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Comment by zaphar | Hacker News Reader

I think it will fly again. I won't be surprised if it takes years and some modifications to the systems before then. It may in fact turn the 737 Max into an overall loss for Boeing due to lower sales and contractual fees owed to the airlines for the planes that have already been sold and re-certifying pilots to fly it

But fixing the 737 is going to be strictly less money than developing a new model for Boeing. The right call here is to fix the issues both in software and possibly with the addition of more redundancies in the sensors. They were definitely bloodied by this but the plane itself is salvageable.

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What happens if a 737 MAX crashes? Boeing was confident in their planes when they were falling from the skies, how much more confident are they going to be when they re-introduce it into service? They(Boeing and FAA) weren't even looking into it, they were %100 sure that the plane is fine. How the public is suppsed to know that this time is different?

Okay, they may change the name but if a crash happens the media will roll the ball to point out that this is re-named 737 MAX. Is this still cheaper than developing a new plane?

> They(Boeing and FAA) weren't even looking into it, they were %100 sure that the plane is fine.

Weren’t they looking into it after the first crash already? They had issued the emergency directive with instructions for how to shut down the MCAS system, which turned out to not help in the case of the second crash, but there was already a fix to the software in development after the first crash since the issues with the system were reported at the time.

> but the plane itself is salvageable.

You're probably right. From an engineering perspective.

Would you fly in a 737MAX post-fix? We have an engineering mindset here on HN and so I would expect many of us to answer "Yes". But ask this same question to the general public? How is Boeing going to repair the damage to both it's brand and this plane's reputation, and convince the general public to fly on this model?

I wouldn't. That's because I DO have an engineering mindset. A bad platform with tons of hacks to make it work and a severe bug/wrong design hack that has been 'fixed' doesn't imply there isn't more of those we're just not aware of.

I probably would. I'm the kind who looks at the probabilities. I imagine by the time they've fixed this the plane will be pretty safe.

Just ripping out the MCAS and telling the pilots to push the nose down manually at high angles of attack would probably do it for me.

It's possible Boeing would simply rename and rebrand the model, betting that many fliers wouldn't follow the change.

There seemed to be some evidence that they might take that approach based on a 737-MAX delivery to Ryanair earlier this year:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/15/boeing-737-...

the insurers would probably play a significant role here - if insurance rates jump then the plane's profitability and thus airlines' usage of it may be affected.

One one hand this is probably the most scrutinised plane of this generation, on the other hand its the wrong sort of attention... If they can convince people that the scrutiny is an asset, then maybe it will still be viable.

More scrutiny doesn't help the fact that it's a shitty iteration on a decades out-of-date design, though. A modern airplane that's received less scrutiny is nevertheless still likely to be safer.

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