It feels so far away now given the current crisis facing the world, but it was only a year ago that the world was facing a smaller-scale crisis thanks to the evidently disastrous design of Boeing’s 737 Max aircrafts. Now, in what is being presented as a way to “put a human face” and the hundreds of lives lost in 737 crashes, filmmaker Rory Kennedy (Last Days In Vietnam, Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib) is going to direct a documentary about the airliner, Boeing, and the people who have died for Netflix. It was originally planned as a series, but Variety now says it’s being reimagined as a feature documentary, with a lot of “first-person accounts” and (apparently) an approach that will specifically allow audiences to “make up their own minds about what happened and why.”
Somewhat interestingly, Variety says the documentary will “explore the reputation crisis” that Boeing has had to handle in the wake of the 737 disasters, which is a surprising angle since Boeing is the ridiculously massive company that sold the aircraft, but maybe that’s where the “make up their own minds” thing comes in. There could be stories here we don’t know about… which would make this a worthwhile subject for a documentary. Huh!
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a documentary about the airliner, Boeing, and the people who have died for NetflixIf there was a case for when an Oxford comma would help, this could be it.
The very fact that the Oxford comma is debated has always puzzled me. Of course it’s correct, and the above shows why.
Well, a few style guides prohibit it entirely (and puzzlingly, IMHO.) There are times when it actually adds confusion, but in every case it can be eliminated by wording and/or ordering.That, plus the fact that absolutely no-one discusses the use of the “Oxford semicolon” in lists means I really don’t get people who are dead against it.
Better to restructure as: a documentary for Netflix about the airliner, Boeing, and the people who have died.
Indeed.Mind you, I did not say it could not be rewritten better – only that if if written like that, a comma would have helped.
Oh, so you don’t want to honour the poor innocents who lost their lives to the Streaming Wars? You monster.
Stream Wars? Which episodes would you recommend? I-III, IV-VI, or VII-IX?
“If there was a case for when an Oxford comma would help, this could be it.”Clearly an Oxford comma would not help, since you think there is a problem and it already has an Oxford comma.
Clearly you didn’t read the sentence I was referring to.
“Clearly you didn’t read the sentence I was referring to.”Maybe you should have quoted that sentence instead.
The 737 was designed in the 60’s for operating out of smaller airports and was specifically designed with low ground clearance to allow engine inspection on the ramp and ease of loading baggage it is not suitable for the large efficient engines of today. Boeing should have designed a modern aircraft to compete with the A320 but that would have cost $10 billion the 737 Max redesign cost about $2 billion. The CEO & Chairman are now accountant’s they understand money not aircraft or engineering ! — madsailor, Blackpool, United Kingdom, 4 months ago
They made the old 737 more efficient by changing the engine to a different one. But the engine wouldn’t fit on the plane, so they moved it to a different spot on the wing. But moving it made the plane not fly correctly, as it was designed for having the engine in a specific spot. So they hacked together some software to try to fix that “in post”
It’s one bad decision that leads to a cascade of worse decisions.
Sure they were able to get to market faster and save money initially, but having an aerodynamically unbalanced plane was not a good move. Maybe after their painful rollout of the 787, they were not confident in their design abilities, but that too was comically misdesigned by outsourcing everything.
Boeing is truly run by accountants now.
They should have redesigned the 757, instead. And after rolling out the MAX, Boeing then started in on the NMA concept to compete with the A321, which is what I thought the MAX-9 was supposed to do.
Every plane is aerodynamically unbalanced. As the speed it is flown at changes the trim required to balance changes. That’s a system called Speed Trim System was for; the MCAS is a modifier system on top of STS. What MCAS was not expecting was a valid, but incorrect, AoA signal and pilots unable to move a thumb to a trim switch.The fact that there is a trim cutout switch means that some unforeseen failure could cause the trim motors to run. If it was foreseen, the design would have something built in to avoid it. That means that pilots need to know how to handle the plane when the failure reason is not known. What is missing from the Ethiopian accident report is any mention of what training the Ethiopian pilots took after the Lion Air crash made clear that MCAS could do this, including the exact same symptoms the Ethiopian plane produced. It also skips what the airline did to ensure the pilots were trained to handle the situation and what the Ethiopian Civil Aeronautics Administration did to do the same. The answer, three levels deep into responsibility – crickets. Blame Boeing for Lion Air – the Ethiopian crash is 100% on Ethiopia.
The customers wanted the 737 with more efficient engines, not a different plane entirely. The airlines have a full end-to-end operations based on the 737. That’s why they did not buy something else. Other than that the 737 MAX is a modern aircraft, built on a modern assembly line, with modern tools, designed with modern CAD. Not sure how anyone thinks it is a 1960’s plane any more than any other aircraft is.
At this point I think Boeing should only be allowed to make airplanes out of Nerf and fly them over ball pits.
But air travel would still be miserable, right?
As long as I bring my constantly wailing, shitting two year old on fifteen hour flights it will.
If it’s not Flyger King, I’m not interested.
I hope they include this: 5 MONTHS AFTER THE MCAS BULLETIN AND NOBODY REALLY UNDERSTOOD IT AT ET.The incident that really nailed Boeing was the Ethiopian crash. What has never been dealt with is that Ethiopian Airlines is owned and operated by the Ethiopian government as a national pride project and they refused to take actions such as grounding their pilots until they had faced the Lion Air situation and could properly handle it. Also underappreciated is that the Lion Air crash happened the day after the exact same plane with the exact same flaw and exact same symptoms was flown safely – there was nothing about the flaw that doomed the plane; just pilots incapable of dealing with a simple and easily reversible increase in control forces.