This, combined with the recent news that Boeing wants to correct a design flaw on the engine nacelle anti-icing system by putting it on the pilots leads me to simply no longer trust this aircraft.
The first couple crashes were sobering, but I thought Boeing would recover and a single issue like that would get corrected and not happen again. The fact they are still trying to "blame" pilots for aircraft design flaws though is beyond the pale and shows they learned absolutely nothing.
I was trying to put my finger on it last night. I got on a MAX a few weeks ago and I absolutely noticed and felt mildly uncomfortable for a minute. I was chiding myself for feeling irrational fear.
The reason was in front of me the whole time. It's actually rational after all:
I simply do not trust the people who designed this aircraft.
Here here I was just about to post the same thing!
Boeing needs to be held responsible. Absolutely no way should the FAA grant Boeing an exemption for these planes under ANY circumstances. The planes have proven themselves to be dangerous and Boeing is doing nothing to fix them because it would hurt their bottom line.
This company needs to be investigated to the fullest extent by the FAA. The fact that this newest plane was only just rolled off the factory assembly line 2 months ago… a plane doesn’t just rip itself apart in less than two months. Something is seriously wrong at Boeing.
More than merely “investigated”. The FAA should indefinitely ground all Boeing 737 Max until Boeing has fixed them - at its own expense - and the FAA has certified the fixes on each and every one of them. Financial consequences on Boeing be damned. Or kill the plane by banning the Boeing 737 Max from ever flying over the United States ever again. Let Boeing go back to the drawing table and build a plane that works. Let the executives suffer from the years long decline in Boeing’s stock price. Let them lose billions. Tens of billions. I am out of fucks to give. It’s time for the government to draw blood over this corporate malpractice.
My friend and I were joking "well I'm sure they know what they are doing / hey if its not safe people won't fly it / they can just rename it again if it does crash / its all just big gubmint red tape / hey if it has X% risk of crash and Y already crashed then the next Z flight should be OK right?"
Within 24 hours they blow out a door on a new jet. Amazing levels of incompetence mixed with hubris.
"...Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems said they discovered improperly drilled fastener holes in the aft pressure bulkhead — which maintains pressure when planes are at cruising altitude – on the fuselages of some models of the 737 Max. Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit said late Wednesday because it uses multiple suppliers, only some units are impacted and it will continue to deliver fuselages to Boeing.
Boeing said the issue does not affect safety of flight, and 737 Max planes already in service can keep flying..."
Spirit was Boeing - Boeing Wichita - which B sold off to bankers in 2005. It's not "burned by X", it's "sold the plumbing, burned down the restaurant for insurance money". Except not even Tony Soprano would expect to get fresh pizza from a burnt-out shell.
There's been enough written about the cultural changes since MD and Boeing, and goes to show that incidents are unlikely just that. Indeed, incidents keep coming.
Statistically they're still rare, fortunately. There's a lot of these planes in the air every day, and it's far more likely to be involved in a car crash caused by somebody not paying attention, than it is to be on one of these flights.
That said, I don't really want to live with the nature of all these flaws. This is not their rocket science that is failing, but it rather reeks of complacency.
I still remember the wrenches found in early Dreamliners. Noone died, but I mean, come on.
I feel the car comment, which is always mentioned when people talk about flying, is a whataboutism. We aren’t talking about cars, we’re talking about flying in a plane and how it seems a lot less safe today than even a decade ago.
I think additionally, many people feel there are very real factors skewing the rate of car crashes compared to what it'd be from only "good" drivers with how our bar for driver's licenses in America is so pitifully low. And beyond that, that they can generally have more agency about their fate as a driver than as a passenger in a plane, while it'd seem far simpler to imagine quickly stopping a car in response to a failure than managing to land a passenger plane.
Bonus multiplier if someone was then reading articles about pilots and ATC not getting any sleep.
I think also car crashes are generally caused by operator error. Plane crashes are more likely (maybe?) to be caused by mechanical malfunction.
The equivalent would be car crashes caused by mechanical failure where even an expert driver couldn’t have avoided catastrophe.
Though, maybe that’s balanced out by some large percentage of car crash deaths being the driver and/or passengers in the “other” car who were struck unexpectedly by a driver who was reckless, distracted or impaired.
Either way, I agree, it seems like a stretch to call plane and car crashes equivalent.
Planes are substitutes for cars. When talking about plane safety, it’s not whataboutism to put statistics into perspective by noting that choosing to drive instead of flying would be much riskier.
Planes are more comparable to buses than to cars (unless it's a small general aviation plane). So a better comparison would be between the risks of flying and the risks of taking a long-distance bus.
> I'm not sure why you think busses are more equivalent to planes other than holding more passengers.
The more I think about it, the more similarities I find. For instance, both long-distance buses and large airplanes are usually boarded only at dedicated places (bus terminals and airports); both have a separate baggage compartment below the passenger floor; both have built-in bathrooms; both are driven by trained drivers/pilots; both have a set schedule for departure; and so on.
I've taken plenty of long distance bus trips (12 hours or more in each direction), and I've also taken many airplane trips (usually on the 737 family), and I'd say the experience on both is very similar: taking a taxi to the bus terminal or the airport, looking for the correct spot or gate for boarding, putting most of the luggage in the lower compartment of the bus or airplane, waiting until the scheduled departure time, sitting still on your designated seat for most of the trip, arriving at the other terminal or airport, retrieving the luggage, taking a taxi to the actual destination. There are some differences, for instance on a bus there's a rest stop for food after several hours, while on an airplane they serve some food in the vehicle itself, but these differences are minor compared to the differences between an airplane trip and a car trip.
You’re pattern matching on how the two modes work, but that isn’t what economic substitution means. Substitution means people buy one product instead of another, like the way Beyond Meat products are a substitute for meat despite having essentially zero production or digestive similarities at any reasonable level of reduction.
I often fly 300-400 miles (I’m in the US where trains are a joke). If airplanes became seriously unsafe, I would drive. There is no world where I would take a bus instead.
> You’re pattern matching on how the two modes work
No, I'm going by my own experience. I've taken plenty of long-distance bus trips (I've just checked on a map site, one long-distance bus trip I've made many times is around 800 km). Several of them were to cities I could have taken an airplane to (and I did take an airplane to them in other circumstances), and the only difference is that the bus trip usually took longer (and was less expensive).
> If airplanes became seriously unsafe, I would drive. There is no world where I would take a bus instead.
If airplanes became seriously unsafe, I would take a long-distance bus. I can't say there's no world where I would buy a car and learn how to drive just to avoid taking a long-distance bus, but I can't see any advantage other than avoiding the short taxi steps to and from the bus terminal at either end of the trip.
Because in general, at least in the US, the choice for most routes that people take is to fly or take their car. Taking a long distance bus isn’t on the table for most moderately well off people and train usually isn’t a reasonable option.
You choose what car to buy, but the bus company chooses what us to buy. You maintain your own car but the bus company maintains the bus. You drive your own car, but a professional hired and vetted by the bus company drives the bus. You drive your car from a to b when you want, but the bus travels along predefined routes at specific times.
It’s feeling like Boing has been riding on its reputation for a little bit. I’m concerned that this is indicative of issues with any aircraft that they’ve designed in the last decade or two.
Not quite. Cost savings is only one of the many things that can lure a customer toward a purchase. While Louis Vuitton would love to keep costs low, they wouldn't do it at the expense of their status as a luxury brand.
"Bean counter" logic implies putting cost savings above all else, like maybe Walmart or Amazon would do.
I hope airplane customers (the airlines) care as much about safety as they do cost savings, since their customers certainly do.
I flew in a MAX one time. It was a short hop between Burbank and San Jose.
There were maybe around 10-15 passengers, the crew asked us to not all sit at the front for balance. The plane had been sat on the ground powered down for hours, even though it was already late afternoon. I was first on the plane and it was very hot and stuffy but a flight attendant assured me the a/c would take care of that soon and indeed it got comfortable before we even pushed back.
Burbank has a very short runway so planes have to get to takeoff speed quick and then climb steep. This is quite an experience in a plane with huge powerful engines like the MAX with fuel for only a one hour flight and essentially no passengers or their luggage.
Later, the wifi didn't work.
This was shortly after they had been allowed back into the air and at no point did I relax into my seat. White knuckles the whole way.
Is this aircraft designed to a less safe standard than other aircraft? Yes. Is flying on this aircraft also one of the safest modes of transportation I will use this year? Also yes.
What does the severity of the average incident have to do with whether I use a particular mode of transit?
We could add lots of fender-benders between taxiing planes to push down the average severity of each plane "crash." Then they would still be less deadly per mile travelled, but also less severe per incident on average than other modes of transit.
Sure, sorry. Planes cover distance very quickly, and people use them for e.g. a six hour flight covering 4000 miles that they would not otherwise drive; this situation makes planes appear safer "per mile" than alternative valid metrics like "accidents per hour of travel" would.
I wonder how unreliable a specific model of commercial aircraft would need to be in order for it to no longer be the safest mode of transportation.
According to [1], commercial planes are about 3 times safer than buses per passenger mile (edit: passenger hours, sorry). That doesn't sound like a large enough margin to prevent certain more accident-prone models from earning the "deadlier than a bus" badge of shame, especially since the average is skewed by extremely reliable widebody models like the 777, A340 and A380. Meanwhile, commuter planes already suffer from a higher fatality rate than pickup trucks, while private planes are second only to motorcycles.
> According to [1], commercial planes are about 3 times safer than buses per passenger mile.
Uh... the "Fatalities by passenger miles" chart in that article says that fatalities per billion passenger miles are 70 times lower for commercial planes vs. buses.
And in fact if you normalize to actually comparable transportation modes, my guess is it's even worse. The overwhelming majority of bus miles are driven on urban transit routes at low speed. You'd want to split out long haul (Greyhound et. al.) buses to compare to aviation, and highway travel is always going to involve more fatalities.
Basically, even knowing that it's probably the most dangerous jetliner in decades, I'd still view a 737 MAX as an extremely safe travel option.
Fortunately, one normally doesn’t take a 737 to the corner store, drop the kids at school, or go out for lunch. The only thing normalizing by trip tells us is people take lots of car trips.
Well, yeah, because airliners are extremely large. If you do the same thing for cruise ships, they surely look horrifically dangerous! "Heart attack fatalities per trip" are off the charts.
When a regular person asks "is this safe?" they mean "is it safe for me?", not whether someone else on the vehicle might get injured.
Uh... it was an example showing the flaw in the logic. You can't compare a 300-seat jetliner to a motorcycle in a metric of "fatalities per trip", because that doesn't give you any useful information about the subject under discussion ("am I going to die on this trip?"). It's just bad risk analysis.
One very tiny thing (well, big) that I love about the A320 family compared to the 737 family is that the load floor on the 32x is a couple inches lower which increases headspace (both real and perceived) making it feel like a less cramped plane. Love it.
It was not a "window and chunk of fuselage blowout" but a safety door blowout. In case 737MAX-9 is configured with maximum possible seat count then additional safety door have to be added.
On lower seat count configs (like on that incident flight) those extra door are still present but locked, hidden and not visible from inside.
The fuselage opening for the door is still present as it’s a common part. The door is replaced with a window panel to seal the space, there is no door there.
Any mechanical component - even if unused - requires servicing and maintenance. No airline would want to pay for that and the fuel cost on every flight to carry a door they don’t want.
The patent was not claiming this was a maintenance issue. They were pointing out that if there were indeed a hidden exit door here that it would still require maintenance, which is why there wasn’t actually a hidden exit door here. Instead it’s a solid panel of some kind.
It's not a permanent welded-in plug, rather it's a door-shaped panel that is secured in using the fastenings where the door would be fastened. That's why you can see the outline.
The one thing an airline likes less than carrying extra weight is not being able to change their minds later :) Or rather, for the option to be available for whoever they sell the plane to after they're done with it.
Why would it need replacing? It's a permanent element, unless the aircraft is refitted in the future when they can remove the panel and fit a door. The door's connection to the fuselage isn't a service item, just the mechanism itself.
Passenger Diego Murillo, who had been on his way to Ontario, California, said the gap was "as wide as a refrigerator" and described hearing a "really loud bang" as the oxygen masks dropped from above.
He told KPTV: "They said there was a kid in that row whose shirt was sucked off him and out of the plane and his mother was holding onto him to make sure he didn't go with it."
The BBC article notes that this section of fuselage can optionally include an extra emergency exit, but that Alaska does not select that option. Still, it may be constructed with a false opening the same size as the exit door which could have been there.
It seems odd to me that an emergency exit can be optional. Like I get that airlines reconfigure seating, number of bathrooms, storage, etc, but emergency exits seem like there should be a fixed number based on maximum distances between all exits or something.
Another comment elsewhere says it's not really optional, it's just down to the number of seats the plane has. For certain seat configurations it's required.
Maybe the reporter should have asked "do you mean a European sized fridge or American?". Obviously if it was a European fridge size hole I wouldn't have even bothered putting on my seat belt on. Heck, why didn't they just fly on to California if it was only European sized?!
Not only that, but the continent-level statistics aren't useful for much other than scoring Internet points.
State-by-state in the US, obesity varies between 35-50% IIRC.
There are also significant differences by race (black or hispanic highest, white non-hispanic slightly less, and Asian a LOT less).
If we're being honest, Europe has exactly nothing to brag about -- 1 in 5, or 1 in 4 obesity rates are still amazingly high. Just saying "not as high as the US" is a pyrrhic victory.
I've been to a few countries outside of Europe and the US. Obesity and lesser but unhealthy fatness may not be as widespread yet there, but they're not that far behind. Also, what some cultures consider "not fat" isn't actually "not fat." Plenty consider "chubby" to be perfectly normal (and even attractive).
Russia is also technically in Europe but a lot of Westerners don't consider Russians Europeans. So I see no reason why continental Europeans could't consider the British as non-Europeans. In fact, there are plenty of Western Europeans that don't even consider Eastern Europe as 'real' Europe.
Russia indeed spans both Europe and Asia but almost all Russians live in the European part and majority of all Russian history and culture happened or is linked to Europe, not Asia. Similarly Turkey technically is also in Europe (small part of Turkish territory) but nobody seriously claims that Turkey is a European country based on this technicality. Another example would be Israel which technically is not in Europe but is considered to be more European than Middle Eastern. So the Brits not being European is not really such an outlandish claim. Especially that there is a growing tendency for 'European' to actually mean 'related to European Union' instead of its original, geographic meaning.
(I'll use "soccer" for "Association football" below to avoid confusion. I'll use "field" rather than "pitch" because the FIFA "Laws of the Game" use "field" except in 3 places [1]).
The rest of the world uses a different size soccer field than the rest of the world. Not only do soccer field sizes vary country to country, they can vary from league to league within a country.
In American football the size is standardized, except for children's leagues. High school, college, and professional leagues all use 100 yards x 160 feet (91.44 x 53.3 meters).
Heck, soccer fields can even vary within a single league. Take the UK Premier League for example. A few years ago their fields ranged from Fullham's 100 x 65 meters to Manchester City's 107 x 73 meters. They have since tried to standardize on 105 x 68 meters but aren't there yet.
Premier league clubs not yet using 105 x 68 are Brentford (105 x 65), Chelsea (103 x 67), Crystal Palace (100 x 67), Everton (103 x 70), Fullham (100 x 65), Liverpool (101 x 68), Nottingham Forest (105 x 70).
For international play, the requirements are 100-110 meters for the long dimension and 64-70 meters for the short dimension.
There are some things that are standardized on a soccer field and so could be used as length references. The funny thing is that those things are all round numbers when expressed in feet or yards.
E.g., the radius of the circle around the center mark is 10 yds. The penalty area is 44 x 18 yds. The penalty mark is 12 yds from the from the goal. The goal area is 20 x 6 yds. The goal posts are 8 yds apart and the crossbar is 8 ft off the ground.
That's because these things were standardized before the UK switched to metric. I guess they didn't want to change the sizes just to keep the numbers round.
[1] there are two places where they say that the assistant referee should "face the pitch", and one place where they say the assistant referee should use his flag to indicate on what area of the pitch offside occurred.
In practice, they're very similarly sized. 90m vs 91.5m in length (on average). Widths are different but that's usually not relevant when describing the size of things as "half of a football field".
Football/Soccer, American/Gridiron Football, and Rugby all descend from the same class of sport that was just called football back in the middle ages (you played it on foot instead of on horse). Etymologically, neither sport called football really has any more claim to it than the other.
Football field? It was the size of a smallish door. Better analogies would be commonplace things like bathtubs or car doors, not dramaticlly oversized objects like fields or office towers. It was about exactly the size of the emergency exit doors we all see when lucky enough to be seated in an exit row.
As an American, I have never once in my life used a football field as a size comparison, nor have I heard it used as a size comparison for anything that wasn't roughly football field sized.
It might be used more commonly in some places, but I was baffled by the joke as well.
I actually think the stereotype comes not from normal Americans but rather from American journalism. It is in the news and magazines all the time. I am sure Google nGram could support this but I am heading out the door and can’t look it up until later.
For folks who want to feel better: this particular design feature (the unused plug exit) dates back to the 737-900 which has been around since 1997
For folks who want to feel worse: Highly recommend "Flying Blind" (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08P98854S) - its a good book about how Boeing's engineering culture went to shit after the MD merger and the shortcuts used to get the Max delivered.
The book couldn’t have been that good if it never got across to you that an airplane hitting production in 1997 was necessarily designed YEARS BEFORE 1997 (and hence the merger).
Boeings problems were long in work before the MD merger. Many commercial aerospace people in Seattle, particularly ones with parents who worked at Boeing, have struggled to come to terms with that, and there are a lot of rose colored glasses around here of what 1995-1997 Boeing looked like.
It's likely this particular issue is from a lack of quality control, and you cannot blame that on 1997 Boeing.
Quality control degradation in my experience and from stories i've heard are exclusively the fault of bean counters and exec pushing for cost cuts (unlike design flaws where the engineers share the blame). I've heard a story about an industrial machine amputating someone because the new joints couldn't handle the pressure (in france, pre 2019, i don't have the specifics). The maintenance guy wanted to replace the joints with high quality one (like the original were), but they were deemed "too expensive" so they bought new joints at half cost, to gain 10€ on the maintenance of the 400k machine. Less than a week later, the machine broke, someone lost an arm or something (don't have specifics), and a new machine had to be shipped and given for free, i don't know who paid the the amputated guy.
I fly quite frequently, 320 flights so far based on my diary. The MAX accidents back then obviously made me a bit uncomfortable.
Until a week ago, I had't actually flown with a MAX; but on January 1st, I took an Air Mexico flight which happened to be one. I wasn't scared (in the sense I know about myself when I'm scared), but rather curious, so, funnily enough, I came to HN and searched for the MAX articles from back then, because I expected that I'd find insights, good technical conversations and in-deep articles about the topic.
On the other hand, I do have one fear.
On longer flights, the large aircrafts that have three batches of seats per row, I prefer an aisle seat in the middle: there is a lower chance that I'm gonna be the one woken up when the middle seater has to go to the bathroom. On a smaller aircraft (that usually fly for less than 3h, so I don't have to use the bathroom myself) I always prefer a window seat (1)
My nightmare is that once the window breaks, or a panel (that you can see the sealing points of) gets ripped off. This only ever happened a couple times, so I very well know there is practically zero chance that this would happen to me.
And now this, in the news, coincidentally.
(1) and I always check which side that window seat should be so I have the better view(2), like more mountains etc
(2) but honestly, I usually don't have a good view, since I prefer a seat oat the middle of the wings' height so that my ride is less bumpy.
This is somewhat amusing, and at risk of a "me too" low value post...
When I started regularly flying, I would actually search NTSB reports for the airframe in question in the airport lounge. I don't really know why exactly, but I think the engineering related discussion and the dryness of those accident reports were quite comforting - reading about those crashes really drove home how safe air transport really is. I'm sure I raised a few eyebrows though for anyone glancing at my screen.
I also have the semi-irrational fear of where I sit. However mine is in relation to the engine nacelle - I don't want to be within 4 or 5 rows from where the fan blades are in case they explode into the cabin. Same with prop aircraft - I highly prefer to not be seated in the aisle next to the prop.
I haven’t researched enough to be certain, but it seems like shielding yourself from being hurt by an uncontained engine failure is probably the only thing that an individual can affect by their own choices on a modern commercial jet. Most other accident types seem to be either not tied to any specific area of the plane or so large/non-survivable that there’s nothing a passenger can do.
It’s silly since the odds of literally anything happening are so low, but it makes some part of my brain happier so I do it.
Well you can feel better knowing that planes are designed to have tear off strips so if a piece ever rips off it only tears to a maximum small area and shouldn’t keep tearing. At least that’s how Boeing designed it…
Sudden decompression at high speed and altitude is dangerous to both humans and airframes, regardless of "tear off strips". A common pattern in explosive decompression accidents is that e.g. the cargo door opens and then the cabin floor caves in and severs vital control surface cables.
I recall that following the 2019 deaths that Boeing was going to rebrand the Max with some number series or similar, so that passengers didn't get nervous flying in it.
How do I as a passenger identified all the rebranding permutations of the Max so that I make sure my family is not flying in them?
Airlines can and do switch like aircraft at the last minute all the time. Do all the planning you like, but you won't know for sure until you're seated and look at the safety card.
So unless you intend to have a "Qantas never crashed" tantrum in the airport, you may be out of luck because the only airlines in the US that have not ordered the MAX are Spirit/Frontier (Greyhound with wings) and JetBlue, and they don't fly everywhere.
It's performative, but I think next time I get a last minute equipment change to a MAX and nowhere urgent to be I might simply refuse to board and let them know exactly why.
I understand it will cost money and time, and really just mostly annoy the gate agents. But at some point the actual customers need to push back on Boeing and I can't really think of any other way. The FAA has clearly failed.
I'm not so naive to think I can continue air travel and not be taking the MAX quite often as time moves on, but the lack of any consequences for Boeing is rather annoying.
If you’re public enough about it, other passengers who overhear might decide to join you. If that becomes even semi-regular and trends on social, that might be the most effective change agent.
Right now regulators are increasingly broken (under-resourcing, revolving doors, political pressure, etc), so grassroots refusals are potentially the only proactive pressure we can put on airlines to demand more from their vendors. Otherwise we’ll just have to wait for reaction after there are too many incidents to ignore.
I used to refuse to go through the airport scanner, which required a physical pat down. Unfortunately, not enough people did so, and eventually I gave in.
My concern was that I wasn’t reassured that the devices had been adequately tested. I also consider them to be mostly security theater.
So, what I’m saying here is don’t count on others sharing your concerns and following suit.
I only really fly Delta and they don’t have any MAX aircraft, so that makes things easy. The majority of Delta flights I’ve been on are Airbus aircraft. I’ve only flown on one Boeing (737-800) in the past two years and that was from a non-hub Delta airport.
then you should be concerned that your airline of choice (delta) has already paid for and taken delivery of dozens of over 100 737 max's.
They made this purchase years after the initial 737 max issues, and ofc years of issues Post MD merger. They also are putting about 30 percent of the seats as premium/high cost seating. for some reason.
Delta and especially boeing do not have your safety at heart, they have the bottom line at heart and will put you in whatever is most cost effective.
People can say what they want about Spirit but I still think they’re the best airline to get around the US if you buy one of the big front seats. And the fact they don’t fly a MAX is even better.
I somewhat agree with this when they’re running smoothly: you can pay for a few quality of life upgrades and get an experience only a little bit worse than a more expensive airline for somewhat less money.
When things go wrong, though, I feel like Spirit does a pretty awful job. I had them cancel a flight on me at the last minute, and the only thing they would offer was a much later flight to an airport three hours from my destination or a flight to my destination in five days.
As a result, I’d much rather fly something like Southwest. Buy a ticket at the right time and they’ll sell it to you dirt cheap, you’re pretty much guaranteed a decent experience, and if something goes wrong they have enough flights and routes and customer service policies to get you taken care of.
Google says "737 dash 8 through 10" — and Ryanair at least (who has huge order of MAX's) uses "737-8200" or "737 MAX 10."
However, considering how common it is for an airline to switch product, it would be quite difficult to ensure your flight isn't on one of these aircraft without double-checking during boarding — then refusing to board.
Much more of this sort of thing, and any rebranding might have to do something about the 'Boeing' part of the name. I suppose they could bring back the 'McDonnell Douglas' name... but that is associated with a far worse door-coming-open problem.
If Boeing wants to rehabilitate its reputation, showing more respect for the regulatory process would be a good start.
I quoted some one verbatim who works at Airbus who said Airbus Australia was exclusively supporting Defences helicopter fleet. I must have misunderstood what they said and Qantas/Jetstar are flying Airbus but are being supported by another party.
Not sure if you are serious, but I agree. I like to take a train+ferry whenever possible even if it adds a day or two to the journey. Did lots of trips on the Amsterdam-Newcastle and Sweden-Poland routes. Uncomparably good memories compared to plane travel which is uniformly awful.
I have been scouting cruise websites for ways to also replace transatlantic flights, but they are way too sparse.
Ferry routes have really taken a pounding in the UK over the past decade or two unfortunately. Combination of the channel tunnel and low cost airlines I would making former routes uneconomical to run is, I would imagine, where the majority of the blame lies.
One example: I've always wanted to do a motorcycle tour around Scandinavia, particularly Norway, but it's a heck of a ride from Calais all the way up there. For many bikes, far enough that you'd need to organise a service and tyre change at least once whilst on the trip. At the time when I was first thinking about this I had a bike with a 3750 mile service interval, although I could generally squeak 4000 - 5000 miles out of tyres.
So my plan back in 2014 had been to ride up from East Anglia to Aberdeen, get on the ferry to Lerwick, and then get a ferry from Lerwick to Stavanger in Norway to cut off a lot of "transit" riding. Unfortunately it turned out the website with this ferry route listed was lying to me, and that actually it had been retired in something like 2008. (You can still find this route listed on some websites today, but it's long since gone.)
Nowadays I'm not even sure it's possible to get a ferry from the UK to Germany. I've never done it but you used to be able to get a ferry from Harwich (very convenient for me) to Bremerhaven: no more, sadly.
> One example: I've always wanted to do a motorcycle tour around Scandinavia, particularly Norway, but it's a heck of a ride from Calais all the way up there.
Hah, that brings back memories: in the early 80s I did a bike (not motor-) journey from home (in the south of England) to Sweden, taking the Dover-Calais ferry and then via France-Belgium-Netherlands-Germany-Denmark. Must've been ~900 miles of pedalling.
But I didn't attempt a tour of Scandinavia once I got there! (I was headed over there to stay with relatives for a few months.)
There was a ferry from Emden, Germany to Kristiansand, Norway which might have been interesting. But it recently got shut down[1] due to financial difficulties.
Some of these ferries still run for freight-only, e.g. link below. I'm not sure if they'd take a motorbike (or car) as freight though, except on a trailer.
There’s basically only one ocean liner in the world although cruise ships do reposition and there are some other options. Trains are more practical in Europe although long distance can involve a fair number of changes and time spent in train stations.
I don’t love plane trips but they generally get the trip over fairly quickly if the journey isn’t the goal. And longer haul comfort is mostly just a matter of money.
There's plenty of places where geography means they are, especially in Europe — around Scandinavia, Greece, the British Isles, Spanish islands etc. Presumably the Caribbean and some of South East Asia is the same.
The journey is obviously slower, but that can either be a way to rest on a long road journey (truck drivers in Europe sometimes use longer ferry routes so they get their mandatory rest period), or an opportunity to sleep in a fairly decent bed.
If you have a free account on https://www.expertflyer.com/ and attempt to create a seat alert (but don't go through with it) the Aircraft type will be displayed above the seat map once you type in the flight details.
This will also work for aircraft swaps (including last-minute ones) all the way until the plane leaves.
There have been zero incidents involving passenger injury or death since the MCAS issue was fixed.
Meanwhile there are something like 1,300 of them in regular service.
You’ll note, maybe, that pilots continue to fly the plane without raising a stink. If there was a serious concern for their own safety, you’d hear something about pilots refusing to fly them.
Can’t answer this with data, although I’m not sure how many more headlines we need to see before we can collectively accept that something is very, very wrong with this plane at a fundamental level.
Given the number of airframes that rolled out over the decades that didn’t have this issue, I’m inclined to believe there isn’t necessarily an issue with the aircraft. Now Boeing’s manufacturing quality over the last 5-10 years though, that seems to be a major problem. Look at the issues the US Armed forces have had with receiving incomplete aircraft with missing parts and misplaced tools.
The entire industry seems to be under strain since COVID. There was a massive brain drain across the entire system and it’s causing issues at all levels. Many working in the industry are on edge trying to maintain safety.
Very high. The incident suggests that there will be many more incidents in the years to come with different parts of the plane. It's a quality control thing.
Unless the legal fram work changes, it won't work. Airlines are totally allowed to book passeneges on other flights and to switch aircraft anytime the have to, want of feel like it. None of which is a reason to be reimbursed as a passenger. So what do you wanna do, when you book a non-Boeing flight, the Airbus plane has technical peoblems and the airline uses one of the available Boeing planes instead? The airline won't reimburse anyone, so it woupd be up to the website doing so, if they sold this service.
By the way, Boeing planes are generally speaking perfectly fine. I'd rather avoid certain airlines with bad safety records.
> How do I as a passenger identified all the rebranding permutations of the Max so that I make sure my family is not flying in them?
The 737 MAX series has a better safety track record than whatever car your family drives.
Note that since the MCAS issue has been fixed, there have been zero incidents that have caused passenger injury or death.
Note further that pilots—a cohort of self-interested humans like any other—continue deciding to crew the plane. You don’t hear about pilots backing out of flights or refusing to fly in them. Pilots and air crews aren’t threatening to walk out en masse.
This plug design has been in use without incident at least since the -900ER in 2007 and prior to the MAX models. The NTSB report will be worth reading, but I will be good money it won’t have anything in it that warrants the kind of wild frothing at the mouth response here.
Pilots will go to irrational lengths to continue to fly, up to and including doing everything possible to hide any hint of medical problem to continue to do so.
Maybe you trust pilots as some sort of supra-human. I do not. They are humans just as much as the rest of us, and they need to get paid, and I wager they'd fly a bucket of bolts if that was the only thing that people were willing to pay them to fly long after sane passengers opted out of riding along.
> The 737 MAX series has a better safety track record than whatever car your family drives.
None of the car models I've ever driven have any recorded in-flight incidents. I highly doubt any of them were ever involved in an FAA investigation.
You can't beat the flight safety record of most automobile makers.
Ground safety, sure, some cars are worse than others. But even the MD-80 has a pretty good record on the road. All that use and only a few traffic collisions.
Several, including recently Toyota and Subaru who have been making cars for more than half a century.
You just don't hear about them because negative news about Tesla is heavily amplified on HN, Reddit and in the media, and bad news about other carmakers is buried.
> systemic attempt to dodge responsibility for the problem.
If it was widespread, the NHTSA would have forced Tesla to recall the cars. Tesla sold 1.8 million cars just in 2023. It's hard to impossible to hide accidents, injuries and fatalities resulting from wheels falling off.
Unlikely an airline that doesn’t own or lease a max will swap one in.
Sadly the majority of people will choose the cheapest result and voting with your wallet doesn’t work. Which is why we need regulation and can’t leave things to the free market, despite what the libertarians say.
Perfect use for VC money: Reimburse customers when the airline switches planes or flights in perfectly legal manner and customers end up with a Boeing plane anyways.
KC-46? That POS still isn't reliably refueling, and if I understand correctly USAF is rumored to be looking for a replacement.
F-15EX? It can't use conformal fuel tanks the F-15E has been using for almost 40 bloody years. No, that means it can't achieve its major selling point of carrying 22 missiles either.
737 MAX? Clearly maximum kek given this and that whole comedy about safety exemptions yesterday.
I want to like Boeing, but I feel it's justifiable to tell them to go fuck themselves at this point.
EDIT: I also forgot that V-22 Osprey that crashed into the sea off Japan back in November, killing all on board. As far as I'm aware, that led to a complete grounding of all Ospreys by all US military branches and also the JSDF pending investigation findings.
Even funnier because Boeing tried being cute with the Canadian aerospace industry, and instead shot themselves in the foot with a shotgun.
Boeing tried to screw Canada's Bombardier out of the C series aircraft by getting the US Gov to throw on tariffs for an aircraft they had no competitor for. Everything was already done AFAIK that point too; certifications, and everything, the plane was entering into production to fufill US airline orders. It cost $1.3 billion Canadian to develop the plane.
I suspect Boeing thought that'd be the end of it. Airbus had other ideas. They got the whole Bombardier C series aircraft for about $550 million and opened an assembly plant in Alabama in Mobile, about 350 miles from Boeing's assembly plant in Huntsville. Along with the orders from US airlines (I think for 130 aircraft). No more tariffs because these planes are now US made.
As a Canadian it stings a little, but I can't help but cackle at the fact that Boeing execs handed their one major competitor several billion in revenue on a silver platter. And Boeing will need years if not decades to come up with a competitor.
Sad for Canada and Bombardier, but good for the plane: With Airbus's money, marketing, stability and reputation, the amount of planes made will, I think, be a multiple of what it would have been with Bombardier. It's a really good plane, too. Comfy, efficient, reliable so far.
And a spectacular own goal for Boeing that they deserved so much :D
This version of the story is too generous to Bombardier who really screwed up the development of the CS100/A220. Even if Boeing hadn't done anything they would have needed many more bailouts from the government to get anywhere.
Development costs doubled from 2 billion to 4 billion. Then when they went well over 5 billion and the federal government + Quebec had to bail them out to the tune of 1.5+ billion. Even without Boeing, had Airbus not stepped in, it's unlikely the CS100 would have succeeded. European buyers had already started to cancel orders seeing the debacle unfold.
Despite having many orders on the books, banks refused to lend to Bombardier because they expected them to make a loss on the airplane.
So yeah, screw Boeing who played really dirty and Trump helped them (the tariffs were reversed a year later when a more independent body reviewed them). But had Bombardier not been in a massive financial hole this wouldn't have mattered.
The number one reason the planes start to have issues is essentially a lack of effective oversight. Not sure how much blame boeing gets for this, but this is a prime example for a certain amount of effective regulation having a positive impact on the safety culture within a corporation.
The MAX should never have been accepted as being the same airframe as the original 737.
Regulators getting cozy with the people they're supposed to regulate happens in every industry, in every country, and... understandably so. Those are people who have the same expertise, same training, who work together all their life.
It may be one of the most difficult problems to solve.
Its not "getting cozy", its good old felony called corruption. You can tackle that, its not that hard if done correctly. But one needs to avoid conflict of interest from all angles
I guess the question I would have is: to what degree is this happening in the US versus other places like Europe or China, and what can we learn by examining this in those places.
I would hope FAA learned their lesson after being (rightfully!) publicly humiliated by Trump doing their job better and proceeding to lose their prestige as the leading authority of aviation authorities.
Or maybe he was talking about Trump nominating a new FAA head who illegally retaliated against a pilot who was a whistleblower at Delta regarding safety concerns.
Number one reason is lack of meaningful competition (political buying decision Boeing vs Airbus) and industry monopolization. In the 1960s there were Douglas, Convair, Lockheed, Boeing domestically
I agree that a lack of oversight is a core issue, but it also isn’t the job of the government to make your products good. The government can set same rules, but it’s on Boeing to execute.
Of course, besides that, Boeing itself is maybe THE major force reducing oversight.
> but it also isn’t the job of the government to make your products good
A century of progress in domestic automotive sector would disagree with your opinion, here.
If it wasn't for the gub'ment infringing on the liberties of the little guys (corporations), we'd still be driving cars without airbags, seatbelts, and proper fuel tank safety regulations.
I think we’re in agreement on that. I wasn’t saying that regulations shouldn’t exist. I was saying that if Boeing makes shitty products that kill people, then it is entirely their fault if they go out of business. The person I was replying to seemed to be shuffling some of the onus onto the government.
I think it’s to a significant degree the government’s fault that air travel wasn’t safe and people got killed, but it is entirely Boeing’s fault that their products suck and kill people and are losing them money.
KC-46: The USAF had Airbus tankers on order, before Boeing sued and the cinzract was, surprise, awarded to Boeing again. So the USAF and Boeing share equal blame here.
I have to read up on the F-15EX, generally so these kinds of upgrades are basically new designs and as such prone to delays and a bunch of technical issues. Especially for military aircraft.
Nothing to add on the MAX that wasn't said already. Boeing sure has its work cut out developing a new version, the existing 737 design is beyond its design life by now.
Well, if a plane crashes for unonown reasons, it is quite normal to ground the fleet, nothing special about Boeig here.
USAF was (and I suspect still is, given KC-46) happy to go with Airbus, it was GAO[1][2] who intervened alleging corruption and mishandling to give Boeing the platter instead.
Why does anybody continue to trust anything manufactured by this company now? How many incidents/lives is it going to take before airlines just blacklist this manufacturer?
Forget the fines. Leadership at Boeing needs to be criminally prosecuted. Send them to a federal penitentiary. Send a message to those wanting to cost cut on mission critical items. Regulators in this country are asleep at the wheel
Because Boeing is 'too big to fail', proven in the last 737 Max case with MCAS. If there were no leadership prosecuted for that travesty and tragedy, none will ever be for this one. Proper accountability would cripple both the civilian and military sides of the US aerospace sector, which is dominated by Boeing.
So Southwest is all-in on not just Boeing, but 737s. That's their entire fleet. It makes a lot of things simpler. Could they boycott and switch to Airbus? Possibly, but at massive cost and logistics nightmares. Given their logistics failures elsewhere, they'd be fools to try to exit Boeing over this.
Southwest is not just all-in with 737s, they have an excellent safety record flying 737s.
It’s an interesting question. Something seems clearly rotten at Boeing related to their recently designed 737 variants. Does the rot extend to older variants of the airframe? It has historically been considered very capable and reliable… the U.S. military still uses it to fly VIPs around the world.
It's a deep cultural rot that has apparently taken over in the 2010s, not a physical rot with older variants. There is no more of the classic Boeing engineering culture.
Read these emails and chats from Boeing employees in charge of safety and compliance, who brag to each other about pulling a "Jedi mind trick" on the regulators and how they deserve to get paid more for all the money they're saving the company.
Anyone else actively avoiding Max aircraft after this, plus the previous two crashes, and the post from yesterday that Boeing were seeking another exemption from safety rules? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38882358
(If this means refusing to board after an aircraft swap then at least in my case: so be it, I don't trust Boeing's safety record on these aircraft anymore)
It was a fuselage failure, those dont happen all too often. Back then it was because of a lack of maintenance.
It was before i read it was the door though.
edit: In case its not obvious, would be great if you could post other examples. These events in the air are rather rare and i am rather curious for the upcoming ntsb report of this one.
When reading the multiple stories of crazies, that show up in the news once in a while, where someone tries to open doors or emergency exits mid flight ...There is always a reassuring expert comment, that he/she would not be able to, due to the higher pressure inside the airplane, and the fact these devices only open inwards.
It seems for the MAX they blow outwards as easily?
I was wondering the same thing. I’d think these door plugs would be designed the same way as a door, so they can only be removed by pushing them into the plane.
One of my random theories of engineering is that as we’ve gotten better and more precise in our computer modeling we’ve also gotten overconfident in our own modeling abilities.
So we no longer over design with random “engineering factors” added in for the unknown, saving on costs. This of course falls apart when reality differs in some unexpected way from our modeling and it turns out our “just cost optimally regulation safe enough” design actually “just shy of being actually safe”.
The 737max debacles seem like patches on patches on patches trying to thread that needle.
Part of me wants to never get on any of the Max variants, on the other hand, so many have been ordered around the world that it's impossible to avoid the plane.
I'm guessing other airlines are feeling pretty nervous right now too, wondering if they should ground or not. What normally happens here, are other airlines going to wait for AA's report or do their own investigation?
AA will do their own investigation but it's the FAA's investigation that actually matters.
Doubtful much will happen though. The FAA allowed Boeing to do the FAA inspections on the MAX planes they produced, and the FAA rubber stamped the certifications.
Fuck Jack Welch and fuck his devil spawn, the likes of Boeing CEO's Dave Calhoun and James McNerney, and sycophant Dennis Muilenburg.
I wonder if the engineers are being more risk tolerant because if I had to guess an engineer that says “no don’t do this” is not appreciated by management but an engineer that says yes we can do it is lauded as finding solutions than saying no.
I’ve seen this in my role in a large company in cybersecurity. I also worked at Boeing early in my career and I remember them having a pretty cut throat leadership ladder where reporting an issue might get you passed over for that promotion.
Almost every flight that doesn't cross the ocean on Air Canada is on a Max. Great to see this as they are not going to ground them as well...
PS: the documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing was very eye opening, and really shows what happens when a company goes from a Jobs-like CEO to a Ballmer-like CEO, lesson to keep in mind
You mean when they replace an aerospace engineer experienced with the actual business operations and administration with someone who doesn’t know anything about aerospace engineering and learned about business management purely from a financial perspective that quality suffers? Next you’ll tell me that EBITDA isn’t a good metric for internal accounting and value costing!
Lmao you think Jobs was focused on technical/safety stuff. He was a marketing guy. Read Woz's biography, they shows glimpses of the real jobs, even tho it's still toned down since they were "friends".
Presumably the panel landed in in some farmer's field, otherwise we'd hear the news report about someone's roof getting an unexpected emergency exit addition?
Come to think of it, I bet that's something the NTSB investigators will track down so they can do forensics on the debris
I know that the air accident rate is pretty much at its lowest since records began. I have heard a lot about grounding aircraft in recent years, though being a relatively young person, I am wondering is this new or was this always the procedure?
I know that the air accident rate is pretty much at its lowest since records began. I have heard a lot about grounding aircraft in recent years, though being a relatively young person, I am wondering is this new or was this always the procedure?
Grounding aircraft types when there is a significant airworthiness concern has been a phenomenon from the very beginning of commercial jet aviation during the 1950s. The pioneering DeHavilland Comet, the very first jet airliner, suffered ironically similar failures of the pressurized cabin, albiet more serious than the pictured incident. Just like the current article, airlines at the time voluntarily grounded their Comet fleets in 1954.
The only difference is an uptick in risk aversion. It took multiple serious incidents to trigger the grounding of the comet, but here we see grounding after one moderate incident. Then again, the greedy and selfish decision by Boeing executives to install only a single angle of attack sensor without redundancy as a cost cutting measure, which caused fatal crashes when paired with poorly designed software - on this very model, I believe - took multiple fatal crashes before a grounding occurred.
The 737 Max is looking to be an incredibly accident prone airplane.
Note that USA has extremely safe airplanes, probably the safest in the world. But when a singular design (737 Max) has so many issues, it means we need to look at our safety process and think how Boeing could let so many mistakes through.
I think competition increased the number of occupied seats, also margins are way lower now and news fly way faster. A single crash now may mean the end of an airline company.
I understand some unease about this, but this appears to be an isolated incident. Until it's shown not to be, I don't see how this makes the MAX family any more dangerous.
Lest Alaska airlines be given too much of a free pass: they had a deadly incident due to lack of maintenance, where a DC-9-family jet lost elevator control entirely.
Regardless, an incident like this is not the worst outcome: nobody was hurt, and the aviation industry can learn lessons from the situation. That includes learning whether this is an isolated incident, or a systemic one, and where the issue actually came from.
I think their point is that this incident and the incident in Japan aren't comparable as that one was caused by a runway incursion and this was caused by some sort of failure in the aircraft itself.
Not much? What’s your damage claim? Delay? Stress? The airline should probably give you some bonus miles/free tickets as a sign of goodwill, but not sure why they’d owe you beyond that.
If you get sucked out and die, or injured, there’s a claim. But neither happened here.
Emotional distress can reward a lot. Although there were no casualties on this flight, having a near death experience is certainly stressful, and can result in ptsd. This can end up costing a lot in therapist bills.
It's seems impossible that on some routes we do not have alternative to Boeing planes. Consumers should be allowed to decide with their wallet. Isn't that the whole purpose of the Capitalist system?!
The whole premise of the Max was that it didn’t need full certification because it wasn’t a new aircraft. The engineers knew this was nonsense, many of them quit the company rather than work on it. The Max will go down as a textbook example of what happens at an engineering company when the engineers are overruled, silenced, ignored, and finally quit.
The problem is that the perverse incentives of the financial markets are pervasive across American society. The cancer of quarterly-driven management has even spread across Europe, particularly after the '00s.
It's been every year at a all time high since 1970... and it's been decades already that we know it won't get repaid.
> Our government and judicial systems are now governed by money.
Weren't they always or did you believe in fables before?
> Collapse is inevitable
Collapse it inevitable if other countries lose trust in the US and its economy. We are not there yet because many other options are still worse. Everything is measured relatively to other things.
The explanation that, "people have nowhere better to invest/go" is my favorite explanation for who the US will stay strong. It comes off to me as very authoritarian and almost a threat.
> What is a contract for it can be broken with "no-fault"?
Plenty of contracts end when one party wants out for whatever reason. A contract is just setting the rules. One of the rules can be that it can be dissolved at the demand of any party.
Interesting. What would be the point of a contract written as such?
So a contract can be, I pay you $100 then you do the work, but either party can walk away with "no-fault" at anytime. So I pay, then you walk away without doing anything? What would be the point?
Can the rest of the world step up for once and produce something worthwhile? It’s entirely pathetic that 8 billion people have so little to show that we have to constantly be in this situation.
The first couple crashes were sobering, but I thought Boeing would recover and a single issue like that would get corrected and not happen again. The fact they are still trying to "blame" pilots for aircraft design flaws though is beyond the pale and shows they learned absolutely nothing.
I was trying to put my finger on it last night. I got on a MAX a few weeks ago and I absolutely noticed and felt mildly uncomfortable for a minute. I was chiding myself for feeling irrational fear.
The reason was in front of me the whole time. It's actually rational after all:
I simply do not trust the people who designed this aircraft.