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

reuters.com

101–110 of 212 posts

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

#101
post #75

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.

> Why? Because 2 737s went down in the past few years?

In last 6 months, to be more factual.

2 brand new aircraft of the latest model went down shortly after take off in less than 6 months. That is not normal and a proper investigation needs to take place. Until the investigation is done and it is proven that both of these crashes where just freak incidents and not caused by design flaw of the plane the planes should be grounded.

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

#102
post #82

Maybe it's politically motivated, but IMO so is the FAA's certification and nonaction so far. Boeing promised a software fix by January, and the FAA's decision not to ground the fleet was probably informally based on that promise. Unfortunately the software fix is proving more difficult than anticipated. Regulated, safety-critical software, whose failure leads to a smoking crater full of bodies can be like that. Espe…

Wow, I didn't realize the software fix hadn't been rolled out prior to yesterday's crash. Yikes. Also count me among those who went through the rest of this year's (already booked) flights this morning to ensure I'm not on one of these things.

As far as I know, most airlines are seeing the 737-MAX 8 and its predecessor, the 737-800, as interchangeable (or they did until yesterday), so I doubt they will be able to say with certainty which aircraft type will operate a given flight...

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

#105
post #102
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I didn't realize the software fix hadn't been rolled out prior to yesterday's crash. Yikes. Also count me among those who went through the rest of this year's (already booked) flights this morning to ensure I'm not on one of these things.

As far as I know, most airlines are seeing the 737-MAX 8 and its predecessor, the 737-800, as interchangeable (or they did until yesterday), so I doubt they will be able to say with certainty which aircraft type will operate a given flight...

Yeah, in my case it was a pretty straightforward situation with 1 airline not having the 8max at all (despite an article saying otherwise?) and my other flights being on 737-700's. I read a fair bit about this whole mess today and saw some posts saying there was a way to use SeatGuru to reliably distinguish between Max 8 / legacy 737-800, but I didn't need to dig that much myself and as you noted especially for flights far out, they can't guarantee equipment won't be swapped.

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

#106
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would assume that they would do the same thing here, if this also turned out to be a widespread issue not related to aircraft maintenance or pilot training. Two brand new 737 Max from two different types of airlines crashed in 6 months, what else you need to establish the fact that 737 Max worth to be grounded for a full investigation? How "widespread" it need to be? Maybe a few more crashes are required for FAA…

It depends on who died.

Indeed. If this happened to a US airline, I bet the reaction would be quite different.

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

#108
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It could be argued the Brazilian authorities are biased towards Embraer, much the same way US authorities might be biases towards Boeing.

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

#109
post #71
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, FAA didn’t ground 787 until both Japanese airlines had grounded the 787. With the number of fatalities and accidents new 737 had, it should be grounded by all airlines.

I was checking out a thread about the subject on reddit aviation; half the people are saying this is a political move by China - the other half are checking their flights to make sure they are not flying a 737 MAX. What happened to better safe than sorry? Obviously this type of plane needs to be grounded until issues are resolved or the two crashes can be definitely be dismissed as a freak coincedence.

What you're somewhat observing is the split between Boeing and Airbus fans - if you only wade into airliner discussions periodically you might miss that there are two very entrenched and passionate groups of supporters who take the brand issue all too seriously

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

#110

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…

These incidents also somewhat echo the earlier 737 rudder issues, which also had multiple total airframe losses with 100%+ fatalities and multiple incidents before it was fully resolved a decade later

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues

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