What the 737 MAX’s return to the sky will mean for passengers
CNNCNN — Would you fly on the Boeing 737 MAX? There’s also the risk that a safety campaign could heighten passenger fears: if Boeing and the airlines operating the 737 MAX go all out on a public relations spree – which is costly, and the greatest ever recession is very much not the time for that – they risk reminding people of the problems with the aircraft, or making people who weren’t watching the news two years ago aware of them. “But still,” Schonland concludes, he’s “in no rush to try it.” A Boeing 737 MAX airplane is pictured on the company's production line in March 2019 in Renton, Washington. After damning revelations in investigations into Boeing, its regulator the FAA, and the relationship between them – including the US House Transportation Committee’s report, which states clearly that “Boeing failed in its design and development of the MAX, and the FAA failed in its oversight of Boeing and its certification of the aircraft” – international aviation safety regulation agencies are insisting on making up their own minds. In the manufacturer’s place, says AirInsight’s Schonland, the immediate priorities of the Boeing 737 MAX program should be “FAA Certification, the aircraft update to meet certification requirements, and deliveries — in that order.” But part of the delivery piece of the puzzle is around airline demand, already at historic lows with Covid-19, and which will be even less for an aircraft that has been the subject of damning investigations for two years, and that many experts and passengers do not trust to be safe.