Question to the Airline people on HN:
I recall that following the 2019 deaths that Boeing was going to rebrand the Max with some number series or similar, so that passengers didn't get nervous flying in it.
How do I as a passenger identified all the rebranding permutations of the Max so that I make sure my family is not flying in them?
Passenger Diego Murillo, who had been on his way to Ontario, California, said the gap was "as wide as a refrigerator" and described hearing a "really loud bang" as the oxygen masks dropped from above.
He told KPTV: "They said there was a kid in that row whose shirt was sucked off him and out of the plane and his mother was holding onto him to make sure he didn't go with it."
For any other Americans like myself trying to conceptualize exactly how wide this hole was, imagine about 1/150th of a football field.
The refrigerator comparison also doesn't help much because American fridges are much larger then European ones.
Not relative to the average American :)
Europeans aren't that far behind in fatness and obesity.
Britons aren't Europeans anymore!
Of course they are, it's part of the European continent. This is like saying citizens of Lichtenstein or Switzerland or Norway aren't Europeans.
Russia is also technically in Europe but a lot of Westerners don't consider Russians Europeans. So I see no reason why continental Europeans could't consider the British as non-Europeans. In fact, there are plenty of Western Europeans that don't even consider Eastern Europe as 'real' Europe.
Ukraine is in Europe. I don’t know about Russia. I thought Russia spans Europe and Asia.
Russia indeed spans both Europe and Asia but almost all Russians live in the European part and majority of all Russian history and culture happened or is linked to Europe, not Asia. Similarly Turkey technically is also in Europe (small part of Turkish territory) but nobody seriously claims that Turkey is a European country based on this technicality. Another example would be Israel which technically is not in Europe but is considered to be more European than Middle Eastern. So the Brits not being European is not really such an outlandish claim. Especially that there is a growing tendency for 'European' to actually mean 'related to European Union' instead of its original, geographic meaning.
I've been to a few countries outside of Europe and the US. Obesity and lesser but unhealthy fatness may not be as widespread yet there, but they're not that far behind. Also, what some cultures consider "not fat" isn't actually "not fat." Plenty consider "chubby" to be perfectly normal (and even attractive).
Not only that, but the continent-level statistics aren't useful for much other than scoring Internet points.
State-by-state in the US, obesity varies between 35-50% IIRC.
There are also significant differences by race (black or hispanic highest, white non-hispanic slightly less, and Asian a LOT less).
If we're being honest, Europe has exactly nothing to brag about -- 1 in 5, or 1 in 4 obesity rates are still amazingly high. Just saying "not as high as the US" is a pyrrhic victory.
Ranking (% obesity by country) - https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/
On the photos I've seen, it looked a lot more like a plane's emergency door than a window.
The BBC article notes that this section of fuselage can optionally include an extra emergency exit, but that Alaska does not select that option. Still, it may be constructed with a false opening the same size as the exit door which could have been there.
It seems odd to me that an emergency exit can be optional. Like I get that airlines reconfigure seating, number of bathrooms, storage, etc, but emergency exits seem like there should be a fixed number based on maximum distances between all exits or something.
Another comment elsewhere says it's not really optional, it's just down to the number of seats the plane has. For certain seat configurations it's required.
Maybe the reporter should have asked "do you mean a European sized fridge or American?". Obviously if it was a European fridge size hole I wouldn't have even bothered putting on my seat belt on. Heck, why didn't they just fly on to California if it was only European sized?!
I just realized Americans would use a different size of football field than the rest of the world.
(I'll use "soccer" for "Association football" below to avoid confusion. I'll use "field" rather than "pitch" because the FIFA "Laws of the Game" use "field" except in 3 places [1]).
The rest of the world uses a different size soccer field than the rest of the world. Not only do soccer field sizes vary country to country, they can vary from league to league within a country.
In American football the size is standardized, except for children's leagues. High school, college, and professional leagues all use 100 yards x 160 feet (91.44 x 53.3 meters).
Heck, soccer fields can even vary within a single league. Take the UK Premier League for example. A few years ago their fields ranged from Fullham's 100 x 65 meters to Manchester City's 107 x 73 meters. They have since tried to standardize on 105 x 68 meters but aren't there yet.
Premier league clubs not yet using 105 x 68 are Brentford (105 x 65), Chelsea (103 x 67), Crystal Palace (100 x 67), Everton (103 x 70), Fullham (100 x 65), Liverpool (101 x 68), Nottingham Forest (105 x 70).
For international play, the requirements are 100-110 meters for the long dimension and 64-70 meters for the short dimension.
There are some things that are standardized on a soccer field and so could be used as length references. The funny thing is that those things are all round numbers when expressed in feet or yards.
E.g., the radius of the circle around the center mark is 10 yds. The penalty area is 44 x 18 yds. The penalty mark is 12 yds from the from the goal. The goal area is 20 x 6 yds. The goal posts are 8 yds apart and the crossbar is 8 ft off the ground.
That's because these things were standardized before the UK switched to metric. I guess they didn't want to change the sizes just to keep the numbers round.
[1] there are two places where they say that the assistant referee should "face the pitch", and one place where they say the assistant referee should use his flag to indicate on what area of the pitch offside occurred.
When I started reading this post, I definitely did not expect to learn this!
Since you’re mentioning American Grid Iron Football, the MLS appears to generally be on the larger side as well, from 104x68 meters to 110x70 meters: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Soccer_...
They play a different sport altogether and call it football :)
Football/Soccer, American/Gridiron Football, and Rugby all descend from the same class of sport that was just called football back in the middle ages (you played it on foot instead of on horse). Etymologically, neither sport called football really has any more claim to it than the other.
Yep, but there are actually many footballs. Soccer, American, rugby union, rugby league, Aussie rules, Canadian, Gaelic, etc.
Australian Rules is played on a cricket pitch.
What is AFL? Aussie Rules explained
Playing field size: https://youtu.be/XMZYZcoAcU0?t=49
( Bigger than US NFL handegg field )
In practice, they're very similarly sized. 90m vs 91.5m in length (on average). Widths are different but that's usually not relevant when describing the size of things as "half of a football field".
Football field versus football pitch.
Our American football fields are a standard size ;)
Can you put that in units of elephant so I can truly grasp the magnitude?
:D
African or Indian?
An unladen, spherical, metric elephant, of course.
I actually needed some help putting a smile on my face this morning, so thank you for this delightful little banter!
Sorry, only have chickens: https://imgur.com/sMUgkTM
Football field? It was the size of a smallish door. Better analogies would be commonplace things like bathtubs or car doors, not dramaticlly oversized objects like fields or office towers. It was about exactly the size of the emergency exit doors we all see when lucky enough to be seated in an exit row.
This is the joke. Americans always use football fields for comparison, even when totally inappropriate.
As an American, I have never once in my life used a football field as a size comparison, nor have I heard it used as a size comparison for anything that wasn't roughly football field sized.
It might be used more commonly in some places, but I was baffled by the joke as well.
I actually think the stereotype comes not from normal Americans but rather from American journalism. It is in the news and magazines all the time. I am sure Google nGram could support this but I am heading out the door and can’t look it up until later.
It's a joke.
Or, 3 bald eagles
How many baseballs is that?
At least a score and a half, maybe two. My fridge measures almost a tenth of a chain across, and thrice as high.
Well played!
So.. anyone still feel like travelling on a 737 Max with their family?
What a mess.
Photo https://imgur.com/a/G6rtsys
Observable: the entire lateral structure of the aircraft has disappeared next to the seat.
( From related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38887840 )
This, combined with the recent news that Boeing wants to correct a design flaw on the engine nacelle anti-icing system by putting it on the pilots leads me to simply no longer trust this aircraft.
The first couple crashes were sobering, but I thought Boeing would recover and a single issue like that would get corrected and not happen again. The fact they are still trying to "blame" pilots for aircraft design flaws though is beyond the pale and shows they learned absolutely nothing.
I was trying to put my finger on it last night. I got on a MAX a few weeks ago and I absolutely noticed and felt mildly uncomfortable for a minute. I was chiding myself for feeling irrational fear.
The reason was in front of me the whole time. It's actually rational after all:
I simply do not trust the people who designed this aircraft.
Is this aircraft designed to a less safe standard than other aircraft? Yes. Is flying on this aircraft also one of the safest modes of transportation I will use this year? Also yes.
I wonder how unreliable a specific model of commercial aircraft would need to be in order for it to no longer be the safest mode of transportation.
According to [1], commercial planes are about 3 times safer than buses per passenger mile (edit: passenger hours, sorry). That doesn't sound like a large enough margin to prevent certain more accident-prone models from earning the "deadlier than a bus" badge of shame, especially since the average is skewed by extremely reliable widebody models like the 777, A340 and A380. Meanwhile, commuter planes already suffer from a higher fatality rate than pickup trucks, while private planes are second only to motorcycles.
[1] https://turbli.com/blog/the-safest-transport-modes-ranked-by...
According to [1], commercial planes are about 3 times safer than buses per passenger mile.
Uh... the "Fatalities by passenger miles" chart in that article says that fatalities per billion passenger miles are 70 times lower for commercial planes vs. buses.
And in fact if you normalize to actually comparable transportation modes, my guess is it's even worse. The overwhelming majority of bus miles are driven on urban transit routes at low speed. You'd want to split out long haul (Greyhound et. al.) buses to compare to aviation, and highway travel is always going to involve more fatalities.
Basically, even knowing that it's probably the most dangerous jetliner in decades, I'd still view a 737 MAX as an extremely safe travel option.
Someone pointed out that if you normalize from "fatalities per passenger mile" to "fatalities per trip" the airplanes don't look quite as good.
Well, yeah, because airliners are extremely large. If you do the same thing for cruise ships, they surely look horrifically dangerous! "Heart attack fatalities per trip" are off the charts.
When a regular person asks "is this safe?" they mean "is it safe for me?", not whether someone else on the vehicle might get injured.
Surely no one is discussing dying of other causes here
Uh... it was an example showing the flaw in the logic. You can't compare a 300-seat jetliner to a motorcycle in a metric of "fatalities per trip", because that doesn't give you any useful information about the subject under discussion ("am I going to die on this trip?"). It's just bad risk analysis.
Luckily no one was doing that. By your logic we shouldn’t compare anything because far more people travel by car than plane in a given year.
Fortunately, one normally doesn’t take a 737 to the corner store, drop the kids at school, or go out for lunch. The only thing normalizing by trip tells us is people take lots of car trips.
one of the safest modes of transportation
How far do standards have to fall before that's no longer true?
Recall also that aviation is the safest in aggregate, but the severity of each individual incident tends to be much worse than others.
Hard to find up to date data, but looks like about two orders of magnitude, from ~5 deaths per billion miles to 0.05.
(Miles traveled is somewhat charitable to airlines and assumes trips are fungible between planes and cars.)
There's been enough written about the cultural changes since MD and Boeing, and goes to show that incidents are unlikely just that. Indeed, incidents keep coming.
Statistically they're still rare, fortunately. There's a lot of these planes in the air every day, and it's far more likely to be involved in a car crash caused by somebody not paying attention, than it is to be on one of these flights.
That said, I don't really want to live with the nature of all these flaws. This is not their rocket science that is failing, but it rather reeks of complacency.
I still remember the wrenches found in early Dreamliners. Noone died, but I mean, come on.
I feel the car comment, which is always mentioned when people talk about flying, is a whataboutism. We aren’t talking about cars, we’re talking about flying in a plane and how it seems a lot less safe today than even a decade ago.
Planes are substitutes for cars. When talking about plane safety, it’s not whataboutism to put statistics into perspective by noting that choosing to drive instead of flying would be much riskier.
Planes are substitutes for cars.
Planes are more comparable to buses than to cars (unless it's a small general aviation plane). So a better comparison would be between the risks of flying and the risks of taking a long-distance bus.
More often a substitute for cars I'd say. I've ridden a bus long-distance on two trips.
I'm not sure why you think busses are more equivalent to planes other than holding more passengers.
Having done both, I agree that they're more a substitute for busses. Perhaps trains.
I'm not sure why you think cars are more equivalent to planes, especially when they hold fewer passengers.
Because in general, at least in the US, the choice for most routes that people take is to fly or take their car. Taking a long distance bus isn’t on the table for most moderately well off people and train usually isn’t a reasonable option.
Of the top of my head:
You choose what car to buy, but the bus company chooses what us to buy. You maintain your own car but the bus company maintains the bus. You drive your own car, but a professional hired and vetted by the bus company drives the bus. You drive your car from a to b when you want, but the bus travels along predefined routes at specific times.
I'm not sure why you think busses are more equivalent to planes other than holding more passengers.
The more I think about it, the more similarities I find. For instance, both long-distance buses and large airplanes are usually boarded only at dedicated places (bus terminals and airports); both have a separate baggage compartment below the passenger floor; both have built-in bathrooms; both are driven by trained drivers/pilots; both have a set schedule for departure; and so on.
I've taken plenty of long distance bus trips (12 hours or more in each direction), and I've also taken many airplane trips (usually on the 737 family), and I'd say the experience on both is very similar: taking a taxi to the bus terminal or the airport, looking for the correct spot or gate for boarding, putting most of the luggage in the lower compartment of the bus or airplane, waiting until the scheduled departure time, sitting still on your designated seat for most of the trip, arriving at the other terminal or airport, retrieving the luggage, taking a taxi to the actual destination. There are some differences, for instance on a bus there's a rest stop for food after several hours, while on an airplane they serve some food in the vehicle itself, but these differences are minor compared to the differences between an airplane trip and a car trip.
I think additionally, many people feel there are very real factors skewing the rate of car crashes compared to what it'd be from only "good" drivers with how our bar for driver's licenses in America is so pitifully low. And beyond that, that they can generally have more agency about their fate as a driver than as a passenger in a plane, while it'd seem far simpler to imagine quickly stopping a car in response to a failure than managing to land a passenger plane.
Bonus multiplier if someone was then reading articles about pilots and ATC not getting any sleep.
lol that was nearly 30 years ago. give it a rest. “heritage” Seattle screwed this up just fine on their own.
Here here I was just about to post the same thing!
Boeing needs to be held responsible. Absolutely no way should the FAA grant Boeing an exemption for these planes under ANY circumstances. The planes have proven themselves to be dangerous and Boeing is doing nothing to fix them because it would hurt their bottom line.
This company needs to be investigated to the fullest extent by the FAA. The fact that this newest plane was only just rolled off the factory assembly line 2 months ago… a plane doesn’t just rip itself apart in less than two months. Something is seriously wrong at Boeing.
More than merely “investigated”. The FAA should indefinitely ground all Boeing 737 Max until Boeing has fixed them - at its own expense - and the FAA has certified the fixes on each and every one of them. Financial consequences on Boeing be damned. Or kill the plane by banning the Boeing 737 Max from ever flying over the United States ever again. Let Boeing go back to the drawing table and build a plane that works. Let the executives suffer from the years long decline in Boeing’s stock price. Let them lose billions. Tens of billions. I am out of fucks to give. It’s time for the government to draw blood over this corporate malpractice.
The board and C level should be held criminally liable for incentivising profit over safety.
No one is going to hold Boeing responsible because Boeing owns everyone in charge at the FAA.
And the US does not want to let Airbus take (further) the lead over Boeing.
"Boeing Repeatedly Burned By Outsourcing" - https://simpleflying.com/boeing-burned-by-outsourcing/
The managers and the bean counters got cheap. I bet Chinese Comac airliners are safer than the Max.
The passive voice shell game in this article is absurd.
Boeing Repeatedly Burned By Outsourcing
Boeing's outsourcing strategy might be producing more problems than solutions.
No, no, no. Let me re-write them for you Chris Loh[1][2], since you've failed as a journalist.
Boeing's Decision To Outsource Repeatedly Harms Fliers.
Boeing's Decision To Outsource Causes More Problems Than Solutions.
Have some balls, man.
From 24 Aug 2023... "Boeing and a key supplier find a new manufacturing issue that affects the 737 Max airliner" - https://apnews.com/article/spirit-aerosystems-boeing-737-fus...
"...Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems said they discovered improperly drilled fastener holes in the aft pressure bulkhead — which maintains pressure when planes are at cruising altitude – on the fuselages of some models of the 737 Max. Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit said late Wednesday because it uses multiple suppliers, only some units are impacted and it will continue to deliver fuselages to Boeing.
Boeing said the issue does not affect safety of flight, and 737 Max planes already in service can keep flying..."
Spirit was Boeing - Boeing Wichita - which B sold off to bankers in 2005. It's not "burned by X", it's "sold the plumbing, burned down the restaurant for insurance money". Except not even Tony Soprano would expect to get fresh pizza from a burnt-out shell.
Airbus is so much better than Boeing as of late. New Boeing planes are junk.
One very tiny thing (well, big) that I love about the A320 family compared to the 737 family is that the load floor on the 32x is a couple inches lower which increases headspace (both real and perceived) making it feel like a less cramped plane. Love it.
(...) leads me to simply no longer trust this aircraft.
aircraft -> company
I simply do not trust the people who designed this aircraft.
This plane was mangled by bean counter logic: drive down costs to the point where customers go elsewhere, doesn't work at 50,000 feet.
"bean counter logic" is literally just the logic of capitalism
There was an article literally 1-2 days ago (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...) about about Boeing asking for a certification exemption on the MAX7.
My friend and I were joking "well I'm sure they know what they are doing / hey if its not safe people won't fly it / they can just rename it again if it does crash / its all just big gubmint red tape / hey if it has X% risk of crash and Y already crashed then the next Z flight should be OK right?"
Within 24 hours they blow out a door on a new jet. Amazing levels of incompetence mixed with hubris.
It’s feeling like Boing has been riding on its reputation for a little bit. I’m concerned that this is indicative of issues with any aircraft that they’ve designed in the last decade or two.
Seems like the Boeing 737 MAX series of planes can’t catch a break especially after what happened in 2019.
Unless—how often does an airline company ground a particular model?
It's Boeing that can't catch a break.
Starliner? Delays and cancellations.
KC-46? That POS still isn't reliably refueling, and if I understand correctly USAF is rumored to be looking for a replacement.
F-15EX? It can't use conformal fuel tanks the F-15E has been using for almost 40 bloody years. No, that means it can't achieve its major selling point of carrying 22 missiles either.
737 MAX? Clearly maximum kek given this and that whole comedy about safety exemptions yesterday.
I want to like Boeing, but I feel it's justifiable to tell them to go fuck themselves at this point.
EDIT: I also forgot that V-22 Osprey that crashed into the sea off Japan back in November, killing all on board. As far as I'm aware, that led to a complete grounding of all Ospreys by all US military branches and also the JSDF pending investigation findings.
The number one reason the planes start to have issues is essentially a lack of effective oversight. Not sure how much blame boeing gets for this, but this is a prime example for a certain amount of effective regulation having a positive impact on the safety culture within a corporation.
The MAX should never have been accepted as being the same airframe as the original 737.
lack of effective oversight
Regulators getting cozy with the people they're supposed to regulate happens in every industry, in every country, and... understandably so. Those are people who have the same expertise, same training, who work together all their life.
It may be one of the most difficult problems to solve.
I guess the question I would have is: to what degree is this happening in the US versus other places like Europe or China, and what can we learn by examining this in those places.
I would hope FAA learned their lesson after being (rightfully!) publicly humiliated by Trump doing their job better and proceeding to lose their prestige as the leading authority of aviation authorities.
But stupider things have happened.
Are you taking about the executive orders trump signed that reduced FAA oversight?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2019/03/18/did-tru...
[citation needed]
Its not "getting cozy", its good old felony called corruption. You can tackle that, its not that hard if done correctly. But one needs to avoid conflict of interest from all angles
I agree that a lack of oversight is a core issue, but it also isn’t the job of the government to make your products good. The government can set same rules, but it’s on Boeing to execute.
Of course, besides that, Boeing itself is maybe THE major force reducing oversight.
but it also isn’t the job of the government to make your products good
A century of progress in domestic automotive sector would disagree with your opinion, here.
If it wasn't for the gub'ment infringing on the liberties of the little guys (corporations), we'd still be driving cars without airbags, seatbelts, and proper fuel tank safety regulations.
I think we’re in agreement on that. I wasn’t saying that regulations shouldn’t exist. I was saying that if Boeing makes shitty products that kill people, then it is entirely their fault if they go out of business. The person I was replying to seemed to be shuffling some of the onus onto the government.
I think it’s to a significant degree the government’s fault that air travel wasn’t safe and people got killed, but it is entirely Boeing’s fault that their products suck and kill people and are losing them money.
Why would they go out of business? Unless of course they are actually banned from flying death traps.
Besides, Boeing as the only US aircraft manufacturer is too big to fail, especially with China aircraft increasing in number globally.
Number one reason is lack of meaningful competition (political buying decision Boeing vs Airbus) and industry monopolization. In the 1960s there were Douglas, Convair, Lockheed, Boeing domestically
And now compare the safety records, and number of plane crashes, between the 60s and today.
Causation, Corelation.
Even funnier because Boeing tried being cute with the Canadian aerospace industry, and instead shot themselves in the foot with a shotgun.
Boeing tried to screw Canada's Bombardier out of the C series aircraft by getting the US Gov to throw on tariffs for an aircraft they had no competitor for. Everything was already done AFAIK that point too; certifications, and everything, the plane was entering into production to fufill US airline orders. It cost $1.3 billion Canadian to develop the plane.
I suspect Boeing thought that'd be the end of it. Airbus had other ideas. They got the whole Bombardier C series aircraft for about $550 million and opened an assembly plant in Alabama in Mobile, about 350 miles from Boeing's assembly plant in Huntsville. Along with the orders from US airlines (I think for 130 aircraft). No more tariffs because these planes are now US made.
As a Canadian it stings a little, but I can't help but cackle at the fact that Boeing execs handed their one major competitor several billion in revenue on a silver platter. And Boeing will need years if not decades to come up with a competitor.
So from Canada: Get fucked sideways Boeing.
This version of the story is too generous to Bombardier who really screwed up the development of the CS100/A220. Even if Boeing hadn't done anything they would have needed many more bailouts from the government to get anywhere.
Development costs doubled from 2 billion to 4 billion. Then when they went well over 5 billion and the federal government + Quebec had to bail them out to the tune of 1.5+ billion. Even without Boeing, had Airbus not stepped in, it's unlikely the CS100 would have succeeded. European buyers had already started to cancel orders seeing the debacle unfold.
Despite having many orders on the books, banks refused to lend to Bombardier because they expected them to make a loss on the airplane.
So yeah, screw Boeing who played really dirty and Trump helped them (the tariffs were reversed a year later when a more independent body reviewed them). But had Bombardier not been in a massive financial hole this wouldn't have mattered.
I would understand budget increases or timeline delays rather than fear for my safety.
An enraged Canadian...I have seen everything today...
Sad for Canada and Bombardier, but good for the plane: With Airbus's money, marketing, stability and reputation, the amount of planes made will, I think, be a multiple of what it would have been with Bombardier. It's a really good plane, too. Comfy, efficient, reliable so far.
And a spectacular own goal for Boeing that they deserved so much :D
KC-46: The USAF had Airbus tankers on order, before Boeing sued and the cinzract was, surprise, awarded to Boeing again. So the USAF and Boeing share equal blame here.
I have to read up on the F-15EX, generally so these kinds of upgrades are basically new designs and as such prone to delays and a bunch of technical issues. Especially for military aircraft.
Nothing to add on the MAX that wasn't said already. Boeing sure has its work cut out developing a new version, the existing 737 design is beyond its design life by now.
Well, if a plane crashes for unonown reasons, it is quite normal to ground the fleet, nothing special about Boeig here.
USAF was (and I suspect still is, given KC-46) happy to go with Airbus, it was GAO[1][2] who intervened alleging corruption and mishandling to give Boeing the platter instead.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Offi...
Thanks for reminding me, this is such old history facts get fuzzy in my memory.
Not to say that Airbus military plane record is spot less, but the A330 MRTT seems to be a decent plane.
I hate to see Boeing having all these problems, most of which are totally unnecessary.
You’ve forgotten the numerous delays for the 777X
I forgot 777X was even a thing.
It is a beautiful and very quiet plane. I saw it do a close approach over the beach in Seattle last summer.
https://blog.geaerospace.com/technology/second-boeing-777x-m...
Brain drain caused by SpaceX? (shooting in the dark here)
this coming in the same week when an airbus 250 crash and burned without anyone getting hurt ... is not a good look for boeing
How many people were hurt here?
It’s like comparing a car crash with a car that suddenly without any operator error bursts into flames. Causalities aren’t the point to this argument.
That plane literally crashed into another plane. You make it sound like it burst into flames for no apparent reason.
I think their point is that this incident and the incident in Japan aren't comparable as that one was caused by a runway incursion and this was caused by some sort of failure in the aircraft itself.
True, I think I might have responded to the wrong comment.
is this a serious question?
That was a runway incursion, nothing Airbus could have done about it anyway. Except building their plane as safe as possible, of course.
That said, no one died in this incident either.
Five people died, with a sixth in critical condition, in that incident.
In the other plane. And its a miracle the pilot survived
The person above me said:
That said, no one died in this incident either.
In that incident 5 people died (+1 injured).
I think they’re saying the Airbus did well - crashed into another plane and stayed intact long enough for an evacuation.
Meanwhile the Boeing falls apart randomly in the sky.
It was not a "window and chunk of fuselage blowout" but a safety door blowout. In case 737MAX-9 is configured with maximum possible seat count then additional safety door have to be added.
On lower seat count configs (like on that incident flight) those extra door are still present but locked, hidden and not visible from inside.
The fuselage opening for the door is still present as it’s a common part. The door is replaced with a window panel to seal the space, there is no door there.
Any mechanical component - even if unused - requires servicing and maintenance. No airline would want to pay for that and the fuel cost on every flight to carry a door they don’t want.
“That particular Boeing 737 Max 9 rolled off the assembly line and received its certification two months ago“
Not a maintenance issue. Or if it is, that's a seriously shocking amount of maintenance demand.
The patent was not claiming this was a maintenance issue. They were pointing out that if there were indeed a hidden exit door here that it would still require maintenance, which is why there wasn’t actually a hidden exit door here. Instead it’s a solid panel of some kind.
Second paragraph as an argument for why it would be a permanent plug installation instead of a hidden door. I see your point.
Do we know about permanent plug vs semi-permanent substitute door? According to some other posts both exist, both levels of permanency exist.
Somehow it feels less error prone to service an extra door than to replace the whole element from time to time. At least to my armchair viewpoint
Is there a citation or source for that? Not doubting you just interested.
You can see the disabled door here in the picture. It’s behind the window that has more spacing: https://www.planespotters.net/photo/1483230/n969ak-alaska-ai...
Inside there is no exit: https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Alaska_Airlines/Alaska_Air...
still present but locked, hidden and not visible from inside.
Well that seems like a massive waste of weight...
It was a "window and a chunk of fuselage". It doesn't matter how the aircraft is assembled, those are the roles performed by the parts that fell away.
Idea for a startup, a website that sells plane tickets exclusively avoiding Boeing planes. You have a customer waiting.
All the other Boeing plane models are quite flight proven.
And also, airlines can switch planes at any time, you won't find out for sure what plane you are taking until you sit on it.
Unlikely an airline that doesn’t own or lease a max will swap one in.
Sadly the majority of people will choose the cheapest result and voting with your wallet doesn’t work. Which is why we need regulation and can’t leave things to the free market, despite what the libertarians say.
Sure, book an airline that doesn't have MAXes in their fleet. Only to find out that their partner airline do in fact.
Kayak already has an aircraft filter, the many other flight comparison sites could easily add the same.
Perfect use for VC money: Reimburse customers when the airline switches planes or flights in perfectly legal manner and customers end up with a Boeing plane anyways.
So you just want flights that have a Airbus plane?
I fly quite frequently, 320 flights so far based on my diary. The MAX accidents back then obviously made me a bit uncomfortable.
Until a week ago, I had't actually flown with a MAX; but on January 1st, I took an Air Mexico flight which happened to be one. I wasn't scared (in the sense I know about myself when I'm scared), but rather curious, so, funnily enough, I came to HN and searched for the MAX articles from back then, because I expected that I'd find insights, good technical conversations and in-deep articles about the topic.
On the other hand, I do have one fear.
On longer flights, the large aircrafts that have three batches of seats per row, I prefer an aisle seat in the middle: there is a lower chance that I'm gonna be the one woken up when the middle seater has to go to the bathroom. On a smaller aircraft (that usually fly for less than 3h, so I don't have to use the bathroom myself) I always prefer a window seat (1)
My nightmare is that once the window breaks, or a panel (that you can see the sealing points of) gets ripped off. This only ever happened a couple times, so I very well know there is practically zero chance that this would happen to me.
And now this, in the news, coincidentally.
(1) and I always check which side that window seat should be so I have the better view(2), like more mountains etc
(2) but honestly, I usually don't have a good view, since I prefer a seat oat the middle of the wings' height so that my ride is less bumpy.
This is somewhat amusing, and at risk of a "me too" low value post...
When I started regularly flying, I would actually search NTSB reports for the airframe in question in the airport lounge. I don't really know why exactly, but I think the engineering related discussion and the dryness of those accident reports were quite comforting - reading about those crashes really drove home how safe air transport really is. I'm sure I raised a few eyebrows though for anyone glancing at my screen.
I also have the semi-irrational fear of where I sit. However mine is in relation to the engine nacelle - I don't want to be within 4 or 5 rows from where the fan blades are in case they explode into the cabin. Same with prop aircraft - I highly prefer to not be seated in the aisle next to the prop.
So, there are at least two of us out there!
I do the same thing with the nacelle!
I haven’t researched enough to be certain, but it seems like shielding yourself from being hurt by an uncontained engine failure is probably the only thing that an individual can affect by their own choices on a modern commercial jet. Most other accident types seem to be either not tied to any specific area of the plane or so large/non-survivable that there’s nothing a passenger can do.
It’s silly since the odds of literally anything happening are so low, but it makes some part of my brain happier so I do it.
Well you can feel better knowing that planes are designed to have tear off strips so if a piece ever rips off it only tears to a maximum small area and shouldn’t keep tearing. At least that’s how Boeing designed it…
Sudden decompression at high speed and altitude is dangerous to both humans and airframes, regardless of "tear off strips". A common pattern in explosive decompression accidents is that e.g. the cargo door opens and then the cabin floor caves in and severs vital control surface cables.
"Which Airlines Fly The Most Boeing 737 MAX?" - https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-max-airlines/
"Boeing 737 MAX 9 Production List" - https://www.planespotters.net/aircraft/production/boeing-737...
The need for this post, shows the pathetic of the situation.
Nothing to worry about.
Market will fix it after lots of people die and people return to using buses and boats for long-distance travels.
Part of me wants to never get on any of the Max variants, on the other hand, so many have been ordered around the world that it's impossible to avoid the plane.
Depends on the continent. Between easyJet and BA you can get most places in europe without risking a Max (BA run boeing long haul)
Do all US carrier rally have Max planes?
It’s certainly common, but there’s a lot of airbus a320/321/321neo for domestics too
The A320neo is such a comfortable plane to fly on. A380 was great too.
Ryanair has ordered 210 of them so they are going to be a workhorse in Europe too.
Almost every flight that doesn't cross the ocean on Air Canada is on a Max. Great to see this as they are not going to ground them as well...
PS: the documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing was very eye opening, and really shows what happens when a company goes from a Jobs-like CEO to a Ballmer-like CEO, lesson to keep in mind
Lmao you think Jobs was focused on technical/safety stuff. He was a marketing guy. Read Woz's biography, they shows glimpses of the real jobs, even tho it's still toned down since they were "friends".
People seem to think "marketing" means "making ads for an already completed product". That is not what it means.
You mean when they replace an aerospace engineer experienced with the actual business operations and administration with someone who doesn’t know anything about aerospace engineering and learned about business management purely from a financial perspective that quality suffers? Next you’ll tell me that EBITDA isn’t a good metric for internal accounting and value costing!
doesn't cross the ocean on Air Canada is on a Max. Great to see this as they are not going to ground them as well...
If they use the same kind of plug on their Max aircraft then I'd say grounding is merited. But if not then it shouldn't matter.
Unless it's an unknown issue or possibly too generic (like the case of the MCAS) then ADs/grounding/etc take into account the specific failure.
If you're a passenger on a flight like this, how much compensation could you be looking at?
Depends on whether your lawyer is Johnnie Cochran or Lionel Hutz.
“If the plane has a hole, the airline must dole!”
Also known in the US by the saying: you can only get as much justice as you can afford.
Not much? What’s your damage claim? Delay? Stress? The airline should probably give you some bonus miles/free tickets as a sign of goodwill, but not sure why they’d owe you beyond that.
If you get sucked out and die, or injured, there’s a claim. But neither happened here.
Emotional distress can reward a lot. Although there were no casualties on this flight, having a near death experience is certainly stressful, and can result in ptsd. This can end up costing a lot in therapist bills.
Why does anybody continue to trust anything manufactured by this company now? How many incidents/lives is it going to take before airlines just blacklist this manufacturer?
Forget the fines. Leadership at Boeing needs to be criminally prosecuted. Send them to a federal penitentiary. Send a message to those wanting to cost cut on mission critical items. Regulators in this country are asleep at the wheel
Because Boeing is 'too big to fail', proven in the last 737 Max case with MCAS. If there were no leadership prosecuted for that travesty and tragedy, none will ever be for this one. Proper accountability would cripple both the civilian and military sides of the US aerospace sector, which is dominated by Boeing.
So Southwest is all-in on not just Boeing, but 737s. That's their entire fleet. It makes a lot of things simpler. Could they boycott and switch to Airbus? Possibly, but at massive cost and logistics nightmares. Given their logistics failures elsewhere, they'd be fools to try to exit Boeing over this.
Southwest is not just all-in with 737s, they have an excellent safety record flying 737s.
It’s an interesting question. Something seems clearly rotten at Boeing related to their recently designed 737 variants. Does the rot extend to older variants of the airframe? It has historically been considered very capable and reliable… the U.S. military still uses it to fly VIPs around the world.
What choice do I have? If I have to fly somewhere I have to choose a flight that fits my schedule.
Makes me feel good about flying the 737 Max 8 in a few days...
Just try to avoid that row. (Whatever row that is.)
“Don’t mind that leak sailor, you can barely see it from the poop deck.”
This is what is called a high stakes HN comment.
For folks who want to feel better: this particular design feature (the unused plug exit) dates back to the 737-900 which has been around since 1997
For folks who want to feel worse: Highly recommend "Flying Blind" (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08P98854S) - its a good book about how Boeing's engineering culture went to shit after the MD merger and the shortcuts used to get the Max delivered.
The book couldn’t have been that good if it never got across to you that an airplane hitting production in 1997 was necessarily designed YEARS BEFORE 1997 (and hence the merger).
Boeings problems were long in work before the MD merger. Many commercial aerospace people in Seattle, particularly ones with parents who worked at Boeing, have struggled to come to terms with that, and there are a lot of rose colored glasses around here of what 1995-1997 Boeing looked like.
It's likely this particular issue is from a lack of quality control, and you cannot blame that on 1997 Boeing.
Quality control degradation in my experience and from stories i've heard are exclusively the fault of bean counters and exec pushing for cost cuts (unlike design flaws where the engineers share the blame). I've heard a story about an industrial machine amputating someone because the new joints couldn't handle the pressure (in france, pre 2019, i don't have the specifics). The maintenance guy wanted to replace the joints with high quality one (like the original were), but they were deemed "too expensive" so they bought new joints at half cost, to gain 10€ on the maintenance of the 400k machine. Less than a week later, the machine broke, someone lost an arm or something (don't have specifics), and a new machine had to be shipped and given for free, i don't know who paid the the amputated guy.
Boeing's engineering culture went to shit after the MD merger and the shortcuts used to get the Max delivered.
QA is always the very first neck on the chopping block when the bean counters take over. Seen it time and time again.
Previous related(?):
- Yesterday (Friday 2024-01-05): "Boeing wants FAA to exempt MAX 7 from safety rules to get it in the air" (417 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38882358
Two different variants and two different kind of failures.
It is the same (defunct) company, though. So, I would say this is highly relevant.
I would think it is the same type of failure. Management failure.
Boeing probably isn't gonna get that safety exemption from FAA.
Deploy the lobbyists!
I’d hope.
That seems optimistic
Boeing is a good example of how screwed up management can ruin a company culture and therefore products with bad incentives.
Contrast recent products like the 737MAX with the absolute workhorse and nearly unbreakable 777 designed 20 years earlier.
Really a shame.
"They don't build them like they used to anymore" applies to pretty much everything these days.
+1 for the Downfall documentary on Netflix. Answers a lot of questions.
One of my random theories of engineering is that as we’ve gotten better and more precise in our computer modeling we’ve also gotten overconfident in our own modeling abilities.
So we no longer over design with random “engineering factors” added in for the unknown, saving on costs. This of course falls apart when reality differs in some unexpected way from our modeling and it turns out our “just cost optimally regulation safe enough” design actually “just shy of being actually safe”.
The 737max debacles seem like patches on patches on patches trying to thread that needle.
Anyone else actively avoiding Max aircraft after this, plus the previous two crashes, and the post from yesterday that Boeing were seeking another exemption from safety rules? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38882358
(If this means refusing to board after an aircraft swap then at least in my case: so be it, I don't trust Boeing's safety record on these aircraft anymore)
It’s hard to find an airline not deploying them in their fleet but most do provide the type of plane you will be flying in prior to ticket purchase.
I live in Europe so I guess this is significantly easier over here (except for Ryanair of course)
For reference: earlier fuselage failure in 737:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
edit: Earlier door failures happened to two McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 after they changed their locking mechanism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_96
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981
Situation back then was made worse as it sucked part of the floor out with the door.
Yeah, if by earlier you mean 35 years ago. In a totally different airplane design. Literally nothing in common with this flight.
It was a fuselage failure, those dont happen all too often. Back then it was because of a lack of maintenance.
It was before i read it was the door though.
edit: In case its not obvious, would be great if you could post other examples. These events in the air are rather rare and i am rather curious for the upcoming ntsb report of this one.
edit1: Apparently the newer one is a 737 from Southwest from 10 years ago, also maintenance issues. But like similar ones it was rather small https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_812
How is this even technically possible?
When reading the multiple stories of crazies, that show up in the news once in a while, where someone tries to open doors or emergency exits mid flight ...There is always a reassuring expert comment, that he/she would not be able to, due to the higher pressure inside the airplane, and the fact these devices only open inwards.
It seems for the MAX they blow outwards as easily?
I was wondering the same thing. I’d think these door plugs would be designed the same way as a door, so they can only be removed by pushing them into the plane.
It wasn't at cruising height yet so there wasn't as much pressure difference.
Also in this case it didn't open inward, it fell off.
This is what happens when your economy got de-industralized to favor those gamblings of the wall st.
Must be hurting to see such truth. Why bother doing engineering when there is quick & dumb money to be made in all those Ponzi schemes of the wall st.
I understand some unease about this, but this appears to be an isolated incident. Until it's shown not to be, I don't see how this makes the MAX family any more dangerous.
Lest Alaska airlines be given too much of a free pass: they had a deadly incident due to lack of maintenance, where a DC-9-family jet lost elevator control entirely.
Regardless, an incident like this is not the worst outcome: nobody was hurt, and the aviation industry can learn lessons from the situation. That includes learning whether this is an isolated incident, or a systemic one, and where the issue actually came from.
The plane is two months old and experienced an airframe failure. The only way this is on Alaska is if they backed a truck into it.
Is this rupture of the hul possibly caused by that new deicing system that was mentioned in the other HN thread?
No. The engine cowling didn't fail on this aircraft.
In-flight video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaONLEa8LFE
Jesus. And that accidental cinematography what with the video showing the 787 Max safety flyer in the filmer's seat pouch..
Not every Boeing 737 Max but always a Boeing 737 Max.
Are they following agile or what?
If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going.
Presumably the panel landed in in some farmer's field, otherwise we'd hear the news report about someone's roof getting an unexpected emergency exit addition?
Come to think of it, I bet that's something the NTSB investigators will track down so they can do forensics on the debris
related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38887840
That's pretty much sealing its fate as a cursed model from Boeing.
I really want badly to boycott Boeing.
It's seems impossible that on some routes we do not have alternative to Boeing planes. Consumers should be allowed to decide with their wallet. Isn't that the whole purpose of the Capitalist system?!
I know that the air accident rate is pretty much at its lowest since records began. I have heard a lot about grounding aircraft in recent years, though being a relatively young person, I am wondering is this new or was this always the procedure?
I wonder if the engineers are being more risk tolerant because if I had to guess an engineer that says “no don’t do this” is not appreciated by management but an engineer that says yes we can do it is lauded as finding solutions than saying no.
I’ve seen this in my role in a large company in cybersecurity. I also worked at Boeing early in my career and I remember them having a pretty cut throat leadership ladder where reporting an issue might get you passed over for that promotion.
So doing engineering with business school theory doesn't work so well.
Does this data need to be updated?
It does seem to be an emergency exit that blew.
"An emergency exit and whole panel at the left hand side of the aircraft was missing."
Check for further detail and pictures: https://avherald.com/h?article=51354f78&opt=0
Message to Boeing or Alaska Airlines...I have a door on my garden. Email me to discuss terms, or it shows up on Ebay tomorrow...
With MCAS the MAX is already a flying flight simulator for earlier 737 versions.
Fixing this should be trivial: Fit passengers with VR headsets to simulate there not being a giant hole in the fuselage.
Primary source of the announcement: https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/operations/as-128...
https://nitter.net/avgeekjake/status/1743462030366085387?s=2..., it appears to have been the mid-aft door (this is what it usually looks like: https://nitter.net/jonostrower/status/1743466899869147549?s=...)
Just fly Airbus.
Just take the train or boat.
passenger boats are way overdue for a come back.
don't even mention nasty cruises which only cover coastal routes, like some paleolithic dingy.
Not sure if you are serious, but I agree. I like to take a train+ferry whenever possible even if it adds a day or two to the journey. Did lots of trips on the Amsterdam-Newcastle and Sweden-Poland routes. Uncomparably good memories compared to plane travel which is uniformly awful.
I have been scouting cruise websites for ways to also replace transatlantic flights, but they are way too sparse.
Ferry routes have really taken a pounding in the UK over the past decade or two unfortunately. Combination of the channel tunnel and low cost airlines I would making former routes uneconomical to run is, I would imagine, where the majority of the blame lies.
One example: I've always wanted to do a motorcycle tour around Scandinavia, particularly Norway, but it's a heck of a ride from Calais all the way up there. For many bikes, far enough that you'd need to organise a service and tyre change at least once whilst on the trip. At the time when I was first thinking about this I had a bike with a 3750 mile service interval, although I could generally squeak 4000 - 5000 miles out of tyres.
So my plan back in 2014 had been to ride up from East Anglia to Aberdeen, get on the ferry to Lerwick, and then get a ferry from Lerwick to Stavanger in Norway to cut off a lot of "transit" riding. Unfortunately it turned out the website with this ferry route listed was lying to me, and that actually it had been retired in something like 2008. (You can still find this route listed on some websites today, but it's long since gone.)
Nowadays I'm not even sure it's possible to get a ferry from the UK to Germany. I've never done it but you used to be able to get a ferry from Harwich (very convenient for me) to Bremerhaven: no more, sadly.
There may be hope
"Low emission cruise travel . save more than 50% energy compared to.. the last vessel operating the same route."
BERGEN STAVANGER NEWCASTLE - planned to start 2026
https://bergencruiseline.no/ourmission/
There was a ferry from Emden, Germany to Kristiansand, Norway which might have been interesting. But it recently got shut down[1] due to financial difficulties.
Maybe it gets resurrected at some point...
[1]: https://reiseliv1.no/reiseliv/2023/rederiet-holland-norway-l...
Hah, that brings back memories: in the early 80s I did a bike (not motor-) journey from home (in the south of England) to Sweden, taking the Dover-Calais ferry and then via France-Belgium-Netherlands-Germany-Denmark. Must've been ~900 miles of pedalling.
But I didn't attempt a tour of Scandinavia once I got there! (I was headed over there to stay with relatives for a few months.)
Some of these ferries still run for freight-only, e.g. link below. I'm not sure if they'd take a motorbike (or car) as freight though, except on a trailer.
https://www.dfds.com/en/freight-shipping/routes-and-schedule...
There’s basically only one ocean liner in the world although cruise ships do reposition and there are some other options. Trains are more practical in Europe although long distance can involve a fair number of changes and time spent in train stations.
I don’t love plane trips but they generally get the trip over fairly quickly if the journey isn’t the goal. And longer haul comfort is mostly just a matter of money.
I don’t think that passenger boats are a replace for planes in any way.
There's plenty of places where geography means they are, especially in Europe — around Scandinavia, Greece, the British Isles, Spanish islands etc. Presumably the Caribbean and some of South East Asia is the same.
The journey is obviously slower, but that can either be a way to rest on a long road journey (truck drivers in Europe sometimes use longer ferry routes so they get their mandatory rest period), or an opportunity to sleep in a fairly decent bed.
Let's not pretend that passenger vessels are less likely to be subject to accidents.
First check its not a Boeing... /s
That's not realistic. Not always possible depending on routes.
Some routes will only have max planes, so don’t fly them, vote with your wallet.
They can and do swap planes all the time.
Only if they or their partners have max planes in their fleet.
Choose airlines which don’t fly Boeing or don’t fly the route.
Not “all the time”. Usually, they don’t swap planes.
Australia doesn't have any Airbus planes for domestic flights. :-/
Er, what? Jetstar at least seems to have nothing but A320s for domestic stuff.
You don't.
Airlines can and do switch like aircraft at the last minute all the time. Do all the planning you like, but you won't know for sure until you're seated and look at the safety card.
So unless you intend to have a "Qantas never crashed" tantrum in the airport, you may be out of luck because the only airlines in the US that have not ordered the MAX are Spirit/Frontier (Greyhound with wings) and JetBlue, and they don't fly everywhere.
It's performative, but I think next time I get a last minute equipment change to a MAX and nowhere urgent to be I might simply refuse to board and let them know exactly why.
I understand it will cost money and time, and really just mostly annoy the gate agents. But at some point the actual customers need to push back on Boeing and I can't really think of any other way. The FAA has clearly failed.
I'm not so naive to think I can continue air travel and not be taking the MAX quite often as time moves on, but the lack of any consequences for Boeing is rather annoying.
FAA is under DoT. We (consumers) have several options to force FAA to act. Complain to the DoT, contact your senator and/or sue them.
I used to refuse to go through the airport scanner, which required a physical pat down. Unfortunately, not enough people did so, and eventually I gave in.
My concern was that I wasn’t reassured that the devices had been adequately tested. I also consider them to be mostly security theater.
So, what I’m saying here is don’t count on others sharing your concerns and following suit.
If you’re public enough about it, other passengers who overhear might decide to join you. If that becomes even semi-regular and trends on social, that might be the most effective change agent.
Right now regulators are increasingly broken (under-resourcing, revolving doors, political pressure, etc), so grassroots refusals are potentially the only proactive pressure we can put on airlines to demand more from their vendors. Otherwise we’ll just have to wait for reaction after there are too many incidents to ignore.
People can say what they want about Spirit but I still think they’re the best airline to get around the US if you buy one of the big front seats. And the fact they don’t fly a MAX is even better.
Idk, the mandatory sing-alongs about credit cards are pretty rough. Maybe worse than surprise skydiving.
Huh? Sing-alongs? What does this mean?
I somewhat agree with this when they’re running smoothly: you can pay for a few quality of life upgrades and get an experience only a little bit worse than a more expensive airline for somewhat less money.
When things go wrong, though, I feel like Spirit does a pretty awful job. I had them cancel a flight on me at the last minute, and the only thing they would offer was a much later flight to an airport three hours from my destination or a flight to my destination in five days.
As a result, I’d much rather fly something like Southwest. Buy a ticket at the right time and they’ll sell it to you dirt cheap, you’re pretty much guaranteed a decent experience, and if something goes wrong they have enough flights and routes and customer service policies to get you taken care of.
I only really fly Delta and they don’t have any MAX aircraft, so that makes things easy. The majority of Delta flights I’ve been on are Airbus aircraft. I’ve only flown on one Boeing (737-800) in the past two years and that was from a non-hub Delta airport.
The 737 MAX series has a better safety track record than whatever car your family drives.
Note that since the MCAS issue has been fixed, there have been zero incidents that have caused passenger injury or death.
Note further that pilots—a cohort of self-interested humans like any other—continue deciding to crew the plane. You don’t hear about pilots backing out of flights or refusing to fly in them. Pilots and air crews aren’t threatening to walk out en masse.
This plug design has been in use without incident at least since the -900ER in 2007 and prior to the MAX models. The NTSB report will be worth reading, but I will be good money it won’t have anything in it that warrants the kind of wild frothing at the mouth response here.
I have never had my car door fall off mid road trip though
Plenty of people have quite literally had the wheels fall off their car.
Other than Tesla, how many brand new cars have their wheels fall off?
Pilots will go to irrational lengths to continue to fly, up to and including doing everything possible to hide any hint of medical problem to continue to do so.
Maybe you trust pilots as some sort of supra-human. I do not. They are humans just as much as the rest of us, and they need to get paid, and I wager they'd fly a bucket of bolts if that was the only thing that people were willing to pay them to fly long after sane passengers opted out of riding along.
100% this - they fly to earn a living wage, it's not optional.
None of the car models I've ever driven have any recorded in-flight incidents. I highly doubt any of them were ever involved in an FAA investigation.
You can't beat the flight safety record of most automobile makers.
Ground safety, sure, some cars are worse than others. But even the MD-80 has a pretty good record on the road. All that use and only a few traffic collisions.
can someone else tell me if the actual relative risk is significant? my gut tells me no
Can’t answer this with data, although I’m not sure how many more headlines we need to see before we can collectively accept that something is very, very wrong with this plane at a fundamental level.
Given the number of airframes that rolled out over the decades that didn’t have this issue, I’m inclined to believe there isn’t necessarily an issue with the aircraft. Now Boeing’s manufacturing quality over the last 5-10 years though, that seems to be a major problem. Look at the issues the US Armed forces have had with receiving incomplete aircraft with missing parts and misplaced tools.
The entire industry seems to be under strain since COVID. There was a massive brain drain across the entire system and it’s causing issues at all levels. Many working in the industry are on edge trying to maintain safety.
The 737 MAX 9 entered service in 2018. Not even 1 decade for these, let alone multiple "decades".
There have been zero incidents involving passenger injury or death since the MCAS issue was fixed.
Meanwhile there are something like 1,300 of them in regular service.
You’ll note, maybe, that pilots continue to fly the plane without raising a stink. If there was a serious concern for their own safety, you’d hear something about pilots refusing to fly them.
Very high. The incident suggests that there will be many more incidents in the years to come with different parts of the plane. It's a quality control thing.
I'm sure someone will make a website for it. Sooner or later.
Unless the legal fram work changes, it won't work. Airlines are totally allowed to book passeneges on other flights and to switch aircraft anytime the have to, want of feel like it. None of which is a reason to be reimbursed as a passenger. So what do you wanna do, when you book a non-Boeing flight, the Airbus plane has technical peoblems and the airline uses one of the available Boeing planes instead? The airline won't reimburse anyone, so it woupd be up to the website doing so, if they sold this service.
By the way, Boeing planes are generally speaking perfectly fine. I'd rather avoid certain airlines with bad safety records.
You have a better chance of not ending up on a Max if you try to avoid it.
A 20% probability of ending up in the plane is better than a 75% probability.
It already exists: https://www.alternativeairlines.com/airlines-not-flying-boei...
Google says "737 dash 8 through 10" — and Ryanair at least (who has huge order of MAX's) uses "737-8200" or "737 MAX 10."
However, considering how common it is for an airline to switch product, it would be quite difficult to ensure your flight isn't on one of these aircraft without double-checking during boarding — then refusing to board.
Maybe we should help them out and start calling them 737 MBA-8/9/10.
There was talk of rebranding them by dropping the MAX entirely and calling them simply 737-8, -9, -10, but AFAIK this didn't happen in the end.
Much more of this sort of thing, and any rebranding might have to do something about the 'Boeing' part of the name. I suppose they could bring back the 'McDonnell Douglas' name... but that is associated with a far worse door-coming-open problem.
If Boeing wants to rehabilitate its reputation, showing more respect for the regulatory process would be a good start.
If you have a free account on https://www.expertflyer.com/ and attempt to create a seat alert (but don't go through with it) the Aircraft type will be displayed above the seat map once you type in the flight details.
This will also work for aircraft swaps (including last-minute ones) all the way until the plane leaves.
Use this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38891172
I use the Flighty app (it's not super cheap), but it notifies me what the planes are and when they change.