Accidents/NTSB

Boeing 737 MAX That design is so utterly incompetent and the FAA allowing it is so utterly incompetent that it boggles the mind of this pilot flying for 35 years! Clearly the airline rule of requiring redundancy of any component with a greater than 1 in 10,000,000 chance of failure was ignored. Considering the MCAS […]

The FAA on Tuesday announced that it has convened a Technical Advisory Board to review Boeing’s proposed changes to the 737 MAX’s MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) software. The board, which does not have Boeing representation, includes the FAA, NASA, the U.S. Air Force and Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (part of the Department of […]

Passengers who survived the Miami Air 737 that skidded off the runway in Jacksonville last week have been offered $2500 as a “goodwill gesture” from the airline. All 143 people aboard survived the overrun, though three animals in the cargo hold perished. The 737-800 was carrying military and family members from Guantanamo Bay. Miami Air […]

A chartered Challenger 601 bound to Monterrey, Mexico, from Las Vegas crashed in a remote region of Mexico near Ocampo, leaving no survivors. USA Today is reporting that “search crews on Mondayfound no survivors. The jet carried three crew members and 10passengerswhowere returningfrom a tripthat included seeing a boxing match.” The wreckage was found 165 […]

My airplane has wingtip-mounted fuel tanks, installed under a supplemental type certificate (STC). In many ways, they’ve transformed and improved the machine by adding greater loading flexibility, thanks in part to a gross-weight increase. What drag they produce isn’t noticeable, and the additional endurance means the airplane is faster over some trips than it was […]

There were no fatalities among the 143 people aboard a Miami Air Boeing 737 that went off the end of the runway at Naval Air Station Jacksonville Friday night. The plane was on a flight from Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba when it ended up in shallow water in the St. John’s River about […]

Test pilots on the Boeing 737 MAX weren’t provided key details on how the MCAS stability system functioned and apparently weren’t aware of its aggressive trim capability. The Wall Street Journal reports that MAX flight test pilots were also unaware that MCAS relied on data from a single angle-of-attack sensor. The report follows a revelation […]

When Boeing finally digs itself out of the self-inflicted PR disaster of the 737 MAX story—if it ever does—I wonder how it will be graded on handling the crisis. I wonder, but I’m kinda disposed to think it will become a textbook case of how not to behave in the searing glare of catastrophic bad […]

Southwest Airlines, Boeing’s biggest customer for the troubled 737 MAX, said this week that the airplane maker’s documentation incorrectly claimed that its aircraft had operable angle-of-attack disagree warning lights. But Boeing informed Southwest that the AoA function was actually inoperative only after the Lion Air crash in Indonesia last October. Even as Boeing finishes software […]

Addressing shareholders in Chicago Monday, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg spoke to reporters about the 737 MAX’s troubled MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System). “The MCAS system as originally designed met our design and safety analysis criteria,” he said. When asked if the MCAS was the cause of both Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents, Muilenburg sidestepped […]