Senior Boeing employee on why he won't fly a MAX: Just Get me Off This Plane

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/26/former-boeing-employee-speaks-out-00142948

by isaacfrond • 2 years ago

118 67 2 years ago

This is what happens when you remove all accountability from the market.

Boeing used to be accountable to its competitors; now it's the last remaining American manufacturer of airliners. The c-suite often has little accountability to the board. The government treats them with kid gloves because of item #1; who else would the USAF order tankers, AWACS and other logistical aircraft from?

philwelch2• 2 years ago

The government treats them with kid gloves because of item #1; who else would the USAF order tankers, AWACS and other logistical aircraft from?

The military tried to order tankers from a different manufacturer, but Boeing owned enough senators to put the kibosh on that and make them re-run the competition.

lenerdenator4• 2 years ago

Is this in reference to the Lockheed Martin/Airbus tender?

jemmyw3• 2 years ago

Not just senators, they also had a mole in the tender process passing secrets and making decisions that Boeing then "hired" on an inflated salary. They were later convicted for fraud for their part and Boeing was fined but they still got to keep the contract.

panick21_2• 2 years ago

The actual problem is production. Airlines don't want to buy the MAX. The issue is is, if you want to order 100 A320s or 100 A220, you are gone wait a long, long time.

So you have two options, no planes, or the 737 MAX. Those are their options.

throwup238• 2 years ago

Boeing 737 Max backlog [1] is almost as big as Airbus’s [2]. If you are going to order a hundred planes you’re going to be waiting a long time regardless. Orders have been outpacing deliveries for years.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_order...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A320neo_famil...

yifanl• 2 years ago

I've heard that the problem is that airplanes are roughly commodotized, as in they can't compete on features, only price.

And to compete on price, supply chains become more specialized and more fragile and efficient, or software is added to reduce pilot training fees.

headcanon• 2 years ago

Last year, I was flying from Seattle to New York, and I purposely scheduled myself on a non-MAX airplane. I went to the gate. I walked in, sat down and looked straight ahead, and lo and behold, there was a 737-8/737-9 safety card. So I got up and I walked off. The flight attendant didn’t want me to get off the plane. And I’m not trying to cause a scene. I just want to get off this plane, and I just don’t think it’s safe. I said I purposely scheduled myself not to fly [on a MAX].

For me, this is the biggest issue. Even if I put in the effort and choose to avoid a specific plane, they will possibly just schedule the exact plane I don't want, AND try to keep me on the plane when I find out.

If they're going to keep this plane in the air (they shouldn't at this point), they need to be required to flash a big warning to ticket holders.

dboreham• 2 years ago

fwiw I've been Boeing-negative since the first crash, and I believe I understand the details of how the aircraft was mis-designed, but I fly on the planes. I believe overall they're now about as safe as any other plane I have the option to use.

robin_reala• 2 years ago

What do you mean by “about as”? As safe? 5% less safe? 20% less safe?

ajross• 2 years ago

Yeah, that's where I am too. Even granting that this is probably the most dangerous airliner design in decades (and, yeah, it probably is), it still remains extremely safe in an absolute sense. If like me you're middle-aged, your chance of dying from any cause on any given day is getting up to around one in a hundred thousand or thereabouts, which is much higher the fraction of fatal crashes in the total list of MAX flights.

ametrau• 2 years ago

Right they ironed out all the bugs now in the terrible software that killed people.

BashiBazouk2• 2 years ago

Not to mention multiple orders of magnitude safer than driving to the airport.

renegade-otter• 2 years ago

Thank the "regulatory state". The problem angle of attack widget is required to be redundant in the US - but not on all export cheaper models. This is why the crashes happened abroad.

In general, US pilots have better training and experience as well.

samstave2• 2 years ago

The worst part is that Senior Theatre Engineer, sees that the Theatre is on FIRE - but he calmly just exits the building... "well, at least **I** am not going to die in this dumpster fire..."

EDIT:

WHAT THE FUCK:???

>>It's up to the public whether to act on this knowledge.

Its up to the public that the engineer knows what hes talking about????

THE PUBLIC should be responsible for your calculations????

JERASUS EFFSINGS CKNSDHIST@!

pavel_lishin• 2 years ago

A better analogy would be him noticing that the fire extinguishers are past their expiry date, and calmly exiting the building on the basis of a slightly higher percentage chance that in case of a fire, the risks are greater.

joekrill• 2 years ago

He's spoken up publicly about this. He was called to testify before Congress. He started a non-profit -- The Foundation for Aviation Safety -- to raise awareness about the issue. So it's not like this guy is keeping this to himself. He's actively trying to raise awareness.

NBJack2• 2 years ago

Not fair. He has been doing his part, and demonstrably so. It's up to the public whether to act on this knowledge.

Would you have preferred they start screaming at the top of his lungs that they're all going to die?

FooBarBizBazz• 2 years ago

Later in the article it says:

Four airlines in the U.S. fly MAX planes: Alaska, American, United and Southwest.

So: Don't fly those airlines. It is your responsibility to punish them.

(It is also the FAA's responsibility to regulate them, but it's increasingly clear that every regulator is captured. So I'll focus on what I can control.)

And since there was an Ethiopian airlines crash, clearly there are also non-US airlines using the MAX, so let's dig more... This website appears to have done the research:

https://www.alternativeairlines.com/airlines-not-flying-boei...

This should help us boycott the correct airlines.

...

Unfortunately, the route I use most frequently is serviced almost exclusively by one of these bad airlines. I do have some alternatives if I'm willing to take more time though. I guess, if I want to put my money where my mouth is, I will need to start using those alternatives.

nateabele• 2 years ago

I wonder how many different federal and state bureaucracies govern the manufacture & operation of commercial aircraft.

All it would take is for one of them to require senior leadership to take a certain number of flights (per year, let's say) on each new model of aircraft they ship. This would be solved immediately.

PeeMcGee2• 2 years ago

All it would take is for one of them to require senior leadership to take a certain number of flights (per year, let's say) on each new model of aircraft they ship. This would be solved immediately.

They've done this in the past after the prior -MAX issues. It's a pretty meaningless gesture and it can be tasteless at times ("my flight went fine unlike those victims!"). It is very rare for these defect(s) to cause malfunctions during any given flight. The likelihood becomes significant when many of these planes are making many flights every day.

Test pilots aren't employees (or at last not exactly) that would have an agenda, nor are they evil (at least on average I suppose), so any program manager with a vested interest in the plane would happily fly on any that leave the flightline. Any manager that would purposefully conceal or downplay a defect obviously believes the plane is "safe enough" to fly.

The issue lies in "safe enough". Any production aircraft is safe enough to fly according to someone. Program managers know the BIG money involved has already been spent ten times over, so they might draw their "safe enough" line with a tiny bit of leeway because hey, what are the odds?

pksebben• 2 years ago

We can fix it conclusively in one fell swoop; remove the limitations on liability for executives and active shareholders.

If the executives in charge at boeing had to show up to court every time one of their planes crashed, this wouldn't be an issue. If they were facing criminal liability for negligence, you'd never even see them in court. The problems would straight-up just disappear.

Same goes for Pharma and oil execs. If your actions can be punished, you will do a better job of controlling yourself when you see dollar signs, rather than just do literally whatever and face the "worst-case" scenario of being fired with a golden parachute.

emmet• 2 years ago

I'm just annoyed the price of BA flights has dramatically increased since people started paying attention to the planes being flown by each airline. Please go back to your death traps!

NBJack2• 2 years ago

Chilling stuff. What surprised me more is how much of the trouble predated the global pandemic.

orwin• 2 years ago

Wow. I just found out https://www.iam751.org/docs/Dec_2018Jan2019Aero.pdf

I think i will link it every time someone dismiss unions as useless.

Havoc• 2 years ago

Boeing said it’s made substantial changes to its organization

...proceeds to list a bunch of fuzzy corporate speak bullshit.

Only a matter of time till a repeat if that's how they roll.

jnxx3• 2 years ago

Regulators ultimately approved the plane to return to the air nearly two years after the 2019 crash, but Pierson still doesn’t trust the MAX line — the modernized, *more fuel-efficient version* of Boeing’s predecessor planes.

I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the fossil age - and its end will take more than a few companies down with it, which are way too attached to the massive use of fossil fuels.

AnimalMuppet2• 2 years ago

There is exactly zero about the 737 Max problems that are related to the use of fossil fuels.

wkat42423• 2 years ago

It could be argued that the placement of the huge engines was to do with fossil fuel issues as the main reason for them was improved economy.

Due to this the flight characteristics changed and Boeing implemented MCAS to make it feel the same as the NG version.

IshKebab• 2 years ago

Not for aviation. Batteries aren't nearly energy dense enough. Not that fuel efficiency really has anything to do with this anyway.

Adrox• 2 years ago

Airbus made the "neo" versions more fuel efficient and without any security issues. That's why Boeing had to rush the MAX...

1letterunixname• 2 years ago

Safety order of Boeing equipment (safest first):

- 737-[1-5]xx "Classic"

- 757

- 777

- 787

- 767

--- Threshold of stupidity

- 737-[6-9]xx "NG" *

- 737 MAX 9

- 737 MAX 8 / MAX 200

- 737 MAX 10

- 737 MAX 7 ??

* Manufacturing inconsistency since the late '90's led to variance in bear strap and structural component quality (e.g., handmade parts out of tolerance yet marked "airworthy") and installation technique (e.g., beating parts to fit).

** 7[0124]7 are no longer widely flown (passenger) commercially but some are seen in small airlines in remote areas. 717 has 0 hull losses.

kennethrc3• 2 years ago

737

So, everyone's forgotten about that uncommanded rudder hard-over issue from a couple of decades ago? I can only wonder what kind of noise that would have made were it happening now, as that root cause was far harder to track down.

burnerthrow008• 2 years ago

First, I’m not sure why you rank the original and classic 737 so high, given the fatal rudder issues, which Boeing tried to hide in a similar way as the -max saga.

Second, the 717 is actually just a renamed DC-9, and DC-9’s (and the MD-80 series, which are also renamed DC-9’s) certainly have had hull losses and fatalities. They all share the same type certificate, so it’s a bit meaningless to slice out the accidental statistics of 717’s from the rest of the production.

A major reason the 717 had so few accidents is that relatively few of them were sold as “717”s and the design was fairly mature and thoroughly debugged by the time they were marketed as 717’s.

kennethrc3• 2 years ago

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Southwest flies them and it's nice when I'm lucky enough to get one.

wkat42423• 2 years ago

If the door doesn't fall out first :)

ginko• 2 years ago

Southwest flies them and it's nice when I'm lucky enough to get one.

Why? Ignoring the safety concerns I don't really see an advantage to take a MAX over another plane from a passenger POV. At least with an A350 or 787 you get a more comfortable flight due to the higher pressure and humidity within the plane, but the 737 MAX is just a stretched 737 to fit in more people.

kennethrc3• 2 years ago

SWA only flies 737s

wkat42423• 2 years ago

Umm if you're a Boeing expert and you don't notice you're on a Max until you've boarded and see the safety card, you're really not that much of an expert.

PeeMcGee2• 2 years ago

I'm sure he could pick it out of a lineup, but the visual differences are subtle and liveries can really change the profile of a plane (often intentionally as a sort of branding). It also might have been departing during the AM in the dark. Or maybe he didn't pay attention because he trusted the airline to provide what they offered (naive I know), and hopefully not mistake models in their own fleet for one another.

Anyone traveling directly from Seattle to the east coast probably makes that trip often, which is an excruciating 4-5 hours aboard a plane taking you 3 hours into the future. Maybe he did notice the plane roll up to the gate, and that it was different from the plane he used as criteria for his purchase, and that it was instead the exact plane he outspokenly refuses to fly on. He could go quietly complain to the desk for a voucher or something else that would get brushed away. Or he could board with intent to vocally complain that he and passengers are on a 737 MAX, the one that keeps showing up in the news, not a 737 like folks thought they were purchasing and is not obvious to laymen.

It's also highly unusual for that flight to not be a 737 (or AirBus equivalent). Airlines with Boeing fleet that offer direct flights between Seattle and the east coast are almost exclusively using 737s on those routes. The plane was designed for that unique range and capacity, so those margins are just about the only thing that keeps those direct flights running.

Senior Boeing employee on why he won't fly a MAX: Just Get me Off This Plane

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