Boeing whistle-blower says proposed 737 Max fixes aren't enough

Re:Boeing whistle-blower says proposed 737 Max fixes aren't ... by blackflame7000 on Monday September 21, 2020 @05:47PM (#24548836)

The thing is, you are really punishing the airlines by doing this instead of Boeing. Boeing also produced the 787 and 777 and the same time they were working on the 737 MAX and those aircraft have superlative safety records. I think you leave the decision up to Boeing with the caveat being that if the plane crashes again due to a design flaw, it will never fly again which would be devastating to Boeing. If they are confident in moving forward with those stakes, then I would fly on it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing whistle-blower says proposed 737 Max fixes aren't ... by shock on Monday September 21, 2020 @06:55PM (#24549291)

> I think you leave the decision up to Boeing with the caveat being that if the plane crashes again due to a design flaw, it will never fly again which would be devastating to Boeing.

What is the downside for Boeing to just say "let's put the plane back in the sky"?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing whistle-blower says proposed 737 Max fixes aren't ... by blackflame7000 on Monday September 21, 2020 @07:57PM (#24549623)

The economic loss of losing by far their biggest money maker which most likely means bankruptcy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing whistle-blower says proposed 737 Max fixes aren't ... by Klinky on Monday September 21, 2020 @08:04PM (#24549671)

They already took that gamble and lost, twice. Would not be surprised to see them gamble with human lives again. Got to hit those quarterly sales figures.

I think you scrap the plane, then start over with a wholly compliant design. This whole ordeal is a great example of regulatory capture. You have a plane with a ton of new flaws, and all the flaws of the old design, and business decided it was cheaper to pressure the regulator to be okay with these flaws and to kill a few hundred people than to build a proper plane, but let's give them one more chance to kill a few hundred more people, so they're not financially inconvenienced over a problem of their own making.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing whistle-blower says proposed 737 Max fixes aren't ... by blackflame7000 on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @06:22AM (#24552850)

There have been thousands of passenger jet crashes and on the broad scheme of things this plane is still extremely safe. The fact that it wasn't a redesign means it builds off all the lessons learned over the 30+ years the 737 has been in service.

"Got to hit those quarterly sales figures." An aircraft that crashes is pretty detrimental to achieving this goal. Achieving sales figures doesn't preclude safety

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing whistle-blower says proposed 737 Max fixes aren't ... by twh270 on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @10:20AM (#24554619)

Chasing short-term profits at the expense of long-term losses is a popular pastime of management/C-suite executives who are motivated more by "what's good for me" than by "what's good for my company/employees/customers". It creates a culture where everyone is acting more out of self-interest than they ought to.

Eventually, the company pays for it, but it can take a while.

The culture at Boeing has changed, and it seems to me that the quarterly numbers are more important now than previously.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing whistle-blower says proposed 737 Max fixes aren't ... by Klinky on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @02:01PM (#24557790)

>The fact that it wasn't a redesign means it builds off all the lessons learned over the 30+ years the 737 has been in service.

No, obviously it didn't, since the redesign changed the fundamental flight dynamics of the plane. It was not improving the design, it was piggybacking off the good record and past training of the old design to push out a fundamentally different product as quickly and cheaply as possible.

>Achieving sales figures doesn't preclude safety.

Then how did these fatal 737 MAXs ever get released in the first place?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Boeing whistle-blower says proposed 737 Max fixes aren't ... by mehrdadn on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @05:18AM (#24552489)

I was under the impression the 787 still isn't all that great either: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19518642

[ Parent | on HN ]