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by yodelshady 1384 days ago
Indeed. Airlines do well, and they're heavily regulated. But they don't have armies of engineers doing nothing whilst court cases are worked out.

The flip side of that is monopoly. The only recent aviation accidents that have happened, have done so because, put bluntly, the FAA knows they didn't stand a chance if they blocked the only (US) big-jet maker from upgrading its planes. Were there (US) competitors, which once there were, they wouldn't blink at telling Boeing's transparently awful MAX design to go whistle.
2 comments
treis 1384 days ago
That's not really true. The MAX issues were in large part a result of trying to keep the same type rating. An almost entirely artificial requirement generated by the FAA.

In an ideal world Boeing would have said this is the Max, it's slightly different and you need to do a little training to get used to the difference. But that means a new type rating which causes all sorts of operational headaches.

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stonemetal12 1384 days ago
My understanding is what you are suggesting is how it works. The only question is how to measure "slightly different". FAA thought the differences were bigger than slightly and needed more than a little training. So Boeing tried to use software to paper over the differences.
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jhugo 1383 days ago
This requirement was actually pushed on Boeing by Southwest. They insisted that the MAX not require training for their pilots, and with Southwest being a large 737 customer with other good options (A320), Boeing found a way.
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coldtea 1384 days ago
>Airlines do well

Isn't airlines one of the worst performing industries, with companies which often require subsidies, and are always on the verge of collapsing?

And that has been this way, way before Covid...

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