Aerolíneas Takes Its 1st Boeing 737 MAX In 4 Years

[MilHojas]

Aerolíneas Argentinas Takes Its 1st Boeing 737 MAX In 4 Years

Aerolíneas Argentinas now has six Boeing 737 MAX jetliners.

simpleflying.com

 

[FrankPintor]

This is bad news.

 

[Quilombo]

AeroCampora's gotta piss the massive subsidies away on something I guess

 

[sts7049]

This is bad news.

why? their fleet isn't exactly young. getting brand new planes is a good thing i think.

these orders would have been placed some years ago too

 

[FrankPintor]

why? their fleet isn't exactly young. getting brand new planes is a good thing i think.

these orders would have been placed some years ago too

There's a bit too much to go into here, but we can start with two non-human error crashes killing hundreds of passengers (i.e. the planes flew into the ground). Then there's the corruption and collusion involving US federal regulators and Boeing to cut costs to certify an inherently unstable plane (very briefly: the engines are too big for the original 737 design and too far forward), as well as the subsequent attempts at covering up responsibility and trying to blame pilot error. I will do my best to avoid boarding one of these flying coffins. Aerolineas should have cancelled all the MAX orders and bought Airbuses instead (and to Quilombo, AA probably received huge financial incentives from Boeing for not canceling the orders).

If you're interested, this might be a useful introduction to the topic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/ Lots of other articles and information out there, as well as posts on avherald.com and pprune.com.

 

[Quilombo]

There's a bit too much to go into here, but we can start with two non-human error crashes killing hundreds of passengers (i.e. the planes flew into the ground). Then there's the corruption and collusion involving US federal regulators and Boeing to cut costs to certify an inherently unstable plane (very briefly: the engines are too big for the original 737 design and too far forward), as well as the subsequent attempts at covering up responsibility and trying to blame pilot error. I will do my best to avoid boarding one of these flying coffins. Aerolineas should have cancelled all the MAX orders and bought Airbuses instead (and to Quilombo, AA probably received huge financial incentives from Boeing for not canceling the orders).

If you're interested, this might be a useful introduction to the topic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/ Lots of other articles and information out there, as well as posts on avherald.com and pprune.com.

Yeah I'm a bit of an avgeek myself and after the 1st one went down I was like, well... there's a reason I refused to fly LionAir when I was in Indonesia (besides the fact every carrier except Garuda is banned from the EU/US as they tend to hand out licenses to pilots and mechanics like gum in Indonesia) but when Ethiopian went down I told my friends, family, and anyone that would listen to me to refuse to fly MAX 8s because Ethiopian Airlines is a serious, well maintained airline, that, people's racist thoughts about African countries aside, operates both across the continent and world safely every day, so something was definitely unsafe about the aircraft. As it turned out, everyone who shared this belief was sadly proved correct, but this comes with little surprise given the history of Boeing's very friendly relationship with the NTSB/FAA/DOT as you mentioned.

I'm not old enough to have flow on a DC/MD 10, but I'm sure some of our fellow members can recount their apprehension of getting on one, and I take it this will be my generation's equivalent.

I flew a MAX 8 for the first time while in the US for a conference recently and even knowing the changes made regarding the MCAS I was still more on edge than normal. That being said, Boeing and all the 3 letter agencies have decided this bird is going to fly si o si, so unless you're flying long haul odds are you might find yourself on one sooner or later, and I've come to reluctantly accept this as it is what it is.

 

[Redpossum]

I'm going to agree that the 737-MAX is a death trap. That MCAS system is criminally unsafe.

 

[Redpossum]

Having thought it over, I have concluded that a brief summary is in order.

Because they changed the engines and moved the wing, the plane has a tendency to nose up and stall out. So they added this black box called MCAS to autopilot that would push the nose down when that occurred. But that MCAS depends upon one sensor, because they were pinching pennies. So sometimes the MCAS activates and pushes the nose down when the plane is in fact not stalling.

The above is a simplified explanation intended for non-pilots.

Oh, and the FAA didn't perform the safety check for the cert of the MAX version. FAA allowed Boeing to do the testing themselves, and just took their word that it was safe.