The thing that angered me the most was Boeing refusing to admit responsibility and fighting the authorities that were grounding the plane. They knew people were dying and were willing to let more people die without remorse. In my mind that was a criminal action.
That kind of sociopathic behavior is natural outcome of business culture that is solely about maximizing shareholder value. I'm not sure what can be done to fix it.
First of all shareholder income should be taxed the same way as employment income. I think (at least in my country) it is absolutely disgusting that when you draw dividends from a business you pay less tax than if you were drawing a salary. If taxation was the same across the board, then there will be no incentive for shareholders to insist on extracting the value through dividends. The next thing is that in many cases shareholders are de-facto directors in terms of influence, this means they should also share the same liabilities and responsibilities. This should be a start to make it healthier.
A lot can be done to fix things. Prompt prosecution against management, including manslaughter charges where applicable. This no longer "wink, wink, nudge nudge" stretching the rules that is prevalent. Hundreds have already lost their lives.
You can't simply acculturate businesses against it- they will slowly be replaced by other businesses headed by ruthless sociopathic maximizers of shareholder value.
This is the guaranteed outcome given this way of organizing commerce. Just as if you organized everyone into medieval guilds, we would replicate the behavior of medieval guilds.
>they will slowly be replaced by other businesses headed by ruthless sociopathic maximizers of shareholder value.
I dunno man, the culture came from McDonnell-Douglass which was actually purchased by engineer-centric-at-the-time Boeing. How this culture spread in Boeing ought to be some kind of HBS case study, except they wouldn't notice that it should be taken as a cautionary tale.
For those unfamiliar with the case: Boeing and McDonnell-Douglass actually merged, but the name stayed Boeing. It is often said in the industry that McDonnell-Douglass bought Boeing with Boeing's own money.
The company that today uses the name Boeing looks, acts, and quacks a lot more like 1970s-1995 MD did, than 1970s-1995 Boeing did.
My comment really didn't intend to rule out mergers, or even businesses changing by themselves. I'm just saying they inevitably end up that way, by replacement if necessary.
That device is a statement to a changing public mindset. Not a solution in itself. In a society where 40% of voters back a corrupt president even after a term where he focussed on enriching himself, I don't see the required readiness.
I worked with Jinnah before and he is great at shielding the engineers from executive. If hiring great execs is not movement of corporate mindset I don't know what is.
Same experience. When I was flying bi-weekly, I made sure most international flights were with Finnair because no Boeings there, for that reason. Mostly everything was worse on Boeings (most experience is with BA; 100s of flights). But the sound was the worst. Maybe this is how the planes are kitted out by the carrier and I had bad luck in that regard?
I don't know why this is downvoted. I happen to love flying on Boeings, especially the 747. I think that Boeings typically have a higher wing loading than Airbusses, which might be noisier but does handle turbulence better.
Trust takes a long time to build, and minutes to loose. Boeing knows that, that is how a pilot's license is issued and revoked as well. They gambled their Trust and lost, so now they are in a well-deserved decades-long Trust deficit.
...because Airbus' 100% subsidy from the French government did not cause parallel organization and incentive issues which bled into engineering and was responsible for similar preventable accidents in the company's history???
In a weird way, having the Max grounded during 2020 turned out to be lucky timing on Boeing's part. The airlines slowdown due to COVID likely gave them some serious breathing room while they got their shit together.
Now hopefully they actually did get their shit together.
Covid’s timing was devastating for Boeing and the 737 Max.
When the planes were grounded, Boeing kept producing them assuming the issue would be resolved quickly. As of January 2020, slightly before Covid, they had 400 planes built, but not delivered to customers (and so customers haven’t paid for them). Boeing was funding these aircraft with debt.
All of a sudden, demand for air travel drops off a cliff.
All those airlines now decide “I’m just not going to take delivery of those aircraft”. Which also means “I’m not going to pay for them”.
Had the timing gone in the other order, all of those aircraft would have been delivered, and paid for, and airlines would have been holding the bag. (and the covid crisis would have limited the damages airlines could claim, and thus demand from Boeing, if they could meet their reduced schedules with other aircraft).
Can an airline really refuse an aircraft without wasting some significant amount of money? I assume the airline or leasing company start paying from the moment they place an order all the way through construction, finished by a final payment at the moment of acceptance? When one orders a building company to build a house, you are given a payment schedule, I assume it is the same with airplanes.
Airlines on the brink of bancruptcy have to refuse such orders, even if it only saves small amounts of money. And due to Corona, virtually every airline is in financially troubled waters.
Airliners are paid over a period yes, from the contract signature to several months after delivery. But the biggest chunk of cash changes hands at delivery.
This is true. I at least hope Boeing was able to reduce the compensation it will pay to airlines. There’s no lost income for airlines if there’s no demand for travel!
Low oil prices have also not helped the situation. Airlines need fuel efficient aircraft less than ever right now.
COVID has been a godsend to many struggling or otherwise unstable businesses.
Recent example I've had to deal with:
Morgan Stanley's acquisition of E-Trade has completely wrecked their customer service experience. Live chat wait times are 2+ hours, getting a secure message response takes 5 days now.
Their web site is covered with COVID-19 disclaimers for all the trouble, with a minor blurb about "operational shift".
MAX is a lot more efficient than the old NGs or classics (and can also do routes of 757s or 767s if they are thin enough). In a time of reduced demand airlines would prefer to park their more fuel-hungry planes and use the more efficient ones. But they can't because it's grounded.
And now there are airlines failing left and right with their planes going on the second hand market, back to lessors or are gutted for parts. That's depressing the price of airplanes and spare parts. That can't be good for Boeing either. Would you buy a 15% more efficient car for twice as much?
> The airlines slowdown due to COVID likely gave them some
> serious breathing room while they got their shit together.
Though I agree with you, Boeing could have really used the time to properly train 737 type pilots on the MCAS-specific issues. But the whole purpose of MCAS was to not retrain pilots, so instead of those pilot spending the past half year training on the new system, they spent the past half year mostly grounded.
Training pilots before a training program is approved is kinda like throwing money into a fire. They would still have to turn around and train them again with the approved training.
Also, being has little to do with the actual decisions on what and how to train pilots not employed by them, the airlines develop training programs that are approved by the FAA and operated with FAA oversight.
I think I disagree. If they’d taken the time to scrap the 737 Max and move to a new design, they’d have had the time and the public would have eaten the new product up.
Instead, they doubled down and are now going to try to have to sell a product that many will refuse to ever fly on, myself included.
Yes. Taking a 10-15 year timeframe from Boeing publicly signalling intention in 2011 that would mean the new aircraft would have gone to market in early to mid 2020s.
Perhaps no one in sufficient interests in Boeing read Irrational Exuberance [1] which covered in a decent amount of detail about downturns +/- 2 years of every decade, always the same root cause if different symptoms. Or perhaps they did but were 'maximising shareholder value' (with a 3 month window on the share price) and didn't care - "this time it's different" after all.
Considering that a new design would take like 10 years to get into production, how would that have been an immediate solution for Boeing? They need to be able to sell more 737 until a new design is ready, and no one wants that to be rushed. While I didn't hear anyting about a new design, I sincerely hope they are at it already though.
I don't think previous iterations of the 737 were fundamentally safer. As there were probably other changes done to the 737 Max beyond the different engines, like improving the overall build, I do think that the fixed 737 Max should be safer than any other 737.
The issue with the Max was, that a software, which should improve the handling in extreme situations, kicked in in normal conditions and the pilots failed to handle this (runaway stabilizer procedure). And indeed, the software for the MCAS was really badly designed, which has been fixed now and by now every 737 pilot should be aware how the two crashes could have been prevented by the right crew reaction. Both of this should mean that these accidents won't happen again.
That's true but the lingering issue is that if Boeing and the FAA collaborated in pushing the broken design through certification, how many other issues can and will they cover up that the pilots don't know about? I think most want this systematic problem to get fixed as well, the MCAS at this point is as you say hopefully solved..
MAX exists as a response to competition. One may assume the previous design is no longer competitive. And no, the body count isn't being considered; fuel efficiency, capacity and leveraging existing training are among the considerations.
Most people don't know what manufacturer of the aircraft they are flying in, let alone the specific model. I haven't flown in quite a while, but when I did I didn't research what model aircraft I was flying in. I doubt more than a small handful of people do.
The original 737 had some early issues also. Tail rudder problems that resulted in crashes is one that comes to mind. They were fixed and now nobody thinks twice about flying them and their long-term safety record is excellent.
Tail rudder problems is putting it mildly. There was malfunction with a valve that would cause the rudder to move in the opposite direction of the control inputs.
Anyone have any more info on this? It seems completely insane for flight control inputs to invert themselves, but only in certain temperatures. I'd love to see the incident report on that...
2.7.2 Unusual Attitude Training for Boeing 737 Pilots
At the time of the USAir flight 427 accident, no air carrier training programs were
specifically aimed at training 737 pilots to recognize and address a rudder jam or reversal.
The guidance available at that time from Boeing advised pilots, as a first consideration, to
maintain or regain full control of the airplane. Specifically, the guidance advised pilots to
counter unwanted roll tendencies from a malfunctioning rudder with the application of up
to full aileron control inputs. However, the guidance did not advise pilots that, at some
airspeeds, an uncommanded full rudder input could not be successfully opposed by full
wheel (aileron and spoiler) inputs and that a reduction in the airplane’s angle-of-attack
could improve the effectiveness of the roll controls relative to the effectiveness of the
rudder. Boeing’s guidance for relieving a jammed rudder informed pilots only that they
should use maximum force to overpower the jam and specifically warned pilots against
turning off flight control switches “unless the faulty control was positively identified.” No additional guidance was provided about the effects of flight control switch selections
on rudder jam conditions.
Yes. This took a long time to work out with initial finger pointing between Boeing and the Pilot unions.
"Testing revealed that under certain circumstances, the Power Control Unit (PCU)'s dual servo valve could jam and deflect the rudder in the opposite direction of the pilots' input. Thermal shock testing revealed that the uncommanded rudder movement could be replicated by injecting a cold PCU with hot hydraulic fluid. Thermal shock resulted in the servo's secondary slide becoming jammed against the servo housing, and that when the secondary slide was jammed the primary slide could move to a position that resulted in rudder movement opposite of the pilot's commands"
resulted in rudder movement opposite of the pilot's commands
Did the rudder actually move in opposition to the commands, or was it stuck at some limit value?
i.e. in that situation, if you command the rudder to go left, does it move even more in the wrong direction? Or is it simply frozen at whatever position it happened to get stuck in?
I'm not sure. I'm not a pilot and only have memory of this from prior reading. As I look at it now it reads more like it was uncommanded movement to the limit of travel and getting stuck there. I've also heard this problem referred to as the "rudder hard-over" problem. But there are also statements about rudder movement opposite of that commanded.
In theory the problem was recoverable but the pilots had about 10 seconds to realize what was going on and react appropriately. Sounds familiar to the 737-MAX uncommanded trim issues.
(Oh, by the way, I didn't mean to imply you were mistaken, or anything like that. I was just so shocked that a plane's controls could invert themselves in any conceivable circumstance. Currently digging through the accident report to try to figure out what happened.)
"the probable cause of
the USAir flight 427 accident was a loss of control of the airplane resulting from the
movement of the rudder surface to its blowdown limit. The rudder surface most likely
deflected in a direction opposite to that commanded by the pilots as a result of a jam of the
main rudder power control unit servo valve secondary slide to the servo valve housing
offset from its neutral position and overtravel of the primary slide"
Unfortunately I don't know what most of these terms mean. It sounds like it might be saying "they moved the rudder to its limit, and then it jammed at the limit; so when they tried to command the rudder to go the other way, the rudder was pointed in the opposite direction of the control inputs." But I'm really not sure.
No offense taken. I meant that if I start researching it again I’ll be up for 5 hours because of the personal ties to it.
My recollection in researching this a decade ago was that the cold weather made the behavior of the rudder change (my term was invert, maybe that’s not accurate), and pilots were trying to pull up, but in fact putting the plane deeper into a nosedive. Some 25 seconds later they hit the ground at some 300-400 MPH and vaporized.
The only way to have saved the plane would have been to dump the hydraulics and/or switch to a manual fly by wire mode, neither of which were a logici thing to do in the 15 seconds they had to save the flight.
I’ve only flown for 20 hours in a Cessna so sorry if my terminology isn’t perfect!
> ... behavior of the rudder change (my term was invert, maybe that’s not accurate), and pilots were trying to pull up, but in fact putting the plane deeper into a nosedive.
The rudder controls yaw, not pitch. The rudder controls did invert: the pilot tries to turn slightly left, the plane turns right, so the pilot naturally tries turning harder left until the rudder is in the full right position, and they're in an uncoordinated turn. The wing on the inside of the turn starts to drop significantly or even stalls. The plane is then sideways and in a dive, and on top of that, the rudder is all the way over in the direction that makes the dive steeper. The planes quickly rolled over on their sides and went into steep dives.
My understanding is that a big break in the case came when a pilot figured out what was going on and successfully landed a plane with reversed rudder controls.
The issue isn't a really a physical one in principle here. It's an issue of corporate accountability.
You had corners cut to deliver a product that ended up killing people. There is no real room for doubt in that just from the material we have available.
So, what? What happens? What should happen? Everything go back to "normal"? Let the same people who ran things continue to profit off their wrongdoing? Accept that as long as you're one of only two rides in town that you have the security to deliver and recover from delivering a lethal product?
That's the issue. That's the reality we're taking out of this. It isn't even self-regulating anymore. There is no bankruptcy, no hammer, no reallocation of assets to those that can wield them more responsibly, no reset. Just a token gesture. The same Goliath just shrugs and moves on.
While I get that might be tenable or desirable to some, I'm not one of them. Realistic risk of falling flat on your face, being held to account, and not being able to just shrug it off and keep going keeps you honest.
Once you lose that, "What's a life here and there? Doesn't bother me. Can't make an onelette without cracking a few eggs."
The economy is not an omelette, and people are not eggs. Either we serve it, or it serves us. I know which side of that assertion I'm on.
What alternative would you propose? You can't just remove Boeing as a company: they have tens of thousands of existing aircraft in the field that need to be maintained, and a large number of people who were not at fault in all of this whose jobs would be eliminated. So how do you hold the proper people accountable without doing so much collateral damage that the cost of that outweighs the benefits?
Also, responsibility doesn't just like with Boeing; the FAA certified the 737 MAX, and the rules that allowed that to happen were written by lawmakers and bureaucrats over a period of decades. How do you hold all of them accountable? Many, if not most, of those people aren't even actively working any more.
The alternative is obvious - corporate manslaughter charges, aimed at management that knew plane was unsafe and pushed on regardless.
> " collateral damage so cost of that outweighs the benefits"
Do we have a system a justice or do we not? You seem to suggest some people are above the law. Let's see, could that possibly lead to corruption and abuse of power?
And their obvious defense is that they were acting entirely in accordance with statutes passed by Congress and regulations approved by the statutory process for doing that.
Certification was almost entirely done by Boeing in-house, with the design specs. it forwarded to the FAA not reflecting the final state of the system.
The replacement CEO was previously the chairman of the board. So while they did change personnel, I am skeptical about how different their actual management practices are.
The original 737 wasn't broken-by-design in the way the Max is. The Max _requires_ software kludges to paper over its deliberate mistakes; that's very different from just having a few bugs to work out in a fundamentally sound design.
This is a bit of an urban myth that keeps flying around. The plane is perfectly stable without MCAS, but would have had different handling characteristics than the previous version. The purpose of MCAS was to modify the handling to match the previous plane, so pilots' type ratings would carry over with minimal retraining.
At its heart, it was a (poorly implemented) kludge in an attempt to sidestep a lot of paperwork.
This is my understanding too, though Boeing hasn't really come out and said it definitively. Specifically:
> MCAS was devised to fulfill an airworthiness certification condition in 14 CFR 25.173 and 14 CFR 25.175. In high angle-of-attack (AoA) flight configuration, it is required that stick force/g (the stick force necessary to produce (hold) an incremental normal acceleration of 1g) and stick movement/g (ditto mutatis mutandis) must increase (or at least not decrease) with an increase in AoA (thanks to Clive Leyman for this formulation). I understand that in flight test, in which “wind-up turns” were conducted (a turn with increasing angle of bank; an increasing angle of bank means ceteris paribus increasing AoA), this condition was not fulfilled.
@throwaway201103: “You're mostly right, but it wasn't just to make it handle like the previous versions, it was to satisfy FAA certification rules on how it handled.”
And also to stop the plane dropping out of the sky!
@HPsquared “.. The plane is perfectly stable without MCAS ..”
NO, no, no it isn't .. doesn't matter how many different ways you re-arrange the word salad. MCAS is a software kludge to compensate for an unstable airframe
The implementation is certainly not "elegant". It's like this random batch job that triggers when some conditions are satisfied and does its own thing without regard for anything else, sure. Not integrated with the auto-pilot, does not display anything in the panel.
We have plenty of aircraft (even though most are military) which are aerodynamically unstable, and require fly-by-wire software to even be flyable. We don't think those are kludges. That's not too far from what Boeing has to do.
It could have been either a fancier fly-by-wire software in the Airbus philosophy that wouldn't let pilots exceed parameters(retrofitting it might have been a challenge, and possibly even more dangerous). Or it could be this non-elegant solution that behaves like an old-school stick pusher. Both could have worked.
The problem is that they did this while trusting a single sensor. And not informed anyone.
The 737 MAX is aerodynamically stable. MCAS is primarily concerned with making the forces one needs to apply on the stick at high angles of attack comparable to earlier generations of 737.
An interesting question is going to be as to what happens elsewhere in the world; I'd be intrigued to see if Boeing ends up certifying the 737 MAX with MCAS as an optional feature with additional difference training required, as some things mentioned suggest that it's not implausible that this will happen.
Airbus had a crash because their fly by wire averaged the input from both yokes vs doing what Boeing does which is to allow both to feel that the other is pushing on the yoke and the pilots where not trained to understand that.
It would have been a great time for pilots to be training on the the 737 Max as a different aircraft. The mistake with the 737 Max is that it is a simulator for pilots flying like it was a regular 737. The selling point to not have to train the pilots was the big mistake with the design.
That intention led to choices in the physical design which are less safe than they otherwise would have been. So although giving dedicated training presumably would be better than nothing, that doesn't absolve this aircraft of the significant concerns about its fundamental suitability due to the decision making approach
A new plane design takes years from inception to first revenue flight. Early development of the 787 started in 2003, first revenue flight wasn't until 2011. And then we all remember when it spent a couple months grounded in 2013.
They crammed big engines under the wings in a way that it could really need a new air type certification. This is more like a new plane, with the baggage of the old 737 and without the certification testing for a new plane. Yes it can fly, but it's pushing the boundaries of safety.
I guess one would be able to check via an app like seatguru.com instead of perusing a long list on wikipedia. I also think someone would make an along the lines 737-Max-or-not if Boeing tries too hard with the renames.
I saw a really good take on this last time this subject came up here, that at this point this airframe is probably the most heavily scrutinized to ever exist
Planes can be switched out last-minute. I plan to check the plane type at the gate every time I fly for the next 10 years, and if it's a MAX, I'll reschedule my flight on the spot.
They claim they solved the software problem, but they didn't solve the physics problems created by the engine position (which necessitated the software in the first place).
> they didn't solve the physics problems created by the engine position
The engine position, in itself, isn't terribly unusual; the 757 and 767 both have engines in similar forward positions on the wings and have a similar pitch up moment due to the engines at high angles of attack. So do a number of Airbus models. Designing flight controls to deal with this issue is not new and has been well tested.
The particular issue with the 737 MAX was that Boeing wanted to change the engine position on an existing aircraft, without requiring a new type certification and pilot retraining. That meant that the flight controls had to not just properly account for the engine position, but to do so while keeping the same stick force curve vs. angle of attack as existing 737 models. That is what drove the MCAS software system that caused all the trouble. If the plane had been designed as a new type from the start, the engine position would not have been an issue; and the redesign is basically doing what a new type design would have done, as far as I can tell from the documents the FAA has published.
> Because the engineers would not have positioned the engines there in the first place.
That would have been one possible approach, yes, but it would have involved other changes, the main one being longer landing gear and a higher ground clearance.
My point is that even having the engines in a similar position to the existing one would not have posed a problem if the plane had been a new type. Other planes in service have engines in a similar position. What caused the problem was having the engines in that position and having to match the stick force curve of the existing 737 in order to keep the same type rating.
On top of that there was a single angle of attack (AoA) sensor active that was complained about and failed hundreds of times. [1]
Not only is that a single point of failure, it is more easily sabotaged or easily damaged.
Besides the fact the plane has engines too big for it and needed this MCAS system simply to retrofit and route around regulations and deal with that by constantly checking the AoA to trigger nose down adjustments, this is bad engineering/product design by management.
The software now takes two sensors into account in case of a failure of one but is still a problem potentially. Not sure if software can solve this.
In the original design, wasn't there an optional safety feature that added a second AoA sensor? It seems unbelievable, and is possibly one of the most ridiculous things about this whole story.
Presumably as part of the update, this optional feature has become standard?
I'd also like to see a list of all the airlines that chose not to spec the additional sensor in their initial order of the aircraft. It probably says a lot about their safety culture.
From what I understand, the plane always has two sensors and MCAS always only used one of them (with Boing arguing that the pilot was the "redundancy"). The plane was supposed to show an alert when the two sensors disagreed, but Boing made a mistake and that alert only showed when the airline had purchased an additional add-on package to show the sensor value in the pilot display. Boing discovered this in 2017, but did not consider this a safety-critical defect and thus didn't inform anyone or prioritize a fix, despite internally also assuming that the pilot realizing the issue within seconds was the redundancy for correcting MCAS.
Boeing's expectations for pilots recovering from an MCAS error were criminal. With an erroneous AOE reading, MCAS would immediately and repeatedly force the nose down. Pilots, not even told that MCAS existed, would somehow need to quickly recognize it as a powered flight control problem, cut off power to the stabilizer, and use the manual trim wheel to raise the nose - which can be physically impossible at high speeds in a nose-down attitude.
No rational person would think this system wouldn't kill people. The people responsible committed manslaughter.
I have no illusions I could easily create anything on the level of complexity of ITA (super impressive team/product). If I were to do this, it'd be a layer on top of some flight API doing the heavy lifting.
Depends on what you consider rational. E.g. flying a few hours on the pre-fixes 737 Max would have been more dangerous than driving a few hours in a car. And a cautious person can greatly reduce their risk of death in car driving by being a cautious driver.
Flying is much safer then driving, but that a statement based on real statistics. However, a large number of people have an irrational fear of flying vs driving. That’s the point.
Flying is safer than driving on average. But a lot of bad can hide in averages.
Boeing delivered 387 Max 8 aircraft to their customers before they were grounded in 2019. Two were destroyed, killing everyone aboard. That's half a percent of the aircraft they delivered destroyed within two years. That's obviously much worse that most other aircraft, and far worse than any car currently for sale. You wouldn't buy a car that had a one in 200 chance of killing you and your family before the lease was up, would you?
That is the wrong way to look at this. The only apples to apple comparison is miles/hours/people. How many miles over how many hours for how many people.
I was not able to find official statistics on 737 Max flight hours, which is why I fell back to percentage of aircraft as a means of comparison.
But to continue down this path, let's compare the 737 Max to its predecessor, the 737NG. Out of the 7,065 737NGs delivered, 22 have been completely destroyed, for a rate of 0.3%. If we only look at fatal accidents, we find 12 (0.16%). If we limit this to accidents that were caused by some failing of the aircraft, even if it was made worse by pilot error, you end up with two fatal accidents (0.027%).
So in order to believe that the 737 Max is no more or less dangerous than the 737NG, you have to believe that the 387 delivered 737 Max aircraft were flown enough in 2 years to cover the massive difference in their fatal hull loss rate. I'm sure that the 737 Max was flown a lot, the reduction in fuel consumption means that airlines would want to use it as much as they could, but there is over an 18x difference between the rate of fatal accidents caused by those two aircraft; do you really think that the 737 Max flew 18x more on average than the 737NG has?
Oh, and Airbus has delivered 1,499 airplanes in their a320neo series. None have crashed so far.
The decision isn't about flying in general - it's about flying on a 737 Max, which was multiple orders of magnitude more dangerous than existing aircraft in its class.
Are airlines even obliged to disclose the type of plane? One of them even changed the type of plane and destination airport (same city though) for one of my flights.
Delta has had it for years though, way before the Max issue came up. When you book a flight it's right there and tells you what model you're getting, which is needed since you can select seats ahead of time.
Admittedly, there are times it gets changed at the last minute for whatever reason, but when you book you see what you're getting, and have for years.
All 737 have an obsolescent fuselage design. It could not be certified given modern regulation and relies on being grandfathered for new production. The consequence is the fuselage can shatter on crash landings or runway overruns whereas more modern designs will hold together and protect passengers.
The relatively minor training, hardware and software revisions of 737 MAX do not make it safer than other models. Reading the FAA documents one learns there is little interest in pursuing more fundamental problems.
For instance, the trim wheel control force issue has been officially handwaved. This means your 737 pilot may need to be an athlete in the midst of dealing with failed systems and reading flight manuals. Modern designs have flight proven fly-by-wire systems and don't involve wrestling with crazy naval vessel-like mechanical wheels to control pitch.
Do you disagree with the 565 independent pilots and aviation experts who signed off on the Max in Europe alone?
It's the most scrutinized plane in aviation history, and has been vetted by multiple regulatory bodies and received thousands of test flights since fixes were made.
Honest question: if this isn't enough for you, what is? All other planes have been scrutinized far less. The bar for the Max to return was much much higher.
> Do you disagree with the 565 independent pilots and aviation experts who signed off on the Max in Europe alone?
No, I do not disagree with any conclusion that the 737, including the MAX, is safe to operate. I disagree with the characterization that, as a result of recent scrutiny, the 737 is now 'far safer than other models.' It is not and no amount of additional scrutiny, and no signoffs by any number of pilots in any nation will change that.
> It's the most scrutinized plane in aviation history, and has been vetted by multiple regulatory bodies and received thousands of test flights since fixes were made.
I don't disagree with any of this.
> Honest question: if this isn't enough for you, what is? All other planes have been scrutinized far less.
It's plenty for me. I would happily fly on an 737 MAX. However, I do question whether some count of hours of scrutiny (or whatever you mean by 'far less') is a good proxy for safety. Things that operate safely tend not require so much scrutiny.
>Things that operate safely tend not require so much scrutiny.
I don't understand this statement, it seems fundamentally wrong. Aviation is full of scrutiny. Aircraft maintenance checks happy every 500 flight hours. Engines get overhauled completely every 1,500 hours.
Maintenance and scrutiny ensure safety.
If the Max has received, at a guess, 200x the scrutiny of any other plane in history, then I'd wager it is the safest. And at this point, pilots will know the Max back to front and front to back in order to avoid issues. Do pilots have such deep knowledge of other planes which almost assuredly have latent bugs which rarely or never crop up due to exceedingly rare conditions?
> Aircraft maintenance checks happy every 500 flight hours. Engines get overhauled completely every 1,500 hours.
Maintenance and overhauls don't address design issues. Exactly the opposite; the people that perform checks and maintenance are expressly not supposed to deviate from approved designs and published processes. Conflating these tasks with regulatory scrutiny shows a fundamental misunderstanding about this discussion.
And airliner engines are not 'completely overhauled' every 1,500 hours. Figures that low are related to small aircraft engines, usually piston engines.
> [citation needed] It was never said that it was an unsafe design.
[google it]
I never claimed it was unsafe. I argued with the claim that, due to the additional scrutiny the 737 was now somehow 'far safer than other models.' It is not and no amount of additional scrutiny will change that.
FWIW, I don't see any pilots or aviation experts saying this. I think it's actually still poorly designed -- I don't think they added a third AoA sensor and used a quorum on them, as Airbus does given their own link of AoA to an automatic flight control.
There's been hundreds of independent pilots and experts who have signed off on the plane from multiple regulatory bodies and other independents. Including 565 independent pilots in Europe alone. [1]
No other plane in the history of aviation has had this level of scrutiny.
That's fine, but signing off on it just means that they were convinced that it's airworthy. Your own [1] link even says:
> “While the software upgrades and changes are enough to get the plane back in the air, the agency is still demanding the development of a so-called synthetic sensor (that will be ready in 20 to 24 months) to reach even higher safety levels.”
This seems clear that we're talking about a conditional airworthiness rather than absolute confidence, safest plane ever made, etc etc. Recall that you said "It's probably far safer now than other models". Why are you saying that given that the experts you quoted are using the paragraph above for this plane, when they don't have similar concerns and requirements for other models?
Because safety is far from a binary equation. Safety is a sliding scale that never reaches 100%. If the Max is 99.9999% safe and regulators are demanding they make it at least 99.99991% safe it doesn't detract from my point.
If other planes received this level of scrutiny, changes would similarly be demanded. The practice of re-badging old models is widespread.
I'm telling you that personally, I'd exclusively travel on just the Max for the rest of my days and wouldn't lose sleep.
I argued that it is untrue that aviation experts and pilots now consider it to be much safer than other models as a result of the scrutiny. You asked if any of those people have publicly refused to fly it, presumably because they think it's a deathtrap.
That isn't a response to my actual position, or something I expected to happen.
Boeing is a company that needs to take the long view, and the only way to make that happen is to vote with your dollars.
If they can wave this away, then the necessary lessons haven’t been learned and the Jack Welch protege currently at the helm will be allowed to continue business as usual.
Please don't fearmonger. The 737 Max is not fundamentally less safe than any other 737... What made it less safe is the corporate culture that added this flaw and the flaw has been fixed. The fix was obvious at the time of the failure and that hasn't changed.
Why do these articles say so little about how Boeing fixed the problem? People are more likely to fly on these if they know what's different from the ones that crashed.
This is Reuters. It's for consumption by the general public. Even if the journalist did know, whould they really go into any detail in a short reuters piece?
I'm sure there are better sources for details, and in the end FAA.
Aviation Week tends to have much more accurate aviation articles. I haven't seen much to gripe about with their coverage of the 737MAX issue, but the mainstream media articles have all been pretty much trash.
At least insofar as the US is concerned (and note many other regulating bodies are writing their own ADs, certifying the aircraft themselves), the FAA AD is https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf..., where the actual changes operators are required to make start on page 45.
Thanks for the link. The interesting part [with some comments]:
> As proposed in the NPRM [FAA's notice of proposed rulemaking], the corrective actions mandated by this AD [airworthiness directive] include a revision of the airplane's flight control laws (software). The new flight control laws now require inputs from both AOA [angle of attack] sensors in order to activate MCAS [Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System; the system causing the crashes]. They also compare the inputs from the two sensors, and if those inputs differ significantly (greater than 5.5 degrees for a specified period of time), will disable the Speed Trim System (STS), which includes MCAS, for the remainder of the flight and provide a corresponding indication of that deactivation on the flight deck. The new flight control laws now permit only one activation of MCAS per sensed high-AOA event, and limit the magnitude of any MCAS command to move the horizontal stabilizer such that the resulting position of the stabilizer will preserve the flight crew's ability to control the airplane's pitch by using only the control column. This means the pilot will have sufficient control authority without the need to make electric or manual stabilizer trim inputs. The new flight control laws also include FCC [flight control computer] integrity monitoring of each FCC's performance and cross-FCC monitoring, which detects and stops erroneous FCC-generated stabilizer trim commands (including MCAS).
> This AD further mandates changes to the airplane's AFM [airplane flight manual] to add and revise flight crew procedures to facilitate the crew's ability to recognize and respond to undesired horizontal stabilizer movement and the effects of a potential AOA sensor failure.
> This AD also mandates an AOA DISAGREE alert, which indicates certain AOA sensor failures or a significant calibration issue. The alert is implemented by revision of MDS software [MAX display system]; as a result, certain stickers (known as INOP [inoperative] markers) will be removed.
> Additionally, this AD mandates adequately separating certain airplane wiring, and conducting an AOA sensor system test and an operational readiness flight on each airplane before the airplane is reintroduced to service.
> Finally, this AD requires that operators that wish to dispatch airplanes with certain inoperative systems must first have incorporated specific provisions that are more restrictive into their existing FAA-approved MEL [minimum equipment list; defining what can be broken and you can still take-off].
Because they didn't fix the problem. Shit can still hit the fan with one AoA indicator down and MCAS disabled. Think about how flawed these sensors have to be to fail mere months after coming off the assembly line. 737 MAX is only safe if there is triple redundancy on the sensors to confirm which of the two remaining sensors are in agreement.
The Lion Air sensor was defective when installed on the aircraft (The day prior to the accident), it was a part that was repaired by a company in Florida that was not authorized to repair it, and the airline's maintenance department failed to verify its correct operation and just forged the verification in their records.
The Ethiopian Airlines sensor was speculated to have been hit by a bird on takeoff.
> In another display of confidence, European budget airline Ryanair was set to place a hefty order for up to 75 additional 737 MAX jets, industry sources said.
If one needed another reason not to fly Ryannair, here it is.
I believe they had an order in place already, but I bet they've negotiated a big discount on it now.
I think people will fly on the MAX (or 737-8 as it's going to be badged) after a year or two assuming there are no more accidents. Cheaper long haul flights is too tempting.
Though I don't think I'd like to be stuck in a Ryanair plane with the temperature notched all the way up so the passengers buy drinks for longer than 1/2hrs.
> Though I don't think I'd like to be stuck in a Ryanair plane with the temperature notched all the way up so the passengers buy drinks for longer than 1/2hrs.
I've never noticed that, and it doesn't really make sense as it costs fuel to heat up the cabin. Are you making that up?
Some people also have no choice because of their financial situation. How many people drive in cars that are not road worthy? I can imagine the anxiety going through those souls who have to use Ryanair.
Curious, I never want to fly in one of these. How can one achieve that in a realistic way? Let's say airline changes plane after I booked, then I wouldnt get a refund. Is there a solution to this?
Fly Airbus-only airlines (Which can mean having to drive or take the train if you are at an airport where only one or two airlines operate such as for example most domestic airports in Norway).
You will never be able to get a refund for plane changes. Even airlines with no MAX aircraft of their own could operate your flight with a MAX if they use code share or wet lease.
So while you can make your risk small, you can never be sure, without accepting that you may need to turn back at the gate. But on the other hand I assume you'll be OK with flying it once it has flown for a number of million miles in a few years from now. After all, the airlines that operate non-MAX 737's for the equivalent flights will be flying older and older craft.
The only way is to book on an airline who doesn't have the MAX, doesn't have them on order and has no history of wetleasing. Alternatively you can fly only on routes where the MAX is unsuitable i.e. longhaul.
It's usually stated when you browse flights, but obviously planes can be substituted before you fly. You can take your chances.
The best plan would be to avoid airlines that own the plane, but that will be impractical for most. Even then you might be re-routed onto another airline or third party plane.
Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737. Presumably future engines will be bigger still, will they just tack them onto this old design as well? At the end of the day this is just a software fix.
> Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737
That's EXACTLY what they didn't want to do.
Airbus was able to do the 320Neo without a redesign. They essentially slapped new engines on it and made tiny adjustments. Boom, fuel savings.
Boeing wanted to do the same. Their design didn't accommodate the bigger, more efficient engines they wanted. So they created a workaround.
Redesigning essentially means creating an entirely new aircraft, even if it looks similar. Requires a new type certification, which is a very lengthy process in itself. Requires pilot training for the new type rating. Possibly new simulators, and simulator time. Not all airlines even own simulators.
Airlines like Southwest use all 737s exactly because that makes pilots interchangeable(simplifies logistics and maintenance too, but mostly it's about pilots).
If I'm an airline and now you tell me my pilots need training, including expensive simulators, it's no longer the same aircraft(as in, not the same type rating). If it is not the same aircraft, that means I could choose any other aircraft. Such as these new Airbus models I've been hearing about...
See the problem? MCAS wasn't such a bad solution on paper, it's just that the implementation sucked. It should have required some minimal training (which is much better than a new type rating) but Boeing didn't even want that.
> Boeing wanted to do the same. Their design didn't accommodate the bigger, more efficient engines they wanted. So they created a workaround.
Note that Boeing had this problem ever since the 737 Classic (the second generation 737) was introduced, hence the non-circular engine inlets they've had for decades. This cost them efficiency, at the benefit of maintaining commonality with all its advantages.
Note that last I heard Airbus was planning a clean-sheet redesign for the A320neo's successor, targeting an early 2030s introduction into service. If you allow me to speculate for a moment, Airbus is in an interesting position now having the A220 in its family: it could easily stretch the A220 to be comparable in capacity to the A320, leaving an A320 family replacement to focus on the A321 and the smaller midsize market.
I think the world is moving away from twin-aisle planes somewhat. The future is point-to-point in smaller planes. In that sense Airbus is well positioned.
> The engines being too low will kill everyone on the plane should the special control mechanism not exist.
It makes the control curve slightly different, don't be so dramatic.
> If a control mechanism can easily be fixed... What was the exact fix? Literally tell me.
I'm not psychic, I can't tell you how they fixed it, but you can find a ton of people talking about how redundant sensors would have avoided the same issue. You could also have it be much more obvious when it's adjusting trim, because if the pilots were aware of what was happening they wouldn't have crashed either.
from your other comment> Saying the control mechanism crashed the plane and just fixing that is like saying you didn't put enough duct tape over the real problem.
Tape, and the equivalent of tape, is a valid solution to many problems if you have an expert analyze it.
>It makes the control curve slightly different, don't be so dramatic.
I'm not being drastic, the plane has an unconventional control system built to hide a physical flaw that is never an actual physical property on planes designed from the ground up. The plane will literally stall:
It's well known boeing used a hack to avoid costs of redesign.
>Tape, and the equivalent of tape, is a valid solution to many problems if you have an expert analyze it.
The experts who killed 300 people analyzed the mcas and also built it. No one will get on a plane covered in duck tape no matter how many experts analyzed it.
>I'm not psychic, I can't tell you how they fixed it,
Makes sense that you're not psychic. Likely you went to google at some point and tried to find out what that fix was and likely you found nothing. That's a red flag, a huge one.
Being psychic is the only possible way you'll know what the engineers did to duct tape the whole design. At the very least this is something any wise man should know about before getting onto that plane.
The plane will stall unless you push the stick differently or adjust the trim. It's something you can compensate for. MCAS doesn't even adjust the trim very fast! It's a hack but that's mainly to avoid retraining, not because the design is inherently all that dangerous.
> The experts who killed 300 people analyzed the mcas and also built it.
It could be fair to avoid all planes coming from those experts. But if you don't trust them to fix a single flaw, why in god's name do you trust them to design an entirely new plane? This is not a reason to push for a redesign.
> No one will get on a plane covered in duck tape no matter how many experts analyzed it.
Ever heard of speed tape?
Most people will either get on the plane when it's fixed, or they will never get on the plane. They're not going to care about the exact details.
> Likely you went to google at some point and tried to find out what that fix was and likely you found nothing. That's a red flag, a huge one.
Sure. Red flag. But a flag is far from conclusive.
> At the very least this is something any wise man should know about before getting onto that plane.
I'm wise enough to not play armchair plane engineer when my life is on the line. If I don't trust the process, then I'll wait for a certain number of flight hours instead. I'm not going to depend on my own ability to analyze plane design.
The locations of the engine necessitated flawed control mechanism designs which caused the crash.
The locations of the engine and a plane flown without mcas will also cause the plane to crash.
The technical debt transferred over to the control mechanism and now all the engineers and people who worked on and funded the plane are responsible for killing over 300 people. These are peoples lives at stake. Fix the technical debt. Saying the control mechanism crashed the plane and just fixing that is like saying you didn't put enough duct tape over the real problem.
If this seems unavoidable maybe the government should require all but trivial changes to aircraft to go through the same process. That said, airplanes are still very safe even with these tragic incidents.
> Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737.
If I were the EU regulator, I would have forced them to... It's a great way to screw over Boeing (American) and boost sales for Airbus (EU), while having the fairly legit rationale that you no longer have confidence in the US regulator due to a long series of blunders, and you are not happy for a major new plane design to use a decades old type rating (and is therefore missing now-mandatory safety stuff).
Doing that would mean acting in bad faith (obviously) but also breaking WTO Rules, i.e. international law, which can come with a big price tag if your caught (potentially unlikely in such a scenario and depends on the WTO being accepted by the US, which is also not very likely). That is on top of being sued by Boeing in Court for wrongfully denying the recertification. So I'm not sure whether that would really be a consideration.
Well, they drove Bombardier CSeries (a small barely competing program with some potential) into the hands of Airbus (a huge threat with production and logistics capabilities) for free. In the end USA won (they got production of new aircraft on their soil). Boeing? A total loss.
> It's a great way to screw over Boeing (American) and boost sales for Airbus (EU), while having the fairly legit rationale that you no longer have confidence in the US regulator due to a long series of blunders
Trade agreements are written to anticipate this sort of thing.
This is a 20 year old question. A new single or small twin isle would cost $10-20B and take 8 years to develop and certify on the optimistic side. Given they're still bleeding on the 787, the 777X may be cancelled, KC-46 fiasco, Airbus competition, they have to go with what they have.
Not at all excusing what’s happened, but if Boeing and Airbus disappear, who’ll create the new jumbo jets? You can’t just kill a company like that. You can fine the living daylights out of them, sure, but don’t kill them.
Bombardier, Embraer, Ilyushin, Mitsubishi, Tupolev, BAE - have flown on all these and really liked Bombardier and Embraer, very quiet, generally pleasant, for a short haul I'd opt for these rather than a 737 or A320.
An expectation of a product creates a product. And a product (can) create(s) demand with or without that expectation.
Of course that won't happen as aerospace is such a strategic industry.
FWIW, note that Bombardier is out of the commercial aviation market now; their only doing business jets now. BAe, now BAE Systems, is very much a defence company; the commercial side effectively went to Airbus with BAe's stake in it.
Multiple aviation projects have almost bankrupt Bombardier in recent history, so I don't really see them getting back into it. And it's hard to see what BAE Systems would get out of entering the commercial aviation market.
Regarding Boeing, it’s my opinion that you don’t kill off the whole company but rather kill off all the regulation loopholes that allowed this 737 Max mess to begin with. If Boeing can’t get their plane fixed and certified, properly, then big deal. That’s their problem. If they fail because they can’t sell their “new” broken plane, they killed themselves off.
The even bigger problem is that our governments allow companies to get to these “too big to fail” states, and I myself am pretty tired of it. Every single time it is the consumer that pays, either literally or with their lives.
Something definitely needs to be done about it, but “too big to fail” is a very real thing. Regulation fixes, corporate culture fixes, something, but killing the companies that are “too big to fail” isn’t a good idea in most cases.
I’m saying that, just like monopolies, there’s nothing inherently bad about being “too big to fail.” But when they do stuff wrong, we still punish them, but we don’t kill them. Break them up? Possibly.
Every time I say this I get told I don't know what I'm talking about.
You shouldn't be able to say "we followed all regulations" when people die and leave it at that. They should stop playing games and just design an aircraft.
As with software, restarting from scratch can introduce many, many bugs.
Boeing planes are super safe from millions of flighthours and the learnings and failures from before. The older aircraft annealed into a state of safety and reliability from known-ness.
Building from scratch isn't really building from scratch is my point. You build off of what you have and revisit designs. They aren't reinventing the aircraft.
"In another display of confidence, European budget airline Ryanair was set to place a hefty order for up to 75 additional 737 MAX jets, industry sources said."
A Ryanair spokesperson said "It's the first time we've ever been offered a discount in excess of 100%"
Ryanair were notable for also placing a large order for the 737 NG in January 2002, which was rumoured to be in excess of 50% of list price, as Boeing had struggled to make any sales and was having lay-offs.
That quote wasn't in the article... I suspect OP was joking, but even if they had been given a massive discount, I'm sure the contract prevents them from telling anyone else the terms...
The planes are just a cost for Boeing once they are built and they obviously need to them in the air to convince everyone that they are safe and ok to buy.
Given the recent news about delivery services (UPS, Fedex, Amazon) having constraints on capacity this would be a great time for them to invest in some planes. I assume Boeing is desperate to sell these. Or is there something about these planes that makes them unsuitable.
They'd have to be retrofitted to be capable of loading and unloading cargo similarly to typical air freighters. The standard passenger entry/exit portals are not big enough to move large pallets on the plane.
Interesting - so the airlines that didn't cancel just assumed that they were far enough down the list that Boeing would figure it out and passengers would forget? I'd be asking for a discount for sure - especially since commercial airlines are hurting for cash.
What would be the airline's alternative plan? The A320neo family has a multi-year backlog of orders, so you'd be delaying your aircraft replacement. Keep flying older 737 NGs? Then your competitors can beat you on costs due to lower fuel burn.
That all said, Boeing is liable for penalties due to late delivery of many (most?) aircraft.
A couple questions here - I am assuming that planes are only at 50% usage now, so they obviously age but less hours right? Does that change how long they are kept so that you need less replacements?
So there's two limits to most commercial aircraft: one of the number of pressurisation cycles the airframe goes through, and the other is number of flight hours. Typically it's the former that's the limit run into in practice.
Clearly the fact that fewer aircraft are flying increases the lifespan of those aircraft (assuming they aren't scrapped or inappropriately stored!). But that's often not the only concern the airlines have: some airlines pride themselves on having a fleet of relatively new aircraft, fuel is a significant cost and can be a significant incentive to replace aircraft with more efficient ones regardless of age (especially if you have competitors on the same routes with more efficient aircraft), time out of service due to maintenance (at some point having the aircraft out of service for a couple of months with a large bill due just isn't worth it versus replacement, and aircraft maintenance is mostly done on a time basis so the clock is still ticking).
Delaying aircraft replacement by a couple of years due to 737 MAX delays is almost certainly viable, but delaying replacement by 5+ years to instead order A320neos is harder, and delaying replacement by 10+ years if you want to push Boeing to replace the 737 is likely implausible.
The economics are obviously different from a 747 or 767 but Boeing sells (converted) 737s as freighters [1]. Alaska Airlines also operates some combined passenger/freight 737s on routes in Alaska that can't fill a 737 entirely with either. Admittedly neither of these are MAX variants but the potential seems to be there.
Anti-stalling software system was an artificial patch of an outdated planer, which could not cope with changes in aerodynamics with new engines. Boeing basically made a terribly unsafe plane and put a watchdog to prevent it from crashing too often to make it embarrassing. I will refuse flying 737 MAX even if they implement 100 watchdogs and give every passenger a parachute. Such an outrageous contempt to human's life out of corporate greed could not be justified.
The DC-10 recovered. It was grounded, returned to service, crashed again. Eventually, it became safe. And eventually the public forgot about the issues.
The bigger problem is that you have a company that decided that a single sensor driving a safety-critical system was sufficient, even though they have two (and even that is not enough, such systems should have three).
For a new system that was introduced and not explained to pilots, because that was the goal. It even made the "AOA disagree" warning _an optional feature_. Or, more specifically, it made the AOA indicator an optional feature, and the AOA disagree feature was tied to that. They knew about it, but didn't inform anyone. Including the FAA.
So now we trust that same company to make the plane safe. Why?
To be fair, it makes sense that the AOA indicator/disagree features were optional since airliners generally don't have AOI indicators in the cockpit and airline pilots generally aren't trained to use AOA information. These features were targeted at airlines who have lots of ex-military pilots. Their potential safety significance is probably more obvious in retrospect.
I believe the FAA should have insisted that the MAX get several hundred hours in the air - e.g. flying for courier companies over Christmas peak - BEFORE recertifying it for public use.
> Everyday flights are as boring as possible on purpose
But the frequency of flights increases the probability of an unusual or unforeseen event occurring, or tested events occurring but in combination. Just like beta testing.
It's also how the Soviet regulators certified their aircraft, they required them to operate for a year or more on cargo and mail flights so that they were exposed to a wide range of environmental and operational scenarios.
> Everyday flights are as boring as possible on purpose
So were the commercial 737 Max flights, yet here we are.
The aircraft didn't crash because of oversized engines. It crashed because MCAS was poorly implemented. A properly implemented MCAS system and there is no problem with the aircraft.
I would respectfully disagree. The reason for MCAS existing in the first place is, without it, the flight characteristics of the plane are quite a departure from the standard 737 and can be rather unstable. And the only reason Boeing did that was to circumvent some regulatory restrictions around airframe certification and pilot training. So, you're right in the sense that the MCAS was poorly implemented, but it was only required in the first place because of the abnormally sized engine. Well, not so much the size but the increased size with the same airframe caused it to be moved to a different part of the aircraft.
Problem will not be resolved for me until indications of real cultural shift happen in a direction where safety and Quality take some level of priority over brute fiscal efficiency.
Aerospace should be a cost-sink first, a financial growth engine second. Often, a cost-sink is actually both at the same time with the growth in industry around them that new, costly, realistically risky work creates. Whereas optimizing for the second metric at all costs tends to only benefit the undertaker, investigative agencies, and the lawyers.
For me having good statistics is good enough. The question is how many flights are necessary for 737 Max 8 to overcome the bad start in its statistic. It needs to go back to 0.2 per million flights, which needs about 10 million flights more to prove itself (taking about 5-10 years maybe)
,,The global fleet of nearly 400 737 MAXs flew 500,000 flights from March 2017 to March 2019, and experienced two fatal accidents for an accident rate of four per million flights when it was grounded. The previous generations of the Boeing 737 averaged 0.2 accidents per million flights.[180]'' - from Wikipedia
Consider two models of car. One was sold in large numbers in the early 90s and has proven exceptionally reliable, but obviously it's built to early 90s safety standards, and has been involved in a huge number of fatal accidents with various causes ranging from operator error to scattered manufacturing defects. However, no serious design issues ever surfaced.
The second is a 2020 model, equipped with state of the art safety features. However, its fatal accident rate is the same as the other model (though the absolute number is much smaller), and nearly every single such accident happened in the exact same way: the driver assist system, which cannot be turned off, has a nasty habit of overpowering the driver and steering into oncoming traffic. The NHTSA investigation reveals that this system was implemented hastily, using outsourced labor and cheap non-redundant components, so that the manufacturer could qualify for a tax credit. Specific concerns regarding the implementation were raised by engineers but overruled by management.
Well since the chance of getting cancer is ~30%, we should not even bother with traffic laws, food safety or guns - anything short of nuclear weapons is just unlikely to ever get you!
The plane is a STEM engineer fixable issue. The corporate mess that pushed this across flying clearance is not.
I’ll aim to fly airbus until Boeing understands that difference and fixes the root cause.