Just watched the program Boeing still don't except the aircraft was at fault, and categorised the MAX as minor changes to the 737 Thereby not requiring recertification by the FAA, and when pilots found they were stunned that they were not told, and now criminal investigations are ongoing, shareholders have record pay-outs over the last two years.           

WestJet is looking for compensation from Boeing. The groundings have been hitting their low cost Swoop subsidiary pretty hard in particular.

 

https://calgaryherald.com/business/local-business/westjet-extends-suspension-of-max-8-airline-seeking-compensation-from-boeing

1 minute ago, goates said:

WestJet is looking for compensation from Boeing. The groundings have been hitting their low cost Swoop subsidiary pretty hard in particular.

They are by far not the only ones.

2 hours ago, goates said:

WestJet is looking for compensation from Boeing. The groundings have been hitting their low cost Swoop subsidiary pretty hard in particular.

Norwegian Airlines is the other one that is having issues as well. They are having enormous internal issues and the MAX isn't helping much either. Also fascinating they are excepting Bitcoin as currency for flight tickets, not sure what they are up to with that one 🤨

On 7/29/2019 at 2:46 AM, John_Cillis said:

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. 

so in the last 4 days that ive been on shift how many medicals (ie one of the first aid kits or the doctors box has been opened or they have used an oxy bottle on board) do you think we have had at virgin,  to help you out here, we have 45 aircraft, so your looking at 35 sectors a day x 4 

go on have a guess..  4 days...

Edited July 30, 20196 yr by fluffyflops

1 minute ago, fluffyflops said:

so in the last 4 days that ive been on shift how many medicals (ie one of the first aid kits or the doctors box has been opened) on board do you think we have had at virgin,  to help you out here, we have 45 aircraft.  go on have a guess..  4 days...

Loaded question. 

My response, when I took flight lessons, what was the most important thing my CFI (and both of us were experience simmers) told me to do?

As for medicals, I could only venture a wild guess because airline policy differs (and I use to help manage crew scheduling for American) and your question is not specific enough--do you mean medical emergencies or pre flight crew screening?  Just assuming the pilots are screened for alcohol or drugs in their system and not knowing how many flights Virgin schedules, my calculation is number of crew hops x flight crew, since with 45 aircraft some could be not in the air due to maint reasons.

As for in flight emergencies, I have been on only a handful of flights with in flight pax emergencies.

20 minutes ago, John_Cillis said:

Loaded question. 

My response, when I took flight lessons, what was the most important thing my CFI (and both of us were experience simmers) told me to do?

As for medicals, I could only venture a wild guess because airline policy differs (and I use to help manage crew scheduling for American) and your question is not specific enough--do you mean medical emergencies or pre flight crew screening?  Just assuming the pilots are screened for alcohol or drugs in their system and not knowing how many flights Virgin schedules, my calculation is number of crew hops x flight crew, since with 45 aircraft some could be not in the air due to maint reasons.

As for in flight emergencies, I have been on only a handful of flights with in flight pax emergencies.

youre misreading the question John,  I mean medical events on board.  ie panic attacks on board,

because you said   "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. "

to which im asking you how many similar incidents do you think we have had at virgin in just 4 days.  96 hours.

go on have a guess. to help you out somemore,  we have 35 flights a day (x 4days)  so around about 140 sectors... how many times have we had an asr/gsr for opening the first aid or doctors boxes or cracking open an oxygen bottle in just 4 days.  

go on take a stab at it.

 

 

Edited July 30, 20196 yr by fluffyflops

22 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Norwegian Airlines is the other one that is having issues as well. They are having enormous internal issues and the MAX isn't helping much either. Also fascinating they are excepting Bitcoin as currency for flight tickets, not sure what they are up to with that one 🤨

i have just been out to dinner with a buddy at Norwegian, not 3 hours ago, they are dangling by a thread.  If there is a issue in middle east (ie iran) and fuel prices go up their finished and hes quite high up. 

39 minutes ago, fluffyflops said:

youre misreading the question John,  I mean medical events on board.  ie panic attacks on board,

because you said   "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. "

to which im asking you how many similar incidents do you think we have had at virgin in just 4 days.  96 hours.

go on have a guess. to help you out somemore,  we have 35 flights a day (x 4days)  so around about 140 sectors... how many times have we had an asr/gsr for opening the first aid or doctors boxes or cracking open an oxygen bottle in just 4 days.  

go on take a stab at it.

 

 

Ohhh, could not even guess.  As I have said, I have not seen them, but a good flight attendant, and I am sure Virgin has good ones, would keep the situation under control so as not to embarrass the passenger or worry caring close by passengers.  I would imagine more than one each flight, if flight attendants handled them that way.  And it depends on the seriousness of the attack.  What is more common, I have seen, are children or passengers with ear trouble on flights and turbulence issues, the worst of which was when I was inbound and outbound into JFK on a flight to Europe in 77, when we hit turbulence so severe, that after our outbound leg commenced we were told by the pilot on the horn "You are lucky passengers, we were the last flight out, they have just closed JFK to inbound and outbound flights due to weather.

Worst wide body experience I ever had, and I am sure Virgin has had a few of these, was when I was flying home via JFK from Frankfurt to Frisco in '84.  When we were within 20 mins of landing, our pilot told us a severe storm was going to cause us to circle on an in flight gate hold.  We circled for two hours, then the pilot came back on the horn and told us the runways were flooded with up to three feet of water from a biblical JFK flood, and we had to divert to Philly.

Philly was not prepared for the thirteen inbound European widebodies that were marooned there, by then late afternoon.  We were stuck on a hot TWA 747 with no AC for three hours until customs could handle us, since at that time Philly had no international terminal, just a hold area.  The passengers mutinied, and I was among them, because we were not given food, or water.  Finally they broke out the booze to appease us, to which we applauded the flight crew.  It worked, calmed me down for the then two hour line in customs, followed by a half hour taxi ride to the domestic terminal and another three hour wait at TWA's ticket counter for useless hotel vouchers (all the hotels filled up for me, I was at the back of the line) and rebooked flight homes.

Passengers were yelling and screaming at the ticket agents for their delay, even though it was caused by an act of the Supreme Being or the Tiki Weather beings.  Finally I, the very last pax before they closed the ticket counter got up, sighed and the pretty gate agent fluttered her eyes when I said "I am so sorry for what you've dealt with for the past few hours".  She took a look at my ticket, smiled at me, and grinned "You're easy", and handed me a ticket home first flight out the next morning on United which I did not look at at first.

I knew I could not get a hotel, and full of Jet Lag from a fifteen hour point to point trip from Frankfurt, with my next day SFO leg waiting the next day, I took a peek at my United ticket and saw that I was in seat "1A" on a DC10 the next morning.  Well, my spirits soared!  I know seating charts inside and out, even in those days before seat guru, knowing I was given a first class ticket home the next morning by the pretty gate agent (my fiance I met in '95 worked for Mexicana airlines, my Mom told me I traveled so darn much my destiny was to marry an airline agent or attendant).  Her prediction was true, and that got me many free flights in addition to my 500,000 accumulated frequent flier miles I built up by that time since the mid 70'x.

The night while I was stuck at Philly I met a Marine, who kindly kept me company, although I hated his calling me Sir all the time, but you know how polite military is trained to be (I especially found that true when I traveled in England and met the British military).  We bought each other beer at an all night bar there.

Finally next morning, they unlocked the concourse at 6AM for our early flights.  I boarded my flight, and we flew first to JFK before flying home.  We were warned not to deplane during our 45 minute layover because they told us it was sheer chaos inside the waiting area from the thousands of pax stranded at JFK from the previous day's storm.

As I sipped my only Champagne as we took off from JFK for the six hour flight to Frisco, I thought of how I would enjoy being wined and dined on my first ever of several first class upgrades I received during my touring and career.  The movie "The Bounty" with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins was playing, just released (a good movie to catch if you have never seen it with a good score by Vangelis).  But within an hour with the headphones on, while listening to the movie, I fell fast asleep and missed some of the other perks of first class, like flirting with the flight attendants, lol...

A bigger problem you must face at Virgin, and we did at American, are unruly passengers especially when you are desperately trying to avoid diverting a flight because of them.  It is at those times flight crew would wish they had Haldol and a syringe to inject it, to sedate such pax, in all seriousness.  I had the same problem with unruly hotel guests in the hotels I managed, and in closing, one time when I was alone managing my property because one of my employees was ill, I had a guest service call so I had to lock the front desk door, and take care of it.  When I came back, a guest from a group of rowdy Australians in our wine bar was answering my beloved switchboard, trying to take a reservation!  I kicked him out as he slurred "tryan to hhhelp ya mate" but lost the caller and the reservation.  I kicked out the Australians and only my wicked stare worked, but that said, I love the Aussies who have saved me from unruly people more than once...

Thanks for sharing your experience, and please share the answer to your question?

John

On 7/30/2019 at 1:43 AM, Matthew Kane said:

Norwegian Airlines is the other one that is having issues as well. They are having enormous internal issues and the MAX isn't helping much either.

Being the handling agents for Norwegian at Manchester, we were discussing this. Someone told me tonight that one of their MAX aeroplanes was in Spain when the grounding decision was being mooted by several European countries; so in an attempt to get that aeroplane back to their fleet base, it took off and proceeded to do that, but in the interim, Germany had decided to implement a ban on the type and would not let it transit their airspace, so it had to land in France and has been stuck there for several months now. Of course there are many MAX aeroplanes stuck on the ground, but most of them are somewhere where the airlines have personnel who can at least crank the engines every day or so and roll them back or forwards a few feet to prevent the tires getting permanent flat spots and the brakes siezing, plus a few other routine maintenance tasks. I think the fact that Norwegian cannot do that with their MAX stuck in France using their own engineering personnel, is costing them a fair bit of money.

It's fairly apparent from the length of time that Boeing have been taking to try and sort this issue, that the notion of shoving a big block chevy into a Model T Ford and putting 18 inch rims on the thing, then hoping that it would handle the same as a stock Model T Ford, which is akin to what Boeing have done with the 737 MAX in shoehorning those new engines into a fifty year-old design, is not something which can easily be solved with a few lines of computer code.

There are some designs which from the off were easily able to accommodate some radical changes, notably the B757 and the DC-8, both of which had a set of landing gear which gave them more than enough ground clearance to be able to allow a fuselage stretch and to fit any engines they cared to onto the thing. Boeing's decision to make the 737 low to the ground to facilitate loading and maintenance (which is great from a maintenance and servicing standpoint, as anyone who has ever clambered onto the nose wheel of a B757 and then stretched over to try and shove a GPU plug into the socket under the fuiselage will know) made sense when turbojets were the engines of choice, but sadly it is really one of the reasons why they should have accepted the fact that they'd taken that 737 airframe as far as it could go when they squeezed the first high bypass turbofans onto the Classics and NGs, not to mention the fact that in using the same nose profile as the B707, it suffers more skin drag than its rounder-nosed competitors.

I love the 737 as much as anyone, and retaining a general type rating was of course something which was worth trying to do, but it's really time to admit that the 737 airframe has had its day. Over fifty years is a good innings by any standard, but we didn't see Douglas sticking JT8Ds on the DC-3 and crossing their fingers, did we? And that's basically what Boeing has tried to do in producing the MAX. This was the company which made the B17 Flying Fortress and the 747 and as such, we've come to expect better from them than trying to do a low-cost makeover.

Edited July 31, 20196 yr by Chock

The Norwegian MAX  Mr Chock is on the remote stands in TFS / GCTS next to a TUI UK. With engine and wheel covers on

Both got stuck there when Easa grounded them. 

The crew on the TUI UK had to pax back on a LGW A/C. When it happened.  The Norwegian crew paxed over to ACE and then jumped on a UK bound A/C

I was working the day Easa grounded the max we had to interline pax home a couple of crews stuck in North America. 

Edited July 31, 20196 yr by fluffyflops

3 hours ago, Chock said:

I love the 737 as much as anyone, and retaining a general type rating was of course something which was worth trying to do, but it's really time to admit that the 737 airframe has had its day. Over fifty years is a good innings by any standard, but we didn't see Douglas sticking JT8Ds on the DC-3 and crossing their fingers, did we? And that's basically what Boeing has tried to do in producing the MAX. This was the company which made the B17 Flying Fortress and the 747 and as such, we've come to expect better from them than trying to do a low-cost makeover.

The 737 airframe obviously isn't the most suitable to stick some of those new generation engines that have become so big in diameter under its wings. When you do that anyway and end up with an aerodynamic issue as a result, it's arguably not the most elegant solution to introduce a software to apply stab trim to eradicate that issue.

However, that aerodynamic issue really only comes into play in an abnormal flight situation which rarely ever occurs. I'm not talking about you on this one, but there is quite a number or people that keep insisting the MAX is inherently unstable and out of balance. Is it? No, of course it's not. The situation close to stalling is the only exception. An 'inherently unstable' aircraft wouldn't have a chance of being certified. So I'd say, while still not the most elegant solution, sticking those larger engines under the wings isn't that bad.

You said it's not something you can change with lines of code. I disagree here. The issue in question can be solved by a software like MCAS if you do it right. Boeing, obviously, didn't do it right and lives were lost. The original version of MCAS was much less aggressive until it was found not to be enough. Then Boeing changed the design and that's where things as far as MCAS is concerned went of out hand. The FAA wasn't notified of the (substantial) change and left with only the original version to review. Even engineers working on MCAS themselves only found out the design was changed when the first accident occurred. It was put into the, as we now know, wrong failure category, hazardous instead of catastrophic, which only demands a software like MCAS to rely on one AOA sensor.

If Boeing had come up with the proposed fix as the initial version, nothing would have happened. It still would have been justified to point out the 737 isn't really made for engines that big, but there would be significantly less discussion about whether putting out a new version of the 737 was the right decision or not.

Many aircraft nowadays have some sort of software 'fix' to make up for a disadvantage in flight characteristics. I think it's in the 9$/hour thread that I posted an article on the A321neo which, under certain flight conditions on landing close to flare, has a pitch-up issue which is now being fixed by a 'flight-control refinement'. It's not as big a thing as MCAS on the MAX, but it goes to show that something like this is happening on other aircraft as well.

Long story short: the problem with the MAX is limited to an issue in a rare, abnormal flight situation that, if MCAS is done right, can be eradicated. The reason why there's so much drama with the MAX is that Boeing screwed up a background software so bad that it ended up powerful enough to drive the whole aircraft into the ground when if was meant to not even be noticeable if it ever kicked in.

 

Ryanair in the news today hundreds of jobs to go over the 737MAX grounding and delays to fleet upgrade.

A recent silver age of airline travel was cheap fares right after 9-11.

The golden age was before security checks. I used to plan to arrive 20 minutes before take off (we had reserved seats just in case we were 5 minutes late).

We now have assembled our documents and have a 'Real ID' appointment at the motor vehicle department. Appointment windows are 2 months in advance in our State. 👺

5 hours ago, threegreen said:

The 737 airframe obviously isn't the most suitable to stick some of those new generation engines that have become so big in diameter under its wings.......

One thing I thought was cool when I first saw the 737-300 was the shape of the engine cowling, which you'd expect to be circular on an aircraft but due to the low slung body of the 737, they had to reshape it and flatten it on the bottom.  Better that than redo the gear, but I think they finally gave up and did just that.  I miss the old 737-200, for some reason it reminded me of the ME-262 with its long, low hung engines.  Flew in it many a time on Air California with their colorful livery. 

To think the 737 is still around, a design almost as old as I am, and probably drawn up on paper rather than computers and tested in wind tunnels rather than computer wind tunneling.  I am kind of amazed by that, humbled by it really it is like the old child's story of the "Little Engine That Could".  But my favorite looking aircraft of its size was the not often mentioned or seen anymore Caravelle.  Until the 787 came along I felt the Caravelle was the coolest looking jet in aviation.  They flew on United in the US but I never got the chance to fly in one.  The EMB 17x/19x is also a stunning jet airliner in looks.

John