The 737 MAX 8 in particular has a bad rap but what happened to FlyDubai 1073 should give every traveler confidence in these planes.

The Wall Street Journal reports the jet reached about Mach 0.96 in the dive, well past its maximum operating speed of Mach 0.82, then was hauled out at roughly 3g and still landed with a chunk of its rudder gone.

The thing people need to keep in mind is that while Boeing's engineers know the certified envelope and the safety margins, what they don't have is a full-scale flight test of a complete 737 Max flown until it breaks apart.

So the exact speed and duration at which this airplane would have become unrecoverable was always modeled and estimated, and no one really knows at what points the airframe just disintegrates. Boeing is not going to destroy a complete plane and sacrifice a test pilot in flight just to measure a number no airline will ever need.

All this to say that this is the safety factor doing its job.

Boeing can take a bow.

🄳🄾🄾🄼🄿🤖🅂🅃🄸🄽🄶