Boeing to stop 737 MAX production in January

I don't like drive by wire OR fly by wire. But at least you have half a chance with driving.

The Board needs to fire the CEO (and Chairman of the Board).

I can't comment on the technical aspects, but what government regulator, here, in the EU or elsewhere is going to want to put their signature on the final approval for this plane? If one of these things ever crashes again, for any reason, it's all downside for the chump who signed off. Ultimately this, as well as the flying public's perception of the Max, could be much more difficult to overcome than the technical fix.

This is disgusting. The simple fix was to train the pilots better. Why make this hard? Oh, forgot, this is America's government do-gooders at work. Good work FAA. sarc/off.

How ridiculous! Boeing makes some of the finest, most intricate, and technologically advanced HARDWARE in the world - - and yet - - they've allowed their massive business to be jeopardized by failures in SOFTWARE. Who was the management genius who decided to make their planes reliant on software - - where Boeing had little expertise - - instead of on hardware - - where they had fabulous technology? Successful hardware company ruined by over-reliance on software. Sad and stuoid.

What are they going to do with all the aircraft that they have been building and storing, as a lot of airlines will no longer want to take a chance on them, not alone prospective passengers?

This is a total crock. This is nothing beyond incompetent third world pilots, who cannot deal with a runaway trim situation caused by a broken part, not repaired by their incompetent third world maintenace. And it seems like the FAA is taking a totally destructive, punitive approach to this process, intentionally screwing with Boeing rather than helping them to get this BS behind them.

There were 41 causes cited for the accidents only 9 of which related to Boeing. The article perpetuates the misinformation that the MCAS software was an anti-stall system. It was merely a system to make the 737 Max "feel" the same to pilots as the older 737 in certain high angle of attack conditions. This allowed airlines to not have to certify their 737 pilots in a new type. The MCAS was extensively tested but Boeing underestimated the probability that the independent angle of attack indicators used to trigger it would fail. Although the MCAS had redundant left and right processors the pilots had to be able to detect when one side was out of agreement with the other and switch to the correct side within a few seconds. Normally this check would be done by maintenance staff prior to flight but this was not done on either of the fatal flights which contributed to the crashes. Pilots are also trained and expected to be able to determine and correct for a standard flight emergency known as "runaway stabilizer trim" which causes the nose to be forced down by a stuck switch on the trim control. MCAS uses the trim to force the nose down to control the feel of the aircraft and when its defective AOA sensor erroneously reported a high angle of attack it began to correct automatically. Due to confusion and lack of experience the flight crews did not recognize the runaway stabilizer trim event in time to switch off the trim motor and regain normal manual control of the aircraft. At least one crew did switch it off but then switched it back on when they could not regain manual control due to the high airspeed of the aircraft making the flight controls too heavy for one pilot alone to pull up the nose. Switching a suspected system back on after switching it off goes against basic pilot training for handling emergencies. One factor cited in one accident report was that the first officer had only 200 hours of flight time and was unprepared for handling complex aircraft under emergency conditions. The FAA received massive criticism from the media for the accelerated certification process of the 737 Max that they had agreed to with Boeing after years of safely relying on the Boeing expert engineers for data. As a result they adopted a severely uncooperative attitude with Boeing which has resulted in greater delays in getting back in the air than Boeing had anticipated based on their own corrective action plan. The MCAS software was revised to use a comparator function that verifies agreement between the left and right AOA sensors and warns the crew when this condition occurs. The fix was actually part of the original software but was not activated because of the mistaken probability analysis that showed it was very unlike ever occur. Boeing is running out of space to store the new 737 Max planes prior to shipment and has decided to simply stop production long enough to deliver the stored planes and make room. They would then resume production according to a revised schedule as airlines indicate they are ready to take delivery some time next year. The FAA is expected to lift the grounding in early 2020 after they run their own tests. The 737 Max is as safe as any aircraft flying and I would not hesitate to fly on any domestic airline aircraft that is good enough for the pilot, first officer, and the other crew members on the flight. I would not be comfortable flying on foreign airlines especially those of less developed countries who apparently cut corners on maintenance and crew training and did not meet their responsibilities to the flying public in the two fatal crashes with the 737 Max.

As a Boeing shareholder(and wish I sold it a year ago) I don't understand why they design planes that can not fly on paper without a computer to fix the issues.

My neighbor is a pilot for American. His very short non-technical version of this is that American pilots (both the company and the country as a whole) are trained to fly the airplane. Foreign pilots are trained to rely on the computers.

Brilliant comments above. The FAA are dragging their feet. Incompetence or are they waiting for the graft?

@#8 - I'm not being a wiseguy when I say I wish I understood what the heck you're talking about. From what I've read, Boeing put a larger, more powerful engine on an existing aircraft (737) that wasn't designed for a larger more powerful engine. The diameter of the new engine was too large to be mounted in the same place as the original engine because it would drag on the ground. Boeing's fix was to move the engine forward and inward, closer to the fuselage. That was the reason for the software fix. That changed the flight characteristics of the plane. Probably not a god idea, as we have seen but much cheaper than building a newer, larger 737. As usual, money talks - until it doesn't.

Surprised not to see any question about the number of low cost H1-B hardware and software engineers that were likely used in the design of the aircraft.

#9, your simplified "newspaper version" is nonfactual. Read over #7 and #8, especially. This is a railroad job of Boeing, IMO. I know two 737 pilots, both say that they would fly the Max tomorrow and not bat an eye. The bureaucrats at the FAA are punishing Boeing for this "because they can".

Boeing Off Shored their Software testing. Boy, they sure saved a lot of money, didn't they?

Thank you, #8. Everyone should read your last paragraph about 3 times or however long it takes to sink in. My two airline pilot friends have said that they would fly a 737MAX in line service any time. One is a current 737 driver, the other flies another aircraft. The root issue is shoddy 3rd world pilot training standards and shoddy 3rd world maintenance. Taking a motorbike handyman and making him an airline mechanic is not safe. Neither is taking any old 3rd world folks and giving them a few months training and pretending that they are qualified airline line pilots and safe. They are not really capable of dealing with emergencies. The depend way, way too much on automatic systems to cover for their lack of skills and understanding. And in many cultures there are very serious cultural issues which prevent proper crew coordination which is required for safe airline flying. This last item was the root cause of the Asiana Air SanFran crash just short of the runway, ......cultural problems, a junior office cannot cause a senior officer to "lose face" by mentioning that he making a critical error and is about to crash the plane. And too much, too complex automatic systems, easily misunderstood and misused. The pilot thought that he had selected an autopilot mode which used auto-throttles, but they used a similar mode without aut-throttles. And he/they put the aircraft right into the ground, with four, count 'em, four, "airline qualified" pilots in the cockpit just watching the aircraft fly itself into the ground. Exactly as they had set it up to do. Old saying in computer biz: "The problem with computers is that they do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do." Yeah, every time. Unflinchingly.