With that said, it will be interesting to see how quickly Congress and the media move on from this. Not exactly sure what the end game for politicians would be to aggressively try to interfere with Boeing as such a large domestic company that employs a wide range of people (unlike the bank CEO hearings where no one is really concerned about getting in the way of an investment banker getting paid to do their job).

Yep, thats pretty true. Saw this on the National ABC News last night, probably 45-60 seconds of airtime. Only at the very end did they briefly mention that no passengers, only pilots on-board. I knew that it had to be a ferry flight, simply because I'm an FT follower. They never mentioned the words "Ferry Flight" just the quick blurb at the end about no passengers.

A local station (6 I believe) played audio of the flight. 'We've lost an engine" and at no time mentioned ferry flight or no passengers but did note that the Max8's have been grounded.

Sadly the local stations are the worst, even in Top 10 markets in the US :rolleyes: :td:

Boeing does not make the LEAP engine any more than it makes the fuselage (Spirit AeroSystems makes the fuselage for 737).

Drives me nuts. OK, even more nuts .... :p

Stand by for an aneurysm - FlyerTalk itself is featuring the "story" in its daily email digest. :eek:

MAX News Day
 

Boeing briefings today: boeing-737-max-meeting-pilots-regulators

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/27/polit...ors/index.html

Senate hearings today at 3 pm: congress/hearing-737-max-crashes-will-focus-faa-oversight

https://www.rollcall.com/news/congre...-faa-oversight

An interesting read: https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1334482

My simply distillation

1. Competitive market pressures requires BA to the only solution possible a 737 modification with new engines / wings etc. to compete​​​​​​. Fundamentally new engines on a airframe design from 40 years ago has some issue!
2. During development identified a fundamental issue with engine airframe integration that required a software patch
3. Business constraints with pilot training, fungibility, cost, biggest customer required 2) to subterfuge
4. Obviously internally they identified additional things like dual sensors, warning lights and I'm sure someone in BA suggested more explicit notification / training but because of 1) and 3) decided to do the "minimum" they needed versus what they could.

Now the CEO and senior leaders should take a look at what JnJ did with their Tylenol and or Intel finally had to do with their FDIV. It is hard to admit you failed, but the longer they don't the worse it will be and all confidence will be lost. Of course AirBus can't look itself cleanly in the mirror as their closet isn't clean of skeletons either.

Agreed. This is a market with very little competition as well which contributes to the problem. Innovation has stagnated heavily, especially in the narrow body aircraft market.

The quoted article is titled: "Software Won’t Fix Boeing’s ‘Faulty’ Airframe"
 

The quoted article states:

"Travis is unequivocal in his assessment of the Boeing 737 MAX. “It’s a faulty airframe. You’ve got to fix the airframe [and] you can’t fix the airframe without moving the engines” back and away from their current position."

Again, as with many others, you've got cause and effect backward. The aircraft is certifiable without MCAS; MCAS is not required due to a "fundamental issue with engine airframe integration" period.

Then why spend the money and include MCAS at all?

Meaning they don't have to spend any money on training and no different certification.

Which has led us to two similar crashes in five months.

With Boeing's software changes & MCAS being less robust, we will just have to wait & see if 737mAX pilots will be facing abnormally more times where they have to take affirmative action to prevent a stall.