Mountain Explorer

Come on. A Max flight declaring an emergency on takeoff is newsworthy at the moment. Especially considering there were probably fewer than 10 Max flights today.

Panic? Where do you see panic? The only person overreacting here is you

24left

Interesting article

How the Bizarre Economics of Airplanes Raises the Stakes of the Boeing Fallout

Strange things can happen when a business is based on millions of people flying around in $100 million metal boxes that can take a year to build.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business...-value/584947/


QUOTES:

Volodymyr Bilotkach, an economist at Newcastle University and the author of The Economics of Airlines, says that if cancellations do materialize, Boeing likely doesn’t have a great Plan B, but neither does anyone else. The airplane-building industry, he says, is an “effective duopoly,” meaning it’s dominated by two suppliers: “There is no way Airbus”—the other half of the duopoly—“will be able to come to the rescue, as that manufacturer’s order book is also not empty.” Indeed, one analyst who follows Boeing closely told
Bloombergearlier this week that his firm didn’t see “meaningful long-term risk” for the company. (Bilotkach says it’s possible that instead of taking their business elsewhere, some airlines might opt for older Boeing-made models with safer records.)

Airlines—Boeing’s customers—are not in a great position either. The primary challenge in the industry, says Clifford Winston, an economist at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, is how far in advance airlines have to decide how large their fleet should be at any given time. “A plane takes a long time to make,” he says—sometimes a year or longer, and even buying used planes can take a while. Airlines’ task, in essence, is to guess how many people want to go from, say, Nashville to Denver on this day next year, and then buy a bunch of elaborate, $100 million metal contraptions accordingly.

Because airlines’ fleets are assembled according to long-term projections, they might have trouble adapting quickly to events that hurt demand, such as recessions or terrorist attacks.“That’s when they lose a ton of money,” Winston says.

***

Winston says that this shortage of capacity draws attention to another quirk of airline economics: Only American carriers are allowed to fly trips starting and ending in the U.S. He’s in favor of extending what are called “cabotage rights” to overseas airlines, one benefit of which would be that they could provide more seats in situations like this, after a surprise reduction in capacity.

Where does all this leave passengers? Winston expects to see airlines cancel some flights and perhaps raise the prices of others to compensate for the lost revenue. That means some passengers might end up spending more to get where they need to go on their preferred timeline; others might just have to be flexible on their departure time, consider another mode of transit, or not go at all."

CZAMFlyer

Did you miss the part of my post in which I specifically included hardware? Regardless of whether or not Boeing resists, if the plane is recertified, the specific causes of the two crashes - likely MCAS related - will have almost certainly been resolved.

Yes, it does. With that in mind, I wrote in my post: "I have little doubt the manufacturer will also exhaustively review every other system from nose to tail."

Strange conclusion. I "got the point", not only in a number of my upthread posts in which I specifically discussed the erosion of public and airlines' trust, I alluded to it in the very post you quoted: "That may be of little comfort for many thousands of Canadian passengers who face future Max flights with AC, WS etc."

Well, er, because of the exact reasons you listed. Boeing has been 'caught' potentially cutting corners and will now bend over backwards to rectify what never should have happened. I use the term 'potentially', because I don't hold the level of inside knowledge of the Lion Air & Ethiopian crashes required to make declarations such as "This was due to..." Anyway, with the current level of global attention now thrust upon them, and Boeing a household name for all the wrong reasons, it provides a really solid incentive to 'get it right this time'. We can all agree that it should have been 'got right' the first time, but nothing spurs a corporation like the threat of market annihilation. The complete loss of the Max line would all but guarantee that outcome.

It's a never-ending source of amusement when people contradict posts without fully reading the post they quoted, or without following the thread closely enough to discern members' positions based upon previous comments.

KenHamer

If Air Canada keeps the 737MAX do you trust them more than Boeing?

RatherBeInYOW

MCAS Software Update

I suspect this is what they'll end up getting certified with the FAA, and then getting TC and EASA to certify if they follow through with their promises to do their own independent reviews.

bimmerdriver

This is what I expected. I think expectations that the entire aircraft would require recertification are not rational.

That is not to say that Boeing should not be taken to the woodshed if it turns out that they misled the FAA during the certification process. If they did, I expect they will be severely punished.

24left

Analysis from FlightGlobal

Boeing presents MCAS fix to pilots, regulators and media

By Bjorn Fehrm March 27, 2018, © Leeham News

https://leehamnews.com/2019/03/27/bo...ia/#more-29743



QUOTE:

"Implementation of the fix

Boeing will now work to have the software update, which takes about one hour to install on the 737 MAX, approved by the world’s Airworthiness authorities. As the authorities are in the drivers’ seats for when the update gets approved to install, it’s impossible to say when the individual airline’s 737 MAX will fly again. It all depends when their local regulator approved the fix and allow the MAX to return to operation."

Mountain Explorer

Seems like a reasonable and even common-sense approach. Really makes you wonder how nobody thought about these things before launch

ridefar

Well. Sort of. Common sense for aircraft would be to use three sensors and require two failures before something catastrophic could be allowed to happen. And if blowback is the ultimate issue (as some analysts have suggested) I am not sure this solves that -- although it might eliminate most circumstances in which MCAS could trigger a blowback event? (I am neither a pilot nor an engineer so don't take my word for it!)

bimmerdriver

Back in the day of the space shuttle, there was a study into how many levels of redundancy were required. For obvious reasons, the flight control system had to be tolerant of multiple failures. It was decided that 4 computers plus an additional backup were needed, allowing for a failure but with three systems remaining so there would not be a situation where if one computer disagreed, there would be a stand-off. Maybe this is overkill for an airplane, but having only two sensors means if they disagree, you don't know which one is right. A friend of mine from the navy used to say, two is one and one is none. For this reason, you want to have three.

IluvSQ

As usual, the comments following the article are much more interesting than the news itself.

24left

Regulators knew before crashes that 737 MAX trim control was confusing in some conditions: document

Reuters - MARCH 29, 2019 / 1:23 AM / UPDATED 8 HOURS AGO

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-e...-idUSKCN1RA0DP



Boeing 737 MAX’s anti-stall system was activated before Ethiopia crash: report

March 29, 2019

https://globalnews.ca/news/5109685/b...investigation/

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/29/afric...ntl/index.html

tracon

Is the Boeing 737 Max Worth Saving?

Is the Boeing 737 MAX Worth Saving?

InTheAirGuy

I'm moving my prediction to post-October.

Boeing 737 MAX 8 software fix delayed by a few weeks, FAA says

"FAA spokesman Greg Martin said that “time is needed for additional work by Boeing as the result of an ongoing review of the 737 MAX Flight Control System to ensure that Boeing has identified and appropriately addressed all pertinent issues.”"

https://globalnews.ca/news/5119425/b...oftware-delay/

RangerNS

I hope the FAA is concerned about the time that they need to take to identify and address all issues.

Boeing doing what was best for Boeing and everyone else is what got us here.