American Airlines Sticks By Boeing 737 MAX Commitment

Chris Habig, calling out the design age of the 737 airframe as it compares to more modern aircraft redundancies is a false narrative. You can argue about the design limitations of its undercarriage certainly. You can argue that the MAX still ulitlizes hydro-mechanical flight controls. But, neither of these factors are age related; they are and were conscious design choices. Boeing designed the undercarriage for ease of access for smaller airports lacking larger ramp equipment. With the MAX, they could've easily incorporated an all fly by wire flight control equipment. They chose to keep the bulk of the existing hydro-mechanical gear for cost control measures. As for redundancies, all aircraft flying today have multiple redundancies with their flight control systems..as does the MAX. The fact that Beoing failed to have any redundancy with respect to MCAS and the AOA vanes, is a colossal blunder, and not an age related design limitation. PS, the A320 series design dates to the late 1970s...not exactly a modern aircraft design. My point is, modern airframe design hasn't changed all that much since the 1960s(except with the 78u and A350nwithe their carbon fiber fusilages). The 737 airframe is still quite viable in the modern world of aviation...Boeing may have asked it to do too much within the existing design parameters. If you want to argue that point, it's a valid argument.

Basic planform? Not really. Power? Avionics? It is nothing like its fifty year old grandmother. It was done in by the hubris of its outdated management. Boeing falls victim to lacking pilot skills. Colgan. Pull into the Stall. AF 447? Pull into a wild climbing Stall. Schiphol? Who’s is flying the plane? SFO? Six pilots don’t notice what or who is controlling thrust? These are all heavy state of the Art aircraft, plus a Bombardier. Eliminate the less than stellar pilot errors, then get back to me.

Absolutely agree with you. I see the the analogy between MAX and this. Our president is a corporate thug and he got others' vote. To keep on track with Boeing and the MAX, Boeing is not the only one's to blame. Part of the blame goes to some of these corporate big dog number crunchers who work for airlines whose safety is out the window, but numbers are more important.

Spokesman Paul Bergman said that the relevant functions of the system were "described" in the manual, and that "media reports that we intentionally withheld information about airplane functionality from our customers are simply untrue." Also like I said had the pilots known how to fly old school "stick and rudder" They would have done what was done by US pilots an estimated 355 times prior resulting in zero crashes. Also how was Boeing Greedy? If it was to take more hours of training to fly the bird then that should be on the airlines or included in the aircraft price tag.

No certification inspector is going to put their name on a certification approval of this airplane with it's related history on controversy unless they have gone well above and beyond the minimum requirements. Their names will be dragged through the media mercilessly if there is a future problem.

No they shouldn’t rename it because then people would say “you are trying to hide it, you are trying to fool us”. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

I for one, would care, but there are many out there who wouldn't, I agree.

As a former flight attendant, I still remember in my drills in training BRACE BRACE BRACE BEND OVER STAY DOWN OVER STAY DOWN! That was about as fun going through MOPP levels during NBC training while in the USAF.

... just one will do!