Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and a love
Speaker 1: of all things tech. And we are continuing our series
Speaker 1: on Boeing, and before we get into it, I just
Speaker 1: want to tell you guys, technically, I probably could have
Speaker 1: done maybe two or three or four more episodes about
Speaker 1: Boeing because the company has done a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of controversy around some of those things,
Speaker 1: and all of those elements are pretty deep and could
Speaker 1: they could all justify an episode all by themselves. But
Speaker 1: rather than turn this into the Boeing Podcast, I thought
Speaker 1: I would kind of some up things in this third part.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to skip over a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: and if you guys are really interested, I could always
Speaker 1: go back and do a couple of episodes that really
Speaker 1: focus on some of the individual stories on a more
Speaker 1: granular level. But rather than have this series go on indefinitely,
Speaker 1: We're just going to press about seventy years of history
Speaker 1: together into one episode. So, considering the first two episodes
Speaker 1: were thirty years, we're gonna be taking some liberties. But
Speaker 1: in our last episode, we looked at a very busy
Speaker 1: time for Boeing because the company had become a major
Speaker 1: part of the war effort for the United States during
Speaker 1: World War Two, and we also looked at how Boeing
Speaker 1: continued to develop both military and civilian aircraft after the
Speaker 1: war was over, and we finished with a discussion about
Speaker 1: the development of the seven oh seven, which was Boeing's
Speaker 1: first mass produced commercial jet, so passenger jet like the
Speaker 1: kind we have today now. As I mentioned in that episode,
Speaker 1: the development process for the seven oh seven represented an
Speaker 1: enormous investment, a huge risk for Boeing. It took up
Speaker 1: nearly all the profits Boeing had made since World War
Speaker 1: Two had ended. And making the matter more fraught was
Speaker 1: that the havaland comment the British made commercial jet that
Speaker 1: had inspired Boeing president William Allen to take this big
Speaker 1: risk in the first place, well, it ended up having
Speaker 1: some catastrophic problems of its own, and by the time
Speaker 1: those problems became evident, Boeing had already committed to building
Speaker 1: a commercial jet, so within the first year of operation
Speaker 1: that would be the comment started to have some issues. Now,
Speaker 1: the first accident only caused a couple of minor injuries,
Speaker 1: and in that incident, the Commet the airplane failed to
Speaker 1: become airborne at the end of a runway, so it
Speaker 1: ran the whole length of the runway, could not take
Speaker 1: off and it ended up crossing into really rough ground.
Speaker 1: But people got bumped up, but that was the worst
Speaker 1: of it. However, a similar accident in nineteen fifty three
Speaker 1: was much more serious. Again, a Comet failed to take
Speaker 1: off from a runway, this time in Pakistan, and it
Speaker 1: collided with an embankment at the end of the runway.
Speaker 1: All five members of the crew died and six passengers
Speaker 1: did as well. It was the first commercial jet accident
Speaker 1: that had fatalities UH and obviously this was a huge deal.
Speaker 1: Then in nineteen fifty four, on two separate occasions, Commet
Speaker 1: aircraft broke apart in midflight. The Commet fleet was grounded.
Speaker 1: As a result, the aircraft lost its certificate of airworthiness
Speaker 1: and a full inquiry was made and an investigation to
Speaker 1: find out what exactly was happening. The investigation actually found
Speaker 1: that the aircraft's frame was suffering fatigue and that led
Speaker 1: to structural failures, particularly around the windows. It was that
Speaker 1: the the pressurized cabins. You know that air pressure inside
Speaker 1: the plane is much greater than the air pressure outside
Speaker 1: in high altitudes, and so you have this force pushing
Speaker 1: outward on the interior of the plane, and that push,
Speaker 1: particularly at the windows, was what was causing fatigue on
Speaker 1: the airframe. And thus you had structural failures in flight
Speaker 1: with a couple of these comet flights, and that caused
Speaker 1: in flight accidents, essentially the planes which just completely break
Speaker 1: apart with all people aboard lost as a result. Now
Speaker 1: all of this was going on, as I said, as
Speaker 1: Boeing had already committed to creating its own commercial jet aircraft.
Speaker 1: So one of the big challenges Boeing faced was creating
Speaker 1: an aircraft that was demonstrably safe to travel in. And
Speaker 1: then a second challenge was to convince the general public
Speaker 1: that this was the case. And travelers were understandably concerned
Speaker 1: after the high profile accidents involving the world's first commercial jets.
Speaker 1: So Boeing produced a film titled This is Such a
Speaker 1: Charming Name, Operation Guillotine. It was a a film that
Speaker 1: was trying to counteract this public reservation of flying aboard
Speaker 1: a commercial jet. And in the film, Boeing had test
Speaker 1: footage where they had aircraft chambers that were pressurized. This
Speaker 1: was inside a controlled environment, so this wasn't like flying
Speaker 1: in the you know, over the United States or something.
Speaker 1: And in the first demonstration they showed a pressurized airplane
Speaker 1: fuselage like a regular propeller airplane type fuselage, and the
Speaker 1: fuselage gets pierced by two metal blades. So this is
Speaker 1: like a scenario where a propeller failure has happened and
Speaker 1: part of a propeller breaks off and breaks into the
Speaker 1: fuselage of a plane and that caused rapid depressurization and
Speaker 1: the fuselage broke apart in that test. But then Bowing
Speaker 1: showed a similar test with the fuselage of their seven
Speaker 1: oh seven and they had five blades pierced this structure,
Speaker 1: not just two. But in their test footage they show
Speaker 1: that the Bowing fusel lodge can hold together even with
Speaker 1: this this breach, and some air was escaping obviously because
Speaker 1: there was, you know, now a hole in the plane.
Speaker 1: It's not like you can just not have air leak
Speaker 1: out if you have a differential in pressure on one
Speaker 1: side and versus the other, but it did show that
Speaker 1: the Bowing design was far more resilient to damage that
Speaker 1: was going to hold together even in a catastrophic event
Speaker 1: like that than the traditional aircraft, which is an interesting
Speaker 1: way to build passenger confidence, to be sure, but it
Speaker 1: was one of the things they tried. The seven oh
Speaker 1: seven was meant to be a mid to low range
Speaker 1: commercial jet, and I mentioned in the previous episode that
Speaker 1: PanAm had put in an order for twenty seven oh seven's,
Speaker 1: but PanAm also hedged its bets. It wasn't going all
Speaker 1: in on Boeing. It also put in an order for
Speaker 1: twenty five d C eights from boeing competitor Douglas. Boeing
Speaker 1: was able to manufacture the seven oh seven faster than
Speaker 1: Douglas could build the d C eights, and Bowing would
Speaker 1: also customize the aircraft itself. They would have different load
Speaker 1: outs and different variants of the seven oh seven, And
Speaker 1: because of those customizations, there's not really one set of
Speaker 1: measurements I can give you for a seven oh seven.
Speaker 1: The same is true for all the different seven hundred
Speaker 1: series aircraft that Boeing would produce. There are different variations
Speaker 1: of those and they all have different stats. But here's
Speaker 1: how the first seven oh seven stacked up. It was
Speaker 1: a hundred forty five ft one inch long, that's about
Speaker 1: forty four point two meters, and had a wingspan of
Speaker 1: a hundred thirty feet ten inches or thirty nine point
Speaker 1: nine ms. The fuselage, so you know, like the body
Speaker 1: of the aircraft had a width of twelve feet four
Speaker 1: inches or three point eight meters. And while it was
Speaker 1: meant as a mid range aircraft, its first commercial flight
Speaker 1: was actually between New York City and Paris, France, though
Speaker 1: it did stop once in Newfoundland to refuel. The seven
Speaker 1: oh seven could travel faster and hold more passengers than
Speaker 1: the Comet could, and there were several variations of it.
Speaker 1: There was the seven O seven one, the seven O
Speaker 1: seven one twenty B, the seven oh seven to twenty,
Speaker 1: the seven oh seven three twenty, the seven oh seven
Speaker 1: four twenty, and then there was the seven twenty and
Speaker 1: the seven twenty B variants. So those two seven twenties
Speaker 1: you might wonder what's up with those because they didn't
Speaker 1: follow that seven oh seven pattern. These were meant to
Speaker 1: be short to medium range jets, and they were also
Speaker 1: meant to service airports that had shorter runways that couldn't
Speaker 1: accommodate the larger versions of the seven O seven, so
Speaker 1: these were slightly smaller versions of those those commercial jets. Now,
Speaker 1: differences between some of these variants could sometimes be tricky
Speaker 1: to spot. Some of them were essentially the same design
Speaker 1: but had different engines, so unless you were really really
Speaker 1: observant and had an up close and personal look at
Speaker 1: the interior of some of the workings of the jets,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to necessarily tell on site the
Speaker 1: difference without seeing a designation. Now, Boeing would manufacture more
Speaker 1: than one thousand of the seven oh seven aircraft across
Speaker 1: US all families over the decades, and the seven oh
Speaker 1: seven would be in continuous production from nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy seven. It helped establish commercial jet travel
Speaker 1: across the world, not just for Boeing but for all companies,
Speaker 1: and before long more people were traveling by air than
Speaker 1: by sea, which was a first because while air travel
Speaker 1: had been established for several decades, it was incredibly expensive
Speaker 1: and it was very slow if you're using a propeller aircraft, uh,
Speaker 1: and it there was this perception of real danger, so
Speaker 1: a lot of people preferred to travel by boat rather
Speaker 1: than by airplane, but jets were a different story. It
Speaker 1: also established something else. The seven O seven had exit
Speaker 1: doors on the front left and rear left side of
Speaker 1: the plane, so the four and the aft of the plane.
Speaker 1: This would become a standardized configuration for Boeing's commercial jets
Speaker 1: and ultimately would mean that other manufacturers would have to
Speaker 1: follow suit because airports would accommodate this particular configuration with
Speaker 1: the design of their jetway. So if you've flown into
Speaker 1: a major airport and you notice that all the jets
Speaker 1: are pulling up to their jet ways the same way,
Speaker 1: it's because the Boeing kind of established this, and then
Speaker 1: it sort of became the standard. While Boeing was hard
Speaker 1: at work on the seven oh seven, the company's aircraft
Speaker 1: also made history in another way. On September one, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, a Boeing B forty seven Strato jet refueled
Speaker 1: another B forty seven in midflight. It was the first
Speaker 1: time a jet was being used as a tanker. The
Speaker 1: arrangement relied upon what is called a probe and drogue
Speaker 1: refueling system, so there are two main aerial refueling methods,
Speaker 1: and by that I mean two main methods of refueling
Speaker 1: a plane in air, not a way of refueling a mermaid.
Speaker 1: One is to use a rigid boom extension that connects
Speaker 1: two aircraft together in midflight for the purposes of fuel transfer.
Speaker 1: It allows for a very high speed fuel transfer because
Speaker 1: you're using a rigid boom. Um when you use something
Speaker 1: that has flexibility to it, it actually slows down the
Speaker 1: transfer of fuel a little bit. However, that system requires
Speaker 1: both aircraft to fly pretty close to each other, and
Speaker 1: if something should go wrong, the boom, because it's solid,
Speaker 1: could cause serious damage to one or both aircraft, so
Speaker 1: it's riskier. The probe and drogue method is slightly more safe.
Speaker 1: The aircraft in need of refueling flies ahead of the
Speaker 1: tanker aircraft, and the refueling plane extends a hose that
Speaker 1: is otherwise retracted so that it would be flush against
Speaker 1: the aircraft. So it starts to let this hose out,
Speaker 1: and the hose trails behind the aircraft, and at the
Speaker 1: end of this hose is a basket, and the trailing
Speaker 1: aircraft the one that has all the fuel aboard it
Speaker 1: that's going to refuel The first plane has the probe.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a uh, you know, a fuel
Speaker 1: pump that you would use at a gas station. The
Speaker 1: the pump part where you plug that, you know, you
Speaker 1: slot that into your gas tank. That's kind of what
Speaker 1: the probe is. The pilot guides this probe into the
Speaker 1: basket and that connects the probe to the hose and
Speaker 1: refueling can begin. Afterward, the tanker pilot can retract the
Speaker 1: probe from the drobe. The basket um and the pilot
Speaker 1: of the newly refueled plane retracts the drogue, winds it
Speaker 1: back up, and then you've got a newly refueled plane
Speaker 1: in flight and never had the land to refuel. And
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say this, I find the fact that
Speaker 1: pilots can fly so steady as to allow for in
Speaker 1: flight refueling to be absolutely mind blowing. I'm amazed at
Speaker 1: that level of precision and skill, and also the ingenuity
Speaker 1: required to create the refueling system in the first place.
Speaker 1: Human beings can be pretty astounding sometimes, And of course
Speaker 1: I say that as a human being. I'm not some
Speaker 1: sort of transdimensional alien make observations or anything. So let's
Speaker 1: get back to Boeing and stop asking silly questions human
Speaker 1: by nint. Boeing had made some huge accomplishments. The Dash
Speaker 1: E D had already had its first flight at that point,
Speaker 1: and Boeing was producing the k C one five strato
Speaker 1: tanker aircraft, which was based off this DASH eight design,
Speaker 1: and it was also at this point working on that
Speaker 1: seven oh seven commercial jet, which again was also based
Speaker 1: off the Dash A D. So you can think of
Speaker 1: the DASH E D as the parent to both the
Speaker 1: k C one thirty five strato tanker and the seven
Speaker 1: oh seven. And those two aircraft were not identical. They
Speaker 1: were actually very different from each other, but they were
Speaker 1: both based off that same ancestor. Now Boeing was still
Speaker 1: building military aircraft like the B forty seven, and it
Speaker 1: had begun production on the B fifty two A, so
Speaker 1: things were going pretty well for the company in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six. On September, William Boeing, who was the founder
Speaker 1: of the company but had you know, sold off all
Speaker 1: of his entry in years before, passed away. He had
Speaker 1: a heart attack aboard his yacht. I can only hope
Speaker 1: that I go the same way. But it was three
Speaker 1: days before his seventy five birthday, and I'd prefer to
Speaker 1: last a little longer than that. But other than that,
Speaker 1: I think, um passing away on board your luxury yacht,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty baller way to go if you've gotta
Speaker 1: if you gotta choose, I think on May fift nifty eight,
Speaker 1: the US Air Force put in an order for three
Speaker 1: of the new seven oh seven's, specifically the seven oh
Speaker 1: seven one twenties, because you remember they're all those variations,
Speaker 1: and these planes would receive a new designation, which would
Speaker 1: be VC one thirty seven A. They were meant for
Speaker 1: something very special. They'd be used for transportation for the
Speaker 1: president and for other high ranking government officials. And when
Speaker 1: the president steps aboard one of those planes, that plane
Speaker 1: then becomes known as air Force one for as long
Speaker 1: as the president is on it. And that's fun bit
Speaker 1: of trivia. Air Force one does not refer to a
Speaker 1: single goal plane. It's the designation that we give whatever
Speaker 1: plane happens to be carrying the president at any given time.
Speaker 1: So there's no one air Force one. It's whatever plane
Speaker 1: the president happens to be on that is air Force one.
Speaker 1: These planes were not the first to be used for
Speaker 1: presidential transportation. I mean they were customized specifically for that,
Speaker 1: but they weren't even the first for that. They were
Speaker 1: the first from Boeing Um. They were also not the
Speaker 1: first planes to be called air Force one when the
Speaker 1: president was aboard, but it was the first time Boeing
Speaker 1: would be the company providing planes for that purpose, and
Speaker 1: they would continue to do so. Boeing has frequently provided
Speaker 1: well sold planes to the United States government for use
Speaker 1: as presidential transportation. On October t n eight, Boeing landed
Speaker 1: a contract to assemble an intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM,
Speaker 1: called the minute Man. This was named after the members
Speaker 1: of the American militia who were participated in the militia
Speaker 1: leading up to the Revolutionary War. They were so called
Speaker 1: the minutemen because they had to be ready to deploy
Speaker 1: within a minute of getting a message. The i c
Speaker 1: b M would rely upon solid rocket fuel, which would
Speaker 1: also allow those missiles to stand ready for use indefinitely,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the liquid fueled rockets of that time,
Speaker 1: which had to be fueled pretty much immediately before use
Speaker 1: and thus required more time to actually deploy. Now, it
Speaker 1: would come about that they would find workarounds for that
Speaker 1: limitation for liquid fuel, but at the time that was
Speaker 1: not really you know, those rear options. Now, while the
Speaker 1: Minutemen I c b M had been proposed earlier, the
Speaker 1: US military originally dismissed those proposals, and the idea was
Speaker 1: that they had already started development on other missiles, so
Speaker 1: they thought, well, it doesn't make sense for US to
Speaker 1: devote even more resources to building different types of missiles.
Speaker 1: Were already building missiles. But then there was a report
Speaker 1: which was later found to be inaccurate that suggests said
Speaker 1: that the Soviet Union was actually far ahead of the
Speaker 1: United States and missile production and deployment, and that pretty
Speaker 1: much scared the dickens of the U. S. Government, and
Speaker 1: soon the minute Man was given the fast track for
Speaker 1: production and Boeing was in business. In nine Boeing began
Speaker 1: development on what would have been a predecessor to the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle. I think I referred to this a little
Speaker 1: bit in the Space Race episodes I did a year ago.
Speaker 1: It was called the X twenty and was later known
Speaker 1: as the Dina sore d Y in a dash s
Speaker 1: O A R. It was a space plane meant to
Speaker 1: be able to return to Earth as a sort of
Speaker 1: plane or glider like the Space Shuttle. So this was
Speaker 1: different from the Gemini or Giminy if you prefer, and
Speaker 1: Apollo designs. Those were ballistic spacecraft, which meant they would
Speaker 1: hurtle to Earth like you know, uh, just a cannonball,
Speaker 1: and then deploy a parachute to slow them down, as
Speaker 1: well as angle themselves properly so that you know, their
Speaker 1: heat field was at the right angle, and then eventually
Speaker 1: they would land in the water. From nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 1: to the early nineteen sixties, Boeing would work on the
Speaker 1: dinosaur design, and hundreds of millions of dollars were dedicated
Speaker 1: to this development from the U. S government, But ultimately
Speaker 1: the US government decided that the ballistic approach, which was
Speaker 1: much less expensive and technically less complicated, would get priority,
Speaker 1: so the project was canned in nineteen sixty three. It's
Speaker 1: a shame too, because it was actually a pretty cool design.
Speaker 1: I'll talk about a bit more after the break, but
Speaker 1: first let's go and thank our sponsor. The dinosaur looked
Speaker 1: pretty darn cool in a chunky way. It measured thirty
Speaker 1: five and a half feet or ten point eight meters
Speaker 1: long and had a delta wingspan of nearly twenty one ft.
Speaker 1: Boeing had built a mocked up model of it and
Speaker 1: was working on building out a prototo hype when the
Speaker 1: project got jumped. The official decision was that the spacecraft
Speaker 1: would have no military applications, so it would be useless
Speaker 1: as a military vehicle. You couldn't use it for you know, wartime.
Speaker 1: You couldn't use it for reconnaissance, so there was no
Speaker 1: practical use of it in that sense. And it was
Speaker 1: considered to be too expensive to be of any practical
Speaker 1: use as a research and science vehicle, So there was
Speaker 1: no practical scientific application. And so the dinosaur went the
Speaker 1: way of the dinosaurs. And yes, I was waiting to
Speaker 1: make that joke for ages. I couldn't wait for the
Speaker 1: break to be over. In the spring of nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: Boeing acquired the Vital Aircraft Corporation and it formed a
Speaker 1: new division within Boeing. Vital was a play on the
Speaker 1: phrase vertical takeoff and landing, so it's this part of
Speaker 1: Boeing's company that develops v t o L aircraft like
Speaker 1: helicopters and related vehicles. Um they actually would be involved
Speaker 1: in developing lots of helicopters. They don't talk about a
Speaker 1: lot of them in this episode. That's one of the
Speaker 1: thing things that I'm having to skip over quite a bit.
Speaker 1: But they had a hand in designing several helicopters, both
Speaker 1: for the military and for civilian use. In late nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, Bowing would land a contract to produce the
Speaker 1: first stage booster for the Saturn five, which would be
Speaker 1: used in the Apollo program. That's pretty darn cool, And
Speaker 1: the following year Boeing would test its first hydrofoil vehicle,
Speaker 1: the high Point. So what's a hydrofoil. Well, as the
Speaker 1: name suggests, it has to do with water, you know,
Speaker 1: hydro water, and a foil is a surface that uh
Speaker 1: provides lift. So a hydrofoil is a surface that, when
Speaker 1: it moves in water, acts as a lifting surface. So
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the wings on an airplane, except,
Speaker 1: of course, an airplane moves through the air, hydrofoil moves
Speaker 1: through the water, and of course water and air both
Speaker 1: obey fluid dynamics. So if you've ever seen a boat
Speaker 1: that travels really fast and it's on top of skis
Speaker 1: that are on these long struts, that's a hydrofoil, and
Speaker 1: Bowing would go on to produce hydro of foil vehicles
Speaker 1: for the Navy as well as for other uses. And
Speaker 1: hydrofoil boats can travel pretty darn fast, and it's largely
Speaker 1: because they have decreased drag. There's reduced surface area making
Speaker 1: contact with the water, so they can go much faster
Speaker 1: than boats that have their full surface or you know,
Speaker 1: the full lower surface in contact with the water. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, Boeing began producing seven twenty seven aircraft.
Speaker 1: So I guess now it's a good time to just
Speaker 1: do a full run down on the seven hundred family
Speaker 1: of commercial jets and get a general timeline for each
Speaker 1: and describe how they are different. I'd like to get
Speaker 1: them all all the way collectively, though obviously obviously we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to come back for the seven thirty seven
Speaker 1: Max designed to close out this episode. But yeah, let's
Speaker 1: let's do all the seven hundreds, because if I just
Speaker 1: keep on going through the timeline, it's just gonna get
Speaker 1: tedious anyway. So it all started with the seven oh
Speaker 1: seven that got things moving, and then next was the
Speaker 1: seven twenty that was the variation on the seven oh
Speaker 1: seven that was designed for the shorter flights and smaller airports,
Speaker 1: and then after that came the seven twenty seven. Now,
Speaker 1: depending on the lay out, it could hold between a
Speaker 1: hundred forty nine to eighty nine passengers max. And it
Speaker 1: had three engines. It had an engine under each wing,
Speaker 1: and then the third engine was located at the tail
Speaker 1: of the aircraft. It was built into the tail of
Speaker 1: the fuselage, and it was also intended for short to
Speaker 1: medium routes. The original seven thirty seven would follow in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen sixties, and the original seven thirty seven
Speaker 1: had twin engines, was also meant for short to medium
Speaker 1: length trips, and Boeing has updated this particular line many
Speaker 1: many times. There are several variations of the seven thirty
Speaker 1: seven seven thirty seven seven thirty seven Classic, seven thirty
Speaker 1: seven NG, seven thirty seven Crystal seven thirty seven Low Calorie.
Speaker 1: I might be making some of these up, though, but
Speaker 1: there really is a seven thirty seven n G that
Speaker 1: stands for next Generation, just like Star Trek and uh
Speaker 1: that one was a little bit more narrow than the
Speaker 1: original seven thirty seven. And of course there's the seven
Speaker 1: thirty seven MAX that here about in the News Currently,
Speaker 1: there are several variants of these jets, even within these families,
Speaker 1: and each variant has slightly different stats and passenger layouts,
Speaker 1: and the variety means it's really hard to talk about
Speaker 1: seven thirty seven's as a collective because there's so much
Speaker 1: variation between them. There are versions that had a maximum
Speaker 1: capacity of eighty five passengers and there are versions that
Speaker 1: could carry up to two fifteen passengers. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: big difference there. Seven seven would go on to be
Speaker 1: Boeing's biggest commercial success. It is the highest selling commercial
Speaker 1: jet liner model of all time, though again there are
Speaker 1: a ton of variations, and that consideration has taken all
Speaker 1: of them and putting them in a big collective group.
Speaker 1: They've been in continuous production since their introduction in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, so a very big working horse for Boeing.
Speaker 1: The Bowing seven forty seven was the very first aircraft
Speaker 1: to receive the descriptor of eumbo jet, and it is
Speaker 1: a beast of an aircraft. Now. I have never flown
Speaker 1: on a seven forty seven, but I have toured a
Speaker 1: grounded seven forty seven. They have one at Delta's Air
Speaker 1: Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, and the seven forty seven is
Speaker 1: a wide body airplane. If you were to look at
Speaker 1: one in profile, you notice that at the front end
Speaker 1: of the airplane has a hump on the top of it,
Speaker 1: and that's because the forward section of the plane has
Speaker 1: a second floor. It's a double decker. UH. Passenger cabin,
Speaker 1: so you actually have a staircase inside the cabin that
Speaker 1: leads up to the second floor. Uh. They can get
Speaker 1: real swanky up there. The at least the model that
Speaker 1: I went on, they had the the first class set
Speaker 1: up in the upper deck and it was pretty nifty.
Speaker 1: So when this seven forty seven debuted in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: it was known as the commercial jet with the largest
Speaker 1: capacity for passengers, and it would actually hold on to
Speaker 1: that title for nearly forty years. There's also several variations
Speaker 1: of the seven forty seven, and the seven eight is
Speaker 1: still in production today. The seven fifty seven is kind
Speaker 1: of a study in contrast to the seven forty seven.
Speaker 1: It first went into production in n one and it's
Speaker 1: a narrow body plane, has a single aisle down the
Speaker 1: passenger cabin. It's got two engines and Boeing generally intended
Speaker 1: it to take the place of the older seven twenty
Speaker 1: seven's for those short to medium flight routes. It can
Speaker 1: hold nearly three hundred passengers in at least some of
Speaker 1: the configurations for the seven fifty seven, and it makes
Speaker 1: it Boeing's largest single aisle passenger jet. This one, however,
Speaker 1: is no longer in production. Then you have the seven
Speaker 1: sixty seven that's a mid to long range aircraft. It
Speaker 1: has a wide body and has two jet engines, and
Speaker 1: there are lots of variations of this one to that
Speaker 1: allow for a maximum passenger capacity of up to three
Speaker 1: hundred seventy five passengers, depending upon the variation. Obviously, not
Speaker 1: all buildouts can hold that many. In fact, some of
Speaker 1: them top out at closer to passengers, which is less
Speaker 1: than half of that other maximum. Like the seven fifty seven.
Speaker 1: The seven sixty seven went into production in one and
Speaker 1: it shares many design components with the seven fifty seven,
Speaker 1: and it's so similar in operation that the f a
Speaker 1: A said that pilots who had the proper type of
Speaker 1: rating to fly a seven fifty seven could also fly
Speaker 1: a seven sixty seven because the differences, at least in
Speaker 1: operation were so few and far between they were practically
Speaker 1: the same aircraft by operation, even though by actual specs
Speaker 1: like by width and length and all that, they were
Speaker 1: very different. The seventy seven sixty seven was much wider
Speaker 1: than the seven fifty seven. Boeing still makes the seven
Speaker 1: sixty seven aircraft today, but most of those are not
Speaker 1: being used as passenger jets are being used for other stuff.
Speaker 1: Then we have the Triple seven, the seven seventy seven.
Speaker 1: It's a wide body, long range aircraft, the first one
Speaker 1: to production in It is the largest twin jet commercial
Speaker 1: aircraft in the world, and some variations of the seven
Speaker 1: seventy seven can hold nearly four hundred passengers. It's also
Speaker 1: the first Boeing commercial aircraft to have computer mediated controls,
Speaker 1: which is going to become part of our story towards
Speaker 1: the end of this episode two for the seven thirty
Speaker 1: seven Max. The seven seventy seven became a big success
Speaker 1: for Boeing, and airlines ordered enough of them to make
Speaker 1: the seven seventy seven the best selling wide body commercial
Speaker 1: jet of all time. It beat out the record that
Speaker 1: was previously held by the seven forty seven, and as
Speaker 1: I record this, Boeing is working on the latest generation
Speaker 1: of the Triple seven family of aircraft with the seven
Speaker 1: seventy seven X, which would start flying the skies in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. One of those is the seven seventy seven
Speaker 1: nine and it's a huge, huge plane. It can hold
Speaker 1: up to four fourteen passengers. Big plane. And now we're
Speaker 1: up to seven eighty seven a k a. The Dreamliner.
Speaker 1: It's an the wide body jet, though it's in the
Speaker 1: mid size range, so it's not as big as the
Speaker 1: seven seventy sevens, and it went into production in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. It's meant to replace the seven sixty seven.
Speaker 1: So Boeing's goal was to create a commercial jet that
Speaker 1: could fill the same role as the seven sixty seven,
Speaker 1: but have much better fuel efficiency. And they did this
Speaker 1: with lots of different changes in design, including using mostly
Speaker 1: composite materials for the aircraft, which helped cut down on
Speaker 1: the aircraft's weight, which therefore cuts down on the amount
Speaker 1: of fuel it needs to stay in the air. It
Speaker 1: can hold up to three five passengers, depending again upon
Speaker 1: the layout, and it also can travel on long distance routes.
Speaker 1: Oh and then there is one other one I should
Speaker 1: mention the seven seventeen. So why would I leave that
Speaker 1: one last? Why would I work up from seven oh
Speaker 1: seven all the way up to seven eighty seven, then
Speaker 1: go back to seven seventeen. Well, it's because Bowing didn't
Speaker 1: actually design the seven seventeen, the Boeing seven seventeen, at
Speaker 1: least the commercial jet version of the seven seventeen. There
Speaker 1: was a Boeing military aircraft that had a seven seventeen
Speaker 1: designation back in the nineteen fifties, but that's not what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here anyway. It wasn't a Bowing aircraft. Originally.
Speaker 1: It used to have the name MD and it was
Speaker 1: designed by Boeing's competitor McDonald Douglas in the mid nineties.
Speaker 1: But before the plane could go into production, something else
Speaker 1: would happen. And I'll get back to that in a
Speaker 1: little bit, all right. So that's the family of Boeing
Speaker 1: commercial jets, and honestly, each of those could merit their
Speaker 1: own episode. There are lots of stories about each of them.
Speaker 1: There are stories about the different crazy configurations the airlines
Speaker 1: would have for those aircraft, their stories about accidents with
Speaker 1: those aircraft. Um, the seven forty seven has had a
Speaker 1: lot of accidents, not not to say that the seven
Speaker 1: seven itself was at fault. There were plenty of accidents
Speaker 1: that were judged to be human error, not mechanical error.
Speaker 1: But there's you know, there's just so much to talk about,
Speaker 1: and again we've got it in this series at some point,
Speaker 1: so I'm just gonna calling all double here. Also, it's
Speaker 1: good to remember a few general notes about these planes. First,
Speaker 1: the number designation doesn't indicate size. This took me a
Speaker 1: long time to figure out. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I just assumed that every number bigger was meant there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a bigger plane. So when I heard I
Speaker 1: was gonna fly on the seven sixties seven, I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be even bigger than the seven seven, And
Speaker 1: I was wrong. Still getting over that. Also, another is
Speaker 1: that the variations within a single family in the seven
Speaker 1: series can be significant. It's not just about the seat layout.
Speaker 1: It's also about the aircraft's dimensions, which engines it has,
Speaker 1: and other design elements. And these differences, at least according
Speaker 1: to Boeing, aren't so great as to necessitate a totally
Speaker 1: new designation. You wouldn't call it a different type of plane,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that not all seven forty seven's
Speaker 1: are alike. For example, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: these Boeing aircraft out there in the wild. Boeing delivered
Speaker 1: more than nine thousand seven thirty seven aircraft alone. That's
Speaker 1: if you lump all the versions of the seven thirty
Speaker 1: seven together. If you do that, then it's delivered more
Speaker 1: than nine thousand of them to customers. That's nearly half
Speaker 1: of all the commercial aircraft that Boeing has delivered since
Speaker 1: it started producing the seven family. So it's pretty impressive
Speaker 1: that the seven thirty seven takes up almost of all
Speaker 1: the planes Boeing has ever sold, at least in the
Speaker 1: commercial jet world. Okay, so back to the timeline and
Speaker 1: bowing in the nineteen sixties. Gotta finish this episode out
Speaker 1: before the number seven ceases to mean anything to me anymore.
Speaker 1: Boeing would continue to play a crucial role in the
Speaker 1: space race, landing the contract with NASA to build the
Speaker 1: Lunar Orbiter spacecraft. Now, these were unmanned spacecraft that would
Speaker 1: fly around the Moon and map out sites of the
Speaker 1: Moon that could potentially be used by the Apollo program
Speaker 1: for landing sites. Boeing would work with other companies to
Speaker 1: produce the spacecraft, and the mission was a success. And
Speaker 1: was very important for the planning of the Apollo missions.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty six, Boeing celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and
Speaker 1: it did so by flying a replica of the old
Speaker 1: B and W biplane that had started it all so
Speaker 1: many years before. On a less celebratory note, Boeing would
Speaker 1: also land a contract and design a short Range Attack
Speaker 1: missile or SRAM s RAM. This was a nuclear air
Speaker 1: to surface missile, so this was meant to be fired
Speaker 1: by bombers that would penetrate enemy airspace, presumably after the
Speaker 1: surface to air missile capabilities of the enemy had been
Speaker 1: knocked out and by enemy everyone was essentially thinking the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. This was still in the Cold War, so
Speaker 1: Boeing would first produce the missiles in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: and would continue to do so, upgrading the line, making
Speaker 1: changes to it, but continuate producing these missiles until which
Speaker 1: was when the program was discontinued. In nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: Boeing began production on the Lunar Rover vehicle, that's the
Speaker 1: moon car that astronauts would us to make some wicked
Speaker 1: donuts on the Moon. I'm told they also used to
Speaker 1: do science and stuff up there too. Not everything went
Speaker 1: without a hitch, however, Boeing had landed a contract to
Speaker 1: develop a supersonic transport or s ST vehicle. This would
Speaker 1: be a passenger aircraft capable of breaking the sound barrier.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, Boeing landed a contract to develop
Speaker 1: such an aircraft, and it would have been the first
Speaker 1: of a new family of aircraft in Boeing. It had
Speaker 1: the designation to seven oh seven, but the government scrapped
Speaker 1: the project in nineteen seventy one and Boeing canceled the
Speaker 1: development on the project. So what happened, Well, if you
Speaker 1: listen to my episode about the Concorde, you know that
Speaker 1: supersonic travel is challenging, not just from a technical standpoint,
Speaker 1: but also an economical one. The expense of developing and
Speaker 1: building the aircraft, of training crews and pilots of how
Speaker 1: to fly them, and maintenance crews about how to maintain them,
Speaker 1: also just paying to fuel the darned things. All that
Speaker 1: ends up being a considerable amount of money. On top
Speaker 1: of that, breaking the sound barrier means you produce more
Speaker 1: sonic booms than I do after a dinner at Taco Bell.
Speaker 1: So while Boeing was tackling the challenge with zeal The
Speaker 1: general opinion in the industry was that it wasn't a
Speaker 1: good idea to pursue, and the general public was concerned
Speaker 1: about the environmental impact that such aircraft would have. So
Speaker 1: at uh, it never got off the ground. Now, when
Speaker 1: we come back, I'll quickly rush through the timeline and
Speaker 1: then we'll talk about the seven thirty seven Max. But
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. So while the SST
Speaker 1: program went belly up, Boeing was continuing to not just
Speaker 1: work on space, military and commercial air vehicles, but also
Speaker 1: to diversify. That involved creating alternate uses for Boeing owned land,
Speaker 1: like turning some of it into farmland, for example, And
Speaker 1: this way they could put the land to work rather
Speaker 1: than just you know, have it be land. And it
Speaker 1: also involved Boeing bidding for contracts to develop rapid rail
Speaker 1: transit technology. So at this point, Bowing is building components
Speaker 1: for spacecraft, for military aircraft, including helicopters, for commercial aircraft,
Speaker 1: for hydrofoil vehicles, and rail transit systems. Oh And by
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies it was also building wind turbines
Speaker 1: for electricity production. So it was really getting into lots
Speaker 1: of stuff. One of the spacecraft Bowing created was the
Speaker 1: Mariner ten, which was a satellite that did flybys of
Speaker 1: Venus and Mercury sending information back to us on Earth,
Speaker 1: which is pretty darn cool. And Boeing would contribute components
Speaker 1: to the Space Telescope Hubble as well. Would also continue
Speaker 1: designing and building missiles for the military, like the a
Speaker 1: l C m or air launched Cruise missile, which was
Speaker 1: designed to fire from a Bowing B fifty two, originally
Speaker 1: getting up to the nineteen eighties. Now Boeing would work
Speaker 1: on components for the boosters used by the Space Shuttle.
Speaker 1: It would also design and build major sections of the
Speaker 1: International Space Station, would was an incredibly lucrative contract. A
Speaker 1: division called Boeing Computer Services would produce software to be
Speaker 1: used on the International Space Station. The company produced the
Speaker 1: Chinook military helicopter as well at this time, and Boeing
Speaker 1: was one of the companies working on the osprey, which
Speaker 1: is a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that has a
Speaker 1: tilt rotor assembly. You've probably seen pictures of these, if
Speaker 1: not one in person. It kind of looks like a
Speaker 1: helicopter and kind of looks like a propeller plane. And
Speaker 1: those tilt rotors actually can can angle to serve either
Speaker 1: as a helicopter or an airplane. So you can have
Speaker 1: it tilted so that they the propellers are facing up
Speaker 1: and then do a vertical takeoff, and then you can
Speaker 1: start to transition and tilt them in a more horizontal
Speaker 1: wing position, and then with the propellers being ninety degrees
Speaker 1: from that and turn it into essentially an airplane. I
Speaker 1: have to do a full episode about the osprey at
Speaker 1: some point because it's really an odd type of aircraft.
Speaker 1: But it's also incredibly expensive and there was a lot
Speaker 1: of controversy around it as well. But they're still ospray
Speaker 1: aircraft in service today. That's more than thirty years after
Speaker 1: Bowing first started working on them. Set it's impressive. In
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties, Boeing built an unmanned aerial vehicle
Speaker 1: called the Condor. This is a bigin has a wingspan
Speaker 1: measuring two hundred five feet or sixty two meters, and
Speaker 1: it has propellers for propulsion. It's not a jet drone,
Speaker 1: it's it's a propeller drone. It looks kind of like
Speaker 1: a very wide, like almost an unrealistically wide propeller plane.
Speaker 1: It has an effective ceiling altitude of around seventy thousand
Speaker 1: feet or twenty one thousand meters, and it can fly
Speaker 1: completely under computer control from takeoff to landing. Only two
Speaker 1: of them were ever built, and they were really meant
Speaker 1: for Boeing to kind of research effective strategies for unmanned
Speaker 1: aerial vehicles. In general, they weren't intended necessarily to be
Speaker 1: production vehicles, and in fact, the military said there were
Speaker 1: very few practical applications because they would be far too
Speaker 1: vulnerable by to enemy attack if you were to try
Speaker 1: and use them as reconnaissance vehicles. For example, Boeing was
Speaker 1: involved in the design and production of the B two
Speaker 1: stealth bomber, which was a top secret vehicle at the time.
Speaker 1: I've talked about stealth technology and other episodes, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go into detail here. It largely involves
Speaker 1: creating surfaces with odd angles so the incoming radar waves
Speaker 1: don't reflect back to the radar stations. But it gets
Speaker 1: a little more compleated than that. But I've talked about
Speaker 1: in previous episodes, Boeing and McDonald Douglas would get the
Speaker 1: nod from NASA to lead R and D efforts into
Speaker 1: the design of supersonic passenger aircraft, again, this time with
Speaker 1: an eye to mitigate the challenges I mentioned earlier. This
Speaker 1: is called the High Speed Civil Transport Project. And occasionally
Speaker 1: you'll hear about various studies and ways to try and
Speaker 1: do things like reduce or eliminate the sonic boom as
Speaker 1: much as possible, which is tricky to do. It's hard
Speaker 1: to fool physics. You ken in decrease its effect, it's
Speaker 1: hard to get rid of it because air, you know,
Speaker 1: nature still abhors a vacuum, so do I hate vacuuming.
Speaker 1: In December nine, Boeing merged with Rockwell Aerospace, and Rockwell
Speaker 1: became Boeing North American and it operated as a subsidiary company.
Speaker 1: Also in August, Boeing would merge with its old competitor
Speaker 1: McDonald Douglas. Harry Stone Cipher, who had been the CEO
Speaker 1: of McDonald Douglas, would then come over to be the
Speaker 1: Boeing president and the Boeing CEO and Chairman, Phil Condent
Speaker 1: would remain at his role at the top. On September seven,
Speaker 1: the f twenty two Raptor, which was based off an
Speaker 1: experimental aircraft from a couple of years earlier, would make
Speaker 1: its first flight. This is a high speed, stealth tactical
Speaker 1: fighter and on that first flight it climbed to an
Speaker 1: altitude of fifteen thousand feet in less than three minutes.
Speaker 1: Boeing was responsible for several parts of this aircraft, but
Speaker 1: it was working in a partner a ship with other companies,
Speaker 1: including Lockheed, on this particular project. In Boeing would change
Speaker 1: the name of the McDonald Douglas m d N that
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, and when was the plane that had
Speaker 1: not yet gone into production when Boeing had merged with
Speaker 1: McDonald Douglas, and the new name was the seven seventeen,
Speaker 1: So now it's the Boeing seven seventeen. In ninety nine,
Speaker 1: Bowing landed a one point six billion dollar contract to
Speaker 1: serve as the lead systems integrator for the National Missile
Speaker 1: Defense Program. And there's a ton of other odds and
Speaker 1: ends we could cover, like the Joint helmet mounted Queuing
Speaker 1: system or the Joint Direct Attack Munition or j DAM platform,
Speaker 1: or the rock and Roll satellites that Bowing produced for
Speaker 1: XM satellite radio or the space launch complex at Cape Canaveral,
Speaker 1: not to mention the various missiles and bombs and aircraft
Speaker 1: that Boeing has worked on since two thousand for the
Speaker 1: United States and other countries. But I'm running out of time,
Speaker 1: and we still need to talk about the seven thirty
Speaker 1: seven Max. Boeing announced this particular generation of its seven
Speaker 1: thirty seven back in two thousand eleven, and they're very
Speaker 1: similar in many ways in capacity to early generations of
Speaker 1: the seven thirty seven, but in other ways they're very different.
Speaker 1: The seven thirty seven Max aircraft received certification in two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, staying the aircraft was suitable to enter into service.
Speaker 1: But in October two thousand eighteen, a seven thirty seven
Speaker 1: Max eight operated by Lion air Jet UH crashed into
Speaker 1: the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia less than
Speaker 1: twenty minutes after it had taken off, with all aboard lost.
Speaker 1: The cause appeared to be a problem with the flight
Speaker 1: control system. More on that in a moment. On March tenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, and Ethiopian Airlines flight also a seven
Speaker 1: thirty seven Max eight crashed less than ten minutes after
Speaker 1: it had taken off from Addis Ababa. There were no
Speaker 1: survivors in that crash either. Investigations are ongoing as of
Speaker 1: the recording of this podcast, but in any case, the
Speaker 1: global fleet of seven thirty seven Max aircraft is currently
Speaker 1: grounded and may continue to be so for the rest
Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen, and Boeing has stated that it may
Speaker 1: soon need to slow or even halt production on the aircraft.
Speaker 1: So what actually happened, Well, it's premature to say everything,
Speaker 1: but we have some ideas now. Boeing has maintained that
Speaker 1: the aircraft were designed properly and they were operating properly,
Speaker 1: but that cruise were not following the correct procedures as
Speaker 1: indicated by the flight manual. Pilots have stated that they
Speaker 1: were not adequately informed of a new type of software
Speaker 1: that was incorporated into the flight control system that may
Speaker 1: have played a part in these accidents. So what's going on? Well, first,
Speaker 1: it's helpful to know that the seven thirty seven Max
Speaker 1: is different from earlier seven thirty seven aircraft in its construction.
Speaker 1: The engines are different from earlier seven thirty seven aircraft,
Speaker 1: and they are placed further forward and higher up on
Speaker 1: the fuselage. And that changes the balance of the aircraft.
Speaker 1: It actually creates a tendency for the seven thirty seven's
Speaker 1: nose to start pointing upwards, starts to pitch up when
Speaker 1: it's traveling at lower speeds, and this in turn can
Speaker 1: lead to engines stalling out. They don't get enough air
Speaker 1: in them, and then they stall, and then you're in
Speaker 1: a real dangerous situation. And this is where the software
Speaker 1: comes in. The software is called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation
Speaker 1: System or m CASTS, and the software detects when the
Speaker 1: aircraft's nose is pointed upward at lower speeds. It has
Speaker 1: sensors to detect the angle of attack, and if the
Speaker 1: angle of attack is too great, it sends a command
Speaker 1: to the horizontal stabilizers. They're at the tail of the plane.
Speaker 1: The stabilizers tilt so that the aircraft will level out,
Speaker 1: which supplies the air the engine's need for continuous operation
Speaker 1: without stalling. So that's important. So in the case where
Speaker 1: this aircraft is slowing down and it's just naturally the
Speaker 1: noses creeping up, this computer system is supposed to account
Speaker 1: for that. In the Lion air crash, here's what seems
Speaker 1: to have happened the m casts incorrectly detected that the
Speaker 1: nose of the aircraft was pointed too far upward and
Speaker 1: the engines would be in dature of stalling, so it's
Speaker 1: sent the command to the horizontal stabilizers, which tilted and
Speaker 1: that caused the aircraft's nose to pitch downward, sending the
Speaker 1: aircraft into a dive, and the crew were unable to
Speaker 1: stop this malfunction or correct for it, and the plane crashed.
Speaker 1: The same thing may have happened with the Ethiopian Airlines crash,
Speaker 1: but that investigation is ongoing as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this show. Now, I have seen several aviation industry experts
Speaker 1: say that a big part of the issue is that
Speaker 1: the seven seven Max is different enough from earlier seven
Speaker 1: thirty seven models like the seven thirty seven in g
Speaker 1: that it should necessitate an entirely new, distinct and thorough
Speaker 1: highlot training program, and that a lot of airlines had
Speaker 1: more casual training programs, like the kind you could complete
Speaker 1: in an hour on a tablet, so that could be
Speaker 1: a problem that might require much more extensive training for
Speaker 1: pilots so they can familiarize themselves with the changes in
Speaker 1: the seven thirty seven max before piloting the newer aircraft.
Speaker 1: In addition, newspapers like The New York Times have investigated
Speaker 1: the f a A and have come to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that that agency is not well enough equipped to perform
Speaker 1: adequate testing and certification procedures on aircraft in general, which
Speaker 1: allows the possibility of malfunctions and mistakes to make their
Speaker 1: way through the certification process because there's just not enough
Speaker 1: funding and expertise to detect all of these, and that
Speaker 1: means that you could have potentially tragic consequences. Boeing Bird's
Speaker 1: part began working on a software patch to address problems
Speaker 1: with the m casts pretty much immediately, and this was
Speaker 1: made more difficult, the company said, because it's simulators were
Speaker 1: unable to replicate the problems that the actual production aircraft
Speaker 1: were experiencing. But the updated software, which puts measures into
Speaker 1: place to prevent the m CAST system from activating prematurely,
Speaker 1: has been completed and as I record this episode, it's
Speaker 1: essentially awaiting f a A certification for distribution. So in
Speaker 1: other words, the company says that they found a fix
Speaker 1: for the issue and it just has to make sure
Speaker 1: that the certification um agrees and that they can then
Speaker 1: distribute it to all the aircraft. As I record this,
Speaker 1: the future of the seven seven Max is in doubt.
Speaker 1: There's the possibility that Boeing might have to scrap production
Speaker 1: on that jet entirely. There are hundreds of outstanding orders
Speaker 1: that could be canceled. It's possible that airlines would rather
Speaker 1: look at alternatives than stick with the seven thirty seven Max,
Speaker 1: even with software updates and training programs to help fix
Speaker 1: these previous problem because now the seven thirty seven Max
Speaker 1: has a very negative association with it, and so it's
Speaker 1: hard to get away from that. It's hard to tell
Speaker 1: passengers no, no, everything's fine now if, especially with the
Speaker 1: amount of reporting then has happened on this issue, uh,
Speaker 1: I think it's reasonable to say that a lot of
Speaker 1: people would have reservations about getting on that type of plane,
Speaker 1: even if they were told that things have been worked
Speaker 1: out since the accidents. It's an ugly thing to see
Speaker 1: it happened. I mean, obviously it's a tragedy and it's
Speaker 1: terrible that people lost their lives in this. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: also frustrating to see the blame game going around. I
Speaker 1: don't honestly know ultimately who is to blame. Boeing says
Speaker 1: that they felt the Flying Manual had all the information
Speaker 1: needed to deal with these kind of situations. Pilots say
Speaker 1: they weren't even really told about the m casts UH
Speaker 1: software on the flying control system. I don't know who
Speaker 1: to believe, UH. I just know it is a tragedy
Speaker 1: and that things have to be fixed for people to
Speaker 1: have at least the confidence that these aircraft can go
Speaker 1: back into service safely. And that concludes our little series
Speaker 1: on Boeing. As I said, I skipped over a ton
Speaker 1: of stuff in this episode, and I apologize for that.
Speaker 1: If you had a favorite Bowing story that I didn't
Speaker 1: get to. But if you do have things you would
Speaker 1: like me to talk about, whether it's about Boeing or
Speaker 1: anything else, get in touch with me. You can send
Speaker 1: me an email the addresses tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or you can pop on over to
Speaker 1: our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You're gonna
Speaker 1: find an archive of all of our old episodes. You'll
Speaker 1: find links to where we are on social media. You
Speaker 1: also find a link to our online store, where every
Speaker 1: purchase you make goes to help the show. We greatly
Speaker 1: appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is a production of I heart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from heart Radio, visit the
Speaker 1: I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. H