Why The Boeing 737 Max Is Flying Again

boeing is finally getting the green light to fly at 737 max 617 days that's how long the 737 max jets have been grounded after two crashes that killed 346 people boeing 737 max now cleared to fly again deadly crashes investigations and crippling controversy have put the company in a precarious position with american customers and regulators alike i will never in my life get on a boeing maxi ever those pilots never had a chance these loved ones never had a chance they were in flying coffins after 20 months of investigations and software updates the faa is allowing the boeing 737 max jets to fly before the end of 2020. the system has been redesigned to the point that these accident scenarios could never happen i'm 100 confident it's the most scrutinized transport airplane in history and it's it's ready to go now all over the country people are working around the clock to bring up hundreds of these planes up to new faa standards to reduce the lock jam of stored planes we were on the first american max flight to carry non-employee passengers an uneventful flight from dallas to tulsa as every carrier works to rebuild passenger confidence in the plane the grounding saga has lost boeing more than half of its market value from a high of 446 dollars per share in february 2019 right before the grounding to just over 203 dollars a share when the market closed on november 18th after the announcement so what happened to the boeing 737 max and can the public trust the revisions to the world's most successful commercial jet if you've ever flown on an airplane in your life chances are you've been on a boeing 737 the jets are the backbone of airline fleets around the world in 2018 the 737 set a new guinness world record for most produced commercial jet aircraft model after building ten thousand seven thirty sevens their introduction helped kick start massive growth in air travel southwest has been a customer since it started flying in 1971 and the planes helped airlines like ryanair become a low-cost giant however for the past 20 months boeing's 737 max has been under fire from regulators around the world i would walk before i was to get on a 737 max i would walk pilots on both flights that crashed lioner flight 610 on october 29th 2018 and ethiopian airlines flight 302 on march 10 2019 struggled against an automatic flight control system known as mcas that was meant to prevent the aircraft from stalling but led to the plane's nose diving after receiving erroneous data the system was new to the 737 and mentions were not included in the flight manual in fact pilots were not made aware of the system until after the first lion air crash because of the two deadly crashes one by one from china to australia to italy global aviation authorities ordered airlines in their countries to stop flying the planes we're going to be issuing an emergency order of prohibition to ground all flights of the 737 max 8 and the 737 max 9 and planes associated with that line the u.s ground to the max only after canada and the rest of the world acted first now the grounding has lasted almost two years becoming the longest grounding of commercial aircraft in history at the time of the grounding there were fewer than 400 737 max in service the max is still boeing's best-selling plane ever and it has more than 3 000 of them on backorder a number that has declined as airlines and other customers cancelled orders for hundreds of planes in the first 10 months of 2020 boeing net lost 393 aircraft orders a welcomes news for rival airbus which won 308 net new orders for craft in that period in january 2020 boeing temporarily shut down production of the deadliners but said it wouldn't lay off any of its workers but in march due to the coronavirus outbreak boeing decided to halt hiring among other measures to preserve cash as its stock dropped to its lowest level since 1974. at the end of october 2020 the manufacturing giant announced that it would cut about 30 000 employees to around 130 000 by the end of 2021 after reducing its workforce to about 140 000 by the end of 2020. they know that their aircraft production is going to be low or lower than it had been or lower than they had been projecting it would be for quite some time boeing is not just dealing with the 737 max they're dealing with kovid and kovid has had a terrible effect on aircraft demand passengers going through tsa checkpoints in the us was between two and three million per day in 2019 since march 2020 that number has gone down to less than one million other companies who helped make the 737 max have fared even worse spirit aerosystems which makes fuselages for the plane announced in january that it would lay off an initial 2 800 people because of the grounding after grueling hearings on capitol hill the day before the final ruling from the faa the house unanimously passed a bill by voice boat that performs the plane certification process the bill among other things requires an expert panel to evaluate safety culture and recommended improvements and mandates aircraft manufacturers to adopt safety management systems and complete system safety assessments for significant design changes as of publication the bill hasn't gotten a vote in the senate we cannot have a race for commercial airplanes become a race to the bottom when it comes to safety the layers of technology added to the boeing 737 over the decades and the faa's plane certification process have been the subject of multiple investigations including both chambers of congress as well as the justice department and the securities and exchange commission in march 2020 the house transportation committee issued preliminary investigative findings stating that production pressure on boeing employs jeopardized safety that the company concealed information from the faa and employees and that there were conflicts of interest with boeing employees who were in charge of the certification process on behalf of the faa one of the misnomers or misinformation that's out there is this delegated process or it's called oda which is basically the faa's ability to allow the manufacturer to have faa representatives who don't actually work for the faa but have been anointed by the faa because of their experience and profession congress realized that you couldn't grow an faa to the size with monetary resources and manpower resources necessary to put people in every manufacturing facility so they allowed these designated representatives you based on qualifications and experience to represent the faa the administrator inside the organization the certification process has been a big part of the controversy because of existing laws and deregulation boeing employees were able to certify some aspects of the plane but that sort of self-regulation is not uncommon in much of the u.s federal government especially when it comes to agencies that regulate a single industry like the faa the problem with the program over the years of course is that you develop a relationship just like the faa develops a relationship with the air carriers you can't just go in there long arm of the law beat on them you try to work with them self-regulation can be a double-edged sword as industries would require higher standards from themselves to gain public trust but could also lead to conflicts of interest some worry that agencies would need a financial boost in order to keep up with robust regulation in a congressional hearing in march 2019 former acting faa administrator daniel elwell said that to do that job at the faa the agency would require about 10 000 more employees and 1.8 billion dollars this same process is used by every certifying authority and manufacturer around the world not just here in the united states airbus uses it embryo uses it because the government cannot they can't afford it as far as monetary resources but trying to find that level of talent to bring in house is virtually impossible so you need to have a delegated program but you also need to have a very robust oversight program of that delegated authority boeing's relationship with the faa was also tested by the max crisis and cost the former ceo dennis muellenberg his job muellenberg was fired after repeatedly issuing forecasts that the faa would unground the planes by the end of 2019. i anticipate that we'll return the airplane to service early in the fourth quarter he was replaced by dave calhoun who had been on the boeing board for a decade and was a former executive of general electric but he faced criticism that he was too much of an insider to change boeing's culture a slew of internal emails that boeing released show employees mocking regulators and airlines others showed employees boasting about convincing regulators to accept lighter training standards calhoun struck a conciliatory tone trying to repair the company's relationship with the faa so the planes can fly again we're do a little less visioning a little less long-term planning and a little less all that stuff and we're just gonna get back down to restoring trust with one another trust with our customers and trust with our regulator and we're going to be transparent every step of the way no matter how tough that is and it will be now with the news that the max jets can fly again the country's former largest exporter and what has been the world's biggest aircraft manufacturer is focusing on its reputation as part of the airworthiness directive that ungrounded the max the faa is requiring installing new flight control computer software revising the existing airplane flight manual to incorporate new and revised flight crew procedures installing new max display system software changing the horizontal stabilizer trim wire routing installations completing an angle of attack sensor system test and performing an operational readiness flight what they've done since that is give pilots more control of the plane and it would be easier to override it wouldn't activate as many times as it did in both of those crashes it would also have more redundancies um taking data from two sensors instead of one sensor so it's just kind of measures that would would essentially or what they hope would prevent um the prevent or repeat of those two crashes american airlines is scheduled to be the first u.s airline to fly the revamped boeing 737 max commercially on december 29th united airlines plans to fly them in the first quarter of 2021 while southwest airlines ceo said that at the earliest it would return in april 2021 for people who are skeptical about the plane airlines will let 737 max passengers change their tickets for free most airlines are going to tell you when you are booking a trip or when you are getting your boarding pass at least in the in the next several months that it is a 737 max because they want people to know they don't want people to be surprised and say whoa nobody told me this and they will work with you but they are not going to be marketing the max family members of those who died in the crashes are speaking publicly against the plane's return brittany riffle was seven months pregnant when her husband melvin and his brother bennett died in the ethiopian crash 18 month old emma has never met her dad i will never in my life get on a boeing maxi ever and probably not even any other plane that they produce from here on boeing declined to provide a comment directly to cnbc for the story but the company issued a written statement on the day the faa approved resuming 737 max operations we will never forget the lives lost in the two tragic accidents that led to the decision to suspend operations said david calhoun chief executive officer of the boeing company these events and the lessons we have learned as a result have reshaped our company and further focused our attention on our core values of safety quality and integrity despite the tumultuous past two years and the fact that the max has been the most scrutinized airplane ever some analysts believe that customers will eventually forget about the crashes and with that the fear of flying on the max i know that there are people who say that they'll never want to be on it but if they want to travel they're going to be on it and i think that there's a lot of demand and i do think that with we couple this with the vaccine news you start saying you know what let me go book something i want to go somewhere we don't say you know what i want to book something but jeez is that going to be the max because they're they're people just aren't that discerning the critical part of return to service is the fact that these airplanes have been sitting for long-term storage in a variety of different environments how the airlines the respective airlines around the world employ the required return to service maintenance because i guarantee the first time you have an airplane take off a max take off and you have an engine problem they're going to blame boeing or they're going to blame the faa and it's not the manufacturer it is not the faa it's going to be how that airplane maintenance was done for the return to service you

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Id: BE6rQxo7HUY

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020