DenverBrian

It does not.

Human life is far more valuable than the worth of a plane or the profits of a company. @:-)

cmd320

Disagree. If the FO was trained properly and flying a well designed and constructed aircraft, there would have been no issue.

There are plenty of accidents which can be attributed to arrogant old pilots with tens of thousands of hours relying on their "experience" rather than crew resource management.

BF263533

What Boeing did or didn't do will certainly be the subject of the Federal investigations & class action lawsuits that will be filled in US courts because of the large judgments they can obtain in the US against Boeing. Regardless of fault, the related publicity will have a continuing negative drag on the image of the 737 mAX. Back around 1979 when there was no continuous 24 hour cable news, the DC 10 survived but with a badly damaged reputation. The 737 mAX investigation & litigation circus will be covered by the news media hungry for sensation.

If I were United, I would not want to be one of the circus' dancing bears, and I would work in an order for A321neos & maybe some A220s.

chrisl137

It was hardly a fender bender at the jetbridge - it could easily have killed everyone aboard, and from a failure and corrective action point of view it really doesn't make any difference how many people died.

GrayAnderson

Of the three killed, one was due to being struck by a door. A tragedy to be sure, but probably not preventable by any changes to design or practice beyond "don't crash the plane". One was dead when they hit the ground (one of the seatbelt cases). One was run over by a fire truck (the other seatbelt case), but IIRC there's a split decision as to whether they were dead when they hit the ground or killed in the collision with the truck between the relevant authorities. Moreover, I believe that I recall reading that the two were either totally or almost totally obscured by firefighting foam, and this was in the context of an emergency situation. There's a difference between saying ".... happens" in that context (where slowing down overall vehicle speed might complicate putting out the fire/averting an explosion) and in the context of "normal" operations. From what I recall there wasn't an assertion of gross negligence in that case, and the fact that the truck very plausibly "just" hit two dead bodies that weren't obviously visible suggests that the firefighters' practices weren't anymore at fault than the tangled "on the ground" facts of the situation. Moreover, poor seatbelt compliance, particularly if the customer obscures that they've undone their seatbelt, is a problem that can't be entirely averted. That's under the category of "you can't fix stupid".

As to the Boeing side of things...from what I can tell from the Wikipedia article, most of the issues come down to "the crew screwed up". Bad communication among the crew, etc. came into the mix, with errors on Boeing's part being contributing factors but not the sole factor (unlike in the current cases, where it's looking pretty cut-and-dried that Boeing screwed up a bunch of stuff and there are no other major factors in play).

Per the reports I've seen so far, Boeing submitted one set of specs with the FAA for certification and then changed them without telling anyone. I'm not sure of the exact contextual definition of "hide", but that comes pretty close to a reasonable definition of it for me.

chrisl137

How anybody specifically died or what the root cause was wasn't the point of the example. If you've seen the crash video, it could easily have ended in far more deaths - maybe a little lower into the edge of the wall or if the fuselage had landed upside down after the tumble and it could have been far worse. From a "things I need to prevent in the future" point of view it's not only just as bad as the MAX failures, but arguably worse, so very much should count as an equally significant crash. In the case of the MAX it's likely an engineering failure compounded by crew inexperience, but the Asiana crash was attributed mostly to poor CRM and confusion because they were over reliant on automation. Once identified, an engineering issue is much easier to correct across the entire fleet and know that it's fixed. CRM is harder to quantify and harder to ensure is fixed for any/every crew - this is what makes it potentially worse, because it's very culturally and training dependent and will vary significantly from company to company and crew to crew.

ExplorerWannabe

A lot of this reminds me of the "discussion" after the Apollo 1 fire. Borman's testimony seems particularly apt (recreated in "From the Earth to the Moon" at ). I very much doubt Boeing or Ethiopian or even Lion Air intentionally compromised safety. IANAP but Boeing likely didn't imagine flight crews at a major airline would ignore or not know of procedures that seem to have been "standard" for decades. In my own job as a "subject matter expert" in a particularly isolated field, I am still constantly amazed at how lessons learned 25-30 years ago are "magic" today or how practices I once accepted as the norm are now abnormal (to be fair, this is sometimes a good thing).

Nevertheless, the OP's question was more strategic, should UA change aircraft? I would still say no for a variety of reasons (not even counting my own admitted bias against Airbus).

If United's 737 pilots are still confident in the 737 fleet, I'm confident.

worldclubber

Have they really been "standard"? And why didn't these allegedly underqualified pilots crash their pre-MAX 737s all the time?

And most importantly: If what you are hinting at is true, why did US pilots complain about the MAX?

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/13/u...max/index.html

ExplorerWannabe

If you read the posts from 737 pilots on this forum, yes, runaway stabilizer procedures have been pretty standard for decades. As mduell noted in this thread and another, ET has crashed 10% of their 737 fleet in the last decade.

As far as complaints go, why do people complain about everything? If you use Yelp, you'll find about 10-12% of reviews will complain about even the best restaurants or hotels. Anything with a Rotten Tomatoes score above 80% is probably doing well. BTW, from what I gathered reading that article, there were a total of 2 specific complaints of an actual incident (and it sounded from other posts like they may have been capt and FO noting problems with the same flight) while the other "complaints" were more general, about the inadequacy of training or the flight manual (and in fact, those cited by the article came from the same pilot).

Again, I am far less concerned about this than I was a week or two ago after reading the responses from professional 737 pilots.

worldclubber

I am glad you are not concerned, but even many professional pilots and cabin crew are.

And, as I said above, Boeing sells more planes to markets in Asia and Africa than to airlines in the United States, i.e. there is a new situation that has to be addressed.

United should at least consider to diversify their narrow-body fleet, to make sure that their network doesn't collapse if the feces hit the proverbial fan concerning the MAX.

fumje

Why are AA and WN cancelling MAX flights while UA is able to reassign aircraft without cancelling? Does UA have lower utilization than those two? By MAX/non-MAX proportion, UA isn't dramatically different than either. Or are they much more flexible in their substitutions? I can imagine WN is a little constrained, but I wonder why AA needs to cancel.

WineCountryUA

As this is a serious subject, the airworthiness of an aircraft series, due to two incidents with significant loss of life, it is appropriate to desire the discussion reflects the nature of the subject. This has been a highly informative discussion and many have commented on the quality of that discussion. While understanding there can be some strong opinions, it is still possible / desired to continue this discussion in a civil, collegial manner. Snarky, derisive comments do not fit the desired discussion environment, so some recent non-constructive comments have been removed.

As flight safety is important and this thread can help many understand these recent incidents and the path forward, let's conduct this discussion in an appropriately respectful manner.

WineCountryUA
UA coModerator

DenverBrian

I'd argue it's Boeing that's going for both sides of the coin. Boeing insists that the MAX flies just like an NG - while quietly slipping in a new system, giving pilots virtually no training and zero simulator time, and no mention of it in flight manuals.

n198ua

How do you know there haven't been any "near misses" by "other" carriers ? I don't know what criterion you're using to classify an airline as "3rd world"; but ET is a *A carrier with a good safety record. Prior to the MAX crash, the deadliest accident in the airlines' history was the result of hijacking.

TWA884

According to Politico, US pilots have complained about issues with the anti stall system. It would appear that in all those instances, they were able to regain control of the aircraft.