Boeing 737 Max ordered by Ryanair undergoes name change | Hacker News Reader

Boeing 737 Max ordered by Ryanair undergoes name change

theguardian.com

250 pointsmaratumba177 comments

> Photos have emerged of a repainted 737 Max in Ryanair colours outside Boeing’s manufacturing hub, with the name 737 Max replaced by 737-8200 on the nose.

Now I'm worried about boarding any 737

This. And I'm starting to be afraid of ANY Boeing. This company is dead.

Really? I was in a 777 yesterday and felt like I was flying in a well-tested, mostly modern plane built with well-understood technologies. That, and I realized 737s (not Max, obviously) have loud interiors.

> felt like I was flying in a well-tested, mostly modern plane built with well-understood technologies

Given how much of its functionality is embedded in electronics and software, how can you know? Would a passenger be able to recognize if it suffered from the same flaws as the 737 MAX?

> Given how much of its functionality is embedded in electronics and software, how can you know?

Marketing, mostly.

The 777 has a great long-term record. The 737 MAX started falling out of the sky right away.

I generally hate being pedantic, but to really be accurate they started flying themselves into the ground rather than falling out of the sky.

I have thought a lot about this for personal reasons, and I increasingly think the biggest failing is not grounding the fleet after the Lion Air crash. The Ethiopia Air should never have happened in any company that prioritized safety and risk appropriately.

From what I understand, Boeing became toxic when they bought McDonnell-Douglas and absorbed their company culture of "Safety? Quality control? What are those?".

The 737 MAX and the 787 Dreamliner were both designed after the acquisition and are full of issues. The 777 predates that, so it's fine.

> This company is dead.

Doubt it.

For you perhaps, but the short memory of the general public, rebranding, and Boeing rebates (probably some generous amounts of heavy wine'n'dine), mean they will definitively show up at an airport near you.

The 737 survived one serious design flaw decades ago (the stuck rudder issue). People will forget about this as well.

Wasn't there something with an overheating or leaking fuel tank too?

The argument is that the issue with Boeing isn’t that they had a flaw with the 737 Max, but that their entire culture has moved away from a safety focused engineering one.

If that is indeed the case, it’s unlikely the 737 Max’s flaw is the last one (in fact, we know it isn’t, and that the FAA discovered something else, which is why it was sent back to Boeing).

I'm worried about boarding any Boeing aircraft at this point. The revelations paint a picture of an engineering culture deep into the normalization of deviance [1].

[1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Diane_Vaughan_...

The planes they built before the current era of management should be ok. I've heard the 777 has the best safety record of any plane flying, but it was engineered before the current management.

I very much agree with that in terms of the old 777-200(ER) and 777-300(ER). The upcoming 777-8 and -9 don't fill me with confidence though.

Yes and that's the point. As a lay person it's not my business to determine which Boeing aircraft are safe and which aren't. Boeing's conduct has dealt tremendous damage to their reputation for safety and this casts a shadow over the entire fleet. They have to do a lot of work to rebuild that reputation and restore the public trust.

Boeing is the red wine of the aircraft industry.

The older the better.

As a lowly passenger I don't get to choose which plane I am assigned to, also the airline seems to change it on a whim.

At this stage I'd be unhappy to be on a modern Boeing but I don't know what I could do about it, except cross my fingers and hope I won't be the next victim. I don't know what rights I'd have to claim a refund or demand a different model plane.

Same here. If this happens, and my company is forcing me to business travel, I'm refusing to travel unless I'm put on an Airbus.

What fascinating language. "I'm using all my leverage to refuse" doesn't me "I refuse". I wonder how many Boeing engineers used all their leverage to refuse to compromise safety.

Edited. I wanted to emphasize the refuse, but I guess my language portrayed weakness.

What company makes it hard to pick your flight that you’d need to resort to leverage?

Some (large) companies have automated processes where you’re forced to book travel arrangements through intranet portals with a limited choice of suppliers.

What mid-size and above company lets you book your own flights at all?

I've worked for and know many people that work for very large (F500ish) companies, as well as the large consulting companies (Deloitte, Pwc, Accenture, etc), and booking your own flights/hotel is standard practice at all of the consulting companies and most of the others.

What company doesn’t? Who books them otherwise?

Corporate travel department that enforces the travel policies.

Interesting. I’ve never heard of a corporate department that books your travel. Sounds like a hassle. Any company I’ve been at, big or small, just has their policy parameters enforced by third party booking tools.

Fly jetblue. JetBlue is Airbus only.

It’s funny how quick we forget things like the totally insane control scheme that brought down the AirFrance Airbus.

But the Airbuses were not grounded right? It is a different thing when they end up grounding all planes of a given model...

The very first passenger flight of the A320 was said to have been brought down by a software issue* and was effectively grounded by its launch being delayed. It isn't exactly the same situation, but its close enough to draw some parallels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296

* - official reports blamed the pilot, but the pilot blamed the new software in the plane. Airbus was also accused of tampering with evidence to blame the pilot. These are also some parallels to Boeing's involvement in the initial MAX crash...

It should be noted that for the Air Show, the Airbus had most of it’s software safety features disabled and on top of that, the pilots flying the plane actually didn’t know the airport they were performing at. The latter is a major red flag.

In the end, software didn’t bring down that flight (as in, the software didn’t pitch the plane down into the ground). Disabled safety features stopped the plane from correcting a situation it would normally be protecting pilots from. And the pilots where unaware of any obstructions past the runway. Coupled with long spool up times for jet engine (any jet engine, I might add), and that flight was basically doomed once it was over the runway.

Mind you, I’m not trying to put the blame on anyone here, but to compare that crash with the recent MAX crashes is just not right. More comparable would be something like Qantas Flight 72, where the autopilot did in fact result in an uncommanded pitch down. Although the pilots recovered from that situation and the plane landed safely.

>In the end, software didn’t bring down that flight (as in, the software didn’t pitch the plane down into the ground)

>to compare that crash with the recent MAX crashes is just not right

>More comparable would be something like Qantas Flight 72, where the autopilot did in fact result in an uncommanded pitch down

These seem like very unnecessary distinctions. "In the end", the plane had software that was supposed to do one thing but failed to do that, resulting in the plane crashing. These are very apt and natural comparisons.

What the pilots did was incredibly dangerous. There's some limit to what software can protect you from.

For instance there was this crash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XL_Airways_Germany_Flight_888T

which practically seemed like the people involved were trying to make it crash.

> These seem like very unnecessary distinctions. "In the end", the plane had software that was supposed to do one thing but failed to do that, resulting in the plane crashing. These are very apt and natural comparisons.

What exactly was the software supposed to do in this instance? They were flying at 30 feet, with idle engines and suddenly demanded full power while pitching up. It takes a good 8 seconds to spool up a jet engine, that's a lot of time to continue travelling forward. At the same time, due to their low speed, climbing steeply away from the ground just isn't possible because it would stall the plane.

It's a shitty situation, but physically the software can't do anything here. I guess you could make a case that the software shouldn't have allowed the plane to even get into such a dangerous flight envelope. But there are a lot of aural warnings from the GPWS (ground proximity warning system) to tell the pilots to climb away from the ground. But if you disable those warnings, can you really blame the software?

Why do you presume they are American?

Why? Do you think their safety record is worse than driving?

You're comparing apples to oranges.

Compare pilots to drivers or cars to planes.

I would guess that somewhere north of 90% of crashes are human error mainly or completely.

I didn't actually do the comparison. I asked a question. You can choose your own methodology.

But if you die, it doesn't matter whether it's human error or not, so it might be better to compare overall risk from all causes?

I understood it to be a rhetorical question, apologies if I misunderstood.

Driving encompasses both mechanical and human risks. Here we are talking about just the mechanical, so I don't think the comparison is particularly fair.

There are pieces beyond just equipment failure and operator error: things like infrastructure and process. Infrastructure has less of an impact in the sky, where the plane is pretty self-reliant, but process is huge, with maintenance schedules, co-pilots, ATC, etc all making the flying experience safer.

On the ground, it's the opposite. There's very little process around driving your car, but there's a lot of infrastructure. How roads and intersections are built, what signage is used and where, how and how much different modes are protected and isolated from each other, all have an enormous impact on road safety.

This is one of the key tenets of "Vision Zero", that blaming driver error is not an acceptable answer for why people die on the road. People make mistakes all the time, including while driving, and we have a moral responsibility to design systems and infrastructure that eliminate or minimize human death and suffering, even in the face of human error.

You're comparing the mortality rate of automobile travel to that of aircraft travel. Would you also compare the rates at which the two forms of travel are subject to, say, bird collisions?

Comparing the two is drawing a false equivalence. Yes, flying and driving are both modes of transportation, but they're radically different in terms of methodology.

I don't understand your objection. I asked a question. I didn't pick a methodology for comparison, so you can choose your own.

Respectfully, my objection is the implication that people should be okay with an "acceptable rate of mortality" for air travel because there's a relatively high rate of mortality for automobile travel (which is unrelated.)

There is an acceptable rate of mortality for everything. In some cases it's very low, but not zero. You can't leave the house without taking a risk, and there are risks at home, too.

Sure, but that's not what I've taken issue with.

Once again, my issue is that you appear to have falsely compared flight safety to car safety despite the fact that the two operate in very different ways.

I already understand that you think I'm wrong to make this comparison, but I still don't understand why. Why does it matter that airplanes and cars have many differences (of course they do)? If you die in a crash, you're just as dead.

The reason I'm talking about car safety is that driving or riding in a car is probably the most risky thing that most people do all the time. And yet, we accept the risk. So this seems like a good baseline for what should be considered an acceptable risk.

So I can understand not wanting to encourage airlines you don't like. I also understand wanting to encourage airlines to be safer, because improving safety is a good thing to do.

But that's different from not flying in a certain kind of airplane because you think you might die, while meanwhile taking other risks that are much worse. That's just inconsistent. We're all inconsistent sometimes, but it seems weird to object so strongly to someone pointing it out.

The comparison isn't wrong, it's nonsensical.

It's like comparing the mortality rate of heart surgery to that of psychotherapy because they're both performed by doctors.

If I died from talking to a therapist then, yes, I would see that as a major problem. The mortality rate of brain surgery wouldn't factor in to my decision making in this regard, because it's unrelated.

If I died on a Boeing aircraft with an inherently dangerous design flaw that makes it relatively more dangerous than other planes then, yes, I would see that as a problem.

The sad fact that driving is more dangerous does not mitigate that... because it's unrelated.

I think you're arguing that the relationship between activities doesn't matter, but when it comes to expectations, I'd argue it's the only thing that matters.

> And yet, we accept the risk. So this seems like a good baseline for what should be considered an acceptable risk.

They are completely different playing fields. In a plane your life is in the hands of a pilot or two and a computer. On the road, the risk is amplified by every other driver.

Also, skies aren't nearly as full of traffic as roads.

There is no 'acceptable baseline' that reaches across fields that isn't zero. I think this is the main point here. I doubt anyone today would consider the number of deaths we experience on the road to be an acceptable risk, either.

> that driving or riding in a car is probably the most risky thing that most people do all the time. And yet, we accept the risk. So this seems like a good baseline for what should be considered an acceptable risk.

For cars.

I'm very glad the FAA and airlines don't think the way you do about risk. They have their own standards. And it's perfectly consistent.

I sometime commute by skateboard, but I am NOT ok with my airlines or car companies using this choice as some sort of "acceptable risk baseline" for me.

> I don't understand your objection.

The objection is obvious and very easy to understand; it tries to compare apples with oranges, and here you are trying to argue that they are both fruit.

"Apples and oranges" is a metaphor for things that shouldn't be compared. But that's just asserting that you can't compare two things without giving a reason. And I'm asking why not?

There are lots of statistics comparing deaths from different causes. Why not use them to make informed choices about risk?

> "Apples and oranges" is a metaphor for things that shouldn't be compared.

No it's a reference to comparisons that don't make sense.

You can compare as many apples you'd like with oranges, just as you can compare air travel with roadway traffic, but you'd be making absurd and meaningless comparisons.

You're just repeating yourself with different adjectives. Why "absurd"? Why "meaningless"? Why "doesn't make sense"?

All I'm getting out of this is that you don't like it.

Elevators are even safer than airplanes. Why shouldn't we compare things to elevators?

Far worse than my safety record for driving that is for sure.

Other planes are available.

Ditto. And I'm really sad because after nearly two decades of not flying, I flew again last year (two round trips!) on Southwest, and I loved it and was looking forward to flying Southwest again. And now because of the 737 MAX, I'm going to have to avoid them.

What low-cost carriers in the US fly Airbus exclusively? There's Spirit, which is notoriously horrible, and I saw someone mention JetBlue elsewhere in this thread. Any others?

There is Allegiant, which has an all-Airbus fleet, but you're unlikely to fly them unless you're taking a vacation to Vegas or Florida.

Spirit also gets an unnecessarily bad rap. Yes, their seats are tight, but they fly very few true long-haul flights, so it's not that big of a deal, and the Big Front Seat is probably the best value "premium economy" experience in the US. Prices for food and drinks in flight are more reasonable than they would be in the airport. In my experience, the only really unpleasant things about flying Spirit are:

1. Long lines to check bags (solution: don't check a bag, just pay the $5 extra to carry it on)

2. Other passengers that disregard plane etiquette (listening to music without headphones, etc.) or just complain a lot.

Allegiant has one of the notoriously worst safety records of any US airline. I definitely wouldn't recommend them if your goal is to pick a safer flying experience.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/allegiant-air-the-budget-airlin...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiant_Air#Safety_concerns

Allegiant started out with old DC-9's/MD-80's, and a few 757's. They were all replaced with Airbus A320's by November 2018. Most of Allegiant's previous safety problems stemmed from using old jets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiant_Air#Fleet

I think the company's startup plan was to use cheap/old fuel-guzzling aircraft to get the business off the ground: it's cheaper to pay for fuel than interest payments on new jets. Now that they've built a stable-enough business they've transitioned to newer planes. Wikipedia says the company's first brand-new jet was purchased in 2017, which was 20 years after the company was founded.

Delta is also known for using old jets (including MD-80s, a lot of 757s, and until 2014 the DC-9. 25% of Delta's current fleet is these old planes) and is famous in the aviation world for having a stellar maintenance program and few safety issues with them. Up until ~2014, American also had several hundred MD-80s (and still has many 757s) in its fleet, and yet it still didn't have nearly the rate of safety issues that Allegiant has.

Many of the issues Allegiant was cited for were also not only due to the plane being old, but also because Allegiant's maintenance crews (which apparently are very understaffed and underequipped) totally missed the issue and erroneously cleared the plane to fly.

Allegiant's issues may have been partly due to old planes, but as evidenced by Delta/American, if Allegiant had a decent maintenance operation the old planes would not have been a problem. The fact that they still had issues does not speak well of their overall safety program, which is more than just the types of planes they fly, and also affects their current fleet.

Any Boeing designed, built or remanufactured in the past 20 years is fundamentally risky to the flying public because of the corrupting influence of regulatory capture, i.e., lax oversight of phases of system engineering and manufacturing, self-certification.

In 2010, Al Jazeera presented an investigative report about Boeing subcontractor Ducommun's substandard manufacturing practices for critical support structural ribs and door frames that Boeing installed on 737 NG (-600/-700/-800/-900) airframes and management subsequently covered up an internal safety investigation. As a direct consequence of these choices, several 737 NG's have broken up on hard landing and runway overruns, killing passengers, whereas in the past, fuselages survived intact under similar conditions.

Also, the 787 is a disaster waiting to happen.. anyone who steps foot on this clusterF deserves what they get.

Out of all the possible solutions, let's go ahead and choose the one that further destroys people's trust in our abilities to make sound decisions!

Ridiculous.

Not ridicilous at all. Same tactics have worked for many multi-national companies after huge screwups and it worked.

Just a few examples: https://www.businessinsider.com/7-companies-that-changed-nam...

United Fruits comes to mind, what a lovely company...

The mercenary cough I mean security company Blackwater rebranded as well. The School of the Americas (which is a US State Sponsored terrorist training organization for South and Central America) was rebranded to "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation"

Not surprising that you are being down-voted for stating the obvious.

Boeing exhibits all the schizophrenic behaviour we come to expect from business as it stands in this age. And they will continue to do so as long as it maximises shareholder value, which is the only reason they exist.

Sure, corp-cucks will blab on about social license and the like, but look at how the market judged them: A $100 drop from $450 to $350, and that's it. Two planes drop from the sky, killing ~350 people, subsequent investigations reveals Boeing fired their skilled engineers and to this day have not fixed their software. The share price barely moves. Why the fuck should they change anything ?

Immoral yes. Ridiculous no.

People have a short memory and a strong affect toward symbolism.

Marketing just pulls the desired psychological tricks to reach their objective.

It works. Just like lying in politics works. Just like making corporate PR statements work. Just like in your face ads work. Just like showing boobs work.

It will work as long as people are cruising in their life instead of trying to build it. It will keep working because it goes with the flow of our internal mechanisms, and it takes conscious efforts to not be influenced by it. And it will keep being used because the value of doing so it far superior than the cost.

"It is worse than a crime,—it is a blunder"

( https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Fouch%C3%A9 and https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Maurice_de_Talleyrand-... )

Immoral-as-the-norm is itself ridiculous.

I tend to see bad apples just like tornadoes or forest fires. They are natural catastrophes, and they will always be there, not matter the society we build.

The important part is how we react to those people. In that sense, I feel we are more responsible for the problem than them. Indeed, why blame a tornado ? Better learn to behave in case of one, and make houses the proper way.

So I don't think we should focus on the immorality as much as we should make sure we create generations of persons than know how to deal with it: remember bad deeds, detect manipulations, choose what they consume, etc.

You're absolutely right to focus on making sure we know how to deal with these things. The difference is that there aren't two sides to a tornado. We should also additionally focus on the people and systems that make this happen.

Sure, but no matter how much you do this additional focus, there will be always be a few terrible persons going through the net. The only way to avoid it would be to cut down on freedom to an extreme.

It's also very expensive. The legal system, prisons, and the whole gov web is a big, slow and inflexible machine.

Removing the incentive to be an asshole is just better. But it's our job, not the job of some higher power.

> People have a short memory

Just think about the "Sony Rootkit" or countless of other fiascos that have happened over time. Society forgets so easily.

Can't argue with you, that was very poignant.

This is disgusting misdirection and frankly feels fraudulent to me.

The definition of fraud is as follows:

Wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.

What Boeing is doing meets that definition of fraud if you ask me.

If there is fraud here then I think it would be committed by Ryanair. There are essentially 2 transactions to consider here:

1. Boeing-Ryanair: both parties know this plane has been rebadged and have agreed to it. There is no deception.

2. Ryanair-customer: one party has rebadged a known faulty product, claiming it to be something else. There is deception on the part of Ryanair, the entity financially benefiting from the transaction.

Maybe consider that everything the 737 MAX 8 touches dies. Airlines, flyers, shareholders.

Boeing made this dumpster fire and now they should sleep in it. I'm with other posters here who will now avoid any 737. Lots of fish in the sea, lots of planes in the sky.

True enough. Both parties seem to know that they are trying to deceive passengers though. Both are at fault if you ask me.

It's not fraud to drop a toxic brand name. It's been designated the 737-8200 internally and in regulator documents for years.

Surely the context within which alleged fraud happens is exactly what makes it so?

The mattress and consumer electronics industries do the same thing with model names, specifically so consumers can't comparison shop. Very shady.

The "deception" part is crucial. If I call water dihydrogen monoxide, is it deception? 737-8200 is and has for years been another name for that craft.

That's context dependent. If you know that people will be deceived by it, and you use the terminology for that purpose, then it is deception.

>Airlines fear some passengers will refuse to fly on the Max.

Well this sure solves that problem in an anti-customer way.

Your partner doesn't want want duck for dinner? Order it anyways and tell them it isn't duck. If you make up a new word for duck, it's not lying and you're a good partner. /s

"I can't believe it's not duck" !

In Amsterdam there is a steakhouse that has been serving horse steaks as just ‘steaks’ for over 40 years.

People thought they were great and prefered them over beef, untill they found out it was horse.

Its all in the mind!

(Steak doesn’t kill you though, airplanes do)

Edit: resto is called Piet de Leeuw

To be fair you can make a steak from horse meat, or any beefy animal for that matter.

On the one hand, I personally feel that trying to avoid the Maxes specifically, once they are allowed back in service, would be an excess of caution that overemphasizes the legacy of one issue. On the other hand, could they have found a better way of sending the message that they think the problem is passenger perceptions, rather than in systems engineering and adequate pilot training?

To be honest even without the fix, the risk for a passenger taking a single trip on this plane it still negligible. It is not really rational to worry as a passenger. It is when you work all year long on one of these planes that the risk becomes unacceptable.

I despise these types of arguments. Look I get the statistical argument; but take a moment and consider the enormity of what Boeing has done here.

Their best selling plane in history is also that which carries the most blatant stain of corruption and negligence. If Boeing gets away with this type of behavior, we really do essentially break the system by acknowledging that as long as you get big enough, it's totally fine to cheat; even in a life/safety critical industrial vertical. Sure, the PR will suck, but the network effects will ensure you keep rolling unharmed because you're too big to be allowed to fail.

This is way more than any one person's convenience at stake. This is any hint of actual systemic integrity that is at jeopardy.

This is the danger of excessive centralization and consolidation. Yes, synergy happens, and money gets unlocked, but the consequences of failure also get amplified, becoming of such a scale the entire infrastructure starts getting jeopardized. More seperate, redundant pieces at least ensures there is buffer to keep some semblance of stability in case of catastrophic failure of one particular agent in the system. When the system is essentially one agent, you're flying on a prayer nothing goes wrong. When you only have two realistic options, it isn't much better.

The effective solution isn't flying this one particular plane, the solution is to get involved in politics and work at getting people elected who will provide the resources necessary to the government agencies responsible for certifying safety.

Of course, in the US, we do the exact opposite by going for the candidates that harp on about waste and cutting down government in favor of free market solutions even when they aren't tenable. Unless of course, it's a terrorist attack, then we can unleash the floodgates of taxpayer funds to agencies tasked with violating our civil liberties.

Without any fix the plane is not safe. The MAX variant has not been around long enough to have 2 crashes, let alone 2 with no corrective action.

It's not an excess of caution, and it isn't one issue. This whole debacle has shown that safety is not a priority at Boeing at all, with misstep after misstep; we've only scratched the surface of the cancer running deep within this company.

Remember, when the first plane crashed, they tried to blame the pilots. Then the second plane crashed, and they continued to insist it was safe. All the other nations' air safety agencies had to ground the plane before the FAA would. Then after that they continued to refuse to admit fault, they wanted to make a small, lame patch to the MCAS software instead of making it triply redundant, they didn't want to retrain pilots, I could go on and on. In short, they didn't really want to fix the issue completely, they just wanted to gloss over it and get the planes back in the air as quickly and cheaply as they could, which proves my original point: safety is not a priority with Boeing today. And they certainly haven't fixed their internal management or engineering to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again.

So why would you trust this company at all at this point?

I personally would not worry if my next flight is Boeing 737 max, the probability it will crash still very low, even if it do crash, I will be dead anyway it won't matter.

Doesn't mean I trust Boeing, I trust market force, I trust that other people will keep the uproar to keep airline in check.

> I trust that other people will keep the uproar to keep airline in check.

I agree with you, and expect that engineers/regulators to do their jobs. But I think this is a form of the bystander effect. [1] I'm not sure what we can do proactively except be cognizant of what we choose to ride in.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

The engineers and regulators have already proven they can't be trusted to do their jobs. Thankfully, the EASA has stepped up to do some proper regulation now that they've seen that they can't trust the FAA any more, and are keeping the plane grounded.

I personally would not worry if my next flight is Boeing 737 max either but I would worry if any members of my family were on it.

I mean, its not like they have had a stellar record when it comes to covering up previous issues with their planes.

https://www.themilitant.com/1997/617/617_34.html http://old.seattletimes.com/news/local/737/part04/

I'd probably agree, depending on how this all resolves once they're in service. That said, it's an individual by individual decision. If my friend is afraid of heights, which I consider irrational, and I lie to them to get them somewhere high, taking that choice from them, I'm still being a huge asshole.

I wonder what happens if 737 max becomes the first Ryanair plane to crash(even with no fault on Boeing's part)?

Would that bring down the trust for low-cost airlines too?

Maybe cheap tickets can get associated with low security?

"Yeah, don't buy that ticket they are probably using the crashy plane"

50/50

The name is not new but still the motive is unclear...

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/new-name-for-ryan...

Did you mean "the motive is clear", but got autocowrekted?

Boeing is not going to disappoint you when it comes to shady stuff. I think now I am going to avoid any 737 models from now on-wards.

Perhaps not the best strategy. Excluding the MAX, the 737 has been around long enough, with enough incremental improvements, that the safety record is quite good.

Sometimes, when voting with your wallet, you don't only go for the best choice, but express lack of support for some amoral piece of sh*t behavior of competition. That's how all the boycotts of various brands/businesses happens, even if their products are fine otherwise.

Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to avoid the 737 for a lot of routes because it's so ubiquitous. Also, most of them were engineered and built before the current management, and have proven themselves with a good safety record so far, so they really should be OK. It's the new MAX model you really want to avoid, and it's probably a good idea to avoid the 787 as well.

Why the 787? It's been my favourite ride so far—comfort-wise.

1. It was created during the current management era. 2. It was built in South Carolina at a new plant that had huge production issues, such as leaving metal shavings inside the airplanes where they would get into wiring harnesses.

Let's not forget the exploding batteries which were fixed by putting a metal container around them and a hole in the hull, so when they inevitably explode again, they'll at least vent outside.

It'd be okay with that shit on a bus. Not on a plane in the middle over the Pacific. How the 787 got it's ETOPS rating is beyond me.

(actually it isn't. We have all witnessed how corrupt the FAA is by outsourcing it's own job to Boeing itself - the equivalent of a professor outsourcing paper grading to students themselves).

And this software bug that requires the plane to be turned off and on again every 248 days to prevent an integer overflow and loss of power.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/01/us-aviation...

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.g...

Just yesterday I wondered when Boeing would do this and what the name would be.

The new name is about as humdrum and forgettable as you can get, which is exactly what Boeing hopes will become of the memory of all that has transpired with the MAX.

Fortunately the plane has some distinctive and memorable exterior features: A sawtoothed trailing edge on the engine nacelles and bidirectional winglets.

The split scimitar winglets on 700s and 800s can be hard to tell apart from the MAX8's AT winglets (the AT is more raked). You're right about the giant sawtoothed LEAP engines being distinctive. Also MAX8s have a sharp rear tailcone that protrudes past the base of the tail.

So now we have to keep track of a whole constellation of aliases. Great.

I've found an easier way, chose an airline that uses Airbus instead of Boing. I only have to keep track of two identifiers and filtering becomes very easy.

which airbus planes do you avoid?

I suspect the filtering is Airbus vs Boeing

oarsinsync got it right. I just avoid anything Boeing (which means Airbus most of the time).

Was “NG” originally printed on the previous gen aircraft, but later shifted to just 737-800/737-8? I always thought the MAX name was kind of like ”New” - ie something that would disappear.

The ‘classic’ ones were -300/-400/-500, and the NG were -600/-700/-800/-900. The MAX 8 is a replacement for the -800, and it has been called a 737-8 for a while – their FAA type certificates are 737-7, -8, and -9.

question- if you are a pilot, and you fly 737s do you think that you are now unaware of the differences? Do you think that given that awareness you may be apt to want to learn about those differences, even if not for curiosities sake, but so that you don't wind up fighting a plane and losing? Now dont mistake this as sympathy or support for the management of Boeing. I think they need to pay fines/spend time in jail/have their ability to lead a corporation revoked. This was gross mismanagement, and they deserve civil and criminal charges for it.

However, it sounds to me like if you know about how the new 737 behaves, and you are aware of/trained on the procedure to fix an incident similar to what happened in the 2 crashes then you are likely to recover without any issue. On the flipside, I used to love to fly SWA because they had only 737s and all their planes were more or less the same and maintenance would be standard across all planes and therefore something that is repeatable and more likely to be mastered by the technicians. Parts would be easily available for their fleet. The pilots know the flight envelope. Sounds to me like one of southwest's biggest selling points is about to go out the window for me, even if this is a laymans perception that is completely wrong. It still seems like they have fragmented their fleet.

This.

I'm surprised by the number of HN readers going bananas about never flying in this plane again. Every pilot on the planet knows about this issue now, and commercial pilots are already used to broad differences in airplane handling characteristics and how to avoid a stall in different configurations, as long as they're not forced to fight against 120 lbs of pitch trim.

If the only thing Boeing does is add an "MCAS off" button, pilots will be able to get the thing back on the ground in an emergency, even without new type rating, and even if pitch is a little bit squirley for ten minutes.

This is the same mistake we accuse the public of making when they freak out over terrorism and demand more TSA theater. We have steel cockpit doors and a new cultural understanding of what a hijacker can do. This is what prevents a 9/11 style hijacking from happening again, not the TSA.

Will this prompt some fliers to avoid 737-anything or Boeing-anything?

It prompted this flyer to.

I'll be avoiding the 737 Max / 737 Max rebranding

Will now avoid all 737 - the 737 MAX is clearly not a good design with the forward engines.

737 Max? Yes. Others? No. The safety record of the 737-non-maxes has been stellar for the combined flight-hours of the fleet. I'm happy to stake my life on it.

Despite the rubber-stamping of the 737-MAX, I view these as separate.

There is one reason to avoid the older 737s if you have a choice and all other factors are equal: they're kinda shitty airplanes to fly on, because they're crappy old designs. Sure, they're very safe, but they're just not very nice to fly on; the more modern Airbus designs are more comfortable for passengers.

Definitely not. Time and time again, it’s been proven people only care about the cheapest ticket price. You can nickel and dime them, treat them like cattle, and physically beat your customers and they will continue to use your airline and airplanes.

I wonder what the true market equilibrium between ticket price and not dying would be if the FAA let people find their own balance. If a life is valued at $2,000,000 then people would accept a one in a million chance of dying for $2 off their ticket.

People would make irrational choices, certainly in deciding whether to drive or fly. I don't think the market would come up with an equilibrium price for a micromort: at best you could find an equilibrium price for taking some risk of dying in a particular way such as a high-profile airliner crash.

Also, it's hard for even an expert to estimate the current chance of a 737 MAX flight crashing: historically it's around 1 in 5,000, but if they were cleared to fly tomorrow it's hard to say if the rate would be 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 1 million.

Maybe Boeing and Ryanair should change their names as well ...

Ryanair never flew 737 MAX commercially yet.

Do passengers have a right to refuse to fly on the 737 "max"?

yeah, don't buy that ticket.

in ryan's case, its fleet is 100% 737, so you need to switch airlines to be sure you're not on a MAX unless they tell you somewhere.

...Yes?

Though I think what you may be actually intending to ask is is the airline bound to provide with a flight to your ticketed destination on another plane if they have to sub-in a MAX because of reasons.

That is a question with a far less straightforward answer; the last time I read terms they reserved the right to swap in hardware as circumstances warrant. You'll want to take it up with the carrier. Which I recommend everyone does; as they only pay attention when sizable customer groups start making a fuss.

that feel when isitmax8.com is already taken

What about naming it A-351 ?

What a very Ryanair thing to do.

Interestingly enough, the pilot who made a simulator experience video about 737 MAX runaway MCAS crash event (Mentour) is a Ryanair pilot too.

Can't blame Ryanair by themselves too much. Their whole company and business depends on the 737, and their foreseeable future on the Max. Not a pleasant situation to be in. Even Ryanair is not that big to handle the dumpster fire Boeing started.

I'm more irritated with IAG who is ordering a bunch of Maxes while they are still grounded and who knows when will fly again, and what the hell is wrong with them. Even giving up a part of their Airbus fleet maintenance to Boeing. Truth be told, the Max will probably fly again and it will be a very scrutinized aircraft so this is a wise business decision. Just don't mind me considering it joining the dark side.

A question: they still have to ground the "whatever re-branded 737 max" until the conclusion of the investigation, right ? This can't be a loophole to avoid the interdiction to fly, isn't it ?

Yes, MAX is a tradename, -8200 is like the model-number and FAA uses that. Still grounded.

Regardless of the name change they are still grounded. Given all the scrutiny, when they finally do fly again they will likely be one of safest planes in the sky.

On what basis? They're trying to fix a fundamental aerodynamic design failure with a software patch. The entire physical design if the airplane is flawed, and they arent rebuilding the entire fleet, just pushing another software patch.

No OP so I can't comment on his source, but I heard the exact same statement from a maintenance engineer who works on Boeing aircrafts for over 30 years (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joselitosousa). He also owns a youtube channel on which he discuss mainly aviation (pt/br) (https://www.youtube.com/avioesemusicas)

its youtube is in spanish. Sad.

A downside of there being so many threads on this fiasco is that many of the same points get made each time.

I'll post the usual counterpoint: this isn't a new. The F-16 for instance is also famously unstable, and cannot be flown without computer assistance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting...

General Dynamics never claimed the F-16 was just a slightly modified Cessna in order to avoid having to retrain pilots and have it safety tested, however.

As I understand it, the 737 itself is not flawed, but when you add huge new engines that need to be much further forward just so they don't hit the ground, that's what makes it unstable.

The whole problem was that they were trying to pass off an airplane that now has very different handling characteristics as a 737, in order to avoid retraining and proper safety testing.

Why do some people believe this? Is there some inherent truth to it that's been borne out?

I won't fly in a max. Likely ever, but at least for a number of years after they start flying again.

In the lighter end of GA there are plenty of aircraft which have gone from having initially poor safety records to having some fo the best in the fleet.

The Mitsubishi MU2 is a good example, it had some interesting control quirks due to having a tiny wing for its weight. After a number of reviews a training package was designed which almost completely solved its safety problems.

The Cirrus SR22 was also in a similar category, despite having a whole-frame parachute. Their problems were solved by insurance companies demanding more training and their owners group pushing the mantra "if in doubt, pull the chute".

I'm sure there are better examples from the commercial air transport end of the scale but I knew those from the top of my head.

>Given all the scrutiny,

I did not read anything about investigating everything from scratch, there is a possibility that the bigger engines could affect the wings, or other subsystem and because they were rushing they did not test all the systems or downplayed the possible issues.

Adding to my doubts is the fact that all the incentives is to get back in business as fast as possible and safety is just a bump that Boeign needs to get around or over it as soon as possible.

Last big issue is the credibility of FAA, you had the first airplane crash and nothing was done, second airplane crashes and FAA again does nothing until it is basically forced to ground the plane. Without the pressure from the other countries the MAX would still fly today with all the issues and the pilots and airline would have got all the blame

If that's true, why renaming it?

The cause of the problem is systemic in today's Boeing. Bad engineering coupled with corporate deception to hide it.

Until executives are fired and senior engineers that have been laid-off are rehired you should expect no substantive changes.

It is not just commercial, the US Air Force has been turning back tankers for sloppy work as well. https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-ramp-up-inspections-a...

Well considering Ryanair's predilection for renaming random airports after a large city it's not really anywhere near, this seems like a logical step.

This is not the first time an airline rebrands an airplane due fearmongering after an accident.

The Fokker-100 was rebranded as MK-28 in Brazil after an accident (trust reverse deployed after take-off). The news reported every incident with the plane afterward. I remember my parents avoiding flights with Fokker-100. The MK-28, on the other hand, had a very good safety record.

Is it appropriate to call this fearmongering when the issues are real (for the 737)?

Yes. I think it is appropriate to call this fearmongering.

The planes with the faulty software are grounded and won't be flying until they new software is proven to be safe. The re-certification process will likely be stricter than usually is. Thus, any fear about flying in those planes are unjustified.

> Thus, any fear about flying in those planes are unjustified

No they aren't. Not until the new software is indeed proven to be safe, and a review of the Max program completed to ensure corners weren't cut elsewhere as well.

It will be fearmongering if all the above is done, and media are still trying to push fear. This is not the case today, so it's not fearmongering.

I see your point. I think I might have failed to express my point of view clearly.

I was talking about reason Boeing chose to rebrand the 787-MAX.

After Boeing made a dangerously faulty plane, Boeing wrongly tried to blame pilots for the first crash, and Boeing wrongly tried to blame pilots for the second crash, the fixed plane will surely be the safest plane in the sky.

You know what they say, lightning often strikes the same place three times, but never a fourth time. :)

This Cell Tower in the Swiss Alps Is Struck by Lightning More Than 100 Times a Year

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/energy/environment/an-of...

I wouldn't called this unjustified. The issue with the plane isn't just the software but the processes around its inception and certification.

"hey we released a new version of the software" is clearly not enough to gain back my trust. The only way this plane can be consider safe is for the whole plane to go through an external and independent audit to address all the other potential design flaws. The FTA certification processes should go through an external audit as well, any of the flaws should be addressed and retrospectively applied to this plane (and any other plane concerned).

I'd contest that.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airline-mechanics-feel-pressure...

Given that the remaining 737 non MAX aircraft should be good in theory, there are very concerning trends still rife in the aviation industry that are cause for concern.

For once, the bean counters need to take a back seat to those actually trying to do their jobs keeping people safe.

This is NOT a software issue. It's a much deeper Boeing management issue which manifested (in this particular case) as a software issue. When the software issue is fixed, there is no guarantee that the underlying problem won't resurface in some other form.

Does that help them to get around regulatory scrutiny (ie get the planes on the air faster)? Or is it just to fool consumers?

This should somehow be illegal. Any time where a product is under scrutiny, it should be illegal to change the name the public has been given previously.

This is just disgusting, corporate greed. People don't trust Boeing and this isn't going to help.

Reminder at how simple it can be for an organization to rebrand itself, even with social media I feel many individuals will still be unaware of this change that will be occurring.

I knew this was the next step for these companies. They don't want to lose millions and the easiest thing to do is change the name. At some point, the public will forget.

Well if I were concerned about safety I wouldn’t fly Ryanair in the first place, I don’t think the repaint was necessary

You wouldn't fly on an airline that has had zero fatalities in its 34 year operating history? Ryanair definitely has had issues (particularly in the early 2000s with pilot fatigue) but there's a lack of basis to suggest they're unsafe.

I won't fly on Ryanair myself, but it has nothing to do with their safety record (which is fair to good), it has to do with the way they treat customers and employees.

Wait, what? Ryanair have barely had an accident in 33 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair#Accidents_and_incident...

Ryanair have a stellar safety reputation.

Just curious: are there any calls for the resignation of the entire management board?

Will they change the scalloped trailing edge of the engine nacelle?

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