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The FAA certifies Boeing's 737 MAX 7 jetliner for passenger flight after years of delays The US Federal Aviation Administration certified Boeing's smallest 737 MAX model, the MAX 7, clearing the long-delayed jet for commercial service. The approval, years behind schedule after crashes and quality crises, is a rare win for the planemaker. Southwest Airlines is the largest customer awaiting the aircraft. Analogies Orville Wright's diary of the first powered flight After running the engine and propellers a few minutes to get them in working order, I got on the machine at 10:35 for the first trial. ... The machine lifted from the truck just as it was entering on the fourth rail. ... A sudden dart when out about 100 feet from the end of the tracks ended the flight. Time about 12 seconds (not known exactly as watch was not promptly stopped).
Orville Wright, personal diary entry for December 17, 1903 (Wright Brothers Collection); transcription on Wikisource → The de Havilland Comet inquiry: fatigue, grounding, and redesign the cause of the accident to the Comet wrecked off Elba was the structural failure of the pressure cabin brought about by fatigue
Statement by Mr. Boyd-Carpenter on the Report of the Court of Inquiry into the Comet accidents, House of Commons, 16 February 1955 (Hansard) → Daedalus and Icarus My son, I caution you to keep / the middle way, for if your pinions dip / too low the waters may impede your flight; / and if they soar too high the sun may scorch them. ... but as he neared the scorching sun, its heat / softened the fragrant wax that held his plumes; / and heat increasing melted the soft wax— / he waved his naked arms instead of wings, / with no more feathers to sustain his flight.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 8, trans. Brookes More (1922), Perseus Digital Library → Leonardo's prophecy of the great bird Piglierà il primo volo il grande uccello sopra del dosso del suo magno Cecero e empiendo l'universo di stupore, empiendo di sua fama tutte le scritture e groria eterna al nido dove nacque.
Leonardo da Vinci, Codice sul volo degli uccelli (Codex on the Flight of Birds), c. 1505, Biblioteca Reale, Turin; text as recorded in the entry 'Grande Nibbio' on Italian Wikisource/Wikipedia → Landscape with the Fall of Icarus Bruegel hides catastrophe in plain sight: the ploughman leans into his furrow, the shepherd gazes at the sky, and the merchant ship sails on, while at the lower right only two thrashing legs mark where Icarus has plunged into the sea. The painting is a study in how the world keeps working while one over-reaching flight ends in disaster — a fall that scarcely interrupts the ordinary business of the day.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (attr.), oil on canvas, c. 1560s, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels → The Lament for Icarus Draper paints the aftermath of the dream rather than the flight: the golden-winged body of Icarus lies limp against a dark rock as three sea-nymphs mourn over him, his great feathered wings still splendid though the wax has failed. The picture turns a cautionary myth into an elegy, dwelling on the beauty and the cost of reaching too high.
Herbert James Draper, oil on canvas, exhibited 1898, Tate Britain, London → 
