On 7/26/2019 at 1:34 PM, Jim Young said:

I do hope Boeing will suck up the loss and move on.....

I am sure they will.  As I mentioned earlier, if push comes to shove, they have many assets to prop up the company, such as aircraft parts, especially engines.  But they will wait for sure because when you sell such assets it is hard to get them back--kind of like reverse mortgages which ensnare seniors.  I still believe they get the raw deal when nearly every aircraft mfr has lost equipment, many times due to maintenance or poor flight crew communication, such as what happened in Tenerife during the Canary Islands disaster.  Flight crew communication is key, although I do not blame the pilots in the two aircraft crashes that shut down the rollout of the latest 737.  As we learned in the case of the "Miracle on the Hudson", much depends on how much time pilots have to react.  I was trained heavily in that in my Light Sport lessons, about always being prepared for an engine out.  My CFI said I was good at spotting potential landing areas without wires or moving vehicles.  Flying trikes I was trained to land in desert washes, which we have in Arizona. 

Another Boeing issue resulted in an oft forgotten "Miracle Landing":

Edit: I should have said CFM issue, the 737 design itself was not at fault.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110

Edited July 28, 20196 yr by John_Cillis

1 hour ago, Matthew Kane said:

The public has short term memory, as soon as those planes go back into service people will for the most part board them not really even knowing what model aircraft they are getting on, all they know is they have a meeting in Cleveland they have to get to

When they get them sorted I wouldn't have a problem getting on one, I've taking far greater risks in my lifetime, just driving to work is a greater risk.

In a way I agree but it only takes one passenger.  Back in my day of almost daily flying, I would get to my seat and they would have a brochure or something in the seat pocket that welcomed you and told you a little about the aircraft you are on and where the emergency exits were located.  I never knew exactly what aircraft I was on but, looking through the seat pocket, I would find a description of the aircraft.  I can see a passenger now picking up one of these descriptions and then stating, "wow, we're on one of those 737 MAX aircraft!  I hope nothing happens!"  I'm sure others in the area will hear and everyone on board will soon know.  You have just one more incident, whether a crash or a situation where the pilot was able to bring the aircraft down safely, and the 737 MAX is dead for sure.  If the aircraft is brought back, I hope they have more experienced pilots than the pilots who crashed the aircraft in Africa.  They were both in their 20's.  They were probably experienced for a 737 but not fully trained and experienced for the MAX. 

15 minutes ago, Jim Young said:

" I never knew exactly what aircraft I was on but, looking through the seat pocket, I would find a description of the aircraft.  I can see a passenger now picking up one of these descriptions and then stating, "wow, we're on one of those 737 MAX aircraft!  I hope nothing happens!" "

That never happens on flights though, even though pax do pick up the aircraft emergency exit guides from time to time, I always did until I became familiar with certain aircraft then I would not bother.  Passengers (at least me, when I was on business or pleasure travel) realize they cannot choose equipment if they want the most direct and cheapest flights.   We pilots make the worst patients, especially those like me who have only flown single engine, light aircraft in real life and not heavy iron.

My fav book about airline flying is "Runway Zero-Eight", about a fighter pilot who had not flown in ten years being the only one who might be able to save a four engined prop airliner from disaster when both pilots come down with food poisoning--and having been the victim of food poisoning, I know it takes away one's flying skills fast, conscious or not.

I always felt, if worst ever came to worst and I were the only one with flying experience onboard an aircraft with sick and disabled pilots, I would grab the calmest flight attendant, make him or her my first officer, and do whatever I could to save my behind, let alone the pax on the aircraft.  That is why I have lately tried to sim in more avionics related aircraft, like the heavier biz jets like the Falcon, so I could learn more about autopilots and when to hold 'em, and when to fold 'em so to speak.

I think one current problem in aviation, and it was foreseen, is reducing flight deck crew from three to two, and increasing automation.  If you are not ahead of the automation during flight, you fall behind the aircraft and there is almost no way to recover, other than the altitude below you, if the automation fails.  Experience or no experience, if automation fails or an aircraft fails and it is too low, experience cannot save you, only fate can.  That is sadly why catastrophic accidents are just that, catastrophic and unsurvivable except in those odd instances where you are in the right seat, or in one instance, a stewardess who was blown clear of her aircraft and manage to free fall and survive.

Even walking has its risks--I was injured the worst in my life in March when I was run over, the pain of which has shortened my lifespan most certainly because of the pain meds I have to take just to manage what I went thru.  But I still walk, having been in a car accident, still drive, and having been in one GA and three airline mishaps, I still fly.

John

 

Every aircraft manufacturer in the history of aviation has had problems and failures. The only reason this is so huge is Boeing's very poor response and the media explosion after the two crashes. 

I sincerely hope they humble up, take responsibility, and fix it. There are too many hard working people that rely on this for their livelihood. I would hate to see them suffer through no fault of their own. 

2 minutes ago, John_Cillis said:

That never happens on flights though

That's a pretty bold statement.  All it takes is one passenger thoroughly educated in the issues with the 737 MAX and you never know what will be said or what will happen.

1 hour ago, Jim Young said:

That's a pretty bold statement.  All it takes is one passenger thoroughly educated in the issues with the 737 MAX and you never know what will be said or what will happen.

It's an experienced statement, from someone who has flown as many miles as the most traveled person in this forum.  I have never seen a DC-10 passenger have a panic attack, or 747 passenger have a panic attack, or 737 passenger have a panic attack.  The more of a certain type of equipment, the greater the number of aircraft will be found in tragic accidents, but it is the percentage of those accidents compared to air miles flown in the equipment that matter the most.  The 737 has had an amazing safety record, the Airbus aircraft second, and the unsung heroes, the puddle jumpers.  The only time I have ever heard passengers scream was when we have flown into severe turbulence, and that has only happened to me on ten or so out of the several hundred commercial flights I flew in a short ten year span, my travel ebbed off to just two-three flights a year after two thousand, after my daughter was born, by choice.

As I said, maybe a pilot, or someone made so worried by the press, might take issue with certain equipment but it is their duty to know this before, and not once on a flight, making a ruckus for their own decision to board without foreknowledge of what they are boarding.

Sadly, aircraft accidents are titillating, they titillate the experienced and inexperienced.  So we jump in as armchair QB's and try to guess what caused the accident, sometimes we are lucky, sometimes we are not.  If there was a pilot or engineer out there who knew all about aircraft, we'd have no accidents.  No such person exists, not here in the forums or in the real world, and sometimes it can be tricky where reality begins and ends.  For me reality is not what I guess at, but what I learn, and I prefer to be in the "always learning mode", right until proven wrong.  Then I accept it.  My experience has done me no wrong, and caused me no worries in flight, except for flight into unsafe conditions.  My cancerous pancreas knows all about that...

John

Edited July 29, 20196 yr by John_Cillis

3 hours ago, Jim Young said:

That's a pretty bold statement.  All it takes is one passenger thoroughly educated in the issues with the 737 MAX and you never know what will be said or what will happen.

That’s a bit of a contradictory statement. A passenger thoroughly educated on the 737 max issues would know that the aerodynamic issue that mcas was supposed to correct is far less dangerous than the design flaw in the mcas software itself. And that once the mcas is corrected to use two aoa inputs before acting, that the plane can be as safe as any other. So I don’t think a notional passenger who is thoroughly educated on the mcas issue would be likely to spread panic amongst seat mates. Rather I would suspect that a passenger who knows little of aviation but absorbs all the sensationalism being bandied in the media would be more likely to spread panic aboard any type of aircraft. And there is nothing that requires the safety cards to emphasis the word ‘max’. The airlines can easily reprint them to say ‘737-8’ or just ‘737’ on the cover.  Few passengers would know the significance of a -8 versus a -800 on the card. Many other different ways for the crew to check that the correct card is in the seats.

Once the software fix is approved and installed, I would have no qualms about flying on a max. Any qualms I would have about flying would stem from who is flying rather than what is flying.

7 hours ago, Jim Young said:

In a way I agree but it only takes one passenger.  Back in my day of almost daily flying, I would get to my seat and they would have a brochure or something in the seat pocket that welcomed you and told you a little about the aircraft you are on and where the emergency exits were located.  I never knew exactly what aircraft I was on but, looking through the seat pocket, I would find a description of the aircraft.  I can see a passenger now picking up one of these descriptions and then stating, "wow, we're on one of those 737 MAX aircraft!  I hope nothing happens!"  I'm sure others in the area will hear and everyone on board will soon know.  You have just one more incident, whether a crash or a situation where the pilot was able to bring the aircraft down safely, and the 737 MAX is dead for sure.  If the aircraft is brought back, I hope they have more experienced pilots than the pilots who crashed the aircraft in Africa.  They were both in their 20's.  They were probably experienced for a 737 but not fully trained and experienced for the MAX. 

All great aircraft have had a tarnished reputation at some point, what makes the MAX unique is it is based on a legacy aircraft with the best reputation of all other airliners to date. Over time the MAX will restore it's place once again. DC-10 had a lot to overcome as well as the A320 when it flew into those trees, the Fly-By-Wire made the public extremely skeptical after that compared to Boeing's hydraulic systems, but eventually Airbus has proven itself.

This one looked really bad at the time, initially people and media blamed Fly-By-Wire, eventually the truth came out:

 

Edited July 29, 20196 yr by Matthew Kane

1 hour ago, Matthew Kane said:

This one looked really bad at the time, initially people and media blamed Fly-By-Wire, eventually the truth came out:..... 

 

As they say, the devil is in the details, you have to dig for the devil in the details to make aviation safer.

Then you say to the aviation Gods, like Otto Lilienthal, (gliders), Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes and the Montgolfier brothers (hot air ballooning) , -- those early ones who braved lifting off the earth without engines, "Oh God, you Devil"....  

The Montgolfier brothers were the real pioneers of flight, but they stayed wise and made an agreement with crash test dummies to fly first.  Sadly that is what airlines do, not the pilots, they consider the pax more and more these days cattle and crash test dummies because they take risks to be more efficient, even the American airlines which I have worked for, I've seen it in their mantra:  "If the pax want to get there, get them there, if we lose one or two out of a million or so, oh well"..... 

And that is not an attack on the airlines, it is meant to be the opposite--the truth of travel is you can get hurt, it is just the risk of movement, and has nothing to do with the inner workings of the airline or jet industry--but does sometimes involve meddling, and I will leave it at that, since meddling is sabotage..

And special tribute must go to ocean cliff divers over the past millennia who established the coda "any landing you can swim--uh uh, walk away from.....

The only flight I have not taken is free falling from an aircraft, because in times when there is no one to fight, there is no reason to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft....  But, lol, I believe the song that the girl group Heart sang, in dreams "Your feet never touch the earth" because after a full day of dwelling on aviation, I fall asleep, happy and weightless until Gravity wakes me up again, lol.

That is why I eat less, because I fly and train under light sport (Light Sport is constant training every two years you need a CFI to fly with you), I wanted to be the #170 pound "clone" pilot because when I started flying Light Sport and Trikes, I was a 240# beast with a simmers attitude that my CFI's had to remove from my head, because too much emphasis on simming and not learning makes ya grow a tumor, lookin' at all those gadgets, lol...

John

Well they are in the news again today denying they cut corners to cut cost they only wanted to keep cost down. 

1 hour ago, rjfry said:

Well they are in the news again today denying they cut corners to cut cost they only wanted to keep cost down. 

That is what we ask for though, as the traveling public, pilots and armchair pilots included, the cheapest seat to our destination.  So efficiency, and maintenance got cut, somewhat like Blue Star airlines in the movie, "Wall Street", then predators came in, mergers and acquisitions, and the bigger the company, the more micromanagement, oversight and mistakes you have.  That is why Rome always falls, and is not the eternal city, because of the predators, the share holders, John Q Public who want to invest in cheap transportation, but not the people involved.  Rome always falls to the the stakeholders, and if the ones above cut jobs, they are cutting the throats of their very stakeholders, which is what automation in extremis, is doing, in all fields.

John

9 hours ago, KevinAu said:

hat’s a bit of a contradictory statement. A passenger thoroughly educated on the 737 max issues

I should have left out the word "thoroughly".  Sorry!

4 hours ago, John_Cillis said:

which is what automation in extremis, is doing, in all fields.

IMO it's not the automation in itself but the Humans who implement the automation. Still wrecked with human errors.

Panorama program tonight on BBC about Boeing and a whistleblower.

9 hours ago, rjfry said:

Well they are in the news again today denying they cut corners to cut cost they only wanted to keep cost down. 

The things is, though, they didn't tell about MCAS, not even pilots flying the aircraft, to avoid actual sim training to, you guessed it, cut costs.  This right here is cutting corners and on the expense of safety as well. They should get away from the whole "the software, we did not do it correctly but we also didn't do anything wrong" approach. It's evident that, while certainly overblown my media, there was some cutting corners that has no place in an industry where safety is of paramount importance.