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The past 10 months have not been good for Boeing for all sorts of reasons—capped off by the failure of the company's Starliner commercial crew vehicle to achieve the right orbit in its uncrewed premier in December. But the biggest of the company's problems remains the 737 Max, grounded since last spring after two crashes that killed 346 people between them. Combined, the crashes are the worst air disaster since September 11, 2001.
Both were at least partially caused by a sensor failure with no redundancy and a problem with MCAS (the new software controlling the handling of the aircraft) that the air crews had not been trained to overcome.
Boeing executives are now telling the company's 737 Max customers that the software fix required to make the airliner airworthy will not be approved in the near future, and that it will likely be June or July before the Federal Aviation Administration certifies the aircraft for flight again—meaning that the aircraft will have been grounded for at least 16 months.
The FAA, for its part, has not committed to any timeframe for re-certifying the aircraft. In an emailed statement, an FAA spokesperson said, "We continue to work with other safety regulators to review Boeing's work as the company conducts the required safety assessments and addresses all issues that arise during testing."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Monday January 27 2020, @12:46AM (1 child)
We have loads of data about what it takes to maintain aircraft that are turned around and flown on a regular basis. How much data do we have regarding proper maintenance when a plane is coming out of being mothballed for a year or two? When planes are flying, airlines have a strong incentive to keep them maintained, ready to fly, and safe to fly. When not flying? Not so much. Prediction: there will be issues bringing them back into service, and doubts that the entire fleet can be safely brought back into service economically. Even if the procedures are down cold, the public will have doubts. They won't make money for the airlines. They'll be written off.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:52AM
Quite a bit, actually. There's not much to it. Airplanes get mothballed all the time. Airlines go bankrupt, travel slows down because of a recession or terrorism, sometimes an airplane gets converted to a different interior configuration. This isn't even real mothballing, where they get sent to the desert so they don't rust, they're just parked. You can park your car for a year and it's ready to go with just a fresh tank of gas and a battery charge, same for an airplane. Airplanes get a full maintenance inspection every 100 flight hours or once a year, whichever comes first, and you can bet that such an inspection will be done for every one of them even if they technically haven't been out of service for a year. They will all have to be modified, anyway.
But you're right that the public might not want to fly on them.