Updates from Alaska, Southwest and United. What you need to know about MAX Flights to Hawaii.
114 thoughts on “It’s Back: Boeing 737 Max Flights to Hawaii Have Resumed”
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Updates from Alaska, Southwest and United. What you need to know about MAX Flights to Hawaii.
Comments are closed.
I’ve been lucky enough to fly on United’s and Southwest’s MAX planes over the past couple weeks and I’ll take a MAX over an Airbus any day! Comfortable, quiet, smooth. Just a nicer ride in general. I’ll go out of my way to book a MAX over other aircraft now.
I think I’ve read as much as anybody about the Max aircraft. I will certainly fly the Max. I’m just not a big fan of the narrow body aircraft. I feel like a sardine in a can. That includes Hawaiian Air AB 321, which has some issue too. The narrow body aircraft do get much better fuel economy and that’s a big plus in several ways.
Aloha Guys
Hi Roy.
Thanks. We concur in always preferring wide-body when possible.
Aloha.
Do you know anything about Air Canada Max flights?
A friend of mine is a SWA pilot, flying out of Denver. Two weeks ago he underwent MAX training in Texas, and feels very confident in the aircraft. However, it will take time for the general public to accept the aircraft again.
Looks like I might switch to Delta from United for my direct flights to Lihue. I have never liked the 737 for overwater flights for 5 hours or more and it always feels tippy and not nearly as stable as the 757.
I seriously can’t see any airline placing the Max800 on Any routes to Hawai’i any time soon. I don’t think that route would be a great guinea pig for this aircraft’s reintroduction into society. If there were any issues (god forbid!) in route… there’s No Place to go! For that reason, I don’t see it going right to Hawai’i with Any airline right off the bat. They’d be stupid to do so. It would be instant route suicide.
I will have no hesitation flying a MAX. Because of all the scrutiny, safety upgrades, etc., the pilots and everyone else associated with it will make sure that it’s the safest plane in the air.
My Father was a Boeing Engineer for 35 years and I’d like to respectfully correct a lot of these people regarding Boeing putting profits before safety which is absolutely not true at all. Without going into detail, I can see that a lot of people here are scared basing opinions on incorrect ideas versus facts. Facts that you wouldn’t have without direct knowledge. As with anything that is man made, including the car you drive every day, there can be after market recall on parts, but it doesn’t change the fact that no matter how much driver training someone has, not everyone should be behind the wheel. Not blaming human error entirely, and I understand why people are scared, but to blame an organization entirely with “they only care about profit” is reckless when you have no direct knowledge of The Boeing Company and their dedication to workmanship and safety.
So true. AND… if Boeing only cared about profit, they would never have sold / delivered an aircraft that they had even the remotest inkling was unsafe. They’ve lost ka-billions of dollars and are essentially insolvent over the MAX incidents. They reported a profit of 10.5 BILLION dollars in 2018–and a loss of 636 MILLION in 2019–a reversal of over 11 BILLION dollars. They’ve been around and in business long enough to know that crashes are FAR more expensive for them than delaying delivery to correct any known safety issues. I agree that pilot error / lack of adequate training on the new planes was just as much to blame as the planes themselves. They went through thousands and thousands of hours of testing before, during and after production. If Boeing knew about any safety issues that absolutely would have addressed them before delivering the planes.
I think one of the major problems with the two flights that crashed may have been the lack of experience in general of the flight crews, from some of the smaller countries of origin. It is also much easier to blame Boeing and their deep pockets as opposed to a third world country and flight crews lack of a skill set.
Boeing was a great company and like many engineering companies get taken over by accountants and short term thinkers trying to hit their bonus. Engineers are outsourced strictly for costs. Why Cutting Costs is Expensive: How $9/Hour Software Engineers Cost Boeing Billions is an interesting article if you read it you will understand. Many engineers with years of experience were let go and replaced. Bad company culture caused this problem as well as lax government oversight.
I feel that I will have a great seat selection when the max returns to service. I’m not afraid of it at all.
This is a helpful comment. My first thought is that there is no way in hell I’m getting on one, at least not for a year or two after we see what happens. I admire your courage.
I also will avoid the MAX for a few years to see if issues are really resolved.i hope other options are available for the time being.
For those of us in northwest Washington, flights from Vancouver, B.C. are often much more convenient than from Seattle. Air Canada has had to bring in a charter company from Atlanta, Omni Air, to provide service since Air Canada was using the Max. Omni is flying the route as Air Canada in a 767. Instead of daily service, it has been every other day.
While not the “Mainland USA”, it is an option for those traveling from Washington State as well as Canada.
Well it turns out Colleen was correct…other problems have popped up…from faulty wiring harnesses to speculation that perhaps the 737 has just been overstretched beyond what it should have been… All this was done as a result of a company philosophy that over prioritized profits (Seattle Times editorial recently said this)….resulting in hundreds of deaths.
Also SWA was a major driver in pressuring Boeing to keep costs down and to keep squeezing the 737 hull for all it’s worth.
I don’t particularly trust them as they certainly offer a cut rate inferior Hawaii product in the name of trying to keep fares down.
Sorry, I’m not impressed with SWA or the MAX. Perhaps SWA over reached what they do by flying TransPac as well as the MAX overreached what the 737 was capable of.
In the long run, the cut rate airlines just don’t do that well in the Hawaii market.
It is not a faulty wire harness. There is a small chance of two wires in a large wire bundle shorting out. Assuming they are even near each other, touching. You have a better change of winning the lottery and being struck by lighting on the same day. This wire routing is also on the 737NG. Rather than fight with the FAA about if this was certified incorrectly (i.e. previouly certified on the NG, and grandfathered in as the bundle was not changed between the NG and MAX), Boeing has chosen to rework the wire routing on all MAXs which have not flown away from the the Puget Sound. THe Seattle Times article doesn’t speak for those of us who worked on the MAX (myself included), non of us put safety over profits.
Wrong you ha e a better chance ce of dying g in a plane crash than winning the lottery which is WHY, as a fearful flyer, I don’t buyouts tickets lol.
Lotto tickets
I flew then to Hawai’i. What I got was the best legroom ever to Hawai’i, very friendly employees from start to finish and free movies on my iPhone as well as free iMessaging that actually worked the whole way there. They didn’t feed us a meal but I got much more than I ever have on United American or Delta. The snacks I got were sufficient for 4 hours and 35 minutes. The legroom and extra wide seats… that alone won me over. Not sure what you weren’t impressed by. Maybe you expected lie flat seats and shoulder massages
I refused to fly MAX8s *before* there were crashes because the plane was designed so tight and uncomfortable that pilots were complaining about getting in and out of the bathrooms. Didn’t think they could make airplane bathrooms smaller but they did.
I agree that the perks of the MAX outweigh the potential risk (which I think is extremely small now) for me.