A federal investigation is underway after a Southwest Airlines flight plunged toward the ocean off the coast of a Hawaiian island.
The incident occurred April 11 aboard Southwest Flight 2786, but only came to light publicly on Friday after Bloomberg reported Southwest sent a memo to pilots about the incident. Bloomberg reported the memo indicated a “newer” first officer was flying at the time and inadvertently pushed forward on the control column.
Flight tracking data from ADS-B Exchange shows the plane dropping at a rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute while only 600 feet above sea level. The Boeing 737 Max 8 flew as low as 400 feet before rapidly climbing.
“Nothing is more important to Southwest than Safety,” the airline said. “Through our robust Safety Management System, the event was addressed appropriately as we always strive for continuous improvement.”
I mean … let’s keep everything the same but slap way bigger engines on the planes, then because it’s the “same airframe” there’s no need for pilot retraining! Isn’t that convenient, Southwest? You know, the airline that flies exclusively the 737 and didnt want to retrain any pilots. Everything is working out great, right?
Boeing has fallen from an engineering powerhouse into some lines on a wall street asshole’s spreadsheet.
You mean lines that some wall street asshole does off a sheet.
I’m no aerospace professional, but that would probably be okay. The issue with the max 8 is the software changes they made, like the addition of the MCAS, which changed the behavior of the computer system, without telling the pilots.
It wasn’t just retraining, using an old certified airframe let’s them skip the airframe certification process. There are similarly some helicopter companies that do similar and make emergency save your life vehicle fireball death traps rather than certify a new design. It is like airframe design died in the 1960s to save money.