This Week’s Featured Links
Muilenburg: Returning Max to service ‘will be an international decision’ – Learmount.com
Boeing held a gathering in Seattle last week for influencers, analysts, and really anyone but media. I was included in the group, but I was at a conference I couldn’t miss. This write-up seems to be the best one I’ve seen yet. It just points to a slow, slow, slow re-entry into service for the MAX. And on that note…
FAA chief says Boeing 737 Max recertification process to stretch into 2020 – CNBC
Did I say slow? Yep. And so did FAA chief Steve Dickson.
One for the Road
Delta still wants Boeing to build a new mid-sized widebody – TPG
Here’s a little potentially-good news for Boeing. Delta still wants a middle-of-the-market airplane. Whether that’s to buy or just to use as a foil to keep Airbus honest remains unclear.
6 comments on “3 Boeing Links I Love: Boeing's Influencer Event, More Delays, A Delta Hope”
I interviewed the daughter of one of United’s chief 737 pilots in Philly, last month, for a place at our grad school. Chatting with him over coffee, he said that he had spent hours and hours in the MAX simulator over the past few months, recreating the conditions under which both 737MAXs were lost. He said those pilots (and passengers) never stood a chance – the physical force required to fight the nose-down stabiliser rotation was so significant it (quote) ‘nearly broke (my) arms’. He did say, however, that he thought they would eventually find a fix and that it could still be a good plane – but conceded that Boeing should never had made it in the first place, a new airframe being far more preferable to a stretch way too far.
“FAA chief says Boeing 737 Max recertification process to stretch into 2020”
I mean that is like 17 days so not much info there sadly.
Kinda of funny, the FAA chief is former Delta. The one airline benefiting from the max grounding… Wonder how his stock is doing?
I’m pretty sure he had to divest all his Delta stock along with any other aviation related stock.
I sure that he doesn’t have any friends at Delta any longer…
About time the FAA finally grew a spine. No doubt since they too have some egg on their face.
For far too long, right or wrong, I have had a hard time accepting them as a truly impartial agency of oversight. Sort of like a judge in traffic court. It’s hard to be neutral when your livelihood depends on getting as many convictions as possible. Even if not directly, the judges still get their marching orders from the ones who do. For years, I’ve viewed the FAA through a similar prism. They may not be directly involved with business and political shenanigans, but the people that sign their paychecks are. So I have no reason to believe that many FAA decisions really came from people who spent some time on the golf course or in a cozy restaurant with a plain brown paper bag and some airline/aerospace executives.
So it’s refreshing to see some evidence that this isn’t the case. At least not for now. Although because I’m such a hardened cynic, I would not be surprised of this prolonged re-entry of service isn’t just smoke and mirrors theatrics. Sooner or later, I’d bet on Boeing crying “national security”, “too big to fail”, etc and getting a taxpayer funded bailout.
Which would then convince me beyond any doubt that all of this is a joke.
Someones head at the top needs to roll. And because that hasn’t (yet) happened…..