The 737 may be commercially one of the most successful airframes built, but it has had its share of fatal accidents which were purely attributed to faulty design. First the rudder hardovers which took years and 3 crashes and one almost crash to resolve. Then the inbuilt dangerous elevator trim system which imho should never have been certified. I personally think this is what the MAK tried to say after the Kazan crash (which was an airframe I had previously flown quite a few times as a passenger…) but was shut up by Rossavia probably because someone thought the implications were too hard to consider.
The Max problem was severe enough to ground a fleet for years and to fine Boeing an unprecedented amount of money, not because they made a mistake but because they lied and covered it up. During the Max investigation, the trim issues of the 737 came into the limelight as well, but was dismissed with the “it worked for 50 years so it must be fine” answer, but no, that is not the case.
I would never fly a GA plane which has a trim system which, after a runaway or mistaken trim setting, can not be manually or alternatively controlled back into normal position at any speed in the envelope. Likewise, I will not set another foot into a 737 before the trim issue is resolved, which can not be done technically. So that is it for me.
And I fully agree that the area this happened in is one of the worst in terms of safety, so personally I would never fly with a local carrier there, as much as I have a personal blacklist of quite a few airlines most here would probably fly with without thinking. I am aware that my understanding of safety and risk assessment is different from many people and it has chanced since I am responsible for a family too, but I do take safety VERY seriously indeed.
The 737, except for the MAX, is a fine aircraft and I would never hesitate in getting in one (including the MAX!) being flown by a western airline.
The MAX is IMHO a bit of a turd. There’s only so far you can go with what’s essentially a partly 1950s design, made for skinny JT8D engines with short stubby landing gear. The MAX 10 is an ersatz 757, basically doing what a 757 does but badly, with bizarre byzantine landing gear so the tail doesn’t hit the ground on rotation. The MAX, despite the fixes to MCAS, still has an inbuilt positive feedback loop (pitch up leading to more pitch up) in certain flight regimes, it’s such a compromised design.
I understand Boeing’s pain – the A320 came out when high bypass turbofans were already a thing so they could design it with that in mind, and so their competitor doesn’t have to turn their product into a turd to make it work with modern engines. Perhaps Boeing should have shrunk the 757, instead of lengthening the 737.
alioth wrote:
Perhaps Boeing should have shrunk the 757, instead of lengthening the 737.
I agree, but the successful 737 is what operators were using already and needed to replace. If I understand correctly there was a training/type rating saving that was a selling point of developing the 737 multiple times too, but a development of something you already use and know is a positive in itself. Car manufacturers do the same thing.
Regards, SD..
Yes, Southwest Airlines ‘just may’ have been a factor in the decision 
They have 729 737s, nothing else, and another apparently another 270 on order.
Silvaire wrote:
Yes, Southwest Airlines ‘just may’ have been a factor in the decision
And Ryanair….
And much of the 3rd world, which is far bigger than say Europe.
It’s a massive market, in which TR commonality is a crucial selling point, demanded by the airlines just as much as being sold by Boeing. But it must be a real challenge, selling to a [hypothetical but fairly typical] airline where fake exam passes, fake papers of various kinds, dodgy selection processes, cockpits with two novice pilots (in the 1st world the muppet count is limited to 0 or 1, and if you have 1 sitting in the RHS then the LHS has an experienced pilot in the LHS), etc, are not uncommon.
The reason Airbus are not gloating over Boeing’s current misfortune is because they have had their share of software cockups and they know that if you sell enough planes into that market x, you will end up with y planes getting crashed, and even an Airbus doesn’t have the GPWS linked to the autopilot 
We would all of us be safer flying in a 737-Max than our own GA aircraft. Which is not to say that the accident and cover-ups show Boeing in a positive light.
Peter wrote:
The reason Airbus are not gloating over Boeing’s current misfortune is because they have had their share of software cockups and they know that if you sell enough planes into that market x, you will end up with y planes getting crashed, and even an Airbus doesn’t have the GPWS linked to the autopilot
I thought there was a long-standing tacit agreement between the two companies that they did not compete on the issue of safety or seek to gain any sort of commercial advantage as a result of each other’s crashes?
Peter wrote:
It’s a massive market, in which TR commonality is a crucial selling point,
I have to wonder how much type rating commanlity is meaningful: differences training from a 737-200 or -300 to a MAX has to be pretty much on a similar level to a type rating.
