Free Republic

As I tell friends, I worked on computers before the public knew computers existed. Can you say SOAPII? Anyway, I can't begin to imagine what the programmers that coded the MCAS boxes are going thru. I know, Boeing needed to more thoroughly train pilots on using or interacting with the MCAS box. But none the less, "in a manner of speaking", the programming of those boxes has indirectly killed over 300 people. But nobody will ever say that.

United Flight 1637 was returning off-duty Air Force Captain Mike Gongol, his family and 157 other souls from their Christmas vacation when disaster struck. The Boeing 737's pilot suffered a devastating heart attack at 30,000 feet on the way from Des Moines to Denver, forcing Gongol to rush to the cockpit and help guide the plane to an emergency landing. His heroic actions have gone unheralded until now, as Gongol recalls the dramatic moment he answered the chilling announcement on the December 30 flight, 'Does anyone know how to fly a plane?'

Today marks a bittersweet milestone in aviation history. United Airlines, the first carrier to make the Boeing 737 a staple of its fleet 41 years ago, is retiring the last of those jets in an airborne party that will stretch from Virginia to California. The plane is the last of 94 Boeing 737s that United has grounded since September 2008. That painful maneuver cost thousands of United workers their jobs but likely saved the carrier from financial calamity as the travel market collapsed last winter following Wall Street's meltdown, analysts said.