More Thoughts From Boeing Land

I think this is my fifth post on the same subject: various aspects of the 737 Max 8 debacle.

This time I have gleaned a question from some recent news.

United Airlines has again delayed activating the faulty aircraft.

I think they said they hoped it could go back in service in November.

That is thought to be good, it was said in tandem with that news, since “Boeing is struggling to complete the required fixes by September”, or some such similar statement.

The question is, do you remember when, after the second crash, Boeing and their buddies at the FAA were saying the aircraft was fine and didn’t need to be grounded - they just needed to gather “more data”?

At the time I wondered what the nature of that “more data” might have been: more crashes?

That seemed to me to be the only meaning I could assign to the term “more data”.

So if the plane was just fine back then, and then immediately after the grounding, was going to be back in service quickly after a couple minor software tweaks (remember that phase of the debacle) why is Boeing still struggling to fix it multiple months later?

If it didn’t need to be grounded why is it so hard to fix?

The real question is, can it be fixed at all?

I guess after the plane is re-certified we can go back to “gathering data” about that question.

I am not much interested in being part of that activity and its related data set.