The problem that Boeing has is that the FAA used to trust companies to do much of their regulatory work - more or less to ‘self certify’ the details of their designs, with the reasonable expectation that the manufacturers knew they had far more to lose if a design was defective and led to a crash.
And the system worked, for decades. But then Boeing decided that paper-pushers from outside with top-rated stock options were better than serious managers at the top and looked for ‘cost savings’ and found the obvious weakness in the FAA system - it required ‘trust’.
So, they tossed that out and made their design on the cheap and self-certified that design. In the particular case of the crashes, Boeing, of course, knew that crashes weren’t good, but they also knew that well-trained pilots could handle those situations. And if the pilots weren’t well-trained, then they get the blame and Boeing washes their hands. ehhh - doesn’t quite work that way, though.
So, why did it take years instead of weeks to start flying the Max again, when a few lines of code would do the trick? Because what other skeletons were being hidden by Boeing...it takes time to dig-in, and they did find at least one in the wiring (and probably lots more).
So on to the 777-X...the problem with that plane is that the FAA now trusts NOTHING from Boeing, and has to go through every detail of every system with a microscope.
...and all to save a few bucks on the Max.
I have a friend who is a senior pilot/flight instructor for a major airline. He said two interesting things recently after more than 2 beers:
“Southwest is THE worst airline in the industry.”
“My biggest challenge as an instructor is that these planes are so reliable that pilots sleepwalk through their flights and when they’ve flown for 35 years and one day something goes wrong, they aren’t ready to immediately react because it’s such a shock. I show them what can happen using the flight simulators, but they know they are in a simulator and something will be set to go wrong.”
Another problem is that all the expertise is at Boeing, not the FAA. Fauci is supposedly the top paid bureaucrat in the federal government at $400,000 a year or so. That means everyone at the FAA is making less than that. The people with the 50 lb. heads that it takes to design something as complex as a modern jetliner are getting paid well by Boeing, not working for the FAA so you end up with second tier people overseeing the designs that they're not capable of working on themselves. They don't have the expertise at the FAA to fully understand what they're certifying.
The “Max” fix involved a lot more than “a few lines of code”.
Very good points.
There is a deeper issue that modern planes are so complex that is is impossible for the FAA to verify everything.
The core problem with the Max is similar to the fighter from the 80’s with the reverse swept wings. It’s so inherently unstable it can’t maintain level flight without constant computer intervention.
Meanwhile you can safely perform a manual controlled dead stick landing with several normally configured jetliners.
A 737 Max without power is a lawn dart.