HOUSTON – Matthew Strauss is a timpanist and percussionist with the Houston Symphony and teaches at Rice University and at the University of Miami in Florida.
Every other week he travels to Florida for work and usually rides on a Boeing 737 Max 9.
He had a flight coming up but was told that United Airlines was grounding the planes.
“I wasn’t concerned about flying on it, honestly, but I was concerned about them not having a different plane, different equipment there in its place,” Strauss said.
The father of two took matters into his own hands and changed his flight entirely to avoid any conflicts as airlines handle rebooking thousands of people.
“I called up United Airlines and they said, ‘Yeah we’re working on getting a different plane.’ And I said, ‘I’d prefer to get on a different flight, which had a regular 737-800, not the Max line,'” Strauss said.
Ultimately, he agrees, it’s a good decision for authorities to ground the planes until they figure out what happened.
“It’s probably a smart step to ground those planes until proven that it wasn’t really an issue with software or any part of the plane,” Strauss said.