, I’d expect there to be twenty or so similar events that the pilots were able resolve.

Or was it a case that there were only two flights with faulty pitot tubes that ended in crashes.

I not a pilot, so I may have glosses over details, apologies in advance.

topspin• 6 years ago

I haven't seen a definitive count anywhere. It is certain that not all flights involving the MCAS problem led to a crash. The LionAir crash flight was preceded by a flight were the pilots first experienced the MCAS problem due to the failed pitot on the plane; they disabled the trim system and completed the fight manually. It was the subsequent flight the actually crashed.

dirtyid• 6 years ago

What is the situation with aviation safety in general as they return more planes from storage?

Boeing 737 Max to Resume Flying U.S. Passengers Today

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