Originally Posted by
bocastephen
Quite a few 727s met their demise with catastrophic results - let's face it, both Boeing and Airbus have lost aircraft with a significant loss of lives, although the Airbus losses were more mysterious in nature vs the Boeing losses which have had useful explanations.
Boeing's problem here isn't the 737, it's arrogance. Knowingly approving a design that for safety reasons requires another component, which is sold as a separate upgrade. Knowingly releasing an aircraft to customers with an existing defect without sufficient training. Knowingly hiding the details and pertinent facts of the aircraft's operational status and condition from regulators in every country where it operated.
The 737 is the most successful aircraft ever released to market - only arrogance, hubris, greed and stupidity from a company I highly respected has tarnished the image of what is really a good, solid reliable aircraft. If I had to levy any criticism against the 737, it's the failure of the fuselage design getting a sideways stretch just barely enough to allow for 6 19" wide seats with a little extra aisle space.
Plenty of aircraft have met their own demise. That isn't really the issue here. The point is that I absolutely do not believe that newer = better = safer. In some cases sure, however when you have a series of completely avoidable disasters like this caused by the production company cutting corners, that raises a lot of red flags.
I'm not sure which mysterious accidents you're referring to, however there are only a few accidents that are really unsolved today, the most mysterious of which is probably actually MH370.
While I agree that the Boeing's problem here is arrogance, I also have plenty of issues with the 737 as a passenger. I avoided the NGs even long before the MAX existed. Sure flying on a 737-400 from Jacksonville to Charlotte was one thing. Flying on a 737-800 from Miami to San Francisco is torture.
Originally Posted by
BF263533
Untied, American and Southwest also share the blame for the MAX disaster. They should have known you can only stretch a 50 year old airplane so far. The airlines are as much to blame as Boeing, if not more so.
It's mainly AA. After all, they were the ones who were too cheap to train their pilots on a new aircraft and backed Boeing into a corner to produce this aircraft.