Boeing 737 Max: new 'troubling
communications' sent to regulators

"Still, Muilenburg, 55, is in line to receive $26.5m in cash and stock as part of his exit package." Apparently this sort of compensation and stock option is worth the lives of hundreds of people. This negligence calls for jail time, not sympathy for the CEO.

The pressure to compete against a globalist company backed by the governments of several countries may be the reason Boeing rushed this aircraft into production. This has a national security issue written all over it. Boeing products from the past never had this many issues, but the rush to get this up and running to compete with Airbus has set Boeing back years.

Boeing will probably have to convert all those MAX jets into cargo aircraft or junk them, as very few passengers will put their lives at risk by flying in them. Chances are through covert publicity campaigns Airbus will see to that. Unfortunately all that could well adversely impact on US national security and Boeing’s future international sales.

I'm thinking that Boeing might just as well be another government agency (junior grade, or light, if you prefer). One suspicious IC lawyer is said to have found a high level position there.

More Airbus propaganda. Nothing Forkner emailed had anything to do with the MCAS flight software, only the simulator behavior. The way you can tell these articles are disinformation is that they keep repeating that MCAS was an automatic anti-stall system on the aircraft. If you had an actual anti-stall system on and aircraft you wouldn't be able to land it which requires a controlled stall just above the runway. An anti-stall system would drive the nose down and crash the plane. Once the political game playing is done the 737 Max will return to the air as arguably the safest plane flying. They are all new airframes, engines, and wing surfaces compared to the older fleets they are replacing. If you fly on domestic airlines you will be safer getting on a 737 Max than you would be taking an Amtrac train. Just minimize the times you fly on third world country's national airlines and trust the people in the front seat that have as much on the line as you do.

The 737 Max is an attempt to modify a 50 year plane to do something it cannot do. The corners were cut, and it has turned into a disaster. This looks like a design by the bureaucrats, rather than by the engineers, let us hope.

No Guardian, the plane was NOT helpless. Every Boeing plane (virtually all planes) has a manual elevator override, an option known to every Western nation pilot. Boeing may have made a mistake in not super-highlighting the MCAS system for foreign pilots, but all Western pilots who are experienced in actually just flying airplanes, always are cognizant of how a plane is acting, and know instinctively to either pay attention to what's going on, or in the event of something awry, go to the manual override. Notice the crashes did not occur in Western nations, where experience and common flying sense reside. Boeing has always placed pilot experience paramount in its flight control designs, unlike Airbus which tends to require computer controls and sensors to dominate over pilot experience (see Air France crash a few years ago). Typical of the Guardian, they prefer to sensationalize rather than investigate.

Boeing has yet to be able to fix the problems. How was Boeing allowed to put the 737 Max into production? The hens are coming home to roost what with the CEO resignation. it sounds like the 737 Max should never have reached the production stage if it had such serious unfixable design (?) problems. This isn't over yet for Boeing.

Remember all the media reports of people obeying their GPS and getting stuck in a mountain pass or in a desert and needing to be rescued or dying. Or driving into a house, a lake or off a cliff. Search "death by GPS". Or Japan Airlines Flight 2 in the fog following the ILS into San Francisco Bay. The pilot was not sufficiently trained on the ILS landings and messed up. Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed at SFO. The aircraft was a Boeing 777. The NTSB found "the captain selected an inappropriate autopilot mode (FLCH, or Flight Level Change).... The NTSB further determined that the pilot's faulty mental model of the airplane's automation logic led to his inadvertent deactivation of automatic airspeed control. Asiana's automation policy emphasized the full use of all automation and did not encourage manual flight during line operations. Ask a US pilot if they would fly the 737 Max. Remember, in the first seat they are usually first to die. I would fly on the plane with Southwest pilots anytime. Boeing sold planes with a software "feature" that under certain conditions would fly the plane into the ground to airlines that train their pilots to obey the software. Boeing had a software patch for the "feature". They made a patch that would stop the plane from flying itself into the ground and decided to charge for the software and reportedly did not explain to buyers that, without the patch, if their pilots were trained to always obey the computer rather than fly the plane that some of their planes would fly into the ground. An investigation into Boeing's management and software operations is necessary and criminal penalties applied if warranted.

There's no quick fix here, except for the FAA to grant an exception to Boeing to provide additional training to airline pilots on the stall-warning system, along with many simulator hours to practice using it. Keep in mind this is something third-world airlines are mandated to provide to their own pilots, but if Boeing pays for it the regulators might agree with it until the "fix" can be put in, which includes a second and third Angle of Attack Sensor, along with many changes to hardware and software of the computer and displays. That's about 2 years of work to fix and certify. By its very Charter, the FAA cannot force an airline or aircraft manufacturer out of business by imposing outrageous airworthiness directives, unless the risks to human life are overwhelming, at $250k per passenger life. EASA is a diametric opposite, especially regarding Boeing, and would never allow such a compromise, even though they too authorized a horrible design on the Airbus A320 that cost hundreds of peoples' lives in third-world airline accidents that flew into dirt at 5,000 feet per minute.