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from the what-goes-up-must-come-down dept.
Boeing's upgraded 737 MAX completes first flight with media onboard:
DALLAS (Reuters) - Boeing Co's 737 MAX staged its first post-grounding flight with media on board on Wednesday, as carriers seek to demonstrate to passengers that the redesigned jet is safe after a 20-month safety ban.
[...] Wednesday's American Airlines 737 MAX flight was a 45-minute hop from Dallas, Texas, to Tulsa, Oklahoma. It comes weeks before the first commercial passenger flight on Dec. 29, and is part of a public relations effort to allay any concerns about the aircraft.
Boeing's best-selling jet was grounded in March 2019 after two crashes in five months killed a combined 346 people, marking the industry's worst safety crisis in decades and undermining U.S. aviation regulatory leadership.
Wednesday's flight marked the first time anyone besides regulators and industry personnel flew on the MAX since the grounding, which ignited investigations focusing on software that overwhelmed pilots.
The mood on Wednesday's flight, which included a Reuters reporter, was subdued. Some passengers mingled and chatted before landing, when applause broke out.
[...] Boeing is bracing for intense publicity from even routine glitches by manning a 24-hour "situation room" to monitor every MAX flight globally, and has briefed some industry commentators on details on the return to service, industry sources said.
"We are continuing to work closely with global regulators and our customers to safely return the fleet to commercial service," a Boeing spokesman said.
[...] In an example of how airlines have begun to soft-pedal references to the MAX brand, the safety cards on Wednesday's flight omitted the "MAX" name and just said "737."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @06:06PM (4 children)
This would seem to be the first salvo in a PR Blitz designed to resurrect the Boeing brand its ill-fated engineering-blunder of an aircraft.
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#AOC-2024
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday December 03 2020, @06:42PM
I would also mention Starliner and SLS.
Long before the Max disasters, Boeing had a history of failing to fix safety problems [washingtonpost.com]
Young people won't believe you if you say you're older than Google. (born before 1998-09-03)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday December 03 2020, @06:50PM (1 child)
It wasn't a "blunder". It was a calculated risk, like the Challenger and the Ford Pinto [wfu.edu]. McDonnell Douglas bean counters took over the whole operation after the merger.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @09:07PM
The fact that they are able to re-certify existing aircraft with minor tweaks to the flight software, sensors and training regimen suggests that the suits were correct that the aircraft design was fundamentally okay. The fact that two of the aircraft nose-dived into the ground shows that there was an engineering blunder either 1) by not predicting that possible outcome, or 2) by not informing the suits that such an outcome was possible. I don't reckon that any manager would sign off on a design that was sure to cause fatalities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @11:46PM
Too late.
If it's Boeing, I aint going.