Will you fly by Boeing?

I haven’t seen the documentary, and perhaps I should have noted that my knowledge is mostly about how things are in the US (rather than Europe), where pilots can be treated quite poorly - including being offered only routes thousands of miles from their homes and other scheduling tactics to ‘encourage’ the right behavior and attitudes.
But one of the other insidious things about Boeing’s planning for the Max was to sell airlines on the benefits of it needing only a short iPad-based conversion course / certification from other 737 types. It seems clear now that is was not sufficient, and people paid with their lives. Outsourcing of the FAA safety certifications of the plane to the manufacturer, as a result of the massive sums spent by Boeing on lobbying the US government, was also probably - shall we say - sub-optimal.
I have no complaint about any pilots, rather a view that the behavior of corporations - especially how they interact with government consumer safety regulations - is a matter of serious concern, and that the 737 Max episode represents the epitome of how this can turn out for the worse.

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and that will get worse as there is an excess of pilots over seats currently giving operators an opportunity to further exploit crew on pain of replacement with someone more «compliant», shall we say.

Clearly the relationship between Boeing and the FAA needs to change, and hopefully the new incoming administration in Washington DC will make sure that it happens.

Until such time as that change has been implemented, I will not be traveling anywhere on any Boeing aircraft of any type.

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Each hour of B-2 flight necessitated 119 hours of maintenance in turn.

Cost averaged $2.1 billion per aircraft.

Another 737 crash

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/indonesia-crash-sriwijaya-air-sj182-boeing-737-b1784946.html

Think that I’ll stick to the car or train for travel between France and the UK, and for flights only go on Airbus.

This has nothing to do with the 737 Max crashes, the plane involved was a 26-year-old Boeing 737-500 classic and many factors could be involved, servicing, local conditions at the time, bird strike, pilot error anything really.
The Boeing 737-500 has had an excellent safety record and you would have as much chance of crashing in any Airbus as a 737-500.

The complexity of modern aircraft is huge and things do go wrong from time to time.

The problem with boycotting an individual aircraft manufacturer is that there aren’t all that many and you’ll quickly run out because they all have similar issues.

In any case should it be Boeing or Pratt&Whitney that you are avoiding?

but the engine shouldn’t fall off mid flight :thinking:

The engine didn’t actually fall off though, it caught fire.

OK, technically they are supposed to be on fire all the time. but in a more controlled fashion :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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Flying is to be avoided where possible anyway…so maybe fewer, better maintained aircraft in the future?

There’s a sense in which Covid has done no end of good for the planet (Gaia fighting back perhaps?).

Sadly, although I suspect it will take a while, it will ultimately be “business as normal” and humanity will have squandered this opportunity to reflect on how it does things.

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The fact that the plane was able to continue flying and land without any issues shows how robust it is.

Isn’t the spec “airworthy with one engine failed” for anything flying over oceans.

Ah, remembered the acronym/standards - ETOPS

significant bits of it did though… there but for the grace no-one on the ground was injured and the pilot recovered the aircraft.

Yes, it’s really not the sort of thing which engenders confidence - especially so close to the 737-MAX failures.

However aviation generally has a good safety record and (much more important) a good safety culture. I’m not less keen on flying as a result of this - as Tim points out the plane was able to get to safety so the systems, in that sense, worked. Mind you I’m not keen on flying at baseline - nothing to do with fearfulness; I just object to being treated as a terrorist for even wanting to get in a plane.

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I seem to remember reading an interview years ago where the head of Rolls-Royce engines was asked about flying habits and he said he only ever got in aeroplanes with four engines, when the journalist asked why that was he answered that it was because there weren’t any with six.

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These are the only ones using a hollow set of blades on the engine, I seem to remember one broke up last year with the same effect.

I wonder if he ever found out about the Antonov An-225?