Dethroned! The case of the Boeing 737 MAX Part 1

The Boeing 737 MAX is the newest single-aisle aircraft in the Boeing family. A piece of engineering like few others have been seen worldwide with a tremendous amount of technology mounted on a reliable and fairly well-proven platform that is found all over the world operating with reliability and consistency.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of this article because despite all the technology it has and the fact that from an operational point of view, it is a real pleasure to fly the MAX, in the year 2018 and 2019, the new creation of Boeing, which would be the most recent jewel in the crown of the American mega manufacturer suffered two accidents that shocked the world. Next we are going to analyze the case of the Boeing 737 MAX in this article in two installments.

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If we put these accidents in a more pragmatic arena, it was no different than what happened with the DC-10, for example, which, after getting rid of its “teething problems”, managed to have a long and prolific operational career with several airlines and is operational today in military and cargo versions.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when we are more connected than ever and the internet is responsible for spreading information instantly, so the eyes of humanity are more open than ever. The result is that things that might not have caused much of a stir a few years ago are noticed today.

So the tragedies of Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29, 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10, 2019 were intensely observed by the world press, the general public and Boeing’s competitors who did not miss the opportunity to use the situation to discredit the platform without hesitation.

The result of all this media war is that the public took notice of the Boeing 737 MAX case and lost confidence in the plane. A very old saying that Boeing used as advertising “If it Ain’t Boeing, I’m not going” was altered to indicate the opposite. Now the public is afraid of Boeing’s extraordinary products.

The most serious thing about this matter is that unfortunately the general public does not have the eye to distinguish between a Boeing 737 MAX and its big brother; the Boeing 737NG. For the average viewer these planes are practically identical, it takes a professional or an avgeek to be able to notice the differences between one plane and the other, which are several, the most obvious being the sawtooth cowling on the Boeing 737 MAX engines.

The result is that there are actually passengers who, upon learning that their plane is a Boeing 737, of any generation, simply do not want to get on. At the beginning of this crisis, 737 operators like Ryanair were allowing people to board without paying if for any reason they expressed any kind of fear on board one of their Boeing 737s. We invite you to stay tuned for our second installment in the case of the Boeing 737 MAX.