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FAA and Boeing Tangle Over Certification as 737 MAX 7, Delivery Pushed to 2024
ARLINGTON —Boeing faces a setback again, with the first delivery of the 737 MAX 7 now pushed to 2024, according to their recent SEC filing. Interestingly, on Wednesday afternoon, the aviation giant saw a 7.7% increase in its stock, buoyed by the Q2 results that surpassed expectations. (www.airlinerwatch.com) More...
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Sorry, Boeing. You're given a free hand in doing your own regulation, you screw it up royally... blame 2 foreign carriers for poor flying skills and then the truth comes out that you specially removed any mention of MCAS and also told a carrier that wanted to pay for training that it wasn't necessary just to avoid the cost of reimbursing Southwest? Now you're complaining about the FAA holding you up in documentation review? You earned it. I really don't care how many downvotes this gets or Boeing apologists defending the company. It's just another example of engineers being overridden by finance guys at the cost of human lives.
Well the one that actually crashed, the -8 is out there flying around unimpeded. Explain that logic to me? In fact I believe the FAA admin at the time flew the -7 as part of the return to service validation of the -8. So arbitrarily holding up the 7 for "paperwork issues" seems to be more about the FAA saving face and penalizing Boeing than actually promoting safety. I'm obviously not saying Boeing is innocent in any way, but the airplane either conforms to the certification standards or it doesn't. To keep delaying it unnecessarily over documentation just seems petty.
Shades of early RVSM LOA's for part 91, 135 operators and the battle for the privilege for a Lear driver to get to 450'.
And then there is the problem with launching an aircraft which had a control problem inbound without a flight test after not finding the problem. That was on the airline not Boeing also another little known problem is Airbus had the same problem with one on of there AC also, computer programing and that cost lives but never was grounded and should have been.
Some of those errors can fly but some can't. Everyone airline seems to want to cheap out on maintenance. How about maybe since you (the airline industry) got a bailout - you take that opportunity to perform PM on ALL of your aircraft instead of doing stock buybacks? I'm not singling out Boeing over Airbus, believe me. I'm pointing out any organization (especially NASA) where they let management overrule engineers. Yes, I'll grant that engineers will tend to err on the side of caution and management does sometimes need to override their decisions. But there needs to be a damn good reason to. Look at Challenger, they made a go decision because Regan had a press conference scheduled. Boeing didn't want to pay Southwest so they came up with a more and more elaborate set of lies and misinformation to intentionally cover up what should've been a day in the simulator and some changed procedures. To top it off, they alluded to the lack of skills on the foreign carriers parts when the planes crashed. Just plain evil.
"Airbus had the same problem" If you are referring to China Airlines 140, the difference is that Airbus had previously identified the problem and advised airlines to modify the air flight system so it would fully disengage the autopilot "when certain manual controls input is applied on the control wheel in GO-AROUND mode", which would have included the yoke-forward movement the pilots made on this accident flight. The accident aircraft was scheduled to only receive the update the next time it required a more substantial service break, because China Airlines judged that the modifications were not urgent. These factors were deemed contributing incidents to the crash, after the primary failure of the pilots to take control of the situation once it began. (Source: Wikipedia)
