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Over nearly the last five years, The Air Current has been regularly measuring public sentiment toward Boeing’s 737 Max. Your correspondent has used his Twitter feed to engage users on a dozen separate occasions to ask a yes or no question: “Simple, but important, question…do you feel comfortable flying on the airplane?” We went ahead and aggregated the data and charted the movement in the results, which have swung wildly depending on events. The chart is available for TAC subscribers.
Related: Boeing withdraws exemption request for 737 Max 7 inlet de-icing system
The yes or no nature of the question is not meant to collect data on whether a person will deliberately avoid or embrace the 737 Max when booking a ticket — that is an action that is only validated in actual consumer behavior and that claim is often reversed if an itinerary carries a lower price or greater convenience. Rather, the question serves as a measure of sentiment around the overall feelings of trust and confidence in the aircraft, and by extension, Boeing.
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