Airlines Review Plans as Boeing Faces First Cancellation of 737 MAX Order

Anyone could see this coming I have NO idea what Boeing was thinking when it put its chancy death traps in the sky without telling anyone about the way they monkeyed around with the planes stabilizer system. IMO that’s intentional negligence, but that’s just me. What I find EQUALLY obscene is Boeing charging EXTRA for the safety system designed to protect the plane from ‘faulty’ sensor readings? How is that not criminal? First they don’t tell anyone about these ‘safety sensors’ and that they could interfere with the plane’s handling by causing a nosedive and second, they left the airlines, the pilots, and the passengers at the mercy of a new system that was not only ‘secret’, it was faulty and Boeing KNEW IT.

Airlines Review Plans as Boeing Faces First Cancellation of 737 MAX Order

PT Garuda Indonesia on Friday became the first airline to pursue canceling its Boeing Co. 737 MAX jet order as other carriers move to limit damage to their flight plans and finances. Airlines are grappling with the likelihood of a protracted global grounding following two fatal crashes.

Garuda said passengers have lost confidence in the MAX after the aircraft model was involved in two crashes within five months that killed a combined 346 passengers and crew in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Regulators last week idled the global fleet of more than 370 MAX planes. Boeing maintains the plane is safe but has promised changes to a flight-control system investigators believe may have been involved in the two accidents.

Some other customers, such as Vietnam’s VietJet, have said they are studying future purchases because of the fallout from the grounding. “We think other cancellations may follow as global customers remain spooked after two crashes with seemingly similar causes,” CFRA Research analyst Jim Corridore said in a note.

Boeing representatives are planning to meet with Garuda in Jakarta on March 28 to discuss the matter further, a Garuda spokesman said, adding that the airline wanted to convert some of the MAX order into larger planes. Boeing declined to comment.

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Boeing expects the return to flight to come much sooner than some airlines fear. Commercial plane marketing vice president Randy Tinseth said Thursday that the company’s planned changes to the 737 MAX software and training are expected to be approved by U.S. regulators within weeks. Last week, Acting Federal Aviation Administration chief Daniel Elwell told reporters he expected the planes to restart carrying U.S. passengers in several months.

https://apple.news/Ag7ZIdZI6Rly4yakWuOYBhw

It’s probably just me BUT I seriously don’t think a software patch is the answer. Boeing could design an aircraft that doesn’t put passengers in danger like this model, BUT it would require a lot of red tape getting the new design certified as air-worthy by the FAA. When it comes to passenger/crew safety and/or company profits, you know the latter is going to cancel out the former. Every time.

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detroitmechworks's picture

Apparently, This is nobody's fault.

Therefore Nobody will be punished to the full extent of the law.
Looks like the only response is that Nobody will be being paid.

Just not as much. Because, after all, Nobody screwed up.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foWx42_1Loc]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Raggedy Ann's picture

When it comes to passenger/crew safety and/or company profits, you know the latter is going to cancel out the former. Every time.

My brother is a flight attendant. Although he doesn't fly on the 737 Max (he does international flights on large airplanes), you never know. I fly SW airlines, exclusively, so it concerns me greatly.

This, to me, is just another example of a way to depopulate the planet. All the big guns are in on it. We are not safe on this planet.

Thanks for the report, Amanda. Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

snoopydawg's picture

@Raggedy Ann

This, to me, is just another example of a way to depopulate the planet.

Jesse Ventura had a series where he showed all the ways that was in the works. Food, water, air, deregulation of safety policies and environmental ones, the FDA not making sure that new drugs are safe. Look at how long it takes to do any recalls for products, food, medicine, cars, airplanes....

Some cars had problems with the accelerator getting stuck and cars crashing and people dying. It takes a big enough number for agencies to act.

Even after two planes crashed and the world stopped flying them this country refused to ground them until Boeing decided it should. The decision was left up to Boeing not our government.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

vtcc73's picture

@UntimelyRippd @UntimelyRippd @UntimelyRippd in the deep end while holding an anvil but they are too big, too important to be allowed to drown.

I’m not saying this isn’t an epic cockup on many levels. It definitely is. They have poisoned the golden goose of their own commercial aircraft business. It’s not the first time an aircraft manufacturer has done so. I just don’t see them not wiggling out of the noose. They’re going to pay heavily but that’s all.

He’ll. Don’t be surprised if they use the losses as a reason to attack labor. The first law is to never allow an opportunity to escape. There’s big executive bonuses to be had after all.

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"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."

snoopydawg's picture

@vtcc73

Boeing helps sets the military budgets and they and Lockheed Martin are too big to fail just like the banks. They will pay some fines, some engineers and software developers will probably be fired, but the CEO will probably get another raise like he did after that first plane crash.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

dystopian's picture

This is capitalism in America. The lawsuits and fines are viewed as an expense and Wall St., and corporate America goes on biz as usual. Whether it is glyphosate, people drugs, or planes that never should have been sold, what mattered most was some money to made. This is how the worship of money works. Boeing probably is too big to fail, but they should over this. Boeing would kill to cut corners and increase profits. So would Wall St. and Big Pharma.

Capitalism is moneyism, the worship of money for money's sake.

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

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chuck utzman

TULSI 2020

Amanda Matthews's picture

@chuckutzman
comes out on top regardless of who’s running things.

I guess when an economy is based on how the DOW is performing the actual citizens wants, needs, and opinions really don’t count for anything.

How did America ever become such a powerful nation before we had the stock market? How about instead of the stock market a country’s status and stability depend on the sweat and toil of the American people instead of the portfolios of stock holders? That’s how we used to judge the state of our economy before everything became predicated on the bottom line of Wall Street.

NO, THE STOCK MARKET IS NOT THE ECONOMY

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwj7xe2n8ZbhAhUm...

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Azazello's picture

Auto-crash is standard, safety is an available option.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSK7rBEwaZY width:500 height:300]

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

@Azazello @Azazello
for those unfamiliar, price discrimination refers to figuring out ways to charge different customers different prices for what is pretty much the same product or service. the most obvious examples are student and senior discounts. however, a more ... dubious ... technique is to deliberately withhold certain features from different versions of the product, and then set price points, not according to the difference in cost of production, but according to the difference in the budgets of customers.

for example, the marginal cost of providing first class air travel is at most twice the cost of providing coach travel, but first class is priced at WAY more than coach.

perhaps more notably, back in the days of the 68000-series of microprocessors (the ones that powered the old Macintosh line), Motorola sold two versions of the chip, for example, the 68040 and the 68040LC. the only difference between them -- the ONLY difference -- was that the floating point units in the 68040LC had been deliberately and permanently disabled. in other words, it actually cost them a tiny bit more for the chips with no [EDIT] FPU, because they needed one extra manufacturing step -- the one where they hit them with a specific voltage on a couple of the pins and blew out the circuit.

This allowed Motorola -- and for that matter, Motorola's customers, like Apple -- to charge two different prices for the same product. Thus, yuppies and executives and research engineers got to have cool, much faster macintoshes than the proles, while the proles bought up machines that had been deliberately and pointlessly crippled. YAY FOR THE EFFICIENCY OF MARKET COMPETITION!

Boeing needs to be able sell the same airliners to wealthy countries and less wealthy countries. To do that, it needs to be able to sell more expensive versions of the airliners to its wealthier customers. To do that, it needs to find things to optionalize, so it can charge a premium for them. Like safety software.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Are you saying that Boeing sold these fucked up airplanes without the safety feature to countries who couldn't afford the upgrade? But the wealthy countries got the safety features because they could afford it?

Jesus Fucking Christ. These people are loathsome.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Amanda Matthews's picture

@Anja Geitz
We are universally distrusted. We are the planets biggest predator. And by ‘we’ I don’t mean you or me. I mean the people who do things like this. They’’re running this country.

They are also building safe rooms and bunkers because the rabble are starting to make noise.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

@Anja Geitz
discussed or decided, or for that matter, what really took the planes down and how the various features/options of the aircraft were priced and marketed. did the planes indeed lack a safety feature only because it was optional? and would that safety feature have saved either of these two recent flights? a lot of information is flying around, and i wouldn't say that it has yet settled into a well-agreed and well-understood narrative.

however, i do know that what i described is how the world of branding and marketing works in general.

for large appliances there are 3 basic levels of "quality", plus perhaps a 4th ultra-luxury level. if you decided to buy a frigidaire dishwasher, you can buy a $300 model or a $500 model or a $700 model. The $300 model is a piece of garbage that should never have been built. It exists only so that they can sell the $500 model to people who can afford it. This means having an extra production line, with all the costs associated with tooling up for that, extra spare parts, extra inventory expenses for dealers and so on. It also means filling up landfills with dead $300 machines, which aren't even worth repairing, because anything that goes wrong with them is going to bring a minimum $150 repair bill, so fuck it, get a brand new one with a fresh warranty, right? The existence of the $300 model is an affront to any reasonable conception of "efficiency", but it is absolutely necessary under the economic regime of the "market".

on the other hand, what you can't buy is a high-quality no-frills model. for example, the cheap model will have mechanical controls instead of fancy-schmancy programmable electronic controls. do you know what that means? it means it's never going to require a $300 repair bill for replacing the dead control board (which, BTW, has about $40 worth of electronics on it).

many years ago i wrote a paper (actually, it might have been an exam answer) in an economics class in which i laid out the idea that democratic socialism was largely a form of price discrimination that permitted the existence of goods/services that were clearly wanted but that a market could not supply. the example i used was BritRail (thatcher's power was waxing at the time). the idea was this: imagine it costs 500 pounds to run a train from Oxford to Cambridge. imagine that there are two people who want to take the train. one of them can afford -- and is willing -- to pay 200 pounds for the trip, and one can afford -- and is willing -- to pay 300 pounds. even though the economic value of running the train is equal to the economic cost of running the train, there will be no train service, because for the train to run with only two customers, the ticket price needs to be 250 pounds ... and that shuts out one of our two riders.
on the other hand, if the government implements a broad model of price discrimination by applying a progressive taxation scheme (actually, doesn't even need to be progressive) and then using the money to subsidize train operations, then the train can run.
is it perfect? of course not. lots of people who don't care about the train will be paying taxes that, in some arbitrary sense, are being spent on trains. the hope, of course, is that while they might not take the trains, they would be deriving other benefits -- both direct and indirect -- from the money they paid in taxes. such as, for example, reduced traffic on the roads, which is both convenient (less congestion, faster drive times, more available parking) and economical (since it reduces accidents on the roads, as well as wear and tear on the roads). would everybody get what they pay for? no. but i don't know how to have a meaningful debate about economic and social policy with anyone who imagines that life is "fair" -- especially when their thinkin on "fairness" revolves around the abstract tokens we call "money".

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

it means it's never going to require a $300 repair bill for replacing the dead control board (which, BTW, has about $40 worth of electronics on it).

My Sister's had to pay $3,000 for her Prius Battery. Can you imagine what parts on a "Driverless" car would cost?

Economic hostage taking in guise of what the market will bear.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz @Anja Geitz
a property of one of the IBM mainframes, might've been the 370, among whose listed features was, "imprecise interrupts" ... wait, nope it was the 360/91:

360/91 - the first pipelined processor. Fully hardwired. Most of the decimal instructions were missing (emulated in software). Because it had multiple instruction execution units, it had "imprecise interrupts". When an interrupt or an exception occurred, the program counter might not point to the failing instruction if the multiple execution units were all active at the same time. For this reason, it was advisable to put NOPs around instructions that might lead to exceptions. Not many of these were built, and they may all have had slightly different tweaks as each of them was successively hand built by the same engineering team."

Basically, IBM couldn't solve the engineering problem of handling interrupts on a pipelined processor with multiple instruction pathways, so they just invented a piece of jargon for the phenomenon and listed it among the machine's features. (At least, that's what I was told in one of my computer architecture courses.)
So in one sense it kind of resembled the problem with these Boeings: They were committed to an architecture, ran into an engineering roadblock, and were too far down the road to back out of the design, so they just went ahead with the project.
BTW, it was only the first IBM pipelined processor. Cray had already used pipelining in his supercomputer designs.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

It'd be refreshing if the "smart" people who were responsible for these planes and their failings would be held accountable. Makes me mad thinking about their arrogant negligence.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz
rotary phone service, some of the phone providers priced touch-tone service at a premium, even though by then it was more expensive to support rotary than touch tone (the mechanical relays that processed rotary dialing would wear out). why? because they could. it gave them a very small window for price discrimination.

the most egregious of what i call market perversities are those in which ethics, morality and even personal health become levers for price discrimination. brown, unbleached coffee filters cost more than white ones. why? they can't possibly cost more to produce. because people who give a fuck about the environment will pay a little bit more to avoid spewing more bleach into the air and the water. wouldn't it make more sense to price the white ones at a premium? then, uptight anal retentives would need to pay more to inflict their damage on our planet, and most people would buy brown filters. speaking of bleaching (not chlorine bleaching, mind you), which costs more -- bread made with bleached flour or bread made with unbleached flour? the answer is that almost all inexpensive mass market bread is made with bleached flour. the unbleached is reserved for the upmarket product lines like brownberry and arnold's. a 24 oz loaf of arnold's bread costs $3. a 24 oz loaf of some bottom-feeding cheap-ass bread costs $1.75. the difference ain't in the ingredients, because neither loaf has more than about 30 or 40 cents worth of ingredients. (Do you know what a large baker pays for flour? As little as $0.25 per pound. Maybe even less -- that's the restaurant supply price. A 24 oz loaf of bread has about 3.5 cups of flour, which is just about a pound.) now i don't know, maybe arnold's and brownberry pay their workers better than other bakeries. they're both owned by "Bimbo" bakers, which is itself owned by a Mexican conglomerate.
what i do know is that in my supermarkets there is only one non-premium brand that doesn't use bleached flour, but it isn't a bottom-line brand, and it does use HFCS. again, this is a comical cost saving -- 1 ounce of cane sugar (which would make for a more than sweet enough 24 oz loaf) costs 3.5 cents at restaurant-supply rates. the cost difference of offering consumers a loaf made with organic unbleached white flour and cane sugar, instead of bleached white flour and HFCS, cannot be more than about 70 cents, because 65 cents is the maximal difference in the wholesale cost of the flour and the sweetener. (If you buy at least 2500 pounds at a time, you can get King Arthur organic bread flour for about 83 cents/pound.)
this, BTW, is why i bake my own bread, using a bread machine. my non-organic 2-pound loaf has 7 ingredients: Unbleached flour, cane sugar, salt, buttermilk, butter, yeast, and water, and costs me about about a buck and a half (70 cents flour, 10 cents sugar, 1 cent salt, 40 cents buttermilk, 25 cents butter, 5 cents yeast) at plain old grocery store prole-prices (gotta buy the yeast in one-pound bulk package, otherwise it's silly expensive). any comparable bread would be 4 to 6 dollars off the shelf. i could easily slice it to a buck 10 by cutting the butter, buttermilk and sugar in half, and under a buck if i bought flour in 25 pound bags and replaced fresh buttermilk with powdered skim milk.
and i bought the bread machine at goodwill for $10. it had never been used.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

wouldn't it make more sense to price the white ones at a premium? then, uptight anal retentives would need to pay more to inflict their damage on our planet, and most people would buy brown filters.

Frankly, if I were granted one wish in this world, it would not be to bestow myself with megamillions. It would be to wash people's brains out with the idea that the person with the most money wins. They don't in my humble opinion. They just become a caricature of a human being. Flesh and bones, yes. But with a hollowed out soul. They may live in a beautifully manicured estate, but their inner life is just another Dorian Gray.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Sourdough. My favorite! I especially like to take Gruyere cheese, slice it on a piece of freshly baked sourdough, top it off with a dollop of hot pepper jelly, and then grill it in a pan until golden brown and the cheese is melted for the most satisfying grilled cheese sandwich you ever ate.

Yummy.

P.S. Nice deal on the bread maker.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz @Anja Geitz
(goodwill or st vinnie's) that didn't have a few breadmakers on the shelf, usually in pristine condition, always priced [EDIT TO FIX INADVERTENT INCLUSION OF HTML MARKUP] under $10.

kids and i sometimes do swiss/gruyere fondue with fresh-baked bread. gruyere ain't cheap though.

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0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

But I get a discount when I buy it at my store. Fondue! Another wonderful thing some awesome person thought of to do with bread.

Will definitely check out the local thrift shop. I'm looking for an ice cream maker. Got some wonderful recipes for a few ice cream flavors that are kinda out of the ordinary and I'm dying to try them. Nice tip!

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

dervish's picture

The problem was mechanical, over-powered engines on small airframe. The software was supposed to compensate for the mismatch, so now we're talking about a patch to fix a patch. It's like trying to fix something with chewing gum and baling wire.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."