The airline plans to purchase 41 more Boeing 737-8 Max planes
“Once bitten, twice shy,” doesn’t really apply to Africa’s biggest carrier, Ethiopian Airlines. Amid this year’s Dubai Air Show, the company has announced that it has ordered 20 planes of the Boeing 737-8 Max—the same model that killed 157 people six minutes after taking off from Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa in March 2019.
Five months earlier, a similar plane—the Lion Air 737 Max—crashed in Indonesia’s Java Sea, causing 189 instant fatalities. In both cases, investigators determined sensor malfunctions to be the cause.
Boeing admitted full responsibility for the malfunctions. The accidents led to the grounding of 737 Max models for two years; flights were resumed in June 2021.
Why is Ethiopian Airlines buying 737-8 Max planes?
Most airlines have since avoided purchasing the aircraft, with only 30 out of the world’s 5,000 airlines flying it. But Ethiopian Airlines thinks adding the model to its fleet makes business sense—despite travelers citing fears of flying in the 737 Max since the 2019 accident. “We have renewed our confidence in that aircraft,” CEO Mesfin Tasew told the press in Dubai. “We believe we have checked and confirmed that the design defect of that aircraft has been fully corrected by Boeing.”
Tasew also said Ethiopian Airlines would purchase 21 more 737 Max planes in the near future. It demonstrates, he added in a press release, the company’s commitment “to serve passengers with the latest technologically advanced airplanes.” The airline said in the release it is purchasing the model because it “reduces fuel use and emissions by 20%” while minimizing noise by 50% compared to the planes it will replace.” But returning to the plane hasn’t been without controversy for Ethiopian Airlines in the past, particularly among families of crash victims.
read more: https://qz.com/ethiopian-airlines-boeing-737-max-faa-fatal-accident-1851028514
Yea supposedly the issue was found and fixed?
At this point the risk should be similar to the risk of buying any new plane model, the risk of the unknown
I watched a documentary about the Max 8. It is now one of if not the most highly scrutinized planes in the world; I would fly on one now. The original issue was twofold. First, a faulty sensor that was convincing the plane software the plane was close to stalling and would thus force the plane downwards which is a problem when you’re rapidly losing altitude. The new models have an extra sensor for redundancy. Second, Boeing essentially lied to the FAA about this system because they feared the system would (rightfully) lead to an extensive testing and validation phase before approval, and thus cost them time and money. So rather than do the right thing, pilots were not adequately trained on the MCAS system at all.
It’s sad to see what Boeing has become post, McDonnell Douglas merger. The MBA ratfucks got a lot of innocent people killed over their balance sheet.
Yep, as one former Boeing CEO lamented, “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s own money”.
Exactly right, MBA ratfucks who only gave a shit about short-term profits, not quality. Everyone in & outside the industry knew Boeing was the right pick because their engineering teens would make the hard, expensive, but correct choice most of the time vs their former competitors. Quality in their parts, products, documentation, training… How the mighty have fallen.
There’s a reason McDonnell was in very real danger of going under before Boeing was urged to buy them.
Line any merger in which a failed company ends up somehow running a successful employee, we see the systematic removal of the very reasons for it’s success in the first place.
You kinda wonder why they even bother, but I guess the generation of business jerks that did it made plenty of money and it’s just one more shitty thing we get to clean up after them.
When i was a kid, a mexican restaurant chain shut down after a bunch of people got sick/died of hepatitis A in my city.
The day they reopened, it was highly publicized on the local news, and my family went there to eat… i asked my dad if he was concerned about getting sick. He stopped, looked me in the eye, and told me with the upmost confidence “i guarantee you that this will be the cleanest restaurant meal you will ever have in your life”…
i feel a similar concept applies to this situation… with all the eyes on the 737 max8, there is no way management is going to sell one if it has outstanding flaws/safety issues.
Similarly to your story, you don’t fire the IT person who makes a grave mistake that costs a lot of time/money/lost data, because you can be damn sure they’ll never, ever do that again.
Unless it was gross negligence and the person is just an idiot, any capable person will learn from their mistakes, and never make the big ones twice.
The old story:
A worker breaks an extremely expensive piece of equipment. he goes to his boss expecting to be fired, but the boss says “fire you, I just spent $3 million training you.”
A mechanic once told me: If its cheaper to pay the families of the dead than fix the issue, then they wont fix the issue.
There wasn’t even a huge issue to begin with. There was a clunky checklist and pilots didn’t get any specific training on it but I would be comfortable flying in an unmodified one with any major US or EU carrier. The planes that crashed were safely recoverable, the pilots just made ongoing mistakes for a very long time in both situations.