Is a Boeing 737 MAX the safest plane in service?

YES. I WOULD.

 

Seems to me it's more about the pilots and the airline rather than the airplane.

You wouldn't happen to be flying on a southeast Asian or African airline, would you? Lol.

 

it's a great plane to fly on!!!

Jim

 

Flown 'em a dozen times since they came back to service. Nice planes inside.

And I haven't died even once.

So I think they're pretty good

Jedi

 

One of the early 3rd world Maxes they lost was recovered for the same fault earlier because they had an IP on board who recognized and corrected the problem. Same airplane with lesser trained crew was lost. Problem has been fixed, beat to death, and a western aircrew would not have lost the aircraft even before it was fixed.

 

Absolutely great airplane. Flew a Max to Boston and an 800 back last week. Max wins in every category.

 

Same, back to back flights between a Max and an 800, the Max was a big improvement. With the ridiculous amount of scrutiny put on the Max (plus the extremely high level of safety on the base 737) I'm sure its the safest plane out there.

 

My thoughts go back to the Lockheed Electra and the flutter failures that it had. A Boeing flutter expert who was working near by solved the problem and the fixes to the wing and engine nacelle structure were extensive. The revised airplane was tested extensively and passed with no glitches. It was rated as one of the safest turboprop airliners in use and has been ever since. Still in use by the Navy and I hear them droning over all the time.

 

I don't know about "safest" but I certainly wouldn't hesitate to ride on a MAX tomorrow.

 

How many Max's fly every day around the world without incident? Like hundreds of flights?

 

About 4200 flights per day on the 4 variants of the 737 Max-8 by nearly 70 airlines worldwide.

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Dave
W7UUU

 

Just sat down in a Max

 

Hold on tight!

 

Safe now but I hope Boeing Leadership (CEO, PMs and especially Engineering) learned some lessons. Just to save some bucks on training, Engineering either was told to or decided on their own to design a flight control mode that was ended up being unsafe. Most pilots don't like a system that takes control from them so I am surprised the Test Pilots let this go through. Test Pilots are certainly great pilots but the system should be designed for the newer, less experienced pilots in a stressful situation (approach in the weather at night with low visibility) where their "gain" is up. That is when you find out the lag in the flight control system that could cause a Pilot Inducted Oscillation (PIO) and other handling qualities issues. To simulate that situation with calm, cool test pilots is not easy, but tasks such as correcting to centerline from offset approaches and tracking tasks can get their gain up. Anyway, I hope the Boeing Engineering culture has been reset to resist cutting corners at the sake of safety.

 

Survived!

 

As an engineer once said to a pilot "Don't worry, it's only a glider". Or is this case, "Nothing really changed, just a few lines of code. It is the same old vanilla 737."

 

Note also a second AOA sensor was optional on the Max originally, just not fitted to all aircraft.

 

Really don't like the Max as a controller (very slow to do anything) and hate it as a passenger (try urinating in the rear lavs while standing up if you're over 6ft).

In my mind it's a huge compromise in many ways; Boeing tried to get away with minimal conversion training by making it mostly like the NG 737, but that required a lot of half-baked measures like the MCAS. The fact of the matter remains that this is a 60+ year old design that really has reached the physical limits of what it can do (especially in terms of ground clearance). One of my pilot friends called it an Airbus made by Boeing due to all the computerisation, which I think says it all.

Honestly though, at this point pretty much all Western commercial airliners are safe. Any one or two incidents with any particular type (outside of pilot error) are well within a statistical margin of error. The biggest single factor is the flight crew, and that is where I'm seeing more and more really scary stuff on a daily basis. On that basis, I always try to take the largest aircraft possible, as larger=better paid pilots with more experience and less exhausting schedules--which while not panacea, seems to encounter fewer problems. Now if only I could deal with the sharp decline in controller abilities in the last 5 years...

 

You’re not kidding about it being an old design. The overhead panel on a Max looks almost the same as that of a -100, and almost nothing is automatic. I didn’t really know much about the plane until I started training on it, and I wasn’t expecting that. Also, it seems like an ECAM/EICAS type system could have been added, but I assume this would make it different enough that it wouldn’t be the same type rating. I won’t complain though. Seniority movement on the 73 is crazy.

 

Yeah, who cares about different center of gravity etc

Only partially true in my opinion, because they usually fly less legs during the same period of time ergo less landings

Appears to be the worldwide issue :/ And the future doesn't look brighter (to say the least)