Regular people boarded the Max 8 and regular people will have board the Max 7 and Max 10. Unless of course, only aviation industry professionals fly on the Max 7 and 10s.

> retraining thousands of pilots, mechanics, and other support personnel.

That ship has largely already sailed after the 737 Max crashes.

Well certainly the people killed by these planes are also entitled to an opinion, but I guess there's survivorship bias in play in the market of opinions.

As a producer of civilian airframes and a major military contractor, Boeing has discovered a way to cut out the middlemen and kill all the civilians directly.

Boeing: "the Next Hundred Years".

Boeing's plane fell out of the sky not once, twice. Everyone is entitled to an opinion on this.

Sure but that’s not super interesting. Everyone’s opinion will be “Planes should not fall out of the sky. Aviation experts please fix this.”

This whole saga, including this article, has been about the tension between Boeing's business/political shortcuts and what aviation experts seem to think is prudent.

"Planes should not fall out of the sky. Aviation experts please fix this."

"Also, lawmakers, ensure the aviation experts fix this."

"Having regard to our advisors, we, the US lawmakers, have concluded that one criterion according to which aviation experts should judge their fix is that planes should have a doobywhacky in them, because aviation experts have assured us that a doobywhacky is important. But we will give them two years to get their plane certified without the doobywhacky on a legacy basis, since it seems like a good faith effort should be able to get legacy planes certified within two years."

"Aviation experts at Boeing, we, the aviation experts at the FAA would like to know some information about your planes."

"Aviation experts at Boeing, we, the aviation experts at the FAA need to know some information about your planes; what you have said is not good enough and you've left many questions unanswered."

"Oh, hi, US lawmaker, we, the lobbyists at Boeing thought you might like to know how bad it would be for you if the law isn't changed, yeah, we know everyone thought a good faith effort should be able to get legacy planes certified within two years, but you know how complicated planes can be."

And at this point, I think there are two possible replies: "Everyone believed it should have been possible, and there are clearly problems at Boeing's end, so they need to wear their mistakes; it's not like they're left with nothing and it's widely agreed that 737 MAX represents an end-of-line design so the cost is not excessive" or "The two years was written into the law to get these particular models out without conforming to the law; if they can be approved under the strictest application of the old rules, does it hurt if the approval is made just before the two year deadline, or just after it? In either case, it's flying according to the legacy certification. So we'll just extend the period a little."

I certainly think a case can be built either way, but knowledge of aviation is really only a minor part of the decision making process facing lawmakers right now.

> > Honestly, if you aren't part of the aviation industry in some professional capacity, I don't think you're entitled to an opinion on this.

"You don't share my opinion, [and you lack credentials,] so kindly don't speak" is becoming an increasingly common debate stratagem.

It would be so much gentler if it were phrased as, "Industry professionals have spent a lot of time thinking about this. I'm not sure your conclusions capture the complexities and nuances of the situation, but I understand your points".

Yeah, forget about this guy's right to freedom of expression, let's go after his right to even hold an opinion! /s

Well, I mean... if Boeing is so corrupt and/or incompetent to let TWO of their airplanes full of people crash because of bad engineering / bad ops, perhaps we can have an opinion on the matter?

If retraining those pilots, mechanics, and other support personnel are required, then why not do it? Sure, it will be expensive, but if the costs are human lives, c'est la vie.

> Honestly, if you aren't part of the aviation industry in some professional capacity, I don't think you're entitled to an opinion on this.

Unless the proposal is to only use the aircraft for flying cargo, this is absolute nonsense.

As soon as the public is allowed to board the aircraft for regular flights, then *OF COURSE* the public is entitled to an opinion about how safe aircraft should be. To even suggest otherwise is, frankly, nonsense.

Maybe cargo but over seas? I mean if an airplane crashes it crashes on someone else's land, unless Boing is buying land to build like a flying railroad or something then everyone that lives close enough to an air route has a say on what they fly above them.

Last time I checked, there's remarkably few airports in international waters. Most big airports that are cargo hubs are(unsurprisingly) next to major cities.

Retraining pilots and mechanics is what is needed. The idea of keeping the same jet but slapping on larger more fuel efficient engines was and remains disastrous. To fit the larger engines they had to shift the placement to the front changing the aerodynamics of the plane. Adding a couple sensors to constantly correct the pitch for this hacked together designed is an embarrassment to Boeing.

The 737max should either be scrapped or limited to cargo only (at best).

Why limit to cargo? MCAS is just a pilot aid that changes the type rating of the aircraft. It was designed to avoid that change but we are witnessing why you do not hide critical subsystems from pilots or regulators. So reveal the system, force a new type, require training. Revealing the system will highlight the obvious flaw of a single air speed foil and aerodynamic issues of the elevator trim. Fix that and you have a perfectly flightworthy plane.

But money is the motivator here and the MAX is starting to look like a loss leader. Big question here: what will southwest do if the MAX requires a new certification by pilots? Stick with Boeing (meaning Boeing pays for this mistake) or flip entirely to airbus (and Boeing loses a major customer)

Just think about how many 10’s of thousands of hours the Max flew, and no pilot ever noticed MCAS.

I am a CEO and recognized thought leader in the aviation industry and I say your position is nonsense.

If you truly work in aviation, then you should consider finding another career. Our industry needs less people with your type of thinking.

If you have written software for planes you should know that it is near impossible to fuck up this bad. It is hard to fuck up at level D like that, it is near impossible to fuck up this way at A(or was it classified at B?).

The amount of people who have to have went "this doesn't seem too important, I don't need to check this" is unfathomable. That such an error was not caught speaks of a deep rot in the entire organization, from management down to the guys writing the software.

The software aspect was outsourced to a dev shop overseas

Good job of advertising that you haven’t read any of the reporting about how the bug arose.

But please, keep opining.

It is very unfortunate that safety critical software is not developed inhouse. The direct communication between engineering, development, testing and management is usually quite important.

But this is never an excuse even if this software had been delivered from a contractor it is the duty of Boeing to write specific requirements and to test them, while making sure that the requirements cover all forseeable eventualities.

This isn't frontend development. You do not just ship software some third party wrote for you.

Having seen inside a group with Ma B, and you can believe me or not when I say Boeing hasn't had a single completely successful new program in more than a generation.

Sometimes individuals or teams will, with herculean effort, do a clever thing here or there, but by and large Boeing leadership has created an environment that's actively hostile to innovation. I've never seen an incompetent person fired, not once. It's always the superstars and the go getters.

Occasionally they buy some company, exhaust its goodwill, then zombify it with dead-eyed MBAs as a meaningless "Center of Excellence". It's such efficient value destruction they should figure out a way to pack it into a JDAM.