With whistleblower revelations and amassing safety incidents plaguing Boeing’s aircraft fleet, some travelers are taking the “If it’s Boeing, I’m not going” phrase to heart.
Alternative Airlines, a booking tool, now allows anxious travelers to seek out routes and carriers that do not use the troubled Boeing 737 MAX.
According to the company’s website, “At Alternative Airlines, we make it easy to see which type of plane is being used for each flight when you’re buying your flight. This means that you can easily avoid any flight that is being operated with the Boeing 737 MAX.”
Passenger trust in the jet has declined since the Jan. 5 door plug incident on an Alaska Airlines flight revealed safety gaps in the manufacturer’s certification process. Moreover, the MAX 8 was grounded for nearly two years following fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, which killed 346 people.
Another prominent travel booking platform, Kayak, also gives travelers the option to exclude any of the Max aircraft. According to Scripps News, Kayak has said since the Jan. 6 incident, the company has seen an increase of 15 times the amount of people searching to exclude a Max 9 in their travel plans.
Just like in a mafia movie, if you don’t pay the mob insurance your business may catch fire. Boeing needs to pay the right mobster insurance or the media will just keep attacking.
Maybe they should just make good airplanes?
I agree with Dan. Corruption needs to exposed and called out.
I don’t mean to mess up any good controversy, guys. But, does any of this have to do with DEI?
Perhaps should blame the transexuals with rivet guns; and not the Wall Street greed which drove Boeing’s board room to eliminated the company’s total quality program as a cost cutting maneuver.
Watch the Frontline documentary “Boeing’s Fatal Flaw” and see the seed’s of a sad foundation of what has happened to Boeing.
BINGO…
As a retired A&P I watched the Frontline documentary you mentioned and the decision to specifically not add training on MCAS by Forkner and then ok’d by Bahrami plus the concerns of the simulator test pilot and engineers says that Boeing and the FAA were quite complicit in the deaths of all those people. Finally, that Boeing decided not to highlight MCAS to the FAA as something new just to rush certification means that many at that company lied by omission.
Will be curious to see if this opt-out causes major problems with passenger bookings on the 737 MAX. First thing Boeing needs to do is fire all the senior executives, bring in a team that aren’t bean counters and lawyers, and get back to building quality aircraft. If they don’t rid themselves of these executives then this situation will get worse.
I know statements have appeared in the media with Boeing executives saying all the right things about Moving Forward etc, but I get the feeling most if not all of them are in a “WTH happened…?” mode. Until that really changes they’re going nowhere fast.
These third party brokers are preying on the irrational fears and ignorance of the public who are not so savvy when it comes to commercial air travel. Firstly, all major airlines already list the make/model of aircraft for a particular flight at time of booking. The ability to “seek” out your airframe of choice – should that matter to you – is not a new technological online concept. And without actually historically collecting my own data and crunching the numbers, I would easily estimate that between 25% – 30% of the flights I take per year have a change to the make/model by the airline sometime prior to departure, making the “seek” somewhat irrelevant. Bottom line, commercial aviation is safe and although Boeing should be and needs to be held accountable, the public should make extra effort to be better informed and be extra guarded to avoid media brainwashing fears.
I’m 100% in agreement with you sir!
Part of the bigger issue is that Boeing kept asking more and more of a 50 year old design, due in part to Southwest who wants to continue an all 737 fleet. Boeing had a great single aisle airliner in the 757, but let it go by the wayside in the name of trying to make a “one size fits all” 73 series. I also suspect, but can’t prove, that if all manufacturing was returned to Kansas or moved to South Carolina, build quality would take a huge jump.
Boeing moved their headquarters to Washington D.C. because the real money is not in airline transportation. Boeing would probably just assume not build aircraft that are lawsuits waiting to happen. Nobody ever sues the manufacture of high tech weapons…
For those of you who are young and unaware research “Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961”. If Boeing never builds another 737 it will be just fine. The United States defense contractors are supplying the world with very expensive weapons for all it’s war zones. You don’t get sued for blowing up everybody but, you do get sued for doors falling off.
Can’t wait for the first “substitution of equipment” for a maintenance item. The nervous nellies will panic. Lol.