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Boeing has made life a lot easier for Airbus over the past few years.
I think a lot of people would actively refuse to fly on a 737 MAX in the future.
The design of the MAX was flawed to begin with. Essentially, the Boeing 737, designed in the 1960s,could not compete with the newer A320Neo on fuel efficiency due to Airbus redesigning the A320 around the much larger, state of the art CFM LEAP engines (Neo stands for “New Engine Option”), Boeing choose to jerryrig the CFM LEAP engines on their existing 737 airframe instead of redesigning another plane around the engine.
Now, since the engine is oversized with respect to the airframe, the newly christened 737 MAX has a tendency to tip upward due to too much lift when flying. Boeing opted to correct this in software by having the plane automatically correct its flight by tipping downward if it senses the plane was tipping up, which they called the MCAS. And of course, since one of the selling point of the 737 MAX Boeing promised was that no additional training was needed for the 737 MAX, the pilots did not know about MCAS, much less have a way to have a manual override for it.
So what if the sensors made a mistake and tipped downward when it’s not supposed to, you ask? We found out in 2018.
It is not something that is fixable barring a grounds up redesign. But that’s not going to happen.
At this point I’m not flying on any Boeing if I can help it. There’s no way to know how recently it was made or refurbished and anything that Boeing touched in the last few years is suspect.
I work in the world of planes, my rule for the 737 family. Is anything in the older NG family is fine. They were designed and built long enough ago for Boeing’s current issues to not be a problem. Plus they have seen enough maintenance with the airlines that they would have found any just in case. So that would be any 737-900/800/700/600
As for the Max family nope, I wouldn’t fly it. For a number of reasons, but mostly the engines are in the wrong spot and nothing they do can change that. That will be any 737-7/8/9/10 with the 10 still delayed. You may or may not see the word MAX in the name.
The quick and easy way to tell them apart is to look at the engines. The Max ones are larger and have a sawtooth edge on rear cowling
As for other Boeing planes currently flying. Basically everything else is an older legacy model except the 787.
TLDR stay away from the 737 Max everything else is fine.
Beyond personal safety concerns, I want to boycott Boeing whole sale. Make the whole brand toxic to airlines, period. Make airlines decide that they lose too much business to their use of Boeing to ever use their planes again. If Boeing doesn’t totally collapse, other airplane makers will eventually follow their example.
So if I were looking to fly with this in mind, you have any suggestions on finding flights on Airbus or older Boeing planes? I.E. is there a flight search site where you can specify? Or at least where it shows the plane on the search results page?
I think they mentioned in the video that Kayak allows you to select aricraft to exclude.
So the easiest is to just fly on an airline that doesn’t have Max planes. Like easyjet, frontier, wizz, Delta, British Air, and Air France are all airlines I know don’t have Max planes. I have heard some travel sites tell you the model of planes for a flight and may even let you sort by model. If nothing else you can look a plane up by its tail number. Often you will find that listed some were in the info about a flight.
TL;Dr Boeing got ate up internally from the failed company they had acquired, becoming a little bitch to a bunch of cocaine addled wall street ninkompoops, who had to be acquired because they made flying death traps, who eventually made Boeing make and sell flying death traps.
It’s the circle of capitalism.
The only thing not covered by LWT (no shade for them at all) was the reaction time required to “correct” MCAS’ error. Imagine being strapped into a seat in the cockpit, and the plane suddenly nosedived and you have under twenty seconds to correct it after not being informed it had that much control in the first place. People who fly model airplanes and helicopters wouldn’t accept that. Pilots with planes full of travelers absolutely shouldn’t. Enshittification issues aside, (takes mental gymnastic skills that I don’t have) that is an unforgivable mistake that should have never made it to planes.
The irony is the whole “if it’s not Boeing I’m not going” phrase came from the era of airplanes like McDonald Douglas being so utterly shit - the company that bought Boeing. Basically a bunch of engineers got buttfucked by business school dropouts.
Are we talking about the time McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money?
Lmao yep
This whole LWT segment is a perfect illustration of the transition to late-stage capitalism at the microeconomic level, featuring examples of shareholder primacy, regulatory capture, communication breakdown, and recursive subcontracting. If I was teaching junior college microeconomics (Economics 1B), I’d consider showing this in class or recommending it to my students for viewing.
It really is a good schoolbook example of how a large reputable company goes to shit from the common ailments of real-world capitalism.
Why is Boeing even still operating after 737 max, Alaskan airlines, tax avoidance?
They kind of have to, otherwise it would be an Airbus monopoly, and there are plenty of planes they still need to deliver to customers. Management needs a total reshuffle for sure though.
They’re the only other big plane manufacurer beside Airbus and being the only remaining US based one, probably important for national defense as well.
Fucking nationalize them then. And prosecute their senior management.
Sir this is America. We only do hardcore capitalism in this country, preferably to the detriment of the average citizen and benefit of CEOs and stockholders the way God intended. /s
“Too big to fail”, or: "congress is bought and paid for ".
You can take the quotes off too big to fail, they literally are. Their only competitor in the world is Airbus. Boeing going bust would be catastrophic to the global aviation industry and doubly so for the USA.
That said, I wanna see Lockheed step up and do a commercial plane. Gimme a jumbo jet that breaks the sound barrier and has a radar signature the size of a credit card pls.
catastrophic to the global aviation industry
Oh no!
…I mean until planes run on hydrogen. The climate really wouldn’t mind covid levels of global aviation for another decade or so.
OTOH the US is of course in a tough spot, they’re reliant on aviation for domestic transport because they never bothered to invest in rail. And don’t come and say “the US is too large”: You can have a high-speed sleeper train from NYC to LA, 14 hours total travel time shouldn’t be hard to achieve, eight of which you can spend sleeping in perfect comfort, ten if you’re indulgent. Proper food. You can even take a shower. Leave in the evening, arrive in the morning, especially as a travelling businessman consider it a hotel on wheels. You can fit a bloody McDonalds in a train if you want.
Boeing’s #1 competency isn’t airplanes or engineering, it’s lobbying.
Honestly, this is probably true for any company once it reaches a sufficient size.
Since this is lemmy and not tiktok, anyone has a short description? There are reasons i can’t play it.
Boeing used to be a company that put safety and quality first, they revolutionized plane travel with the 737. But recently Boeing has put share price ahead of safety and decided to move their corporate office from Seattle, where the planes are built and engineering is done, to Boston (edit: Chicago, not Boston). Why? Because executives heard that successful companies have corporate offices in a separate location. Then the merger with McDonnell Douglas, who has a horrible track record just made Boeing’s quality slide even further. Boeing now parcels out work to subcontractors who subcontract even further and there is no oversight or quality control on the components. This results in “door plugs” missing bolts or having bolts that were not tightened properly on the 737 max.
My uncle repaired airplanes for a living. I have never flown as an adult and I hopefully never will. Somethings I just can’t unlearn. When he first started things were great, but by the time he retired it was a shitshow of cutting corners on replacement parts and who knows what else.
Commercial flying remains the safest way to travel, and it continues to get safer. That’s not to minimise your reluctance to fly. I get it: if something goes wrong it’s 99.9% sure you’re going to die, and know about it long enough for your last moments to be horrifying. But the facts is the facts and the facts is that you’re way more likely to die on a bicycle journey.
Textbook case of late stage capitalism and a resounding success for Boeing’s major shareholders.
The ceo of Boeing was the ceo of my bosses last company. He cut every corner possible, took his paycheck and ran right before the company nose dived into the ground.
Now that he’s CEO of Boeing he did the one thing he set out to do. Get the Max series in the air so he can get his fat paycheck. Hopefully nothing literally nose dives this time.
Is that the guy who called Trump personally after the 2nd 737 Max crash crying to not allow the FAA to ground the plane?
Meanwhile the rest of the world was like “fuck that shit” so basically for a few hours the Max could only fly in US airspace and finally Trump got the memo & told Boeing guy “sorry fam”.
The term is “GE flunkie.” Literally a fucking accountant without a moral compass.
Why aren’t these people in prison? They’re not going to change anything until there’s murder charges.
So I lived in the Everett area and worked near the Boeing plant. My ex gf’s brother worked directly on the line. One family dinner someone mentioned the two MAX crashes mentioned in the video. He totally brushed them off and said
They were from “”“n-word”“” countries. They crashed it themselves.
He was the most blatant, but the other Boeing folk I knew spoke simmiliarly.
Someone on Boeing subreddit said almost same thing under this video. They just used politically correct term, ‘backwards’.
