B737 MAX – Will You Fly on One ?

Boeing to Temporarily Shut Down 737 Max Production https://nyti.ms/34kipNe

Shares down 5.3% overnight.

Will it ever fly in its current configuration ? I have always believed not but have always hoped that I am wrong as that would be a heavy body blow from which Boeing may not recover.
Friends in Aviation are telling me that there is agsain considerable talk among folks that know about these things re the possibility Boeing revamping and re-engining the 767.

Further bad news for the Max programme

BREAKING The FAA confirmed reviewing a “potentially catastrophic” wiring issue that could cause a short circuit on the Boeing 737MAX

And in addition, from the NY Times:

“Boeing also recently told the F.A.A. that it had discovered a manufacturing problem that left the plane’s engines vulnerable to a lightning strike.
While assembling the Max, workers at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory had ground down the outer shell of a panel that sits atop the engine housing in an effort to ensure a better fit into the plane. In doing so, they inadvertently removed the coating that insulates the panel from a lightning strike, taking away a crucial protection for the fuel tank and fuel lines.”

That’s extraordinary. The engines or housings don’t fit on the aircraft properly so workers just ground down the outer shell? Who authorised that, and why didn’t they realise it could be a problem??

[quote quote=986019]That’s extraordinary. The engines or housings don’t fit on the aircraft properly so workers just ground down the outer shell? Who authorised that, and why didn’t they realise it could be a problem??[/quote]

The really worrying thing is that we do not know whether is is in fact that extraordinary. Maybe this is fairly standard practice at airline manufacturers? Maybe they take such shortcuts all the time?

The airline industry cannot ever be 100% risk free – if the airline industry was completely committed to no casualties at all, ever, full stop it would simply declare that aim incompatible with flying and disband. In practice, all safety decisions are in effect trade-offs. This sounds like just one more such trade-off Boeing have made.

Even in industries which routinely and robotically intone “the safety of our customers is our first priority” you know this isn’t really true: the bottom line is, and much of the task of management is to juggle the bottom line against the other objectives of the company. I suspect Boeing (a) knew what it was doing, (b) eyed the cost savings from doing so and (c) thought that the impairment to safety was either completely non-existent or at worst sufficiently minor to allow them to proceed.

Quote of the day ……

“This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys”

Boeing employee

Boeing staff warned they would not take their own families on a 737 Max jet and joked the planes were “designed by clowns and supervised by monkeys” before two fatal crashes, damning internal messages show.

I briefly worked for an airline whose practices were so risky that I would not fly on them. I know how these Boeing people feel.