> So 20 MAX-related issues out of ~850. How is that significant?
To build on what @ggm and @siwatanejo noted. The 737 debuted in 1967, so it is 52 years old now. The 737 MAX is 2 years old. In terms of number of issues per year since the aircraft was introduced the 737 is at ~15 incidents per year and the 737 MAX is at ~10/year. But as @ggm notes, it's important to look at when in the life cycle many of the non-MAX 737 incidents occurred.
Another way to look at this is by number of aircraft produced. The Boeing website[0] gives production numbers for various classes of the 737. In terms of incidence per number of aircraft delivered the non-max 737s have 0.082 incidents per delivered aircraft while the 737 MAX has 0.05 incidents per delivered aircraft.
Both of those suggest that the 737 MAX may not be any worse than the non-max 737s, but a more careful statistical analysis is probably necessary to draw strong conclusions.
I’d look at incidents per flight hour. Some of those 737s have been in the air for decades. I suspect the numbers for the 737 MAX will stand out more on this analysis.
It’s also worth noting that the MAX should benefit from 5 decades of accumulated experience and regulation. So you’d expect far lower incidents.
The problem might not be with the plane per se but rather with Boeing rushing a bit and relying on the fact that “it basically the same plane but better so why would there be issues”.
I didn't downvote you, so I can't speak for those who did. But I replied because simply saying "20/850 is small" isn't sufficient to argue there isn't a difference between the two planes. Partly because the timescales for the two incident counts are different and so are the number of planes constructed. So normalizing the incident counts against those quantities is a first step at getting towards their significance. Though as @ggm and @ansy point out, the incident rates also vary as a function of time through the lifetime of that airplane model. So really that behavior needs to be examined as well.
I don't think anything else has been pushed as far as the 737. The closest are probably the De Havilland DHC-8 and the Douglas DC-9/MD-80/MD-90/717, and maybe the DC-10/MD-11. The The Q400 had some pretty serious landing gear issues, the MD-11 was notoriously tricky to land, the MD-80 had that undocumented auto throttle issue, and the MD-90 had those extra flaps next to the engines.
> Right, I'm (we're) obviously talking about 737MAX
I think @ams6110 is saying that it may not be fair to identify the 737MAX as a completely new plane, since the 737MAX can be identified as more of an evolution of the 737 rather than a new, from-scratch plane design.
And that is bullshit. As long as you're not just changing the resolution of the seat's screens, it's a completely different model, for all intents and purposes.
"737.{0,20}max" (case insensitive) yields 20. [0]
[0] CSV output: https://pastebin.com/87N023cx