Why I’ll happily fly the Boeing 737 Max again

Plane Talk: ‘I would not hesitate for a second to put my wife, daughters and granddaughters onboard the plane’ – Gary Kelly, chief executive, Southwest

Arriving soon: a Tui Boeing 737 Max (Tui)

Until early March 2019, one airline operated the Boeing 737 Max far more than any other: Southwest, the vast budget airline based in Dallas, Texas.

As you know, the latest version of the world’s biggest-selling aircraft was grounded worldwide two years ago after two fatal crashes that together cost 346 lives.

In both tragedies, the pilots lost control shortly after take-off.

In October 2018, 189 people died when Lion Air flight 610 came down in the Java Sea soon after leaving Jakarta.

The following March, 157 passengers and crew lost their lives aboard Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 in very similar circumstances after taking off from Addis Ababa.

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At the root of each disaster was software known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).

The system was intended to make the plane easier to handle in certain conditions. But it was installed with a fatal flaw: an erroneous reading from a faulty sensor could cause the software to kick in, pushing the nose of the aircraft down against the pilots’ desperate efforts to regain control.

Tammy Duckworth, a former Army helicopter pilot and now Democrat senator for Illinois, summed up the deeply flawed design at a Congressional hearing in 2019, where the then-Boeing president and chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, was questioned.

“Pilots know that catastrophes don’t happen in a vacuum,” she said “You didn’t tell the pilots that MCAS was in there. Then you added an extra step that would trigger it again five seconds later.”

After being grounded for 20 months, the plane resumed domestic services in Brazil and the US in December – with much attention focused on the first flights on Gol and American Airlines respectively.

Earlier this month, a Boeing 737 Max operated by American made headlines around the world when an engine failed on a flight from Miami to New York Newark; news media are attuned to any story involving the Max. It was, if there is such a thing, a routine event; the aircraft was built, and the pilots were trained, to handle just such an incident, and the 95 passengers and six crew walked away.

Since then, I have not detected any significant 737 Max news – which, given that Southwest has started flying the jet between 15 US cities, may surprise you. Air Canada and United, too, have completed hundreds of successful flights with the aircraft.

Many travellers have expressed to me the very strong view that they distrust an aircraft which has been responsible for so much grief. In the social media polls I have conducted, a fairly solid one-third of passengers have said they will never fly on the Boeing 737 Max.

I wonder if they will feel the same when (let’s pray) the plane has completed thousands more missions without any problems? I think some will, but many will quietly shelve their concerns when the right flight at the right price and the right time turns out to be on that plane.

Note that Southwest Airlines has a generous Max policy – change to an older 737 without penalty, or claim a refund – but that it applies only until the end of May.

Gary Kelly, Southwest’s chief executive, says: “I would not hesitate for a second to put my wife, daughters and sons-in-law, and granddaughters onboard the plane.”

And since he runs America’s safest big airline, I will go with his view – and conclude that the plane whose flawed design cost so many lives has now joined the ranks of formidably well built and maintained aircraft that, every day, provide millions with safe transportation.

The Max will be flying again for Tui from Manchester, and on a range of Ryanair routes, from this summer.

Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary said on Wednesday morning that the airline will be taking eight Boeing 737 Max aircraft in April and a further eight in May.

“People are going to love these aircraft, and our accountants love them too – we can reduce our fuel burn by 16 per cent,” he said.

“We don’t see any concerns. But if there are one or two passengers who are hesitant, they can travel on the next available [non-Max] flight.”

I do not expect many travellers to take up the offer.