Tag Archives for boeing 737 MAX.
American Airlines has previously said they’ve lost about $580 million from the grounding of the MAX. I actually don’t believe they’ve lost anything close to that since they’ve largely cut what they believe are the biggest money losing flights.
However the fact that American is saying they’ll contribute an additional $30 million to employee profit sharing gives us some indication of the value of the settlement.
This just seems wrong: a children’s book Max, the Airplane that Couldn’t Fly. It’s about how we’re all different, and about overcoming challenges at Boeing.
Boeing CEO Dennis Mullenburg, who had been stripped of the company’s Chairmanship in October, was fired and will be replaced as follows.
Many readers believe that the Boeing 737 MAX should never fly again. I disagree. I believe that while there were design flaws, those have been addressed, and regulators are inherently conservative and so it’s likely taking longer than it should to allow the plane to operate commercial flights. I will fly the aircraft again, and you will probably will too.
The return of the 737 MAX is like every other delay on American Airlines. You show up at the gate before scheduled departure time, because the flight board says you’re leaving on time. But there’s no aircraft at the gate, so that’s impossible.
The plane pulls up, passengers flood out into the terminal, and you stand there waiting. American updates your new departure time, but it isn’t until after that time passes that the departure time gets updated again. You have a mechanical delay and American keeps pushing your scheduled departure out 10 minutes at a time, updating with a new time only after the last one passes.
It is not the official position of any safety agency at this point, but regulators are discussing a whole different approach from Boeing’s software fixes as they consider what it will take to re-certify the 737 MAX.
The higher rate of growth in the airline’s seat capacity next year comes from moving forward when they expect the Boeing 737 MAX to fly again. Parker, of course, has been overly optimistic on the return of the MAX before, suggesting re-certification of the plane was ‘really close’ back in May.
While American’s claims against Boeing will likely be settled amicably, the airline has a hard case to make that Boeing ought to reimburse them for any lost profits when it’s more likely that the grounding of the MAX simply averted losses.
Self-certification dates to 1956. It is not part of a deregulatory push. It’s a system that has worked remarkably well. The FAA has approximately 400 engineers to work on aircraft certification. Boeing has 45,000 engineers. The FAA cannot possibly do all of the work themselves and we wouldn’t want to shift the best engineering minds away from creating product to oversight.
Delegation isn’t a strictly-U.S. practice, or one which was limited to the MAX.
I’m here at United Airlines Media Day in Chicago and United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz said that relying on commitments from Boeing and the FAA that the 737 MAX is “is not going to be enough.”
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
