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China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

reuters.com

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Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#91

Post by rsynnott »

cjbprime wrote: post #39
drstewart wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the Airbus 330 should be grounded? It has 11 hull losses with 1447 built. That's a rate of 2.67 per 350 built by the way -- higher than the MAX

Oh, come on, this is a terrible argument. Those A330 hull losses are over more than 25 years. The Max went into production in 2017 . The correct metric to use here is hull losses per hour of flight. I can see some total number of flights data, but not total hours. The Max has probably made fewer than 100k flights total, the A330 has made at least 7 million flights. Therefore, multiply the two Max hull losses by 70 to…

It may be even worse than that, because the A330 is a long-range plane. I’ve been on an 11 hour A330 flight. Many 737 flights are only a couple of hours.

Of course, given the small numbers of 737 MAXes, this may be s statistical fluke. But grounding it til the investigation is complete doesn’t seem crazy to me.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#92

Post by FabHK »

dschuler wrote: post #69
roenxi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly I want to make it clear I agree that without strong evidence otherwise this decision should be assumed to be a technical/bureaucratic one. However, citing single a 1991 crash as evidence of something 30 years later is a bit extreme - that isn't even in the same century any more. If it was geopolitics or community attitudes, sure. But extrapolating present attitudes from a technical decisions about a thrust re…

I wouldn't go as far as calling the Lauda Air anecdote "evidence of something", but there appears to have been a pattern whereby Boeing writes the rule book for test procedures, which are then adopted by the FAA as the standard. Of course, a manufacturer would not publish a set of tests, then promptly fail to pass them. So the question becomes - assuming this dynamic is still valid today: what independent mechanism e…

Worth pointing out that the FAA bought Boeing's claim that the 737 MAX 8, 9 did not require a new type certificate, and so did EASA. However, from what I gather, the Brazilian regulator deemed the MAX with MCAS sufficiently different from prior generations.

So, there is some regulatory independence.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#93

Post by tokai »

SeaSeaRider wrote: post #83
sk5t wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has better records than the American counterpart What is the basis for this statement? And are you trying to say something about airline maintenance policy, or manufacturing, or training, or record-keeping?

It’s such nonsense, depressing to see it in a highly voted comment.

When I try to look it up I find that China have a rate of 0.45 accidents per million departures while the US have a rate of 1.28. If someone writes something wrong, please provide a source showing them to be wrong.

https://www.icao.int/safety/iStars/Pages/Accident-Statistics...

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#94

Post by rat9988 »

roenxi wrote: post #31
dschuler wrote: post #15

People seem to think this is a political move by the China, which may be true, but this is actually what they're supposed to do. According to the article, 96 737 MAX jets are operated by Chinese airlines, and the aircraft appears to be racking up a questionable safety record. I wouldn't put faith in the FAA to be beyond political influence and crack down on an American manufacturer quickly. Lauda Air flight 004 [0] c…

Firstly I want to make it clear I agree that without strong evidence otherwise this decision should be assumed to be a technical/bureaucratic one. However, citing single a 1991 crash as evidence of something 30 years later is a bit extreme - that isn't even in the same century any more. If it was geopolitics or community attitudes, sure. But extrapolating present attitudes from a technical decisions about a thrust re…

>However, citing single a 1991 crash as evidence of something 30 years later is a bit extreme - that isn't even in the same century any more.

2001 and 2000 aren't the same century, doesn't mean there was much change.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#95

Post by khuey »

rsynnott wrote: post #91
cjbprime wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, come on, this is a terrible argument. Those A330 hull losses are over more than 25 years. The Max went into production in 2017 . The correct metric to use here is hull losses per hour of flight. I can see some total number of flights data, but not total hours. The Max has probably made fewer than 100k flights total, the A330 has made at least 7 million flights. Therefore, multiply the two Max hull losses by 70 to…

It may be even worse than that, because the A330 is a long-range plane. I’ve been on an 11 hour A330 flight. Many 737 flights are only a couple of hours. Of course, given the small numbers of 737 MAXes, this may be s statistical fluke. But grounding it til the investigation is complete doesn’t seem crazy to me.

Takeoff and landings are the most dangerous part of the flight though, so comparing based on number of flights may in fact be the salient metric.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#96

Post by magpi3 »

toephu2 wrote: post #75
speedplane wrote: post #20

Forget China, think about yourself. If you have an option to fly on a 737 Max or another aircraft right now, which would you choose? I suspect market forces will ground these planes anyway.

Why? Because 2 737s went down in the past few years? Do you know how many successful flights have been completed in the past few years? Would you rather drive? do you know how many people die in car accidents everyday? Over 3000. But it doesn't make the news because by definition it isn't new, it happens every day.

If a specific car make and model was presumably more prone to automobile accidents people would have the same reaction towards it.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#97

Post by SlashmanX »

bouncycastle wrote: post #38
speedplane wrote: post #20

Forget China, think about yourself. If you have an option to fly on a 737 Max or another aircraft right now, which would you choose? I suspect market forces will ground these planes anyway.

Any aircraft can be stalled fairly easily. I think the problem may be between the yoke and the chair (PBYAC). Especially when it's a new aircraft, perhaps pilots need time to adjust, same as when you and I get in to a new car, it may have different response when you hit the gas, different mirrors, different sounds, different steering wheel sensitivity, etc.

> Especially when it's a new aircraft, perhaps pilots need time to adjust, same as when you and I get in to a new car, it may have different response when you hit the gas, different mirrors, different sounds, different steering wheel sensitivity, etc.

This again pushes the blame back onto Boeing who insisted pilots didn't need to be retrained / trained up against this model aircraft as it would've meant extra expenditure by the airlines.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#98

Post by piva00 »

toephu2 wrote: post #75
speedplane wrote: post #20

Forget China, think about yourself. If you have an option to fly on a 737 Max or another aircraft right now, which would you choose? I suspect market forces will ground these planes anyway.

Why? Because 2 737s went down in the past few years? Do you know how many successful flights have been completed in the past few years? Would you rather drive? do you know how many people die in car accidents everyday? Over 3000. But it doesn't make the news because by definition it isn't new, it happens every day.

Like other commenters added: it's not the 737 that has been flying for 4+ decades, this is a new update to the 737 that has been flying for less than 2 years, this version has had 2 catastrophic accidents since its first delivery on May 2017.

Flying is safe because we had the time to learn from past accidents and create safeguards around their failures, this could be a new kind of failure we haven't been prepared for and if so there is a potential for risks higher than the usual.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#99

Post by ReptileMan »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #80
toephu2 wrote: post #76

Because one plane went down now everyone is scared and going to cancel any 737 flights. Irrational humans that pay attention to the news. Your chances of dying in a car accident are much higher than dying from flying on a Boeing 737. Are you still going to drive to work tomorrow though? Edit: Yes it is good that 737s are being suspended and investigated but still, statistically speaking, flying is safer than driving.…

2 planes have gone down in 6 months, basically unprecedented in commercial aviation

777 with Malaysia Airlines. But in one case it was highjacking by the pilot and in other anti aircraft missile. But it was not problems with the airplanes per se.

The new Max is having issues. Whether it need combo of inexperienced pilots and specific chain of sensor errors to be presented simultaneously is to be seen.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#100

Post by rurban »

dschuler wrote: post #15

People seem to think this is a political move by the China, which may be true, but this is actually what they're supposed to do. According to the article, 96 737 MAX jets are operated by Chinese airlines, and the aircraft appears to be racking up a questionable safety record. I wouldn't put faith in the FAA to be beyond political influence and crack down on an American manufacturer quickly. Lauda Air flight 004 [0] c…

The problem is not the questionable safety record. The problem are the latest revisions 8 - 10 of the flight software, which enabled the new anti-stall feature by default automatically.

Previously anti-stall just signaled a warning, now it automatically turns the nose down, fighting the pilots attempt to ascend the machine after a start.

This is a serious security defect.

#1 anti-stall being fooled by some strong AOA sensor signal on initial ascend. This is not a stall, this a normal start procedure.

#2 anti-stall turned on by default automatically.

This already caused two major crashes with zero survivors. The attempt to blame the pilots not reading the updated documentation is also criminal behavior. Boeing might go bankrupt over this. I hope so.

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