December return of the -8 or -9 is overly optimistic (my personal opinion). The FSB report, which outlines new pilot training requirements, is still in draft and just closed to public comments 11/2. It will take some time for FAA to adjudicate all the comments and finalize the FSB report. After that, airline training programs will have to be revised and approved. Then additional pilot Differences training (NG to Max) can begin. Not to mention all the Airworthiness - AD requirements for RTS. For the future -10, I would hypothesize (3) AOA vanes may be standard equippage.

News media says AA is planning a December rts for the Max. Has AA managed to overcome all these obstacles you say is gonna severely hinder rts?

EASA approved the Max to return to service with the stipulation that the MAX 10 had to have the third AOA (actual or synthetic) before its first delivery and existing MAX’s would get the retrofits in due time.

What is a synthetic AOA? Is it derived from the other two?

the 787 has a synthetic airspeed that uses the aoa’s and other sources (via gps? Iru’s?) so it could be something like that.

https://www.aviationpros.com/aircraf...light-controls

ERJ 170/190 had 4 pitot tubes. It would derive the AOA from data. They called them “smart probes”. Next time you see one you will notice it doesn’t have a traditional AOA vane.

There doesn’t seem to be much info on this. All I found was an article where Ryanair said that the planes could be delayed up to two years. When the decision to go with the max was announced, I thought that it made sense because of how many 737’s we have. Now with the benefit of hindsight, I hope that it is delayed and that we cancel the order and place an order for an equal number of 321 NEO’s.

agreed. It will be interesting to see what they use for premium Transcontinental flights now that the PW 75s are officially retired. The MAX 10 with lie flats was their planned replacement for those. Do they put lie flats on the MAX 9 or just use the extra “high J” 767s they have sitting around

We’d have to have premium passengers to need a premium seating configuration. Most analysts say that business travel will be slow to recover, and until then the focus will probably be cramming as many as possible into the cheap seats. I imagine that our first class lav policy is ticking our potential premium customers off too. They spend extra or burn miles to sit in a bigger seat and relax or get some work done. Now they just get the bigger seat and have all of the coach passengers lining up to use the front lav. I doubt that lie flat seats are going to be an issue for a while.

What’s the (new?) first class lav policy?