San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Airlines ready to fly theMax— are passengers?
The Boeing 737 Max is coming to an airport near you, and if you’re still flying, youmay ride on the plane in coming months, like it or not.
Federal Aviation Administration officials say the plane is safe and lifted its grounding order Nov. 16. The plane’s grounding 20 months ago followed two crashes that killed a total of 346 people.
The COVID-19 pandemic largely replaced concerns about the Max. Most Americans now worry about whether any plane ride is hazardous to their health.
The three airlines that will fly the Max plane in the U.S. — American, Southwest and United — say they are confident Boeing has corrected its problems, but they acknowledge some passengers might still be skittish.
While U.S. airlines say their websites list the plane models they deploy on each route, the reality is that planes get swapped all the time. The Max could be a last-minute substitution.
“How each customer feels about making a reservation on a 737Max 8 or flying on a Max is an expression of personal comfort that we know is going to be different for every person, especially here at the outset as we return to the service process,” Southwest President TomNealon said in a media briefing Nov. 19.
Southwest already allows customers to receive credits for switching or canceling flights. Nealon said the policy will apply to passengers who don’t want to
fly the Max.
American Airlines will be the first to fly the Max. It plans to operate two Max flights a day between Miami and New York from Dec. 29 to Jan. 4, and then add more flights to the schedule.
It will be followed by United Airlines, which plans to put the Max in service in the first quarter of 2021. Southwest Airlines, the world’s largest Max operator, plans to reintroduce the jet in the second quarter.
Airlines have grounded hundreds of planes because of the lack of demand, but they still want to fly the Max because it is 20 percent more fuel-efficient than other 737 planes.
Even before the two crashes — on Oct. 29, 2018, in Indonesia, and March 10, 2019, in Ethiopia — I avoided the Max.
I fly American Airlines a lot and often chat with flight attendants. They’d warnedme the American Airlines version of the
Max had 12 extra seats that cut legroom throughout the plane.
They also described the new, slimmed-down lavatories, 24 inches wide, with a sink that only fits one hand. The attendants said the water faucet spray quickly overwhelmed the sink, creating a small river.
“We warned (American CEO) Doug Parker that American had gone too far,” one told me, referring to a meeting flight attendants had with the top executive.
American subsequently addressed the flooding problem by reducing the water spray, but the miniature restrooms remain.
Comfort aside, the most critical issue is whether the Max gets passengers from Point A to Point B safely. To believe it’s safe requires faith that the FAA has finally done its job enforcing airplane safety.
Some aren’t buying that.
Critics include consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who lost a
grandniece in one of the crashes. They maintain the plane is not airworthy and should remain grounded.
The FAA’s original approval of the Max’s automated flight control system in 2017 has since come under heavy criticismfrom the agency’s inspector general and federal lawmakers. They detailed a cozy relationship between Boeing officials and aviation regulators that led to the approval of the plane three years ago before it was ready to fly.
The two planes crashed because of faulty sensors and a design flaw in the flight control system that repeatedly pushed down the nose of the aircraft.
A damning FAA report uncovered by congressional investigators after the first crash showed the agency had not acted aggressively enough on its own findings. The FAA had concluded that the Max could crash 15 more times over a 45-year period, the life of the plane, if Boeing didn’t resolve the flight control systemproblem.
Only after the second crash, fivemonths after the first, did the FAA ground the plane.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson has defended his administration’s record of ensuring that planes are safe. At the same time, he admits the FAAmissed problems in the Max flight control system software.
Dickson has clearly mastered the art ofWashington doublespeak. Basically, he’s telling us the FAA did not mess up, but it will do better in the future. Boeing officials, for their part, have apologized for the crashes and say it is now a better company.
The Max’s new fix includes a second sensor for the flight control computer to avoid the system breakdown that led to the two crashes.
One way tomove past the Max’s controversial first few years of flying is to change its name. At least that’s what some airlines seem to think. American Airlines won’t be listing the Max name on its airline safety card in the seat pocket. Instead, it will describe the plane as a Boeing 737-8.
American spokesman Brian Metham said this is part of the standardization of the airline’s safety cards, not “any Max rebranding effort.”
Boeing says it plans to keep the name — but recently called it a 737-8 when announcing that a small Polish airliner has purchased two of the planes.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Max name eventually disappears. It could speed up passenger’s amnesia about the plane’s tragic past, something Boeing and airlines that fly the Max would love.