Boeing's Nosedive: The 737-MAX

15:10All right, we're back.

15:12Josh Clark:I know we talked a little bit at first about how they decided to sort of revamp this decades-old fleet design-wise instead of starting from scratch with all this great new technology. But that's what they did. They took that 737 body. They made a lot of changes. They added bigger engines. And one of the things that was the result, and they knew this by 2012 basically, was that they had created a problem, a balance problem. whereas at certain speeds you could potentially go into a stall because the airplane's nose drifted upward.

15:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because they basically took the same plane and just put giant engines that the plane was never designed for and it just knocked it out of balance, right? And you would say, well, why didn't they just move the wings? There was a good reason they didn't move the wings because the more changes you make to an airplane, the more likely it is that all the pilots at all the different airlines that fly that plane are going to need updated training, right? The FAA will require it. Airlines don't like that. That's an added cost to the plane you're selling them. So they did, they bent themselves into pretzels trying to avoid making actual big changes.

16:26Chuck Bryant:They just tried, they were playing whack-a-mole with all the problems that came up with an eye toward not actually doing the one thing that would solve the problem, which is redesign the wings. So what they came up with instead was some software that would take over and make the nose go back level whenever it got out of a suitable angle of attack, it's called. Yeah, it's called the, and this is the real sort of, well, I was going to say the real villain, but the real villains were the humans behind this decision.

16:58Josh Clark:But we're talking about the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, the MCAS. And this thing, like you said, I don't know if it was clear, but it literally like takes over controls of the plane and takes like supposedly takes care of the issue for the pilot instead of saying like, hey, you know, let's redesign this plane or at least train these pilots to rectify this on their own with their hands on the wheel. No. What's that thing called? The stick, I think they call it. The stick? Is it the stick in big planes too? Probably. I'm pretty sure. Just a larger stick. Yeah. The big stick.

17:33Josh Clark:On the trunk. The big stick. They said, we designed this whiz-bang software that's going to do that for you. And when they went around to test flight mode, I think it was like 2016, the MCAS was still a pretty small part of this whole thing, but it was part of the aircraft.

17:52Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And then they started testing this new design in simulators. And I know at least once, I think in 2012, I think the head test pilot for Boeing took 10 seconds to override the MCAS and crashed. And they were like, ooh, okay, we need to keep working on this. So again, they're back to playing whack-a-mole. Like the Band-Aid that they put on the issue of the imbalance, which was the software, now has its own bugs. So now they're fixing those. And then that would bring up more bugs and more bugs. So they had to fix those and those and those. And this was where the design for the Boeing 737 MAX like really started to get out of hand.

18:35Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. Because like I said, it was a pretty small part of the system at first. It had kind of that one function, I think, initially or was supposed to. But by the time you're playing whack-a-mole, it keeps growing and growing. And you're like, well, then the software will solve this problem. And then the software should solve this problem. And all of a sudden, as it's interacting with these plane systems, it's a huge part of flying this plane.

18:58Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And they had to integrate it with the existing software. They couldn't redo the software or the flight controls or else, again, you have pilot training that you've just triggered. Right. So they were just basically hammering this thing into place as best they could. The way that it finally worked was there were two sensors on the nose that sensed the angle of the plane, right? And when the sensors sent information saying, hey, this plane's at way too steep of an angle, it could stall out if it goes any further up. The MCAS system literally, like you said, took over the flight controls and then leveled the plane back out, right?

19:41Chuck Bryant:There was a huge issue that they made it, they designed it, which still befuddles engineers, aerospace engineers today, so that only one of those sensors saying the plane's angle was wrong could trigger the MCAS. Like, there was no redundancy. So if one of those sensors was faulty and the other was fine, it didn't matter. The faulty one was going to tell the MCAS to level out even if the plane's angle wasn't actually an issue.

20:10Josh Clark:Yeah, like the whole idea there is if one sensor goes off, you want to have that other sensor that aligns with it and says, yeah, we're getting the same readings or whatever, which is, you know, it's that backup. It's that redundancy that you need. You need that matching data before that thing engages itself. So they said, you know what, we've done our calculations and we think it's much simpler this way. And the risk of catastrophic failure is, quote, almost inconceivable. Yeah. I think they figured the probability was one per 223 trillion hours of flight. So they said, you know what? We don't need this redundancy.

20:49Josh Clark:It's not necessary.

20:49Chuck Bryant:Which is still, it's just insane. Like, that is a basic principle. Redundancy is a basic principle of any engineering, right? And it just, I don't, I still couldn't find why they made that decision, why it was so much harder for that, to have the sensors have to match. It's just nuts. But as we'll see, somebody clearly forgot to carry the one because that calculation they came up with for that probability was not correct. Yeah, not correct. So there was another thing that they did. They didn't tell anybody about the MCAS.

21:21Josh Clark:Yeah, this is the one that really gets me.

21:24Chuck Bryant:They created, this was brand new. No one had ever created something like the MCAS before. It wasn't like they took an existing software and just kind of redesigned it. They made new software to do a brand new thing that hadn't been done before. and then they didn't tell anyone about it. And again, just want to reiterate, the MCAS took over the controls from the pilot. If you were the pilot, you were no longer in control of the plane while the MCAS was bringing the nose back down to a more suitable angle of attack. Imagine that happening and you having no idea what's going on because you don't know the MCAS exists.

22:00Josh Clark:Yeah, and all of this is because they don't want to make the, again, make the plane less appealing to buyers, to airlines. because they're going to have to invest a lot of money in, like, pilot retraining and even as simple things as, like, you know, flight manuals and stuff like that. Supposedly, I mean, it was reported at least that Boeing made a deal with Southwest Air that said, hey, if you buy enough planes from us and if you don't require your special training for the pilots, like, save yourself some money, we'll give you a discount on these planes. And Boeing lobbied the FAA, like, actively lobbied them to allow them not to make any mention of the MCAS in the manual.

22:39Josh Clark:Like, we don't even want this in the flight manual. And the FAA said, sure.

22:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah, they said, okay. Boeing told them that it was such a minor part of an already existing system, I think the existing airspeed sensor system, that it was not worth mentioning. And the FAA, like you said, they were like, sure, that's fine. They also didn't even put an indicator light for it in there. That's how secret they kept this thing. So you would have no idea it was on, right? So this was like that was, you might be stunned that the FAA just went along with that. It also shows you that they didn't, they had no idea what the MCAS was. They didn't go and look and say, well, let us see if it's actually important or not.

23:23Chuck Bryant:Tell us what this thing is. Later on, FAA officials, some of them would testify, they didn't get the MCAS. They didn't understand what it was. And they really were encouraged not to ask too many questions. So they just said, sure, if you guys don't think that it's worth mentioning, we won't make you.

23:40Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And, you know, this is all, you know, how I mentioned the beginning, part of the systemic failures of just how things work. So we should talk a little bit about that as far as the FAA is concerned, because when they were formed in 1958, it was pretty clear right out of the gate that their kind of co-mandates could often be in conflict with one another, which was to promote the interest of the aviation industry and, very important, to promote the safety of the flying public. So they knew pretty quickly that, like I said, those don't always align. So Congress in, I think, 1967 said, all right, maybe we should have a new agency that really guides the safety side.

24:20Josh Clark:So they created the National Transportation Safety Board. And they're like, they'll keep everybody safe and recommend regulations to the FAA to enforce. But they can't demand that. The FAA has never had to do the things that they're suggested to do.

24:35Chuck Bryant:It's just the NTSB is looking out for the safety, but the FAA doesn't have to enact it. Because again, that might conflict with the interests of the aviation industry. And that stuck out to me, Chuck, that the safety of the flying public isn't always in the interests of the aviation industry. It should 100 % of the time be in the interests of the aviation industry. Yeah. That's just my take. Hot take.

25:02Josh Clark:But what ended up happening was the FAA said, all right, well, you know, we're good at the industry stuff. So why don't we just let Boeing, like they know planes, why don't we let them handle their own certification process? And it wasn't, I mean, that seems to be sort of standard practice. It wasn't like some big exception was made, right?

25:19Chuck Bryant:Yeah, no, they have a name for it. Organizational designation authorization. The FAA can say, like you just said, you know a lot about what we want and what we require. We're just going to let you go through and verify that all this stuff adheres to FAA requirements and guidelines. And then you come back and tell us if it does. You, plane maker, certify your own plane and tell us if we should certify it in turn. And that's exactly what it is. That's that process. Yeah.

25:51Josh Clark:They were like, hey, here's what you do. Just do it all. Then send me an email that just says all good. Right.

25:55Chuck Bryant:Write an email to the president, but like it's from me and then I'll sign it.

26:02Josh Clark:So this is part of a bigger problem that actually has a name. It's called regulatory capture. And it's this idea that when people are working closely together, like the FAA works closely with the airline industry and Boeing, that they, you know, they know these people and they end up. I don't want to necessarily say siding, but they end up more sympathetic to the industry side than the public that they're supposed to be protecting because they don't work with the public at large every day. They work with these people every day. Exactly.

26:38Chuck Bryant:That's the same reason why you should avoid ever agreeing to mediation instead of a lawsuit. Because the mediators typically, even though they won't say they do, they will typically work for the people paying them. And the chances of your company that, say, you're going into mediation with hiring them again are far greater than you ever hiring them. It's not exactly the same thing, but they have a working relationship that just can't be avoided. And that also is supported by another issue called the revolving door. Regulatory capture is very much supported by the revolving door and vice versa, which is you are a friendly regulator.

27:21Chuck Bryant:And the company you're regulating later on is like, hey, we want to hire you. We think you've done a great job and we want you to come work for us for gobs of money. And it can go the other way, too. A friendly colleague can go become a regulator and, you know, you just kind of expect them to turn a blind eye when you need them to. That's just a huge problem, especially when you're talking about huge, like, life and death stuff, like designing and certifying airplanes. Or, you know, pharmaceutical makers in the FDA, they're frequently talked about as regulatory capture and a revolving door.

27:58Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, I'm just a dummy podcaster, so I don't know how any of this stuff works. But it seems to me like there should be like a rule or a law that says, you know, choose your path. Like, you can't go work for the FAA for 10 years and then go work for Boeing right after that with some plum job or some pharmaceutical company. And then you go work for the FDA. Like, it's just such an obvious conflict, you know?

28:23Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I don't remember if you and I recorded the episode on it or not. I feel like we did years back. I definitely wrote an article about this, and people have proposed that over the years. I think three years is typically the average, which makes sense. Like a lot of people change at a company in three years, so that would probably actually do it. But it's just like just added to the pile of problems that we have to solve to get things on track around here.

28:51Josh Clark:I propose we take a sort of a quicker break here than we normally would because we've got the crashes coming up. And after that, it's, you know, what do you think? I agree. Okay. I'm not quite sure what I was trying to say there, but we'll be right back and we'll talk about what happened with these planes right after this.

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31:00Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck, so we're back, and we're going to go back to March 2017. and I guess this month is when the FAA certified the 737 MAX 8 to fly. A few months later, the MAX 9 was certified to fly, and both of these planes, I think they were the first 737 MAXs to hit the skies. And one thing you want to point out is when the FAA certifies a new plane to fly, they and the European, the EU Aviation Authority, they're basically, their stamps tell the rest of the world, like, these planes are fine. You can buy them, you can fly them, you can put them into your airline fleet. Other countries have their own aviation authority, sure.

31:46Chuck Bryant:But they do not have the resources that like the FAA or the EU's Aviation Authority have. And so they're relied upon, like their credibility is important worldwide. So this is one reason also it was such a big deal that the FAA just completely fell down on the job.

32:05Josh Clark:Yeah, because they're supposed to be the gold standard worldwide, like you said. So on October 29, 2018, Lion Air Flight, it was the 737 MAX 8, crashed into the Java Sea very shortly after takeoff from Indonesia. And the flight crew communicated with air traffic control that basically they were having trouble with flight control. They were having trouble with their altitude. And then the plane just disappears from radar. And I think it was about 13 minutes later, it plunged into the Java Sea at about 400 miles an hour and killed all 189 people on board.

32:44Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Yeah. And all of this was, I think, like you said, 13 minutes after the plane took off. So that angle of attack thing, we know enough now to know what was going on. At the time, no one had any idea what was going on. And so Boeing said, oh, there's this thing called the MCAS that we put in. Here's some just here's some information about it. And if anything like this ever happens to you, here's the procedure to override it and you'll be all good. Just it was still it was pilot error, everybody. That's that's what the problem was. That's what Boeing blamed it on. And what made that crash even worse, Chuck, is that those airline pilots followed that procedure that Boeing had told the world about after the Lion Air flight a few months before.

33:32Chuck Bryant:And it still didn't work because there was a software glitch with the MCAS and it kept reactivating and reactivating and they couldn't override it. And that's when it crashed. So even with this workaround that Boeing came up with, it still wasn't fixing the problem. And after that second crash, it was quite clear that Boeing had screwed up royally and also that the FAA had let them do that and still certified these planes that were way too dangerous to carry human beings.

34:04Josh Clark:Yeah, they had to ground, I think, 30 of their 58-plane stock. Yeah, fleet. Fleet, that's the word. The fleet with the sticks. That's right. I mean, it's clear I'm not an aviator, you guys. I'm sure that's not a surprise to anyone. But governing bodies really kind of came in quickly after that point. They launched investigations not just into Boeing but also into the FAA. And, you know, they did the thing you do, which you start issuing statements like that are really angry. And then there are press releases and there are denials and then CEOs come and go. Obviously, lawsuits and at least one criminal charge would come and regulatory actions.

34:44Josh Clark:But while this is going on, there's still, like, problems with this plane.

34:51Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and the reason they grounded all 737 MAXs everywhere in the world for 20 months, it was supposed to be a very short time, but it turned out to be 20 months, is because these were brand new planes that dropped out of the sky. Remember that one in 232 trillion chance of the malfunction?

35:10Josh Clark:This is two.

35:10Chuck Bryant:Yeah, the Lion Air plane had 800 hours of flight time. The Ethiopian Air had just 1 ,330 hours. Yeah. So this happened two times in just 2 ,130 flight hours. Boy, there's some Josh Clark math in there that we just edited out, Chuck. Right.

35:30Josh Clark:So in October 2019, this is a year after that Lion Air crash, the CEO, who I mentioned earlier at the time, Dennis Muhlenberg, was called before Congress, which is what you do. You got to take your lumps and go in there and get yelled at, basically. And the whole time he's insisting the plane is safe. And in that hearing, and I remember watching some of this stuff, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal said after that second crash, he met with Boeing reps in his office, and they said what Josh Clark would say one day is that it was pilot error, which, like, that's just complete fabrication. Yeah.

36:07Chuck Bryant:I mean, yeah, that's just so scummy, you know, to be that responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, terrible deaths. And then just to blame two people who were, or four people, I guess, who were blameless. And that's just, I just think that's terrible. And you might say, well, OK, what's wrong with Muhlenberg? He was the one who inherited the problem. He's to blame because he didn't ground the 737 MAXs. The FAA made Boeing do that. So he had the option to do this. He had the opportunity to, and he didn't.

36:39Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. You know, obviously the FAA, we've been pretty hard on here, and they were found responsible for good reason. There was a 2020 congressional report that said Boeing and the FAA jointly were responsible for these two plane crashes. And the FAA this whole time is insisting that it did the right thing. It's like we did everything like we were supposed to as far as certification goes. But it seems to be a systemic thing where no one stepped forward before this and said, you can't allow them to certify themselves. Because they may have been telling the truth when they said they followed procedure, but the procedure was wrong.

37:19Chuck Bryant:Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So when that report came out, the shares of Boeing plummeted. As far as fines go and actual money that they had to shell out from this. Yeah. The FAA fined Boeing$17 million in 2021. 17 million with an M.

37:39Josh Clark:Yeah.

37:41Chuck Bryant:For using unapproved or nonconforming parts or mislabeling the parts. Neither of those things had anything to do with the crashes. So Boeing was never fined for those two crashes by the FAA.

37:55Josh Clark:Yeah. Was that just them trying to be like, hey, let's slap him with something so the public sees the headline?

38:00Chuck Bryant:That's my interpretation, yes. And that's the little pussycat bite that they came up with. Right. Is that a thing?

38:11Josh Clark:Wow. Sure.

38:12Chuck Bryant:The other thing is, is the FAA didn't start issuing penalties like that until the Justice Department filed suit against Boeing for defrauding the United States government by saying this thing is fine. You can go ahead and certify it, FAA. And there is actually a criminal misconduct facet to the whole thing as well. And I think Boeing negotiated a$2.5 billion payment or fine to the United States to basically say, like, just here, make this go away. Here's some money. They also had to pay$8.3 billion to the airlines. And then, man, the victims' families, all, I think, 345 victims' families, there was a$100 million pot set aside for them as part of this negotiated agreement with the Justice Department.

39:04Chuck Bryant:The thing that I saw, though, when I was looking that up, Chuck, on like a Google search or whatever, the reporting on it said that Boeing is dedicating$100 million to victims' families almost across the board. Like they weren't forced to? Yes. It's disgusting because it also shows that all of these outlets were basically just copying the Boeing press release.

39:28Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You did mention a criminal charge. There was one. There was one individual that faced criminal charges. It was a former lead technical pilot named Mark Forkner. And he is the guy who convinced the FAA that the MCAS was not something worthy of including in the flight manual. I think it was exposed later on in internal emails. He was frustrated about MCAS in the email, and he said, quote, I basically lied to the FAA, end quote. And he was found not guilty of defrauding federal regulators, and that was the only person to be brought up on criminal charges.

40:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah, after that, the DOJ said, okay, we're closing this case. It's done. As you can imagine, the families of the victims were not at all happy with any of this. Yeah. So the whole thing put to rest. Everybody's moving on. This is, what was that, 2021, I think, when that whole thing got settled. Yeah. And then three years later, less than three years later, there was another catastrophic incident with another Boeing 737 MAX.

40:41Josh Clark:Yeah. And I remember when this one happened after all the other stuff, it was just like, what is because I mean, I feel like there was this weird certain amount of national pride with Boeing even at one point. Like I remember growing up hearing about like Boeing, like this great company of engineers, like these brilliant people. And then by the time this happened in 2024, I'm not even in like a plane head. And I was like, what is happening with this like once great company? And that's when Alaska Airlines flight depressurized rapidly at 16 ,000 feet because a door plug blew out and there was a hole in the side of the plane.

41:17Chuck Bryant:Yeah, a door plug is essentially a panel that covers an unused emergency exit. And that panel came off, blew off. And just by total luck or the grace of God, depending on your view of what's going on behind the universe, there was nobody seated right there. And the reason why this was lucky is because parts of the seats were sucked out. And there would be a good chance that a human sitting in one of those seats would have been sucked out at 16 ,000 feet. It's mind boggling that nobody was killed or I think seriously injured even than that. It's just, it was, it could have been so bad and lucky for Boeing, it wasn't.

42:02Josh Clark:Yeah. Initial reports indicated that they couldn't find the bolts that were to hold that plug in place. And then apparently there were signs that they've never, maybe there were never bolts in place to begin with. And that a Boeing worker removed that door plug for some maintenance, routine maintenance, didn't put the bolts back in. And at this point, the FAA is like, all right, this can't, you know, this is such a public thing after the disaster of the two crashes. They grounded the planes again. They said, quote, this should never have happened and it cannot happen again. And when they did follow up investigations, it I mean, it seemed kind of like a clown show going on at Spirit Aerosystems that like the factory where these things were being put together, one of their suppliers.

42:48Chuck Bryant:Yeah, this was not a good look. There were assemblers who were in charge of putting plane stuff together. They would jump up and down on airplane parts and, like, kick it into place to make the drill holes line up the way that they should. A part like that for something like an airplane in the Boeing of yesteryear would have immediately been sent back, and the supplier would have been sweating that they were going to get dropped for somebody else. That's not the case, or that certainly wasn't the case with their vendor spirit. Um, there were other problems that also came up with the MAX too that were, didn't even have anything to do with the MCAS, but were still both potentially catastrophic themselves.

43:31Josh Clark:Yeah, there was an air pressure sensor that, um, seems pretty vital to me as a non-pilot that would ensure that pilots had enough air to not lose consciousness, I guess, in the event of something bad.

43:41Chuck Bryant:That should be important to you as a passenger too.

43:44Josh Clark:Yeah, it is. They also found loose bolts in the rudder system. And by this point, like, it's pretty obvious that the FAA was complicit in this whole sort of shoddy operation going down with the 737 MAX. They were noncompliant with FAA regulations. And if the FAA is saying they don't know about that, then that's on them.

44:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah, there was no argument or justification that FAA could put forward that exonerated them in even a little bit, you know?

44:16Josh Clark:Yeah. And here's the thing. Before that door plug blew out, just before that, the FAA had gone to Congress and said, hey, I think it's all good now. Can we go back to letting Boeing certify their own planes? And then after that door blowout or plug blowout, they withdrew that request.

44:33Chuck Bryant:And this is the last CEO, Dave Calhoun. The reason he was a problem or an issue as well is because he didn't change Boeing enough for this door plug incident to not happen. So there were two high-profile whistleblower deaths. 32 people came forward to seek whistleblower federal protection to complain against Boeing. Two of them died, and it turns out both of them died. well one died by suicide another one died of MRSA so I guess natural causes are disease but the guy who died by suicide of course there was a conspiracy theory that he was actually murdered he had just given a deposition in Charleston when he was found dead of a gunshot wound in his truck in a Holiday Inn parking lot where he was staying after giving that deposition And apparently there's all sorts of evidence, including CCTV or security camera footage that show that this was suicide.

45:36Chuck Bryant:The point is that doesn't exonerate Boeing. In his suicide note, he actually named Boeing as a huge reason for this because they ruined his life, he said.

45:46Josh Clark:Yeah, he requested to be buried face down so they could, quote, kiss his ass.

45:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

45:50Josh Clark:So, yeah, it's very, very sad, obviously. So they are identifying all these issues with the 737 MAX. The most scathing stuff, obviously, would come from the NTSB because they're separate from the AAA. And they basically have taken to bypassing the FAA by issuing their own safety notices directly and not, like, going through them. Yeah. And I think in June 2025, just last year, they issued a bulletin of a possible engine problem on the 737 MAX.

46:24Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Yeah. I feel like airlines should should alert you. I know they're not going to, but I feel like they should give you a choice. Like this is a 737 MAX.

46:35Josh Clark:Well, you can see what plane it is like when you book the flight.

46:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah. That they switch them sometimes, too.

46:41Josh Clark:Yeah. I'm going to start looking, though, man, after this.

46:44Chuck Bryant:Oh, I do. I do. I don't think I've ever been on board a MAX, but I feel like it's just a roll of the dice every time, you know?

46:51Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's something I'm paying a lot more attention to now, obviously.

46:57Chuck Bryant:We also can't not mention another thing that happened after the Alaska airline blowout that had nothing to do with their airline division or airplane division, but still was Boeing and it was a terrible look. it was an aerospace thing, when the Starliner test flight to the ISS did not go very well.

47:20Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, there were a lot of failures there. We're not going to get into all of them, but it was a test flight carrying a couple of astronauts to the ISS, and they ended up stuck there. I think it was supposed to be a little more than a week, and it turned into nine months, and SpaceX had to go get them.

47:37Chuck Bryant:That's just not a good look, right?

47:40Josh Clark:No, it's not.

47:40Chuck Bryant:I mean, luckily, Wilmore and Williams, the two astronauts, made it back to Earth safely. And the Starliner, uncrewed, remotely controlled, made it back to Earth safely. But still, it's just like your stock price goes down every time. And the reason I mention that is because every step of the way with the 737 MAX, all of it followed that like psychopathic corporate logic where the shareholders return on investment is the most important thing. It is more important than morality, safety, practicality, sensibility, anything. Right. And so the whole like sad trombone like twist, I guess, is that the 737 Max cost Boeing investors $87 billion.

48:28Chuck Bryant:Right. Over the six years from 2018 to 2024. It didn't make them money. It cost them money in share price drops over and over and over again because one thing after another just kept going. And Airbus was eating Boeing's lunch all of these years, too.

48:46Josh Clark:Yeah, it's I mean, there's a lesson in there. No one will heed it, of course. But there is a lesson.

48:53Chuck Bryant:Yes, there is, Chuck.

48:55Josh Clark:You got anything else? I got nothing else. I mean, they're still out there, right? The 737 MAX?

49:01Chuck Bryant:Yeah, they got recertified by the FAA. I think the last one was towed out of groundage. I don't know if that's the word or not, but you know what I'm saying. And it was declared ready for delivery to China on August 29th, 2025. So there is a very good chance that you will fly on a 737 MAX at some point in your life if you fly a lot. Yeah. Oh, and also just real quick, they also have the MAX 7 and the MAX 9 are the newest ones. and they're having trouble getting those certified because they're having an issue that they can't figure out how to fix yet.

49:37Josh Clark:Yeah. Software is a great thing. So I'm not bagging on the software industry, but, like, I have a car that has, like, a lot of newer cars that are, like, very software-based, as a lot of people know.

49:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

49:50Josh Clark:And sometimes it'll just do something.

49:52Chuck Bryant:Yeah. We had ours brick once. Yeah.

49:55Josh Clark:It happens. I've seen it happen in my own car, and, like, that's not a plane with hundreds of passengers, you know?

50:01Chuck Bryant:No, no. Thankfully, we were parked and couldn't get it back on. But, yeah, I can't imagine how terrifying that would be if it happened while you were driving, you know? We should also say, talking about software, it was widely reported that Boeing had hired, had outsourced their software coding to Indian companies to curry favor with India so they could sell more jets there. That's true. I think they were recent college graduates who were being paid$9 an hour. Yeah. Who were entrusted with very important software stuff, but none of them worked on the MCAS. Right. Which was the thing that caused those two crashes, obviously.

50:37Chuck Bryant:That's right. I think that's it for the 737 MAX. I got to dedicate this one to my dad because he's the one who gave me my interest in engineering. Oh, that's nice. Because he was an engineer all these years.

50:51Josh Clark:Yeah, I knew that. That's great.

50:52Chuck Bryant:Well, since Chuck said that was great that I just dedicated this episode to my dad, as foretold in 2008, we just opened Listener Mail here in 2026. All right.

51:04Josh Clark:This is from Alexa from Seattle. It's short and sweet. Hey, guys, just wanted to add to the topic of the cherry blossom trees. And I remember when we recorded this, I was like, I know there's some places that are known for their cherry blossoms that we're not going to mention. And luckily, Alexa wrote in. Seattle loves their cherry blossoms, guys. The quad at UW is probably the most popular spot for cherry blossom viewing, and it's always packed with people. All over the city, you'll find cherry blossoms blooming and events themed around the cherry blossoms, including food items and anime conventions.

51:37Josh Clark:Nice. Cherry blossoms bloom in the spring when we get random breaks from the bleak winter weather, and it's absolutely beautiful. And, Alexa, I can confirm, I think my first two trips to Seattle were in spring, and I got like the best weather and I think I saw cherry blossoms and I was like, what's the deal with this place being gloomy? Like this place is incredible.

51:57Chuck Bryant:I remember that too. I think we've done at least five, maybe six shows there over the years and this past one in January was the first time it ever rained while I was in Seattle.

52:07Josh Clark:Yeah, we got big time Seattle'd on this last trip.

52:11Chuck Bryant:We did, we did. That was smart to choose a Seattle one because that's where Boeing's from so that fits this one very nicely. Oh, fantastic. Uh, that was from Alexa? That's right. Alexa, send email. No. Thanks, Alexa. Oh my God. I'm so sorry. If you want to be like Alexa and send us an email and have us thank you like you're a robot, we will do that. All you have to do is send your email off to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.

52:43Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

53:16Josh Clark:Mike came on 100 miles ago.

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53:35Josh Clark:All while keeping you in the driver's seat. Take 5, the stay-in-your-car 10-minute oil change. Find your nearest shop at take5.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.