 Hello and welcome to this click. Today, we are going to discuss the long saga of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft which remains grounded and under various clouds. One of the issues that have come up is an ex-employee of Boeing has taken what is called the fifth amendment in the United States, which means he will not submit documents or give testimony of a kind that can actually cause problems to him in terms of criminal prosecution. That means it seems to imply that there could be criminality in his past conduct. The second issue, the House Congress committee has asked for essentially access to Boeing employees of this issue on which Boeing has expressed disappointment that in spite of their cooperation, this kind of notices are being made public. So, it appears that the issue is things being made public rather than the content of it. The third issue and this is a much more serious concern for Boeing, the European Aviation Safety Agency seems to be arguing there is still very serious problems with the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft and they do not see it getting resolved without a thorough check by them. So, these are the clouds under which the Boeing is currently. To talk about this we have the Raghunandan who knows the aviation area has been an aeronautical engineer. If we look at all of this, first issue is the Boeing is not going to return to service very quickly. Boeing 737 MAX is not going to return to service very quickly. It looks as if the way things are going now and I am sure we will discuss this further. The problem is that other major aviation markets, particularly in Europe and China are unhappy with the role of the Federal Aviation Administration in the US. So, even when the FAA certifies the Boeing 737 MAX for having undertaken design modifications etc. and they deem it to be air worthy once more, other agencies are not prepared to take the FAA's word at face value and regulatory agencies in other major markets are saying we will do such assessment on our own and then we will clear the aircraft. Independent assessment. That is right. Which means then that even if the FAA clears the 737 MAX, it looks as if initially at least it will fly only in the United States and in a few other countries whom the US can arm twist into following its lead rather than taking independent action. Now you know this is of course something which could be obviated if FAA and EASA for instance had put a joint team to evaluate and examine the shall we say the revisions being made. But also looking at the EASA's PowerPoint presentation which seems to be out which was presented to the European Parliament, they have put out a number of technical question marks over the aircraft and a lot of them has already been discussed among us. We had also talked about how essentially the MCAS remaining a secret from the pilot was such a huge mistake because he didn't know what the hell was fighting him. The questions about computers, single sensor, computers overriding the pilot but more importantly the airframe itself the fact that you had this retrofitted large engines on an airframe which was not designed to take it and therefore the characteristic of the flight of the aircraft having changed. All of this are really some things which do not seem heading for easy resolution, absolutely not. And that is the reason why in the EASA presentation they have highlighted major technical flaws not only in the MCAS and its allied systems which resulted in the runaway stabilizer condition of the two accidents of the Lion Air from Indonesia and the Ethiopian airline. They have highlighted these issues specifically and said we would like to fully understand the causes of these two crashes and until these crashes are fully understood we would not feel comfortable in allowing the 737 MAX to take to the air again. Second to carry out the various design modifications precisely for the kinds of problems that you discussed which we have discussed many times on this program which are known problems the design problems which have been reiterated by the European agency and they have also said that apart from reviewing these we would also like to undertake a more general review of the design of the 737 MAX which would then bring in issues that you talked about with regard to the airframe the mounting of the engine the position of the engine all of that and so on. And once again I would like to reiterate that these problems which the European agency has highlighted are due to a great deal of discomfort in the fact that the Federal Aviation Administration in the US had not conducted these necessary investigations on its own but had delegated these powers back to the manufacturer to Boeing to satisfy which is to put it mildly extremely odd that the manufacturer would be asked to certify his own designs. Yeah this is basically the self-certification issue and that the FAA claims it did not do but in practice that's what they have done and that's clear from all the record now publicly available and if you ask me the issue that you highlighted in your introduction of the Boeing employee not wanting to release is probably linked with this this issue that what he said internally and what he said internally and what he said externally he may have indicated his awareness of this conflict and how he was trying to mask certain defects that he had come across etc. You know the YASA documents also indicate what are called significant technical issues we have discussed some of them already but the more important issue for me is that they do not seem something you can resolve in a month or two so assuming that takes another 68 months and assuming they can be overcome sometimes technological problems are of a nature that actually if you correct it one sense some other flaw creeps up and this could be in that range but if it doesn't then and the flaws are can be rectified it does appear it will take time because I don't see it being done very quickly and they still haven't started the examination of the resolution of the problems that's right in fact when FAA did certain examinations it threw up more problems so in fact new problems cropped up on the question of the load of the flight control computer overloading it and so on but leaving all of it that out what does it mean for the aviation market because this market really had two big players the Russians and the Chinese have yet to come into this market they have aircrafts which are on the shall we say on the anvil or ready to roll but they really are not challenges anymore so this those whole segment of shall we say the medium level jets the passenger jets which are taking a large part of the traffic today the only other players airbus and it doesn't seem they'll be able to cater to the total demand so this is how do you see the aircraft industry moving in on this and what's likely to happen there's two aspects to this one as you said is capacity in the headline industry and how the failure of the 737 max link with this there is certainly going to be a capacity problem the longer the max stay grounded the more problems it's going to create however there is a window of opportunity here for Pratt & Whitney Pratt & Whitney has got this engine but there are other engines which Pratt & Whitney has which it may go back to in doing this and there is the leap engine which is a collaboration between General Electric and Safran of France I think this opens up an opportunity for them more to replace the Pratt & Whitney series of engines in further designs of the 737 Neo range and the max range if that is done and these modifications at least on the airbus as well as on the 737s have not met the same kind of problems as the ones with the Pratt & Whitney engine so that's one possible solution on the horizon that's 12 months 18 months for this to happen that's right it doesn't solve the short-term problem that's right it doesn't solve the short-term problem at all and the second problem which is going to come is with these conflicts between FAA and the European aviation agencies and other agencies agencies these two in the main even the Indian agency for the battles yeah but the last time this happened the Indian agency DGCA was inclined to go along with the FAA on this and may not resist the FAA as much as the Chinese or the Europeans would the problem here is it's also going to affect the insurance companies the insurance companies are not going to be happy at all well more than insurance companies Raghu if other agencies do not certify the aircraft I do not see Americans happily getting into a 737 max either that's precisely my point people might vote with their feet that's right that's the other issue and the same with the insurance companies if the Europeans are not certifying it the Chinese are not certifying it the insurance companies also will put up their prices yeah let's assume the insurance companies are also arm twisted to certify but there's very little way of arm twisting the passengers you know and in fact as we know immediately this accident happened the the lot of the sites which deal with aircraft that's right air reservations they also started telling you what was the aircraft being used on that particular leg that's right so that was an indication that passengers could choose whether they considered safe so this is the other aspect of the capacity constraint one is the physical capacity constraint the other is resistance by various stakeholders various stakeholders the passengers the passengers especially in fact I've seen comments that you know I prefer to drive rather than fly in this aircraft sure so at the US a 12 hour drive will be preferable to booking your flight on an air a Boeing 737 max last question you know this is something if it for instance for 12 to 18 months boy this max 737 max doesn't return to the air do you think there's a real chance of Boeing tanking is it too big to fail yeah or is it too big to fly at the moment it is too big to fail firstly its talks will certainly go down badly but it will be kept afloat to some extent at least by the military side of the business even though there are some problems there although there are problems there also but that's one part that would keep it going for a while until they are able to override this at least in the US market if they're able to do sufficient arm twisting to be able to continue to fly in the US that would give them some push cushion to fall back on although it would affect them a lot because close to 50 percent or more of their market is from planes which are sold to outside the US and it also is an opportunity not only for a bus but also for the Chinese and the Russian aircrafts which are also trying to fill this gap now and which you are about to take off in the market they're supposed to be debuting in this period that's right so that's also the other opportunity unfortunately the Brazilians have taken themselves out because Embraer has been sold to essentially Bohic that's right that is the unfortunate part of all this in fact I was just going to say apart from the Chinese and the Russians Embraer was one whose models could have been stretched to meet the 737 MAX or NIO sizes but then that's gone up the spout yeah one of Bolsonaro effect in Brazil as right thank you for being with us and explaining the larger issues regarding Boeing 737 MAX and also the aircraft industry the aerospace industry today this is all the time we have a news click today do keep watching news click and do visit our website