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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, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @07:30PM (6 children)
Bigotry noted. However, even first class pilots from first world nations apparently knew nothing about the special knowledge and skills required to keep the Max aloft after the computer glitched. There was no training, nothing in the manual, not even some kind of errata addendum published for the airlines to sign off on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @09:33PM (5 children)
There's no bigotry, the numbers speak for themselves. There is no way that the only defective planes were in the third world. These people are the only ones crashing anything now. They're worse than Air France!
Competent pilots had no problem with the airplane. These aren't DC-10s they're flying. The 737 is a perfectly cromulent machine, except for the yaw damper maybe. That was fucked up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @01:17AM
The free market disagreed with you.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 04 2020, @03:47AM (3 children)
How do you account for this then? Boeing pilots knew of a "glitch", which customers were not informed of.
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/771451904/boeing-pilots-detected-737-max-flight-control-glitch-two-years-before-deadly-cra [npr.org]
Pilot complaints
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/13/us/pilot-complaints-boeing-737-max/index.html [cnn.com]
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-19/how-an-extra-man-in-cockpit-saved-a-737-max-that-later-crashed [bloomberg.com]
Two pilots, following published protocol, failed to get the plane under control. The extra pilot, a fifth wheel with no duties to perform, who was less involved, was able to solve the problem due to his detachment from the problem.
It just doesn't make sense that you want to blame the pilots based on the airlines they worked for, or which countries they may originate from. Pretty much everyone who knows anything about aircraft agrees that Boeing was at fault. Only a few shills here and there seem to want to blame "pilot error" for Boeing's shortcomings.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2020, @08:46PM (2 children)
Your own article says they could have saved it. If you have time to check your QRH, you have more than enough time to execute the memory items. Runaway trim is one of the many failures pilots around the world train in and you are supposed to have those checklists locked in your brain for a reason. Yes, Boeing created the problem at point A. But that doesn't mean that the pilots couldn't have stopped it at point B. Sometimes fault is shared and not all or none.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 04 2020, @09:11PM (1 child)
Agreed. But the share may be very unequal. In this case, Boeing created the situation with inadequate documentation, and inadequate training. Boeing went to great lengths to convince everyone that flying the Max was no different than flying any other 737, knowing full well that it was NOT the same.
Very good and excellent pilots might figure things out all on their own when the situation arises. Merely good pilots might not. Mediocre pilots forget about it - they NEEDED the training that highlighted the differences between the Max and all other 737's.
While I agree on shared responsibilities and shared fault, the lion's share of the fault lies on Boeing, not on the pilots who never got the essential training they required.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 05 2020, @05:58PM
Yes, third world pilots are mediocre at best, taught to push buttons, not fly a plane, and only third world pilots crashed the airplane. Yes, boeing fucked up big time, but as was shown, for competent pilots it was just another squawk to write up.