@saxnot @nixCraft the 737 MAX was Boeing's hail mary to compete with Airbus. Instead of redesigning the fuselage which would cost a lot of money and time, they just put oversized jet engines on the plane which messed up its balance and they tried to fix it with software called MCAS that the pilots weren't even trained on properly. This has caused crashes and killed people.

This is simply one of many sins.

Since then there have been numerous groundings of the planes for various issues, not including the most recent "plug door blew out mid-flight" issue that an Alaskan Airlines flight suffered recently. It turns out there may not have been any bolts secure it at all. They've been investigating others and finding insufficently secured or missing bolts. Also the guy who received the gift of the plug door in the tree of his front yard noted the serial number for the door was written in sharpie. This is looking real bad.

That doesn't include the late December bulletin that went out when a a crew was doing routine maintenance on the rudders and discovered stray bolts laying around. Nobody seems to know where they came from yet. This is terrifying.

How does this even happen?

Well, back in 1999 when Boeing took over McConnell-Douglas the company moved their HQ from Seattle where the planes were being built and they could provide daily oversight to Chicago. This was likely financially motivated and it was a terrible decision. Quality has been tanking ever since. Their planes keep getting worse and more dangerous as they continue to put profits over safety and have been repeatedly getting fined for safety violations. There are accusations of cheating regulations/safety tests too.

Since then they've again moved their HQ to Washington, DC where they can spend their time lobbying the FAA to give them a break. This, again, is making things worse and worse.

Let's not forget that there's still an open issue where if the pilot leaves the de-icers on for too long it causes the plane engines to catch fire. They're trying to convince the FAA to give them an exception instead of fixing it.

> Pilots flying the Max 8 and Max 9 have been warned to limit use of an anti-icing system to five minutes when flying in dry conditions. Otherwise, the FAA says, inlets around the engines could get too hot, and parts of the housing could break away and strike the plane, possibly breaking windows and causing rapid decompression.


Have a nice flight! ✈️