Originally Posted by WHACKMASTER

Agreed. I couldn’t believe that the MAX came with the same complete POS recall system that has the contact problems since the damn 60s. For crying out loud, even the B757 had a real EICAS system.

The B737’s an honest airplane (up until the MAX fiasco) but I hope to hell we get the B797 and if I was in charge I’d be placing and order for 500+ of the super efficient A220-300s at deeply discounted prices to replace our -700s.

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

Capt. ‘Sully’ Sullenberger: Where Boeing and the FAA Went Wrong in This ‘Ugly Saga’

(From Barron's)


For most of the history of powered flight, the United States has been a world leader in aviation.

This nation’s aviation regulatory body, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has long been the gold standard of safety regulation in global aviation, often a template for other nations to follow in technical and safety matters.

Boeing has long been the world’s preeminent airplane maker.

But now, our credibility as leaders in aviation is being damaged. Boeing and the FAA have been found wanting in this ugly saga that began years ago but has come home to roost with two terrible fatal crashes, with no survivors, in less than five months, on a new airplane type, the Boeing 737 Max 8, something that is unprecedented in modern aviation history.

For too many years, the FAA has not been provided budgets sufficient to ensure appropriate oversight of a rapidly growing global aviation industry. Staffing has not been adequate for FAA employees to oversee much of the critically important work of validating and approving aircraft certification. Instead, much of the work has been outsourced by designating aircraft manufacturer employees to do the work on behalf of the FAA. This, of course, has created inherent conflicts of interest, when employees working for the company whose products must be certified to meet safety standards are the ones doing much of the work of certifying them. There simply are not nearly enough FAA employees to do this important work in-house.

To make matters worse, there is too cozy a relationship between the industry and the regulators. And in too many cases, FAA employees who rightly called for stricter compliance with safety standards and more rigorous design choices have been overruled by FAA management, often under corporate or political pressure.

Let me be clear, without effective leadership and support from political leaders in the administration, the FAA does not have sufficient independence to be able to do its job, which is to keep air travelers and crews safe. Oversight must mean accountability, or it means nothing.

Boeing, in developing the 737 Max 8, obviously felt intense competitive pressure to get the new aircraft to market as quickly as possible. When flight testing revealed an issue with meeting the certification standards, the company developed a fix, Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), but did not tell airline pilots about it. In mitigating one risk, Boeing seems to have created another, greater risk.

After the crash of Lion Air 610 last October, it was apparent that this new risk needed to be effectively addressed. It has been reported that Boeing pushed back in discussions with the FAA about the extent of changes that would be required, and after the second crash, of Ethiopian 302, the Boeing CEO reached out to the U.S. President to try to keep the 737 Max 8 from being grounded in the U.S. The new fix still has not been fielded, nearly five months after Lion Air. It almost certainly could have been done sooner, and should have been.

Boeing has focused on trying to protect its product and defend its stance, but the best way, indeed the only way, to really protect one’s brand or product is to protect the people who use it. We must not forget that the basis of business, what makes business possible, is trust.

Estimates are that Boeing likely will face additional costs of several billion dollars because of these recent crashes and the decisions made several years ago that led up to them. This case is a validation of something that I have long understood, that there is a strong business case for quality and safety, that it is always better and cheaper to do it right instead of doing it wrong and trying to repair the damage after the fact, and when lives are lost, there is no way to repair the damage.

And in this ultra-cost-competitive global aviation industry, when it comes to costs, nothing is more costly than an accident. Nothing.

Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger is a safety expert, author and speaker on leadership and culture. He is also a retired airline pilot who, on Jan. 15, 2009, safely landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in New York when both engines lost power when they were struck by a flock of birds. All 155 people on board survived.

Originally Posted by THEKERNALKLINK

I agree, it seems as though the RJ's are growing, it's very possible to put together a 125 seat unit. We have some hard, fast core principles. Reduced training costs at the expense of putting all of our eggs in one basket. As we grow as a company, the hard line 737 only policy makes less and less sense. It's just not the smartest, best option for everything we do.

Maybe we can get that jet that runs on compressed air.... anyone seen that conspiracy that's spreading on Youtube? It blows the flat earth theory out of the water for stupidity.

Originally Posted by FollowMe

Well I hadn't until now...just wow.

Originally Posted by hilltopflyer

What happened on the one that made an emergency landing on the way to the storage airport