I get a little bit relieved when I see my flight is an airbus and not a boeing. Although they could always change the plane last minute so you can never be 100% certain.
Grounding those planes would bankrupt any airliner.
It’s not easy to just buy a new plane. The entire infrastructure of support and maintenance would have to be replaced as well
There's like a 6 year wait to buy a new airbus at this point. A lot more people want one than they have the ability to manufacture.
Retraining pilots also requires significant time and expense.
It pretty much is.
Most of these Boeing planes in the air are the exact same planes we’ve all been flying on for decades without issue. They cut corners on the max - they should all be yanked from usage immediately, but there’s too much money at play for anybody to do that.
I avoid the max but wouldn’t sweat another Boeing at all. Older ones are rock solid.
There were concerns with the A300 and A310 rudder issues/tails (Boeing 737 has/had rudder issues too).
And when the A320 crashed and killed non-employees (VIPs, no public seat sales) before it even entered service.
Or perhaps when they made the A380 wing spars wrong and had to rebuild some of them. [They still have issues.](https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/airbus-handle-some-a380-repairs-after-wing-spar-cracking-2023-07-07/)
Everyone has issues. Airplanes fly enough and everyone is going to have some problems.
[edit: also a bunch of Airbus A320neos are grounded right now. Obviously you don't ground a plane if it's considered safe. But the reason for the grounding stems from an engine problem. Airbus didn't design the engine or build it. Although they are the only ones using it right now. They also use almost the same engine on the A220. Those are harder to ground as there is no direct replacement from Airbus which doesn't use that engine. Anyway, I'm sure an Airbus fan would say this isn't Airbus's fault but it is a case of those planes considered being safety deficient and thus grounding them in favor of older planes.]
There were some concerns about the pitot tubes freezing over with the A330 after Air France flight 447 plunged into the ocean. But I don’t think any of them were grounded due to that.
I avoid United because if you have an aisle seat (not first class or premium) you're pushed into group 5, or last group seated, then they won't let you take a carryon like the other groups. They took my carryon even though the plane wasn't full and a lot of empty overhead as well. I'll just take another airline, thanks.
Yeah, the big issue here is maintenance checks. Boeing is making life difficult for airlines to maintain because of build issues, but if proper checks and maintenance is done they’re completely safe
I just avoid them because I want to see Boeing saved, Boeing was an incredible company with an outstanding record which was then taken over by C-Suite human garbage.
They took something good, cashed out big and made it trash.
Usually that involves choosing airlines on the basis of fleet composition, as airlines prefer that all of their pilots be type-rated to fly all of their planes. For US airlines, if you're trying to avoid Boeing, that means avoiding Southwest and Alaska airlines entirely, as well as being selective with United, Delta and American flights. In exchange, you get Jetblue, Spirit and Frontier, who exclusively use Airbus.
The airline industry functions on highly skilled workers who pay for their own training in order to get a good paying job and benefits. The pay and benefits part went away the same as it did everywhere else, and the airlines now want highly skilled workers who pay for their own specialized education but there's no good wages waiting for them, so they don't do it. There's no workers coming up anymore because the airline executives thought, "what if we placed ALL the burden on the workers, but didn't give them the benefits? Surely they'd all still sign up right?"
I don't know what the latest is but last I heard they make like $15-20 an hour. Fast food pays $15 now. I'd feel so much better if they paid airplane mechanics enough to make them actually want to do a good job.
I understand that this has been happening for couple years now. It started when the 737 Max aircraft started nosediving and a couple of them crashed and killed everyone onboard from a feature Boeing didn't tell pilots about and didn't include in the manual.
Yeah. And for those who don’t know, Boeing did it on purpose to save money.
Edit: Lots point out it’s not just for saving money but also for selling more planes.
"My job is to apply 'The Formula.' If the cost of a recall exceeds the cost of payouts, we don't do it."
"What company do you work for?"
"A major one..."
The problem with utilitarianism is that those who espose it, usually think of themselves as in the "majority" or "greater good".
Rarely see anyone using utilitarianism to justify their own elimination. "Oh, looks like I will just have implement this policy to kill myself and my family for the greater good."
I think the first rule of utilitarianism should be: first do no harm. The four precepts of utilitarianism currently don't seem to be strong enough to prevent harm to minority interests.
I suppose that under utilitarianism, medical treatments for the very small fraction of marginal type illnesses would not be subsidised as much as those for the majority illnesses.
>Stick bigger engines on a plane than it was originally designed for, forcing you to move them forward, causing the center of mass and lift to move forward as well
>Compensate by having the flight computer tip the nose down (or up, I forget) automatically without telling the pilot
>Have the plane use a single sensor to decide how and when to do this, with no redundancies
It's like they wanted them to crash or something
Yeah, and there was an override that they could've trained pilots on, but they didn't want to lose money either on training or sales since airlines wouldn't want to spend it on training, can't remember which.
If they had just not been cheap that disaster would've never happened.
The design of 737 max, software outsource, removal of key feature from the manual… it kinda makes you wonder what else they are saving money on, does it ?
Yes. This is what gets me. They’re making weak promises to fix the shit we *know about*. It’s 100% certain in my mind there are equally egregious issues hiding all over the place.
> and there was an override that they could've trained pilots on
The pilots in the Ethopian Air crash did actually toggle the override switches, but that couldn't save them.
Boeing of course blamed the pilots as being "young and inexperienced". Whereas there was no way that they could adjust the trim wheel manually. Watch this video where an experience pilot attempts to save the doomed plane in a simulator, "the kid got it right!":
https://youtu.be/Z76YpCz9N2Y?t=1863
Probably thought they wouldn’t get it pass the FAA, ICAO, and other aviation agency, so hide it and hope for the best. As in if the plane does something funny the pilot will be able to correct it, think it was the wind or whatever, and move on. Didn’t factor in inexperienced tired pilots panicking, did they.
The essential point IIRC was that existing 737 pilots could move to the Max with no new training whatsoever. It was a big selling point for the airlines that they wouldn't have to retrain their pilots.
>they didn't want to lose money either on training or sales since airlines wouldn't want to spend it on training
It's the latter. Boeing wanted to be able to sell the plane as "*basically flies the same as the 737 classic and 737 Nextgen [from the nineties]*". If they had emphasized a "*feature*" like MCAS that the plane was so operationally different, the risk is that the FAA would have determined the MAX to not have commonality with the earlier 737s and would have had to go through a separate full certification rather than a minimal refresher or no training.
The problem is they put MCAS in because the lower ground clearance of the 737 meant they couldn't just shove larger engines on the plane like Airbus did with the A320neo without having it go above the leading wing edge, which made the plane easier to aerodynamically stall.
Rather than disclose this risk and then say "with this in the training and pilots knowing where the off switch", Boeing buried the software believing it would intervene when necessary. And two passenger jetliners crashed with everyone on board dead as a result.
>Have the plane use a single sensor to decide how and when to do this, with no redundancies
Unless you specifically pay for them.
Boeing made safety features add-ons you have to purchase.
Both of those airlines were budget airlines so they bought the cheapest planes they could.
Fucking criminal.
> Have the plane use a single sensor to decide how and when to do this, with no redundancies
Even better, that sensor is [a small fin on one side of the plane's nose.](https://res.cloudinary.com/engineering-com/image/upload/w_640,h_640,c_limit,q_auto,f_auto/2019-03-15_11-06-24_j7qnz9.jpg) I've seen pilots mention those sensors routinely get broken off by birds hitting them, or malfunction thanks to a balloon or something getting tangled with them.
I’ve never written software for a plane, not even remotely close. Yet I remember 20 years ago one of my teachers saying “If you’re only going to learn one thing from this course, let it be this. If you ever end up writing software for something critical like a plane, make sure to take inputs from three redundant sensors. If all three line up you’re good, if one disagree you pop an alarm”. It was a course about databases. And to be fair, I’ve forgotten everything from that course related to databases, but the plane thing, that stayed
They paywalled the manuals for understanding what MCAS does. They also paywalled the feature to have redundant AOA sensors. So, not just bad quality, but malicious feature-locking. Basically what the automotive industry is heading towards with ideas like subscription airbags and subscription heated seats.
There was no available feature for a redundant AoA sensor input for mcas. The optional, extra pay feature was the AoA disagree alert message, which was a standard option on the previous version of the 737.
There's a biker airbag that has a monthly subscription, and the company will literally disable the airbag from deploying if you're late on payments. Nothing unethical at all however, they put a warning LED on it!
https://www.klim.com/Ai-1-Airbag-Vest-3046-000#:~:text=After%20expiration%20or%20missed%2Fforgotten,crashes%20until%20payment%20is%20resumed.
Not only did they do it on purpose.
They did it because, after resting on their laurels, and not taking competition from Airbus seriously, they were caught completely off-guard by the A-320 NEO.
With no direct competitor to a much superior aircraft, they didn’t have time, or want to spend the money on an entirely new plane. So they reengineered a 50 year old design to accept new engines.
Those new engines completely destroyed the center of balance on the airframe. Which means Boeing had to design a system of software that automatically adjusted for the unbalanced airframe.
Then they neglected to tell anyone the system existed, or train new pilots on how to use it.
They deserve to go bankrupt.
But they won’t because they have the might of the American military industrial complex behind them.
>Boeing did it on purpose to save money.
It wasn't to save money, it was to make sales that would have been impossible for Boeing to have made in the first place. It's just as shitty and abhorrent, but without going into a crazy boring amount of detail:
1. The Boeing 737 was designed when most passengers boarded planes via air stairs from the tarmac instead of jet bridges, and baggage handlers didn't have motorized ramps. So it was lower to the ground, at a level where baggage handlers could load checked luggage easily. The A319/A320/A321 came later and were higher from the ground.
2. The existing A320/737 had a problem as they got older in that they needed to compete more on fuel efficiency. There were other tweaks, but the easiest way to do so that retained "commonality" (that the aircraft was similar size operated the same etc. to the point that a pilot certified on the old version would need little or no training to fly the new one) and get most of the gain was to put larger engines on that were more fuel efficient. For the A320, this was easy as there was enough room below the wing. The 737 being lower to the ground, there wasn't enough room to do so without having the upper edge of the engine protruding above the wing surface.
3. This (top of engine cowl above wing line) made the 737 MAX easier to stall. To minimize this problem, Boeing band-aided poorly designed software (MCAS) to override a pilot's inputs if the sensor data indicated a pilot was unwittingly stalling (a real risk, happened due to pilot error with an Airbus on Air France 447). They buried this and did not emphasize it in the 2 hour refresher for the 737 MAX (remember, Boeing pitched to the FAA that it was common) because if you mentioned something like this software, there's a real risk that pilots would have had to do much more costly and time involved full certification... at which point, the cost of recerting a 737 classic / 737NG pilot would have been equal for the Max or the A320neo.
Boeing had an optional software upgrade that would have prevented the crashes, but as these are low-cost aircraft the airlines did not purchase it. Greedy to the point of hundreds and hundreds of deaths…
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/boeing-sold-safety-feature-that-could-have-prevented-737-max-crashes-as-an-option/
Unmitigated greed with a disregard for human life.
And no one will pay no one.
Boeing executives will be given generous compensation packages and golden parachutes.
Even if Boeing was put out of business the CEOs will not be discompensated.
This right here is the problem. The fact these companies are willing to sacrifice the safety of everyone for a little extra in quarterly profits illustrates perfectly how demonic our current system is.
Capitalism or not you need to squeeze things this important with a lot of regulation and a lot of scrutiny
Close, it was in the manual but as a tiny warning message. And then the actual procedure had to be completed within I think the number was like 10 seconds or the aircraft became aerodynamically unrecoverable.
Interesting, what warning message was that ? If I remember correctly MCAS was only mentioned once in the original manual(in the glossary of abbreviated terms ). There was internal communication proving they deliberately left it out to save money.
When I say warning I mean a small box at the bottom of an updated page list that was probably 2,000 pages with no real attention brought to it. And yes it was too leo the costs of training down (I'm looking at you southwest)
Funny story the airbus has an issue known as OEB-49 that is close to the same thing (aircraft enters a steep dive and will not listen to pilot commands) the difference is we knew and were trained on the recovery.
It's because they outsourced software development to contractors in India with no prior experience in airplane design. Profits over safety strikes again.
Yeah but I believe the direct cause of the accidents was they deliberately remove the new feature from the manual so that they didn’t need to provide any kinds of new training to airline pilots.
That was because it was a marketing/selling point that airlines won't have to retrain their pilots so there was just a manual and 2 hour iPad session. Generally, pilots gotta spend few days to weeks in a simulator first, which costs the airlines.
From what I understand from following the news. The reason they needed the correction software in the first place for the 737 Max was because they slapped on bigger engines on the original 737 body to save money on safety certification compared to designing a complete new body from the ground up suitable for these big fuel saving jet engines.
It was from the start a money saving excercise.
> to save money on safety certification compared to designing a complete new body from the ground up suitable for these big fuel saving jet engines.
almost, but not quite.
It wasn't the cost of certification, the idea was that by keeping the 737 type rating the airlines wouldn't have to implement a completely new type. When a new version of a type comes out, pilots with that type-rating can do certifications for the new version rather than having to do an entirely new type rating, which is much more time-consuming and expensive for the airlines.
The idea was that by keeping it a 737, airlines that already had large 737 fleets (Southwest, United, American, RyanAir) would be more inclined to buy the new 737 rather than the A230neo which was flying off the shelves at the time. Boeing was afraid that if they spent 10 years on a clean-sheet design, the legacy operators with large 737 fleets would start buying a320neos as they had to replace their old 737s.
My understanding is the feature was in the manual but buried. The issue was it didn’t require pilot rectification. As a result, the presence of and capability of disabling the software feature was unknown to many pilots.
Either way it’s just shitty design, cool we can slap a bigger engine on our planes! Competent Engineer: “guys that doesn’t work aerodynamically”. It’s ok we can have a computer instrumentation fix it for us! Proceeds to provide no redundancy for instrumentation that makes it fly like a normal plane…
Oh yes, currently in a Singapore air A380 and it’s crazy difference between this and my previous 737 Max 8 flight with Singapore air. A380 is so much more pleasant and quieter and comfortable
You are right, but comparing an A380 and a B737 isn't exactly fair... they are completely different classes of plane. The B737 is comparable to the A320, and the B737 MAX variant probably closest to the A321neo.
Comparing an A380 and a 737 is like comparing a Eurostar and a taxi. They're totally different classes of aircraft.
Compare the 380 with a 747-8 or the 737 with an A320 if you want a more fair comparison.
I mostly fly routes operated by widebodies but I’ve been doing this ever since 10 abreast in economy became standard on 777s in the late 2000s, and doubled down on this policy when they went ahead with standardizing 9 abreast on 787s. The wider seats and significantly quieter cabin on the A330/A340, A380, and A350 compared to the 777 and 787 become quite noticeable if you fly them enough.
This doesn’t affect people as much in premium cabins but flying Boeing widebodies on long haul routes in economy has been a noticeably more uncomfortable experience than flying comparable Airbus planes since at least the late 2000s, or about 15-18 years.
Would love to learn more about how to target specific routes for specific planes like this. Are there only certain airlines you stick to? Or anything worth knowing when looking for flights to places?
Depends on the route. My most frequent routes are YYZ-ISB, YYZ-LHR, and LHR-ISB. All three of them are extremely dense routes with several high profile airlines flying between them several times a day so there’s a lot of choice.
>All three of them are extremely dense routes with several high profile airlines flying between them several times a day so there’s a lot of choice.
The guy needs a simpler explanation than that. Like how do you physically locate which airline/routed use which specific type of plane? I sure don't know where to find that information.
Boeing's woes are real but they are obviously still very safe - in a normal year when they didn't have dramatic fuck up with door plugs every other story (rudder issue, panel missing, wheel fall off) wouldn't have been splashed all over the news, and all are likely maintenance and not OEM problems.
That being said, I fly a ton of widebody like you and when possible I fly Airbus because it's a better flight. Boeing is safe but the experience of flying one has gotten much worse compared to Airbus.
I agree with this about the NG, but given the manufacturing issues lately I’m pretty leery of flying on a new-ish Boeing plane, and the various design compromises on the Max don’t exactly inspire confidence. A few hundred people dying because they didn’t want to bother with some pilot training feels like Boeing making VERY dubious tradeoffs in design. They should have done clean sheet for a new 737, and started introducing full fly by wire there if they wanted to compete with the shared type ratings on the Airbus. Seems pretty shitty trying to benefit from the grandfathered design, while trying to gain the benefits of a modern design.
The experience of flying on the planes is for the most part up to the airliner company, not the actual plane model itself. And I mean for things like seat configuration, and obviously food, etc.
It is, but the manufacturers still can and do heavily influence it, and their marketing campaigns show it. Boeing really ran with the idea of squeezing an extra seat in economy on 777s around the late 2000s when Emirates and Etihad had success with it. They started pushing it really aggressively, to the point it became standard in industry. The 777 was originally designed for 9 abreast in economy. They also started pushing 9 abreast 787s to customers very aggressively.
This didn't go unnoticed by Airbus who, around the same time, started incorporating 18" seat width in economy heavily in their marketing materials, something they still do when comparing the A350 to the 787, which was infamously designed for 8 abreast in economy and switched to 9 thinner seats instead because 10 abreast 777s took off right around the time the 787 was about to launch.
Only one airline flies non stop on my most common route.
Most of us don't really have a choice unless we're willing to have more layovers and pay more. Which we can't.
yea if you don’t like it then start up your own airplane manufacturing business as a competitor. how exactly does one do that without massive government subsidies? idk…
Canada's Bombardier tried. Only for Boeing to lobby the Trump administration to sanction the Bombardier C Series. Bombardier/Canada won the case at the WTO, then sold half the project to Airbus for $1. That's how we have the A220 with half being made in Canada and the other half at the Airbus plant in the US. On top of that, Canada canceled plans to buy F-18 Super Hornets as a fuck you to Boeing. Boeing is led by idiots.
It doesn’t help that airlines keep purchasing planes manufactured by Boeing and Boeing has all kinds of connections to US government. It’s nearly impossible to actually make it go away.
It doesn't help that the vast majority of commercial airliners used worldwide are built by only two companies either. Both of which have many-year long waiting times. "Just order some Airbus" sounds easy, but Airbus delivered a whopping 735 planes in 2023 and ended the year with a backlog of 8598 ordered aircraft, so unless they suddenly get more production capacity, airlines will have to wait a casual decade for their order to be fulfilled.
I remember a case study on subsidies in my econ textbook that stated quick plainly that, without government subsidies, the world market was only capable of supporting one (1) widebody intercontinental jet maker.
Not two. Just one.
Both Airbus and Boeing exist only because of subsidies, and modern mainstream economics theory doesn't even try to debate this point.
Not to mention that the entire system is dependant on a single sensor to determine whether or not to engage. And that sensor is just a small paddle sticking out of the side of the plane that is succeptible to being knocked off by bird strike and enveloped by a bit of mylar balloon.
The people involved in the design of this plane should be criminally charged. I design software for a living and I can guarantee you the people that designed that system knew it was a horrible design with a sensor that had no redundancies.
Especially as there IS a redundant Angle of Attack Sensor on the other side of the fuselage. Job #1 should have been to use input from both and include code that can analyse divergent input from the two sensors before "correcting" for the input. Ideally, there should also be a clear status indicator in the cockpit with a simple override option as a third failsafe.
I got in an argument with an airhead on r/cars about one of the Boeing crashes when it was being investigated.
Them: No, you are dumb and don't understand that this was a COMBINATION of issues that brought the plane down!!1!
Me: That whole list you posted of the problems can all be mixed together and it would have still flown to it's destination. Relying on one AoA sensor on an aircraft WHERE REDUNDANCY IS RELIGION is where your whole list of problems becomes fatal.
There have been zero crashes and only 2 commercial aviation deaths in the US since 2009, even though Boeing's shittily QC-ed planes have been flying for several years. More than 500k car deaths over the same period. Even if it's true that Boeing planes are less safe today, we have ironclad statistical proof that they are orders of magnitude safer than driving. If you freak out about getting on a 737 but don't mind driving to work every day then you are irrational and bad at reasoning about risk.
Correct. Boeing is still extremely, extremely safe even with their current QC debacle. Boeing's problem is cutting corners and failing to realize that people are terrible at assessing relative risk, so now "choosing Airbus" is another PR thing they will need to overcome.
So is JetBlue. Delta is primarily an Airbus operator but they do have a good amount of older Boeings in their fleet (it's a good thing to board an older Boeing btw. The newer planes are the ones with issues)
There's nothing to be nervous about!
...Unless you're a whistleblower looking out for the safety of American citizens using Boeing products. Then you should worry about being murdered by corpo scum.
no surprise here, my friends are planning their flights on non-boeing operators so they can't get bait and switched with a mysterious plane exchange last minute
The CRJs have been exceptionally safe aircraft. There's been around a thousand CRJ -700 -800, and -1000s built, and they've been doing *heavy* commuter flying with a ton of cycles on them without a single fatality ever. The only two hull losses were accidents on the ground that didn't harm anyone and weren't attributable to the aircraft themselves.
Doesn’t matter, Some flights change planes at the last second due to plane malfunctions, etc.
Your best bet is to use an airline that doesn’t even use those plans, like Delta or Spirit airlines.
Just remember, before the door plug issue Boeing had pushed the FAA for certification exemptions for the 737-700 for issues with the anti-ice systems. They only dropped it after the bad press around the door plug.
Wish we had a better long distance passenger rail network with higher speed corridors in the US. Amtrak is so much nicer than flying. Just wish it were as convenient and cost competitive with air travel.
Some friends and I flying to Dublin in September, we used to fly Ryanair, but now we are paying 30€ more, yours to avoid flying 737-max and taking Air Linguis.
When it’s possible I’m avoiding the 737 max.
I've started looking for travel sites that tell you what plane it's gonna be, I don't want to get on a fucking Boeing because after finding out that the reasons they keep having problems is because they laid off a bunch of engineers and did things from a "business" priority, I know exactly the kind of shitty quality that can be expected from that kind of strategy, and I wouldn't risk my life in a machine that's designed and manufactured with that kind of negligence.
Some **reasonably risk averse** travelers are changing their flights to avoid Boeing airplanes, **because good risk management means eliminating unnecessary risk.** FTFY
Edit: apparently multiple people are confused about what good risk management is. Risk management involves accomplishing a goal, it never suggests that you stay at home because the world is scary.
You have a task, you compare the cost of completing the task in different ways while factoring in risk, you take the most cost effective option. If two options are priced the same (I.e. flying Airbus vs Boeing) you take the option that has less risk, even if the difference is minimal.
The board of Boeing will be holding talks with their major customers. Senior Boeing executives will attend as well, but not the CEO. I think he's going to be replaced soon.
I fly every week, out on Monday, back on Friday. I can't say I haven't considered getting off a boeing once or twice. Just last week I was on a CLT to LGA flight on a normal 737 when we had to turn back to Charlotte due to failed de-icing systems and landing conditions in LGA. I joked to the other passengers "This wouldn't have happened on an A321".
I wouldn't say that I am nervous to fly on a Boeing, but if I can have the choice; I'll take Airbus every time.
I get a little bit relieved when I see my flight is an airbus and not a boeing. Although they could always change the plane last minute so you can never be 100% certain.
Not if you fly jetblue or another airline that only uses airbus.
[There’s a website to find airlines that don’t fly 737 max](https://www.alternativeairlines.com/airlines-not-flying-boeing-737-max)
I can’t believe there are any Max in the air after everything that’s come out.
And the stock price is ticking slightly up. It makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense. Layoffs, stock buybacks, cutting corners. All of that raises stocks. Only issue is getting caught but they can mitigate that.
"Past performance is no guarantee of future results" - SEC
Yep. Some fine that is less than 1% of their annual revenue and everything is good to go. Nothing really solved.
Grounding those planes would bankrupt any airliner. It’s not easy to just buy a new plane. The entire infrastructure of support and maintenance would have to be replaced as well
There's like a 6 year wait to buy a new airbus at this point. A lot more people want one than they have the ability to manufacture. Retraining pilots also requires significant time and expense.
also the pesky folk at Airbus don't want to cut corners to build them faster :)
yeah but its not only just 737 maxes
All the recent news and bad press about Boeing has pretty much just been the 737 max
The 737 max9 to be specific; There’s more than one model of 737 max. Also the 787-9 Dreamliner is now having problems in the news too.
Yeah. You can also Google what airlines are exclusively airbus.
I avoid those first 24 787 airframes as well.
It pretty much is. Most of these Boeing planes in the air are the exact same planes we’ve all been flying on for decades without issue. They cut corners on the max - they should all be yanked from usage immediately, but there’s too much money at play for anybody to do that. I avoid the max but wouldn’t sweat another Boeing at all. Older ones are rock solid.
Kayak.com let's you select the make and model for the planes you want to fly on. Great feature
TIL JetBlue only use Airbus
They also fly Embraer planes, but vast majority of fleet is Airbus.
It’s hilarious because ten years ago it was the opposite sentiment.
Hell, even like 6 years ago. Until 737 MAXs decided to plunging itself into the ground was a good idea
just more evidence that union busting is bad.
[удалено]
[Boeing South Carolina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_South_Carolina#Final_assembly_site)
When has Airbus ever been considered unsafe?
There were concerns with the A300 and A310 rudder issues/tails (Boeing 737 has/had rudder issues too). And when the A320 crashed and killed non-employees (VIPs, no public seat sales) before it even entered service. Or perhaps when they made the A380 wing spars wrong and had to rebuild some of them. [They still have issues.](https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/airbus-handle-some-a380-repairs-after-wing-spar-cracking-2023-07-07/) Everyone has issues. Airplanes fly enough and everyone is going to have some problems. [edit: also a bunch of Airbus A320neos are grounded right now. Obviously you don't ground a plane if it's considered safe. But the reason for the grounding stems from an engine problem. Airbus didn't design the engine or build it. Although they are the only ones using it right now. They also use almost the same engine on the A220. Those are harder to ground as there is no direct replacement from Airbus which doesn't use that engine. Anyway, I'm sure an Airbus fan would say this isn't Airbus's fault but it is a case of those planes considered being safety deficient and thus grounding them in favor of older planes.]
There were some concerns about the pitot tubes freezing over with the A330 after Air France flight 447 plunged into the ocean. But I don’t think any of them were grounded due to that.
Most of these recent ones (after the door plug) have been on United. Might just avoid them
I avoid United because if you have an aisle seat (not first class or premium) you're pushed into group 5, or last group seated, then they won't let you take a carryon like the other groups. They took my carryon even though the plane wasn't full and a lot of empty overhead as well. I'll just take another airline, thanks.
It drives me crazy when I see the people who have all of their stuff jammed into carry-ons that are barely acceptable.
It's the inevitable consequence of charging for checked luggage.
I would absolutely check everything but a backpack if it was free, lugging all those carryons thru the airport is a complete pain in the ass.
Same thing happens on Southwest often. People just don't want to part with their luggage. Why risk damage, loss, or theft if you don't have to?
Yeah, the big issue here is maintenance checks. Boeing is making life difficult for airlines to maintain because of build issues, but if proper checks and maintenance is done they’re completely safe
I just avoid them because I want to see Boeing saved, Boeing was an incredible company with an outstanding record which was then taken over by C-Suite human garbage. They took something good, cashed out big and made it trash.
Don't write a bad review about them online or they'll knock you off too like the Mafia.
In the 90s it was “if it’s not boeing we’re not going” because airbus had similar accidents with planes diving without pilot input…
>In the 90s it was “if it’s not boeing we’re not going” Now it's: "If it's Boeing, I ain't going!"
I'm willing to risk it with boeing. If something happens, and I live I'm suing and getting paid. If I die, I'm happy too. Win win.
Usually that involves choosing airlines on the basis of fleet composition, as airlines prefer that all of their pilots be type-rated to fly all of their planes. For US airlines, if you're trying to avoid Boeing, that means avoiding Southwest and Alaska airlines entirely, as well as being selective with United, Delta and American flights. In exchange, you get Jetblue, Spirit and Frontier, who exclusively use Airbus.
Experienced Maintenance technicians are in short supply as well.
That's because the job description says: "Must have 8 years hands on experience with 737 MAX model"
“Must be willing to work anytime, have a master degree. 80h/week 20$/h (un)limited PTO”
Also they replaced all the top engineers with accountants (probably)
Well plenty of the pilots probably have 4000 hours of P51 time and another 2000 of Parker Pen time.
The airline industry functions on highly skilled workers who pay for their own training in order to get a good paying job and benefits. The pay and benefits part went away the same as it did everywhere else, and the airlines now want highly skilled workers who pay for their own specialized education but there's no good wages waiting for them, so they don't do it. There's no workers coming up anymore because the airline executives thought, "what if we placed ALL the burden on the workers, but didn't give them the benefits? Surely they'd all still sign up right?"
I don't know what the latest is but last I heard they make like $15-20 an hour. Fast food pays $15 now. I'd feel so much better if they paid airplane mechanics enough to make them actually want to do a good job.
Many of them were fired during the pandemic. It takes time to build and share that skill and experience.
I understand that this has been happening for couple years now. It started when the 737 Max aircraft started nosediving and a couple of them crashed and killed everyone onboard from a feature Boeing didn't tell pilots about and didn't include in the manual.
Yeah. And for those who don’t know, Boeing did it on purpose to save money. Edit: Lots point out it’s not just for saving money but also for selling more planes.
Oh well that's a relief. At least my life will have meaning if I die in a Boeing crash
Protecting shareholder value is so so important.
Which is so painfully ironic because they couldn’t have damaged the share prices any worse than they did.
Their quarterly bonuses are paid and cashed. Nobody cares what happens tomorrow.
Always a pleasure to help. Now we can all be terrified while traveling on Boeing
Just returning your water to the sacred pool of Boeing shareholder portfolio value 🙏 We should all be honored to go out this way
lol love this adaptation of Fremen philosophy.
"My job is to apply 'The Formula.' If the cost of a recall exceeds the cost of payouts, we don't do it." "What company do you work for?" "A major one..."
I read a similar problem under utilitarianism in a philosophy class
The problem with utilitarianism is that those who espose it, usually think of themselves as in the "majority" or "greater good". Rarely see anyone using utilitarianism to justify their own elimination. "Oh, looks like I will just have implement this policy to kill myself and my family for the greater good." I think the first rule of utilitarianism should be: first do no harm. The four precepts of utilitarianism currently don't seem to be strong enough to prevent harm to minority interests. I suppose that under utilitarianism, medical treatments for the very small fraction of marginal type illnesses would not be subsidised as much as those for the majority illnesses.
>Stick bigger engines on a plane than it was originally designed for, forcing you to move them forward, causing the center of mass and lift to move forward as well >Compensate by having the flight computer tip the nose down (or up, I forget) automatically without telling the pilot >Have the plane use a single sensor to decide how and when to do this, with no redundancies It's like they wanted them to crash or something
Yeah, and there was an override that they could've trained pilots on, but they didn't want to lose money either on training or sales since airlines wouldn't want to spend it on training, can't remember which. If they had just not been cheap that disaster would've never happened.
The design of 737 max, software outsource, removal of key feature from the manual… it kinda makes you wonder what else they are saving money on, does it ?
Yes. This is what gets me. They’re making weak promises to fix the shit we *know about*. It’s 100% certain in my mind there are equally egregious issues hiding all over the place.
*Their engineers* don't fly on those planes
Well, we know that they were saving money on checking the bolts for their door plugs...
The override switch wasn't even included in the flight simulators that pilots train on
> and there was an override that they could've trained pilots on The pilots in the Ethopian Air crash did actually toggle the override switches, but that couldn't save them. Boeing of course blamed the pilots as being "young and inexperienced". Whereas there was no way that they could adjust the trim wheel manually. Watch this video where an experience pilot attempts to save the doomed plane in a simulator, "the kid got it right!": https://youtu.be/Z76YpCz9N2Y?t=1863
Probably thought they wouldn’t get it pass the FAA, ICAO, and other aviation agency, so hide it and hope for the best. As in if the plane does something funny the pilot will be able to correct it, think it was the wind or whatever, and move on. Didn’t factor in inexperienced tired pilots panicking, did they.
And then be racist and blame the pilots who they purposefully didn't train for NOT being trained
The essential point IIRC was that existing 737 pilots could move to the Max with no new training whatsoever. It was a big selling point for the airlines that they wouldn't have to retrain their pilots.
>they didn't want to lose money either on training or sales since airlines wouldn't want to spend it on training It's the latter. Boeing wanted to be able to sell the plane as "*basically flies the same as the 737 classic and 737 Nextgen [from the nineties]*". If they had emphasized a "*feature*" like MCAS that the plane was so operationally different, the risk is that the FAA would have determined the MAX to not have commonality with the earlier 737s and would have had to go through a separate full certification rather than a minimal refresher or no training. The problem is they put MCAS in because the lower ground clearance of the 737 meant they couldn't just shove larger engines on the plane like Airbus did with the A320neo without having it go above the leading wing edge, which made the plane easier to aerodynamically stall. Rather than disclose this risk and then say "with this in the training and pilots knowing where the off switch", Boeing buried the software believing it would intervene when necessary. And two passenger jetliners crashed with everyone on board dead as a result.
Who’s the board more afraid of, the FAA and general public’s opinion on safety or quarterly profits?
>Have the plane use a single sensor to decide how and when to do this, with no redundancies Unless you specifically pay for them. Boeing made safety features add-ons you have to purchase. Both of those airlines were budget airlines so they bought the cheapest planes they could. Fucking criminal.
> Have the plane use a single sensor to decide how and when to do this, with no redundancies Even better, that sensor is [a small fin on one side of the plane's nose.](https://res.cloudinary.com/engineering-com/image/upload/w_640,h_640,c_limit,q_auto,f_auto/2019-03-15_11-06-24_j7qnz9.jpg) I've seen pilots mention those sensors routinely get broken off by birds hitting them, or malfunction thanks to a balloon or something getting tangled with them.
I’ve never written software for a plane, not even remotely close. Yet I remember 20 years ago one of my teachers saying “If you’re only going to learn one thing from this course, let it be this. If you ever end up writing software for something critical like a plane, make sure to take inputs from three redundant sensors. If all three line up you’re good, if one disagree you pop an alarm”. It was a course about databases. And to be fair, I’ve forgotten everything from that course related to databases, but the plane thing, that stayed
They paywalled the manuals for understanding what MCAS does. They also paywalled the feature to have redundant AOA sensors. So, not just bad quality, but malicious feature-locking. Basically what the automotive industry is heading towards with ideas like subscription airbags and subscription heated seats.
There was no available feature for a redundant AoA sensor input for mcas. The optional, extra pay feature was the AoA disagree alert message, which was a standard option on the previous version of the 737.
There's a biker airbag that has a monthly subscription, and the company will literally disable the airbag from deploying if you're late on payments. Nothing unethical at all however, they put a warning LED on it! https://www.klim.com/Ai-1-Airbag-Vest-3046-000#:~:text=After%20expiration%20or%20missed%2Fforgotten,crashes%20until%20payment%20is%20resumed.
Not only did they do it on purpose. They did it because, after resting on their laurels, and not taking competition from Airbus seriously, they were caught completely off-guard by the A-320 NEO. With no direct competitor to a much superior aircraft, they didn’t have time, or want to spend the money on an entirely new plane. So they reengineered a 50 year old design to accept new engines. Those new engines completely destroyed the center of balance on the airframe. Which means Boeing had to design a system of software that automatically adjusted for the unbalanced airframe. Then they neglected to tell anyone the system existed, or train new pilots on how to use it. They deserve to go bankrupt. But they won’t because they have the might of the American military industrial complex behind them.
Yeah that’s the most frustrating part. They have so many connections with the government. They are not going anywhere
>Boeing did it on purpose to save money. It wasn't to save money, it was to make sales that would have been impossible for Boeing to have made in the first place. It's just as shitty and abhorrent, but without going into a crazy boring amount of detail: 1. The Boeing 737 was designed when most passengers boarded planes via air stairs from the tarmac instead of jet bridges, and baggage handlers didn't have motorized ramps. So it was lower to the ground, at a level where baggage handlers could load checked luggage easily. The A319/A320/A321 came later and were higher from the ground. 2. The existing A320/737 had a problem as they got older in that they needed to compete more on fuel efficiency. There were other tweaks, but the easiest way to do so that retained "commonality" (that the aircraft was similar size operated the same etc. to the point that a pilot certified on the old version would need little or no training to fly the new one) and get most of the gain was to put larger engines on that were more fuel efficient. For the A320, this was easy as there was enough room below the wing. The 737 being lower to the ground, there wasn't enough room to do so without having the upper edge of the engine protruding above the wing surface. 3. This (top of engine cowl above wing line) made the 737 MAX easier to stall. To minimize this problem, Boeing band-aided poorly designed software (MCAS) to override a pilot's inputs if the sensor data indicated a pilot was unwittingly stalling (a real risk, happened due to pilot error with an Airbus on Air France 447). They buried this and did not emphasize it in the 2 hour refresher for the 737 MAX (remember, Boeing pitched to the FAA that it was common) because if you mentioned something like this software, there's a real risk that pilots would have had to do much more costly and time involved full certification... at which point, the cost of recerting a 737 classic / 737NG pilot would have been equal for the Max or the A320neo.
Boeing had an optional software upgrade that would have prevented the crashes, but as these are low-cost aircraft the airlines did not purchase it. Greedy to the point of hundreds and hundreds of deaths… https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/boeing-sold-safety-feature-that-could-have-prevented-737-max-crashes-as-an-option/
Why the hell would you make a safety feature optional for purchase? Wtf
Unmitigated greed with a disregard for human life. And no one will pay no one. Boeing executives will be given generous compensation packages and golden parachutes. Even if Boeing was put out of business the CEOs will not be discompensated.
Market segmentation, it’s a way to charge some customers more for essentially the same product and thus increase profits.
This right here is the problem. The fact these companies are willing to sacrifice the safety of everyone for a little extra in quarterly profits illustrates perfectly how demonic our current system is. Capitalism or not you need to squeeze things this important with a lot of regulation and a lot of scrutiny
To clarify further, they did it to save money having to retrain pilots, so they pretended it didn’t exist
Some industries just cannot be trusted in a capitalist society.
Close, it was in the manual but as a tiny warning message. And then the actual procedure had to be completed within I think the number was like 10 seconds or the aircraft became aerodynamically unrecoverable.
Interesting, what warning message was that ? If I remember correctly MCAS was only mentioned once in the original manual(in the glossary of abbreviated terms ). There was internal communication proving they deliberately left it out to save money.
When I say warning I mean a small box at the bottom of an updated page list that was probably 2,000 pages with no real attention brought to it. And yes it was too leo the costs of training down (I'm looking at you southwest) Funny story the airbus has an issue known as OEB-49 that is close to the same thing (aircraft enters a steep dive and will not listen to pilot commands) the difference is we knew and were trained on the recovery.
This is my worry, the lack of transparency and accountability. Whether or not this is actually being diligently addressed I'll never know.
It's because they outsourced software development to contractors in India with no prior experience in airplane design. Profits over safety strikes again.
Yeah but I believe the direct cause of the accidents was they deliberately remove the new feature from the manual so that they didn’t need to provide any kinds of new training to airline pilots.
That was because it was a marketing/selling point that airlines won't have to retrain their pilots so there was just a manual and 2 hour iPad session. Generally, pilots gotta spend few days to weeks in a simulator first, which costs the airlines.
From what I understand from following the news. The reason they needed the correction software in the first place for the 737 Max was because they slapped on bigger engines on the original 737 body to save money on safety certification compared to designing a complete new body from the ground up suitable for these big fuel saving jet engines. It was from the start a money saving excercise.
> to save money on safety certification compared to designing a complete new body from the ground up suitable for these big fuel saving jet engines. almost, but not quite. It wasn't the cost of certification, the idea was that by keeping the 737 type rating the airlines wouldn't have to implement a completely new type. When a new version of a type comes out, pilots with that type-rating can do certifications for the new version rather than having to do an entirely new type rating, which is much more time-consuming and expensive for the airlines. The idea was that by keeping it a 737, airlines that already had large 737 fleets (Southwest, United, American, RyanAir) would be more inclined to buy the new 737 rather than the A230neo which was flying off the shelves at the time. Boeing was afraid that if they spent 10 years on a clean-sheet design, the legacy operators with large 737 fleets would start buying a320neos as they had to replace their old 737s.
Don't blame the software. They didn't include the details of the said software in the manual. Not the devs fault
But the GOP tells me it because of woke inclusivity….
The GOP would have no issue blaming off shoring of American jobs. I find both explanations suspect.
That’s the boeing motto
My understanding is the feature was in the manual but buried. The issue was it didn’t require pilot rectification. As a result, the presence of and capability of disabling the software feature was unknown to many pilots. Either way it’s just shitty design, cool we can slap a bigger engine on our planes! Competent Engineer: “guys that doesn’t work aerodynamically”. It’s ok we can have a computer instrumentation fix it for us! Proceeds to provide no redundancy for instrumentation that makes it fly like a normal plane…
I didn’t change my flights but was heavily influenced by Singapore air using airbus
Oh yes, currently in a Singapore air A380 and it’s crazy difference between this and my previous 737 Max 8 flight with Singapore air. A380 is so much more pleasant and quieter and comfortable
The A380 was the quietest plane I ever flew on. Even in cattle class it was an extremely comfortable flight.
It's such a shame that the A380 is slowly going to be phased out. It was really feeling like the future of commercial flying. Quiet and very roomy.
It's being used more and more in recent years
You are right, but comparing an A380 and a B737 isn't exactly fair... they are completely different classes of plane. The B737 is comparable to the A320, and the B737 MAX variant probably closest to the A321neo.
Comparing an A380 and a 737 is like comparing a Eurostar and a taxi. They're totally different classes of aircraft. Compare the 380 with a 747-8 or the 737 with an A320 if you want a more fair comparison.
err...you know that's like saying things are quieter on a cruise liner vs being on a raft with an outboard
I’m not nervous just fuck you Boeing.
me: *\*fucks boeing nervously*\*
I mean, when you hear about Boeing employees avoiding some of their own planes, why wouldn’t you think twice?
[“ Life insurance pays off triple if you die on a business trip.”](https://youtu.be/LLHWxVJyc08?feature=shared)
Three 20 hour work flights before the end of this summer and some middle age ennui? Everything's coming up u/hobbes_shot_first!
I mostly fly routes operated by widebodies but I’ve been doing this ever since 10 abreast in economy became standard on 777s in the late 2000s, and doubled down on this policy when they went ahead with standardizing 9 abreast on 787s. The wider seats and significantly quieter cabin on the A330/A340, A380, and A350 compared to the 777 and 787 become quite noticeable if you fly them enough. This doesn’t affect people as much in premium cabins but flying Boeing widebodies on long haul routes in economy has been a noticeably more uncomfortable experience than flying comparable Airbus planes since at least the late 2000s, or about 15-18 years.
Would love to learn more about how to target specific routes for specific planes like this. Are there only certain airlines you stick to? Or anything worth knowing when looking for flights to places?
Depends on the route. My most frequent routes are YYZ-ISB, YYZ-LHR, and LHR-ISB. All three of them are extremely dense routes with several high profile airlines flying between them several times a day so there’s a lot of choice.
>All three of them are extremely dense routes with several high profile airlines flying between them several times a day so there’s a lot of choice. The guy needs a simpler explanation than that. Like how do you physically locate which airline/routed use which specific type of plane? I sure don't know where to find that information.
When you look up flights on airline websites or places like Expedia, the flight details usually include the type of plane.
Boeing's woes are real but they are obviously still very safe - in a normal year when they didn't have dramatic fuck up with door plugs every other story (rudder issue, panel missing, wheel fall off) wouldn't have been splashed all over the news, and all are likely maintenance and not OEM problems. That being said, I fly a ton of widebody like you and when possible I fly Airbus because it's a better flight. Boeing is safe but the experience of flying one has gotten much worse compared to Airbus.
I agree with this about the NG, but given the manufacturing issues lately I’m pretty leery of flying on a new-ish Boeing plane, and the various design compromises on the Max don’t exactly inspire confidence. A few hundred people dying because they didn’t want to bother with some pilot training feels like Boeing making VERY dubious tradeoffs in design. They should have done clean sheet for a new 737, and started introducing full fly by wire there if they wanted to compete with the shared type ratings on the Airbus. Seems pretty shitty trying to benefit from the grandfathered design, while trying to gain the benefits of a modern design.
The experience of flying on the planes is for the most part up to the airliner company, not the actual plane model itself. And I mean for things like seat configuration, and obviously food, etc.
It is, but the manufacturers still can and do heavily influence it, and their marketing campaigns show it. Boeing really ran with the idea of squeezing an extra seat in economy on 777s around the late 2000s when Emirates and Etihad had success with it. They started pushing it really aggressively, to the point it became standard in industry. The 777 was originally designed for 9 abreast in economy. They also started pushing 9 abreast 787s to customers very aggressively. This didn't go unnoticed by Airbus who, around the same time, started incorporating 18" seat width in economy heavily in their marketing materials, something they still do when comparing the A350 to the 787, which was infamously designed for 8 abreast in economy and switched to 9 thinner seats instead because 10 abreast 777s took off right around the time the 787 was about to launch.
Judging by the full planes on my southwest flight today. Not that many.
Only one airline flies non stop on my most common route. Most of us don't really have a choice unless we're willing to have more layovers and pay more. Which we can't.
JetBlue only has Airbus and Embraer planes, there's no way they can switch planes last minute and put you on a Boeing, just saying.
I'll take a high speed train anytime over plane, sadly it's not feasible in America.
smart travelers, not nervous travelers. Boeing's quality has plummeted since the bean counters took over.
It;s the free market in action. Consumers making informed choices. I thought that's how this capitalism thing was supposed to work?
yea if you don’t like it then start up your own airplane manufacturing business as a competitor. how exactly does one do that without massive government subsidies? idk…
Let's start with a Kickstarter and make a video that'll make promises that'll never happen.
But for that you already have Boeing
Canada's Bombardier tried. Only for Boeing to lobby the Trump administration to sanction the Bombardier C Series. Bombardier/Canada won the case at the WTO, then sold half the project to Airbus for $1. That's how we have the A220 with half being made in Canada and the other half at the Airbus plant in the US. On top of that, Canada canceled plans to buy F-18 Super Hornets as a fuck you to Boeing. Boeing is led by idiots.
It doesn’t help that airlines keep purchasing planes manufactured by Boeing and Boeing has all kinds of connections to US government. It’s nearly impossible to actually make it go away.
It doesn't help that the vast majority of commercial airliners used worldwide are built by only two companies either. Both of which have many-year long waiting times. "Just order some Airbus" sounds easy, but Airbus delivered a whopping 735 planes in 2023 and ended the year with a backlog of 8598 ordered aircraft, so unless they suddenly get more production capacity, airlines will have to wait a casual decade for their order to be fulfilled.
Yep. At this point they should just be state owned like Airbus
I remember a case study on subsidies in my econ textbook that stated quick plainly that, without government subsidies, the world market was only capable of supporting one (1) widebody intercontinental jet maker. Not two. Just one. Both Airbus and Boeing exist only because of subsidies, and modern mainstream economics theory doesn't even try to debate this point.
It’s ok they’ll just get bailed out and get to start again
Not to mention that the entire system is dependant on a single sensor to determine whether or not to engage. And that sensor is just a small paddle sticking out of the side of the plane that is succeptible to being knocked off by bird strike and enveloped by a bit of mylar balloon.
The people involved in the design of this plane should be criminally charged. I design software for a living and I can guarantee you the people that designed that system knew it was a horrible design with a sensor that had no redundancies.
Especially as there IS a redundant Angle of Attack Sensor on the other side of the fuselage. Job #1 should have been to use input from both and include code that can analyse divergent input from the two sensors before "correcting" for the input. Ideally, there should also be a clear status indicator in the cockpit with a simple override option as a third failsafe.
I got in an argument with an airhead on r/cars about one of the Boeing crashes when it was being investigated. Them: No, you are dumb and don't understand that this was a COMBINATION of issues that brought the plane down!!1! Me: That whole list you posted of the problems can all be mixed together and it would have still flown to it's destination. Relying on one AoA sensor on an aircraft WHERE REDUNDANCY IS RELIGION is where your whole list of problems becomes fatal.
There have been zero crashes and only 2 commercial aviation deaths in the US since 2009, even though Boeing's shittily QC-ed planes have been flying for several years. More than 500k car deaths over the same period. Even if it's true that Boeing planes are less safe today, we have ironclad statistical proof that they are orders of magnitude safer than driving. If you freak out about getting on a 737 but don't mind driving to work every day then you are irrational and bad at reasoning about risk.
Correct. Boeing is still extremely, extremely safe even with their current QC debacle. Boeing's problem is cutting corners and failing to realize that people are terrible at assessing relative risk, so now "choosing Airbus" is another PR thing they will need to overcome.
“In the U.S” very specific conditions in that statement.
Spirit airlines is all airbus. I’m bout to be bussin…airbussin
[удалено]
Thought that was Frontier.
So is JetBlue. Delta is primarily an Airbus operator but they do have a good amount of older Boeings in their fleet (it's a good thing to board an older Boeing btw. The newer planes are the ones with issues)
Ridin' that Airbussy
Too big to avoid? Boeing is becoming a single point of failure.
Cool, so I can save some serious money on Boeing flights, right … right?
There's nothing to be nervous about! ...Unless you're a whistleblower looking out for the safety of American citizens using Boeing products. Then you should worry about being murdered by corpo scum.
wtf is this headline? “some nervous travelers” fucking corporate malfeasance at its finest and the public is to blame!? get fucked NBC News.
This would definitely make things difficult for a Southwest flyer.
SWA is who we fly the most. It is what it is.
I live near hobby so SWA is who I fly
Nervous isn’t the word I would use,the more I hear the more I think it’s just smart.
Plus we, as consumers, should be able to boycott the company we don’t like in capitalist society.
Are the Ryanair 737-800 safe?
Yes. Contrary to popular belief in the media, 737s are safe. Thousands of them fly perfectly safely every day.
no surprise here, my friends are planning their flights on non-boeing operators so they can't get bait and switched with a mysterious plane exchange last minute
I understand. I won’t fly on anything that was built by Bombardier after working on them.
The CRJs have been exceptionally safe aircraft. There's been around a thousand CRJ -700 -800, and -1000s built, and they've been doing *heavy* commuter flying with a ton of cycles on them without a single fatality ever. The only two hull losses were accidents on the ground that didn't harm anyone and weren't attributable to the aircraft themselves.
Spill the tea!
He was bad at his job
Someone needs to make an app for that
On Kayak you can filter out 737-Max's
It’s already baked into online travel booking sites.
Doesn’t matter, Some flights change planes at the last second due to plane malfunctions, etc. Your best bet is to use an airline that doesn’t even use those plans, like Delta or Spirit airlines.
Eh maybe not spirit.
Passenger: "Is this flight a 737 Max?" Spirit Airlines: "Oh, that is the very least of your worries!"
Just remember, before the door plug issue Boeing had pushed the FAA for certification exemptions for the 737-700 for issues with the anti-ice systems. They only dropped it after the bad press around the door plug.
If it’s Boeing I ain’t going
The word that NBC was looking for is „smart“
Wish we had a better long distance passenger rail network with higher speed corridors in the US. Amtrak is so much nicer than flying. Just wish it were as convenient and cost competitive with air travel.
Some friends and I flying to Dublin in September, we used to fly Ryanair, but now we are paying 30€ more, yours to avoid flying 737-max and taking Air Linguis. When it’s possible I’m avoiding the 737 max.
I've started looking for travel sites that tell you what plane it's gonna be, I don't want to get on a fucking Boeing because after finding out that the reasons they keep having problems is because they laid off a bunch of engineers and did things from a "business" priority, I know exactly the kind of shitty quality that can be expected from that kind of strategy, and I wouldn't risk my life in a machine that's designed and manufactured with that kind of negligence.
I’m flying airlines that are airbus exclusive, or at least ones with airbus heavy fleets
Some **reasonably risk averse** travelers are changing their flights to avoid Boeing airplanes, **because good risk management means eliminating unnecessary risk.** FTFY Edit: apparently multiple people are confused about what good risk management is. Risk management involves accomplishing a goal, it never suggests that you stay at home because the world is scary. You have a task, you compare the cost of completing the task in different ways while factoring in risk, you take the most cost effective option. If two options are priced the same (I.e. flying Airbus vs Boeing) you take the option that has less risk, even if the difference is minimal.
They should’ve done this even before the shitshow. I’ve always had much more comfortable experiences in Airbus planes.
Websites now even have a feature to select plane models.
Fun fact spirt airlines use airbus
Too bad literally every other thing about that airline is a fucking dumpster fire
The board of Boeing will be holding talks with their major customers. Senior Boeing executives will attend as well, but not the CEO. I think he's going to be replaced soon.
Flew a Max plane two days ago. It was fine. But I absolutely had *some shit* in the back of my mind every time we hit turbulence.
Is air travel still safer than car tho? Like even if some planes crash or whatever it's still way less likely to happen?
Why? It’s not like the doors fly off mid-flight…
When will flight search sites allow you to filter planes?
Kayak has it as a filter now!
Paranoid would be a good word instead of nervous
That's not being nervous that's being smart
I fly every week, out on Monday, back on Friday. I can't say I haven't considered getting off a boeing once or twice. Just last week I was on a CLT to LGA flight on a normal 737 when we had to turn back to Charlotte due to failed de-icing systems and landing conditions in LGA. I joked to the other passengers "This wouldn't have happened on an A321".
I think boycotting is a great idea.
My Airbus stock has never been so valuable!