Wendover Overstated the 737 MAX Boycott—and Missed Boeing’s Real Trust Crisis
Wendover Productions’ February 2020 explanation of how Boeing would return the 737 MAX to service makes a compelling case that the recovery would be difficult. But several of its most dramatic claims were either poorly qualified or built on assumptions that did not survive contact with reality.
The episode turns passenger hesitation into a projected boycott, makes an arbitrary simulator-training calculation look like a major operational blockade, and treats the FAA's approval process as the central gateway to a worldwide recovery. More importantly, it approaches public confidence as a communications problem when Boeing's deeper problem was institutional credibility.
I examined the predictions against the subsequent regulatory, financial and operational record. The results expose some important weaknesses.
The 70% passenger boycott was never established
Wendover states:
"One commissioned survey found that 70% of American travelers say they will avoid flying on the MAX, even when it is recertified."
That is a much stronger claim than the contemporaneous polling supports.
A June 2019 Bloomberg report published by the Los Angeles Times identified two different survey findings:
- An Atmosphere Research Group survey found that at least 20% of American travelers would definitely avoid the MAX during its first six months back in service.
- More than 40% said they would accept more expensive or less convenient flights to avoid it.
- A separate UBS survey found that 70% would hesitate to book a flight on the aircraft.
These are not interchangeable measurements. Hesitation is not a commitment to avoid an aircraft, particularly after it has been recertified and accumulated a record of safe operation.
Los Angeles Times+1
The UBS survey contained another important qualification that Wendover omitted. More than 66% of respondents said they never checked which aircraft type they were boarding. UBS analyst Myles Walton estimated that only 8% of American flyers would never fly the MAX, falling to approximately 3% when booking habits were considered.
Washington Examiner
I would not publish the 70% figure in Wendover's wording without identifying the original survey and establishing exactly what respondents were asked.
The distinction matters. A passenger who says they feel uncomfortable today is not necessarily a passenger who will reject an available flight six months after a successful return.
The public had legitimate reasons to distrust Boeing. That does not give an editor permission to turn a measure of anxiety into a prediction of mass refusal.
The simulator shortage was real. The calculation exaggerated it.
Wendover identifies 34 Boeing 737 MAX simulators worldwide and calculates that training 5,000 pilots for ten hours each would require approximately two months, even if every simulator operated continuously.
The shortage was genuine.
Reuters reported in January 2020 that airlines were competing for simulator time across Fiji, Iceland and Panama. South Korea's Eastar Jet lacked its own simulator, while Fiji Airways was receiving inquiries from other airlines seeking access to its equipment. CAE and TRU were also manufacturing additional simulators in response to demand.
Investing.com UK
But Wendover overlooked information already available before its February publication.
On January 23, 2020, Southwest Airlines discussed its training plans during its quarterly earnings call.
The company had three MAX simulators and planned to increase that number to six before summer and nine by the end of 2020. Its initial planning assumption was approximately two hours of simulator training, not ten. Southwest expected the additional training to require a couple of months for its entire pilot workforce.
The Motley Fool
This matters because the video presents a static shortage calculation while airlines and simulator manufacturers were already expanding capacity.
Later, Aviation Week estimated that the near-final FAA training package would require approximately five hours per pilot, including two hours in the simulator and 90–120 minutes of ground instruction.
Aviation Week
Using Wendover's own hypothetical of 5,000 pilots, two simulator hours each would produce 10,000 simulator-hours rather than 50,000.
At 34 simulators operating continuously, that is approximately 12 days of theoretical capacity, rather than two months.
That is not a realistic operational schedule. Simulators have limited availability, airlines have competing training requirements, and pilots must travel to training facilities. But the difference demonstrates how heavily Wendover's conclusion depended on an unsupported ten-hour assumption.
The actual return also demonstrated that airlines could train pilots progressively rather than wait until every pilot in their workforce was qualified.
American Airlines began MAX-specific training on December 2, 2020. It expected all 2,700 of its 737 line pilots to complete simulator training by the end of March 2021, using four simulators. Nevertheless, American operated the first U.S. passenger flight on December 29, 2020.
Aviation Week+1
The simulator shortage created genuine difficulties, particularly for smaller airlines. But it did not create the all-or-nothing obstacle suggested by Wendover's numerical illustration.
The FAA did not switch the world back on
The video describes the FAA's airworthiness directive as the official document that establishes that the MAX can fly again.
That is correct within the FAA's regulatory jurisdiction. It is not a universal international permission slip.
The FAA's own review makes clear that individual states remain responsible for the continued airworthiness and operational safety of aircraft on their respective registries.
Federal Aviation Administration
Europe conducted its own assessment. On January 27, 2021, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency approved the modified MAX after more than 20 months of independent technical work.
EASA specifically stated that it had conducted its own flight tests and simulator evaluations rather than simply relying on Boeing or the FAA.
EASA
China took considerably longer to return the aircraft to passenger operations.
According to Boeing's 2022 annual report, the first Chinese passenger flight since 2019 occurred on January 13, 2023. By December 31, 2022, Boeing still held approximately 250 MAX aircraft in inventory, including 140 designated for Chinese customers. The company expected to deliver most of its inventory by the end of 2024.
SEC
The problem was no longer simply whether the aircraft had passed its technical inspections.
It was whether the relevant regulator had approved it, whether an airline still wanted the aircraft, and whether the manufacturer could complete the delivery.
The one-year backlog estimate was badly optimistic
Wendover predicted that clearing Boeing's approximately 400 undelivered aircraft would take about one year.
The subsequent figures tell a different story.
Boeing's 2023 annual report disclosed that approximately 140 previously manufactured 737-8 aircraft remained in inventory at December 31, 2023. Eighty-five were designated for Chinese customers.
Boeing still expected to deliver most of these aircraft by the end of 2024.
investors.boeing.com
That is several years beyond the video's projected clearance period.
There is an important qualification: Wendover published on February 26, 2020, before the full scale of the COVID-19 aviation collapse was apparent. The pandemic devastated airline finances and demand, while Chinese restrictions and regulatory delays created additional problems.
Boeing's own filings identify customer delivery deferrals, cancellations, remarketing of aircraft, and lingering pandemic effects as factors affecting the inventory.
SEC+1
I would not pretend that Wendover should have predicted the pandemic.
But the episode treated the backlog largely as a technical completion exercise. It underestimated how much aircraft deliveries depend on customers, international approvals and the commercial health of airlines.
A completed aircraft without a customer ready to accept it is not a successful delivery. It is an expensive asset sitting on the ground.
Boeing's trust problem was not a public-relations problem
Wendover spends considerable time describing Boeing's proposed passenger-reassurance strategy.
The company planned to monitor social media, respond to worried passengers, notify flight crews, distribute safety information cards and produce explanatory videos.
Those measures might help anxious passengers. They do not address the deeper question: why should passengers trust Boeing and the regulatory system responsible for certifying its aircraft?
That question became considerably more serious in January 2021.
The U.S. Department of Justice charged Boeing with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with the FAA's evaluation of the 737 MAX.
According to the DOJ's findings, two Boeing technical pilots concealed material information about MCAS from the FAA's Aircraft Evaluation Group. The resulting FAA flight-standardization report omitted MCAS information, which meant U.S. airline manuals and pilot-training materials also lacked that information.
Boeing entered a deferred prosecution agreement involving more than $2.5 billion in payments, including compensation for airline customers and the families of the 346 people killed in the two crashes. This was a deferred prosecution agreement, not a criminal conviction.
United States Department of Justice
The legal story did not end there. In May 2024, the DOJ determined that Boeing had breached obligations under the agreement concerning its compliance and ethics programme. The original criminal information was subsequently dismissed in November 2025 under a new non-prosecution agreement. Victims' representatives challenged aspects of the resolution, but the Fifth Circuit denied their petitions in 2026.
United States Department of Justice
There is a fundamental difference between persuading someone that an aircraft is safe and establishing that the manufacturer and regulator can be trusted to tell the truth about its safety.
A printed information card cannot repair the second problem.
The 2024 incident exposed the wider quality-control problem
A further development demonstrates why this distinction matters.
On January 5, 2024, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 suffered rapid depressurisation after a door plug separated from its Boeing 737-9 MAX aircraft during flight.
This was a different aircraft variant and a different failure from the original MAX 8 MCAS crashes. It should not be presented as evidence that the 2020 MCAS modifications failed.
But the subsequent National Transportation Safety Board investigation identified another serious institutional problem.
Its June 2025 findings attributed the accident to Boeing's failure to provide adequate training, guidance and oversight to manufacturing personnel responsible for reinstalling the door-plug hardware. The NTSB also identified ineffective FAA surveillance and audit planning as contributing factors.
NTSB
The FAA responded by grounding affected 737-9 aircraft, halting production expansion of the MAX and requiring Boeing to address systemic production-quality problems.
Federal Aviation Administration
This is the uncomfortable distinction the original episode never really explored.
Boeing's credibility depended on much more than fixing MCAS and persuading passengers to board. It depended on the integrity of its manufacturing processes, its internal reporting systems and the regulator's ability to identify failures before an aircraft left the factory.
The later incidents do not mean the 2020 return-to-service modifications were ineffective. They demonstrate that restoring confidence in one aircraft design does not automatically restore confidence in the organisation producing it.
The verdict: A useful checklist mistaken for a reliable forecast
Wendover correctly identified many of the practical tasks involved in returning the 737 MAX to service: software changes, simulator training, aircraft inspections, maintenance, airline scheduling and passenger reassurance.
The problem is the confidence attached to several of its most dramatic conclusions.
The 70% passenger figure turned hesitation into apparent refusal. The simulator calculation relied on an arbitrary ten-hour assumption while airlines were already planning shorter training and expanding capacity. The one-year inventory forecast underestimated the importance of international regulatory approvals, customers and extraordinary market disruption.
Most importantly, the episode framed public confidence as something Boeing could manage through communication after technical certification.
The subsequent record shows a much deeper problem involving corporate candour, regulatory oversight and manufacturing discipline.
I would not describe this as a fabricated account of the MAX's return. Its operational sequence was largely grounded in real problems. But it was too confident about its projections and too narrow about the institutional failures behind the crisis.
Boeing did not merely need to get an aircraft back into the sky. It needed to establish why the public, airlines and regulators should trust the people building and approving it.
That was always the bigger story.
References
1. How Boeing Will Get the 737 MAX Flying Again — Wendover Productions, February 26, 2020. Original source containing the forecasts and claims examined here.
2. Many fliers say they will avoid Boeing's 737 Max even if it's cleared to fly — Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg, June 4, 2019. Distinguishes definite avoidance from survey respondents expressing hesitation.
3. Most US fliers afraid of Boeing 737 Max won't know they're on it — Washington Examiner, June 4, 2019. Reports the UBS survey's 70% hesitation figure and the much smaller estimated permanent refusal rate.
4. Airlines scour the world for scarce 737 MAX simulators — Reuters, January 22, 2020. Documents simulator shortages, Eastar Jet's difficulties, Fiji Airways' capacity and simulator manufacturers expanding production.
5. Southwest Airlines Q4 2019 Earnings Call Transcript — The Motley Fool, January 23, 2020. Provides Southwest's actual pre-publication simulator expansion plans and its two-hour training assumption.
6. How Much Time Will The New Boeing 737 MAX Pilot Training Take? — Aviation Week, October 12, 2020. Estimates the near-final training programme at five hours, including two hours of simulator time.
7. Flying the Boeing 737 MAX Again — Aviation Week, December 7, 2020. Documents American Airlines' training schedule, pilot numbers and simulator capacity.
8. Summary of the FAA's Review of the Boeing 737 MAX — Federal Aviation Administration, November 2020. Establishes the final special training requirements and the responsibilities of individual national regulators.
9. EASA declares Boeing 737 MAX safe to return to service in Europe — European Union Aviation Safety Agency, January 27, 2021. Documents Europe's independent certification and additional return-to-service requirements.
10. Boeing 2022 Annual Report (Form 10-K) — Boeing, February 2023. Provides the aircraft inventory, Chinese customer exposure and revised delivery expectations.
11. Boeing 2023 Annual Report — Boeing, 2024. Documents the remaining pre-2023 MAX inventory and the subsequent production-quality crisis.
12. Boeing Charged with 737 Max Fraud Conspiracy and Agrees to Pay over $2.5 Billion — U.S. Department of Justice, January 7, 2021. Details the FAA deception concerning MCAS and the deferred prosecution agreement.
13. United States v. The Boeing Company — U.S. Department of Justice, updated July 24, 2026. Records the DPA breach determination, subsequent non-prosecution agreement and appellate proceedings.
14. In-Flight Separation of Left Mid Exit Door Plug, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 — National Transportation Safety Board, June 24, 2025. Establishes the manufacturing training and FAA oversight failures identified in the separate 737-9 accident.