Donald Trump used to own a whole airline. He purchased the Eastern Shuttle in 1989 and renamed it the Trump Shuttle. He lost $100 million on the deal, and also lost big in a takeover attempt of American Airlines the same year. The Trump Shuttle is now the American Airlines shuttle. So he’s an expert on commercial aviation.
Trump does still own a Boeing 757 (as well as a Cessna). He acquired the jet in 2011.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign the 757 had to make an emergency landing in Nashville. So he’s an expert on air safety. In fact the record safety year in 2017 was Trump’s doing:
Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news – it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018
He considered naming his personal pilot to run the FAA. Air safety for the President, then, is clearly very personal (he might have just been looking for someone to give back the waypoints which were taken away when he launched his Presidential campaign). He also takes aircraft noise complaints seriously.
Naturally what the country wanted to know was when President Trump would speak out on the issues facing the Boeing 737 MAX. Our long national wait is now over. The President feels we use way too much technology in our aircraft.
Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019
….needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019
This is actually an intellectually consistent position for the President to take. His views on trade are very much to focus on displaced workers when new technologies compete away older products, rather than to focus on what more productive uses those resources could be put towards.
Trump himself could lead the investigation into the cause of the Ethiopian 737 MAX disaster:
To be sure, I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot either. He’s been dead since 1955.
However I believe data suggests that air travel has gotten safer overall with advancements in technology.
Live look at the new Air Force One pic.twitter.com/V6IQORjcwC
— Emily C. Singer (@CahnEmily) March 12, 2019
Filed under: bad news for Uber and self-driving cars, good news for those who like the continued use of paper flight strips by air traffic controllers.
I see it’s another slow day at Gary’s TDS shop.
Hmmmmm. Trump decisions or those of a want to be economist suffering from “Im relevant “ syndrome.
Choices choices
oh look, more liberal propaganda on the travel blog!
Who knew airplanes could be so complicated?
When will these egg head bloggers stop their whining about their lost liberal leaders?
Accept your loss and try to move on. Get some therapy please.
Stop spreading the hate and division you do.
Just ignore him. Was this really worth a blog post?
I guess I don’t get the reaction of anger/defensiveness, if anyone disagrees with something I’ve written I’d expect them to say (1) what they disagree with and (2) why.
For what it’s worth I don’t think most observers would consider me liberal in the US political sense.
The question is, has he contacted his FAA administrator to address this specific problem regarding the Max 8. I don’t expect Mr Trump to know much about the inner workings of an airliner’s flight control system and software, but the FAA has people that do.
AS
retired ATC
@Gary. It is pretty obvious that you don’t like Trump and voted for the pantsuit. Your left wing biases affect your choice of stories, comments and spin. That you can’t see it nor understand is not surprising.
Gary, Jose is spot on. Sorry dude.
PS, Trump is going to win again. The left has learned nothing.
But what has Gary said that was wrong? Nothing I can see.
Gary, your hatred of Mr. Trump has diminished your reputation as a travel blogger. Mr. Trump was stating that often times new products are over-engineered. He did not say he was against new technology. Your spin on his words is going to hurt your reputation.
You liberals and the lame-stream media are always trying to call out Trump for the stupid things he says.
@Gary, how dare you criticize the president for tweeting without bothering to learn anything about an issue? Next thing we know, you’ll be attacking him for lying on a regular basis!
cool !Trump opens his mouth, a trove of fodder for liberal media!
So all of the comments here are attacking Gary and his perceived biases. How come no one is commenting on the content?
Trump made a very well reasoned comment that has been the basis for Boeing vs Airbus control architecture debate for the last 30 years. These two crashes are actually the result of Boeing shifting to control surface automation that a civilian would not expect from Boeing. Airbus makes great planes but the lack of direct pilot control has always been a concern.
I understand humor and satire but this article is just absurd. This has no place on boardingarea. I want politics free travel news.
@Jose – what is pretty obvious to you is not, in fact, accurate
Would Gary write a slanted, hateful story about Obama or Hillary or “Air head” Ocasio Cortez? Nope just more Garbage hate speech from the liberal left.
Have you seen me writing positively about AOC?
If you are for feedback –
1. You often attempt to be funny via a smug, sarcastic framing of your arguments. But it comes across as the kid that would suck up to the teacher, that no one liked in grade school. You seem to try to suck up to progressives.
2. You generally write in a condensending manner about economic issues, but have marginal insights
3. You try to offhandedly and casually show you are important via references to who you work with, but we know you are a mid-level grunt peón
4. You try hard to be relevant but since you were too scared to blog full time your insights and importance has been surpassed by those fully engaged in this area
But essentially your a guy that did a great job finding a niche, so you are smug with yourself about that, but now you realize you are increasingly losing influence and relevance in this area so you resort to click bait ( let me guess 1,000,000 ways to use the new zeal Mart card) headlines and snarky anti-trump comments to be relevant. Both of which are just funny, but not how you think – actually like the little boy in grade school that tries to make friends by eating booger’s – not knowing everyone else is laughing at not with him.
But keep alienating half the country. I’m sure it will pay off for you emotionally.
There certainly are a lot of triggered snowflakes in the comment section today!!
@Prchef very constructive feedback thank you !
“no one liked in grade school”
“you…have marginal insights”
“you are a mid-level grunt peón”
“tries to make friends by eating booger’s”
And yet you comment here regularly.
Gary is alienating 50% of the country? Trump got 46% of the vote and his approval rating has mainly settled in the low 40% range the past year.
Gary, you failed to look at Trump’s argument for what it really is. Every average person knows what it means when Trump said he would not want Einstein but a professional pilot to fly his plain (ie. overengineering). Your twist implicated your bias against someone who speaks out at least intelligently on the surface — president regardless. “You don’t need to be Einisten (or rocket sicientist) to know this or that,” like my mentor says to me sometimes.
A very spirited defense of Trump by many people, not sure why these people continue to waste their time reading your blog if they feel it’s so biased. I certainly don’t continue reading sites that I consider blatantly one-sided and misleading.
Many people also keep bringing up the fallacy that if you are not for Trump, you are a liberal and/or you are a Clinton supporter. As a lifelong conservative, I’m not for liberals/Clinton but I’m definitely also not for Trump. There are not just two options and we conservatives need to understand that Trump is only looking out for himself, that he is a proven liar, and that he was a Democrat before he was a Republican so it’s not like he has deeply held beliefs. When Trump is gone, we will look back on what he has done to degrade the Presidency, the reputation of the US in the world, and to our morality/ethics and he will not be remembered well by history.
BTW, I found your blog post to be humorous, which I believe was the intent. Please keep up the blog post for those of us who find it interesting.
Gary’s blog — He can do what he wants.
Of course, it would be more provident if he took a neutral position on Prez’s statements — as is demonstrated by the above comments — and I share the distaste for his commentary.
Notice, he does not deny Alan’s incisive review and critique of his commentary about past Dem officeholders.
What I want to know is now that you have moved to Austin, Gary, when do you plan on voting for a personal income tax for TX, in order to destroy one of the main rationales why people and corporations are moving to that state??
Should have just stayed on either Coast so as not to pollute the interior with your failed views.
I am not a huge Trump fan, but certainly laugh at the hysteria of the left over everything he says.
You state: “This is actually an intellectually consistent position for the President to take. His views on trade are very much to focus on displaced workers when new technologies compete away older products, rather than to focus on what more productive uses those resources could be put towards.”
Actually his views on trade are simple, protect American jobs and close the trade deficit. It has nothing to do with technology. Trade deficit means we are importing more than exporting. If anything, trade should be even. I learned that in 6th grade civics.
You’re right, statistics show that safety has improved due to technology. However, it has been shown that Boeing did everything they could to have this new technology rolled out with proper training…..
I understand this is a blog, but sometimes reporting on facts is better than adding opinion. A lot of folk, including me, come here to get the stories not the editorial
Nobody knows more about aviation than Trump, believe him. It’s perfectly rational for Gary to quote the world’s foremost aviation expert since it’s a travel blog.
Gary, great news. I was just approved for the United Explorer Business 75,000 Mile Bonus Offer VIA ANOTHER BLOGGERS LINK. Keep up the political links buddy. Great job!
@Chris. You take Trump’s argument for what it really is, a layman’s point of view. To be uninitiated, the panels of buttons and sliders are obviously confusing. The question is whether even a professional pilot was offered confusing features within 7M flights that must be activated or else there would be an accident. A lot of things I know well would be over-engineered for my grandma. But could something within 7M flights be overengineered even for flight pilots that have possibly received different levels of training.
@Daniel
You totally showed him dude! High five!
Hope you’re proud of yourself!
Way to own the libs!
Normally don’t like the political posts, but this one’s fun!
@Flyoverrunner wealthier societies consume more, and to the extent goods are produced less expensively from abroad they’ll consume from abroad. The trade deficit has hit record levels under Trump, but that’s not Trump’s fault it’s the economy’s.
Do you worry that you have a trade deficit with your local grocery store?
@Hadley V Baxendale I rather like the administrative benefits of living in Texas, thank you very much! Hope they do not change though fear that the state is turning more of a purple of time and they might.
Gary. You are missing the obvious. Because Trump used to run his own airline, however unsuccessfully, and runs his own jet, he knows more about the airline industry and airplanes than most people.
What Trump is really good at is framing complex issues in every day language so that Ma and Pa Kettle can easily understand. Plus he does not try to hide his true opinion in political double speak. Since the anti-Trump media misconstrues his every word, he uses Twitter to go direct.
Go back and read Trump’s comments again and see if you can figure out what he fhinks the issue is with the Max8 crashes. You can do it, I have confidence in you.
Trump would seem so much smarter if he never opened his mouth. Whatever education he got seems to have been a waste of time and money.
Snark mode…activated! It never fails to amaze me how quickly Trump supporters take it as a personal affront when even a modicum of criticism is leveled at their fearless leader. In their eyes anyone that is not an ardent MAGA devotee, including die hard conservatives (Bush family, Mitt Romney) and American heroes (RIP John McCain), is automatically a Clinton loving socialist liberal who wants revenge for the 2016 election. Unfortunately the only way these folks can reconcile their unwavering support for a woefully ignorant, pathologically liar, serial adulterer, textbook narcissist, bigoted, misogynist, hate spewing individual like Trump with reality is to take up his battle cry and spew more hate at each and every one of his critics that they can find. Good thing the Russian bots and troll farms are doing half of the work for them! Better log on to Infowars.com and put on Sean Hannity/Tucker Carlson in the background to get back to your happy places!
To be clear, Trump has done little to nothing in his entire career and particularly in this quagmire of a presidency to benefit anyone other than himself, his family, and his enablers and cronies that he has surrounded himself with for the last half century…at least not on purpose. If something goes well in America under his watch like the economy, stock market, aviation safety record…he’s the first to claim credit. If something goes bad like the trade deficit, national debt, America’s standing in the world, stock market, aviation safety record, he’s the first to point fingers. The one thing he does deserve credit for is convincing millions of republicans that a democrat supporting New York aristocrat in a gold tower with an insatiable desire for power and relevance his entire life all of a sudden had change of heart and now cares about the plight of the “forgotten man”. The sick irony of it all, is that the folks that are hurting the most from his policies (public employees, farmers, factory workers, NRA members, the religious right, etc.) are his primary champions and most ardent supporters. The saying “bite your nose to spite your face” is apparently completely lost on the “own the libs” crusaders.
While I’m afraid that this post may result in a minority of your readers shunning your blog from now on as a result of your “left wing bias” (pun intended?) and “liberal propaganda”, kudos to you for speaking your mind while stating the facts even if those dear readers of yours that are fond of red hats choose to ignore them altogether. As said best said by Groucho Marx, “who are you going to believe…me or your lying eyes?”
Gary: The other obvious thing you missed. I believe that President Trump has the authority and the responsibility to ground the Max if he deems it necessary. So far, he has not done so. His opinion really matters. Ours are just background chatter.
Maybe it would be more interesting to figure out what his administration is going to do about the Max than just provide snark.
LOL. Did Akuma just melt down and do a data dump. I am glad he is not flying a Max.
Meanwhile more and more airlines/countries are grounding the Max 8 or literally denying that AC type (AC means aircraft for all the newbs and rubes posting here) access to their airspace.
Is this simply a matter of flight deck crews being improperly trained to evaluate and compensate for whatever anomalous irregularities that this new flight control system presents; we’re going to find out. And hopefully that proof won’t come in the form of a third catastrophic failure.
AS
retired ATC
@Akuma. Life is at stake here. Is 7M safe, and if so (or otherwise), to what extent and what is missing? I tend to ignore argument tangential to this debate as far as this blog is concerned. In high school essay 101, we learned about facts vs opinions; a writer sometimes uses “in fact” and “in my opinion” to make it obvious, but it is often omitted if a typical reader can be expected to discern it clearly. Trump obviously expressed an opinion.
Gary can argue if it would be appropriate for Trump to make an opinion in this situation; and I have no qualm about it. Gary can also blame how people (who failed high school essays) see what anything Trump says is gospel to them and warn people not to jump to conclusions. However to attack this Trump’s opinion on possible safety concern is ill advised. From what I have gathered so far, 7M flights are supposed safer and the feature could be overridden if it misbehaves. Well, what if you buy a car with cruise control, and it can only be deactivated by pressing a button on the radio panel if you must override it (like in a potential crash situation)? Call it normal engineering or overengineering all you want. To you (or Gary), yeah such an override mechanism exists. To me that’s bad engineering. [Warning: I am not privy to the working of 7M and what happened in the accident. I am just scheduled to fly soon and I hope my pilot knows about this button — if it exists.]
I’d really love to see another 4 years of this (after the next 2). You guys are really something else. I enjoy it tho’. I really have no clues as to Gary’s political leanings. I love Gary either way. We all have a right to say whatever we want to say…..don’t we? “Clowns to the LEFT of me…Jokers to the RIGHT…here I am”….as the song goes.
Political argument left vs right is like debate in religion. I have a headache from faith-based discussion further colored by self-interest.
I’m ok with the article, it’s tangential to the blog. Some folks can’t talk any criticism for their chosen leader but are are of course happy to dish it out for others. Take a chill pill folks, No reason to get upset.
Chill aka Mr. Cellophane.
The most powerful man in the entire world – The President of the United States, issuing a statement regarding the 737 Max controversy, is well worth a post on a blog dedicated to travel.
With that said: I don’t have any major issues with what he said. One of the few actual facts that we know of regarding the crashes, are that both took place in areas where the pilots have to do much less training in order to be certified. From what I understand it’s a complex plane, and US pilots have to be trained much more thoroughly, and log more hours than the pilots who flew for Ethiopian Airlines. Is that a factor in the crash? I have no idea, and neither does anyone else at this point in time.
Which is why I feel grounding them would be premature, especially in the US.
We probably should wait on official report (and see what it is worth). There is indication that MCAS is a necessary feature due to 737s being refitted with bigger engines to make the new 737 Max, and a pilot should override it when MCAS mistakenly points down the nose of a 7M for one reason or another. However, various pilots have reported insufficient flight operation manual and there has been lack of training in this new feature (with design flaws, so april software update is a start) before pilots from other models are moved to 7Ms, for months leading to the incident.
I have seen well written (unofficial) articles on some of the details and I think Gary would like to wait for the official FAA report amid the confusion. I tend to think that one should have available information to decide one’s own flight plan based for one’s or family safety.
Our Dear Leader = Malibu Stacy
“Airplanes are hard!”
Good post Gary. Don’t mind the haters. You don’t have to be a liberal to understand trump makes stupid comments sometimes although there is a grain of truth in this one too. You should follow up with another post about the phone call with Boeing’s ceo not to ground the plane.