Boeing 737 Max. Photo by Andreas Zeitler/Shutterstock
As we stated when we released the survey last week inquiring about how confident our audience members were in the 737 Max, we were actually rather uncertain about what to anticipate. And as it turned out, a vast majority of those who participated in the survey have very little fear of the potential risks they might encounter when flying on this jetliner. The plane has been grounded for a whopping 20 months now following a pair of catastrophic crashes, one in 2017 and another in 2018, which resulted in the tragic loss of a total of 346 lives. Investigators are striving to determine the causes that were attributed to both Boeing and the FAA for the system-wide failures that ultimately led to the worldwide grounding of the next-generation 737.
Regarding our question, “How confident are you that the FAA and Boeing got the design of the 737 Max right this time?”, respondents either expressed extreme (49%) or fairly confident (21%) levels of certainty, indicating that 70% of respondents demonstrated a strong degree of confidence in the fixes implemented to the plane. Once again, a large majority, standing at 64%, stated that they would board the 737 Max on the very first day of its reintroduction.
Perhaps what was most surprising to us is that 35% of those who answered the survey said that they would have flown on it even if the underlying issue hadn’t been fully addressed. To be fair, 65% said that they would have declined.
In response to our final question, “Would you fly on one after it has been back in service for a while?”, 60% said that they wouldn’t even need to wait that long and 26% replied that they would wait for a while but would take flight on it once it was proven to be safe.
A fortunate 13% of respondents said that they would never fly on the 737 Max.
It’s never too late to add your voice to the survey. And a big thank you to all those who participated.
