About one year ago, in mid-March, 2019, Boeing’s 737 MAX was quickly and unceremoniously grounded. This was hugely significant in quite a few different ways. For Boeing, the MAX was the newest generation of their most popular aircraft series and its difficulties place a huge stain on the company’s stellar safety and reliability record. Meanwhile, for the US, it halts growth at one of the countries largest companies and employers, and then beyond that, for the worldwide aviation industry, it puts 387 aircraft on the ground at a time of continued growth for most every airline worldwide.
Everyone knows why the 737 MAX was grounded by now—faulty sensors would, in particular circumstances, indicate incorrect information to software which would respond by sending the aircraft into a nosedive. What’s less known is how Boeing will get the 737 MAX flying again. In addition to the 387 aircraft that were flying prior to the grounding, Boeing kept production going for nine months after this so there are about another 400 completely assembled aircraft sitting on every empty piece of tarmac outside Boeing’s factory. Aircraft are not built to sit around.
Except for the occasional longer period of maintenance, most commercial aircraft won’t go a day in their lives without taking the skies, but in this case, aircraft will have sat, abandoned, for more than a year by the time the MAX is cleared to fly again. The process of getting those 800 aircraft to the skies will not be quick or easy. Getting the MAX flying again is also more complicated than just gaining the FAA’s approval for their fixes. One commissioned survey found that 70% of American travelers say they will avoid flying on the MAX, even when it is recertified.
Boeing has to persuade regulators it can fly, and then it has to persuade the public it can fly. It will be a massive, monumental effort by the company and the airlines. The first thing that we don’t know about the 737 MAX’s return is when it will happen. When it was first grounded back in March 2019, Boeing expected the aircraft to be flying again in a matter of weeks. Since then, the date of return has been pushed back and pushed back and pushed back again.
At the time of writing, Boeing says the aircraft will fly again in mid-2020 but, just like every time before, it’s quite possible that will slip further. Another unknown is exactly how, from a technical standpoint, Boeing will fix the issues that caused the two crashes, in addition to a number of other issues that have been identified since then. What we know is that, once Boeing is satisfied that it has indeed reached a solution, it will notify the FAA and schedule a certification flight. For this, Boeing will provide one 737 MAX aircraft with any and all physical and software tweaks installed, and FAA pilots will take to the skies to determine if these fixes are satisfactory.
What will follow is a short, few day analysis period and, assuming the fixes seem to be working, the process will be passed on to the Joint Operations Evaluation Board. This is a FAA-run group made up primarily of 737 MAX pilots from around the world who’s job it is to determine what sort of training pilots will need before flying the 737 MAX again. These pilots will each try the fixes in a simulator, in order to have first-hand experience, and then, after about two weeks, the board will pass their recommendation onto the FAA’s Flight Standardization Board who will incorporate the recommendations into a report.
It is this step that is expected to establish a tremendous hurtle to the MAX’s reentry to service. It is expected, on Boeing’s recommendation, that the FAA will require simulator training before MAX pilots can fly the aircraft again. It’d be easy to underestimate how significant this is. The entire MAX aircraft was designed around assuring that pilots would not need simulator training.
Boeing wanted the MAX to seamlessly fit into the airlines fleets of older 737 aircraft so that the same pilot who flies a 30 year-old 737 can fly a brand new 737 MAX. That’s because pilot training is hugely expensive and so a lack of need for it would, by extension, lower the cost of operating the 737 MAX to airlines. Boeing boasted in marketing materials that it would take only two days of computer based training to certify an existing 737 pilot to fly the MAX.
The push for limited training was even a major factor behind the implementation of the MCAS system that caused the two MAX aircraft to crash. They wanted the plane to fly like it was any other 737 even though, without electronic intervention, it did not. Because of all of this, very few 737 MAX simulators were made. Only two companies manufacture them: CAE and TRU Simulation. These simulators are not a whole lot cheaper than the aircraft themselves. A full-movement 737 MAX simulator is estimated to cost up to $15 million and therefore the hourly cost to run one of these is in the thousands. They’re just hugely complicated machines to develop to the level that they accurately mimic the flight characteristics of a real aircraft.
Accuracy is what is needed in order to use them for training in place of a real plane which, given fuel, cost airlines quite a bit more to run, but, given the little prior demand for 737 MAX simulators, only 34 exist worldwide. Just, as an exercise, say 5,000 pilots are needed to fly the 387 grounded MAX aircraft. If ten hours of simulator training are needed and every simulator in existence is used 24/7, it would take two whole months to get those pilots trained.
In reality, pilot numbers are likely larger, necessary training hours could be higher, and efficiency will be lower. Simulator training will be a huge bottleneck to the reentry process. Many MAX operating airlines own their own simulators, but many others do not. For example, Eastar Jet, a South-Korean operator, does not and therefore needs to find simulator availability in order to get their planes flying again. For the simulators owned by airlines, their owners are undoubtably going to prioritize their own pilots for training first, so those won’t have availability for quite a while, while among simulators owned by training centers, these centers are much more likely to want to please a huge airline like American Airlines than tiny Eastar Jet.
Many of these smaller airlines are going to be at the end of a long list to get their pilots trained. Even the big airlines will be sending their pilots to all corners of the globe to get simulator time. Fiji Airways, for example, owns a simulator in Fiji and will quickly be able to train all their pilots, and therefore other airlines are lining up to pay big money to use it. Other simulators with availability also exist in Iceland, Panama, and more, so airlines are scouring around the world for anyone who will give them hours. This is all, of course, though, dependent on what exactly the FAA Flight Standardization board decides is required to train pilots. Sometime soon after the conclusion of that phase in the process, the FAA will issue an airworthiness directive.
This is the official order that says, for one, that the MAX can fly again, but it is also the final and definitive document outlining what steps airlines need to take in terms of aircraft modification and training so their specific aircraft and pilots can fly again. This directive, though, does not mean work is over and the hundreds of grounded aircraft can fly again. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is where the real work begins. All of the 387 grounded aircraft have been just sitting there, largely abandoned. Keeping them each in the same state of maintenance as an aircraft actively flying in a given airline’s fleet would be hugely expensive, so most operators have largely left their aircraft be.
Therefore, each aircraft needs to go through a process of testing all systems and components, in addition to a deep clean, to be sure they’re truly ready to fly. They also, of course, need to have Boeing’s revised software installed. This whole process is expected to take, for each aircraft, up to two weeks. As soon as airlines know with relative certainty the timing of the MAX’s reentry, they’re likely to shuffle resources around to dedicate as many mechanics as possible to aircraft reentry. That could mean delaying heavy maintenance on other aircraft.
Boeing will also have to go through an even more exhaustive process for the 400 or so MAX jets that they built since the beginning of the grounding that now sit at their factories undelivered. Each of these aircraft are at a stage just short of completion. They’re built, for the most part, but still significant amounts of work need to be done before they’re ready to be delivered to customers. Clearing that backlog is expected to take about a year.
Following this, airlines will need to rework the MAX into their schedules. If the reentry happens during the most profitable summer season, one could expect this to happen quite quickly, possibly even with airlines scheduling extra flights given the extra capacity. If its in the less busy times of the year, though, it could be a while before the MAX is fully reincorporated into airline schedules, which are planned sometimes years in advance. The biggest unknown, though, happens when the MAX is back in service: will passengers fly on the beleaguered aircraft? History says yes.
After other popular aircraft have been grounded in the past for safety reasons, there has never been a serious issue with a consumer boycott of the plane type, but passengers do have something that they didn’t back decades ago in similar cases: information. For one, never has an aircraft grounding been such a media event. In addition, before the last few decades, flight bookings typically happened through a travel agent and the consumer wouldn’t really know which aircraft type they were booked on. Nowadays, booking online, aircraft type is clearly displayed and, given the choice, a consumer might choose to fly on other aircraft over the MAX.
Finally, social media has the power to escalate groupthink in such a situation. One video of a passenger having an anxiety attack upon leaning they’re flying on a 737 MAX could go viral and cause mass anxiety. Boeing is preparing for all of this. They’ve been developing a plan for how to respond to passenger anxiety anywhere from during the booking process to inflight. Part of the plan includes monitoring social media and, if a passenger is publishing concerns inflight or in the airport, responding to this digitally and notifying flight crew about the individual.
They also plan on having employees distribute small cards with information on the aircraft’s safety and the changes to anyone anxious, in addition to creating explainer videos for those who want to learn more. Boeing will also no doubt spend huge amounts of resources conducting a public information campaign to quell concerns about the aircraft because, if passengers won’t fly the aircraft, airlines won’t buy it. Truly everything is on the line for Boeing with this reentry.
The aircraft is Boeing’s cash cow and the entire company is centered around it. What’s just been described is only the plan, and if any step in it fails, then the entire process fails. Few things have gone to plan with the 737 MAX so far, so the stakes for Boeing have never been higher. There are certain things that delineate the level of professionalism one is perceived to have online, one of which is certainly their email address.
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