737 MAX

I am sure airlines will start using the 737 Max ASAP and that will probably include those of us here on the West Coast trying to get to the BVI's..via STT for us. I would love to here from some of the pilots on here ( George etc) about their feelings on this aircraft and its safety ...From SFO AA has been using 737's to Miami which is a tight fit on a long flight BTW..and a redeye..not fun unless you can get an upgrade.

It’s probably the most tested and safest aircraft you can fly on. Keep in mind that both crashes occurred after transfer of control to very inexperienced copilots. In both cases the crews failed to manage thrust to keep the airspeed where you want it with trim issues. The MCAS system has been completely redesigned to prevent what happened occurring again. Certainly the system had faults that needed correction but this was far more crew qualification issues than aircraft issues. The copilot in the second crash quite literally had no experience.

As a non pilot what you say about inexperience makes a point. But a pilot that has graduated to commercial jets should have enough flying skills to safely pilot an aircraft IF he has not been over ridden by computer control. That would have to be the worst experience for a pilot; knowing what needs to be done and the controls don't respond.

George..thanks..that was ,somewhat. my thinking..tough times for Boeing that's for sure! Hope to see you in the islands again soon!

My 14 year old niece has been flying right-seat with her dad in a wide range of aircraft from tail-draggers to dual-engine turbo-props for the better part of 5 years. She was left seat 2 summers ago in both glider and lake craft, with supervision. He's turned her over now to an actual flight school because he really MUST make sure she earns her quals, and he's convinced she is ready to do just that. She won't do her over-land distance solo for a while, but even after that, there are years and years and years before she would even dream of right seat in a commercial aircraft.

Putting a computer in charge of an aircraft without the back-up of an effective kill-switch manned by a qualified aircraft captain is hardly the definition of Boeing's ( or any other owner/operator) best work. First Max that went down should have been the last one.

More than one charter boat has gone aground because auto-pilot was misused by < someone> a charter company trusted as " captain". CYOA won't clear a boat for the STX crossing without 2 CG licensed captains aboard. I'm pretty sure the reason why is no big mystery.

The aircraft had and always has had kill switches for the trim system. In the first crash they were turned off per procedures and the aircraft continued to fly. They then put them back on and passed control to the copilot and the aircraft crashed. On the prior flight on that aircraft the crew had the exact same failure. They used the disable switches and flew the aircraft using manual trim to the destination without issues. In the second crash they were not used but the aircraft was still flyable. Neither pilot however noted or bothered to reduce power from full takeoff power. As a aircraft speed increases out of trim conditions increase.
Your 14 year old niece had more experience than the copilot in the crash. Things are done differently in Africa. I once had a Air traffic Controller admonish me after multiple radio calls he did not answer about bothering him while he was trying to sleep!
Here is a statement on his experience:
Two-hundred hours is extremely low," Aimer told Business Insider. "In an emergency, it becomes a problem. If you have a complicated airplane and you basically put a student pilot in there, that's not a good thing. Even if the guy in the left seat has so much experience, if you have so much imbalance of experience, that can be a problem."

George is correct. I fly 737’s professionally and look forward to its return, it really is great airplane that Boeing has made better. I wouldn’t hesitate to put my family in the back of one. It’s unfortunate that Boeing took so much of the blame for the problems when the reality is that the training of foreign air carriers played a major part in the crashes. Don’t forget, if Boeing came out and said that publicly they wouldn’t sell too many planes to non-American airlines.

I don't think that's entirely correct. I believe it's not 2 CG captains but rather two people qualified to captain the boat. If it was 2x CG captains it would be a very small subset. I don't think CYOA wishes to make that trip impossible but rather make sure it's safe. I tried to find the rules on their website but I don't see it there. So if you want to go to STX I would think a conversation with them would be the place to start. I was just there a couple of weeks ago and I can attest that it's a great sail and a fun place to hang out. And if you have entered STT following the entry requirements then no other regulations are required for STX.

Do the CYOA boats have MCAS?

I am not sure about your xenophobia comment but the US requires 1500 hours to fly as a copilot for a air carrier. Europe has lower hour requirements but very tough testing standards. Several African airlines were seeing very low pass rates on candidates they sent to Europe or the US for training. They initiated their own in house training programs and now enjoy a near 100% pass rate and drop them into the right seat with 200 hours. The global statistics for jet hull losses in 2019 was .15 per million flight hours. Africa was 1.39.

The xenophobia comment, which seems to have been removed is about how you reconfigure a plane with larger engines which tilt the nose up, design an override system which points it back down to the point of crashing it and then blame that on the 'foreign' pilots at the controls. Thankfully the review process has now rectified the MCAS problem, which is and was the real problem in my opinion.

I don’t know about xenophobia, but I do know that this isn’t that hard. An experienced highly trained pilot will turn the switches off, leave them off and hand fly the plane safely in the event of this malfunction. An inexperienced or poorly trained pilot will ..... well you know the rest.

By the way, people have been conditioned to think this MCAS malfunction is the one to be scared of but there are many possible aircraft malfunctions, many of which are way more complex than this one. Training and experience matter for those too.

Boeing’s fix is good because the odds of this particular malfunction happening again are now infinitesimally small, and Boeing can keep selling airplanes around the world to airlines with less training and with less experienced pilots. Win Win.

I respect your opinions because you both are pilots.
But it's hard to get away from this; Boeing commissioned a plane with a new 'safety' software override capable of crashing the plane on it's own, and in my opinion that's horrendous.
I don't recall these 'inexperienced , poorly trained' pilots crashing 737's before this, the aircraft and their pilots have an excellent safety record historically.
8 Americans, 18 Canadians, 7 Brits , 33 other Europeans were amongst the fatalities and the exiting CEO walked away with a $62m severance package, heaven knows what we'd all be thinking and saying if this were a Chinese or Airbus product.
Peace brothers, I'm not here to argue, I'm just very sad about it all.

Just to point out the Airbus A320/A321 NEO has the exact same issue with controllability at high Angles of attack. It’s actually caused more by the engine nacelles producing more lift. The new engines do not produce much more thrust. The initial solution by Airbus is to block the last few rows of seats. A software solution has been produced.

Wasn't the other contributing factor that the sensor failed and there was only one. And that the US airlines that fly these paid the extra for a second sensor? Thus making it far less likely the issue would occur in the first place in the US regardless of whether or not the pilots would handle it better? Having a safety system with no redundancy seems like a big flaw to me.

Seriously??? One IS a 737 pilot. It’s NOT an opinion - it’s fact.

If you are properly trained the planes don’t crash. If you are not, they crash. Both are still true if the part fails.

Is that really hard to understand?.

All righty then. I have no clue what any of this has to do with the BVI and it's gotten pretty chippy, so will end this one here.