How can this possibly be a surprise. It's public interest vs a multitude of companies: airlines, Boeing, their suppliers etc. It's absolutely no contest in current the US system.
US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max
61–70 of 344 posts
Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max
#62What I dont understand is why the airlines themselves (Southwest and American) are refusing to halt the planes - this seems totally irresponsible with what is known at this point.
It’s pretty safe to assume that at this point every fricking pilot out there knows about MCAS and how to deal with it if this specific problematic behavior occurs.
That's what everyone said before the Ethiopian Air crash as well
Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Safety is always a priority, but it's never the only one: There's also an economical factor in the equation. Other nations have less to lose by grounding these planes, leading to a different result between 'risking human lives' vs 'causing financial impact'. Finally, airplanes may have different configurations. I only skimmed some discussions and I'm not well versed in the subject so take what I say with a grain of s…
> Other nations have less to lose by grounding these planes By what measure?
By financial measure. If Norway grounds the plane (by not allowing it in its airspace), it impacts their (and other nations) airlines. If the US ground the plane, it impacts their (and other nations) airlines, and their airplane manufacturer. (The impact for the latter is hard to measure, particularly for the long-term).
Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max
#64I don't get it. Airline workers, Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney and democratic senators are for suspending it, which China, the EU and Australia have already done. What's going on at the FAA?
Boeing spends a lot of money on lobbying and the CEO called Trump after his tweet.
Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max
#65they stopped flying 737 Max even in Russia. That is in the country where drunk (not to mention heavily hanged over) pilots isn't something out of ordinary :)
Anyway, reading for example this https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/what-is-the-boeing... for a layman like me it sounds like making 737 (statically stable plane) into the Max Boeing produced a kind of F-16 - a statically unstable (and thus a great dogfighter) plane which cant be flown manually and requires constant controls adjustments by software.
Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max
#66Lots of jumping to conclusions going on in this thread, blaming the FAA, lobbyists, and politicians for being in the pocket of Boeing. Nobody knows why this plane crashed. The flight recorders have just been recovered and so far there has been nothing in the news about what was on them. The plane might be to blame. The airline or the pilots might be to blame, and by the way, that airline has a bad safety record. It m…
> The sudden rush to judgment on this case is unjustified by the evidence. If it turns out this was not Boeing's fault, a lot of people are going to have to eat their words, and millions of dollars will have been wasted for nothing. The prudent thing would be to err on the side of caution and suspend it until we know. What's millions of dollars (which I think is way exaggerated for a temporary suspension until the ev…
There is risk most any human activity. Your prudent thing would result in suspending any beneficial activity with any possible risk. The a prudent thing would be to err on the side of still receiving the benefits of 737 air travel.
Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max
#67Lots of jumping to conclusions going on in this thread, blaming the FAA, lobbyists, and politicians for being in the pocket of Boeing. Nobody knows why this plane crashed. The flight recorders have just been recovered and so far there has been nothing in the news about what was on them. The plane might be to blame. The airline or the pilots might be to blame, and by the way, that airline has a bad safety record. It m…
> that airline has a bad safety record
Could you substantiate the above claim ? Whatever I have read indicates Ethiopian has a very good safety record.
e.g. The airline has a safety rating of six stars out of a possible seven on respected aviation site AirlineRating.com. Source: https://thepointsguy.com/news/despite-recent-crash-ethiopian...
Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max
#68It’s scary to think how complicit the FAA was in granting Boeing’s wish that this 30 year newer plane with substantially larger engines only required 2-3 hours of new training and said training was able to miss covering entire systems like MCAS. Now 350 people are dead, all the FAA can be thankful of is the dead are foreigners so it’s unlikely they’ll be held properly accountable.
It isn't just the FAA and Boeing.
Where I work many of us have a "common type rating" between the A330 and A350 (-900 and -1000). While I commend Airbus for making them similar they are in no way common enough to justify the minuscule training course.
Flying the A350 you get lots of brilliant features like brake-to-vacate, auto wing leveling during a crosswind landing (when you de-crab), differential flap setting in the cruise for CP control and better fuel efficiency. And so on. However, coming back to the 330 after lots of 350 flying it's very easy to forget just what you have and don't have.
Both have very different cockpit layouts. Even something simple like cockpit lighting is totally different. They have significantly different limitations, speeds and procedures for dealing with abnormal situations.
Additionally, the A350 still has a fair share of teething problems. The list of Temporary Abnormal Behaviors is quite long and hasn't shortened much in the last couple of years.
Throw some fatigue into the mix and it's not much fun. My company's error rates have increased on the "common fleet" by almost triple.
Yet our regulator thinks it's all good.
Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max
#69It’s scary to think how complicit the FAA was in granting Boeing’s wish that this 30 year newer plane with substantially larger engines only required 2-3 hours of new training and said training was able to miss covering entire systems like MCAS. Now 350 people are dead, all the FAA can be thankful of is the dead are foreigners so it’s unlikely they’ll be held properly accountable.
Does the FAA set the rules for Indonesia? Did the FAA tell Lion Air not to repair the broken airspeed indicator that crashed plane experienced during the flight before the crash? Also, did the FAA tell the pilot to turn off the anti-stall system in the Lion Air plane? Because that’s what happened, a pilot turned off that system due to the unrepaired airspeed indicator. In the US, no airline would have allowed that plane to fly, but Indonesia’s airlines are operated like they’re flying bush planes and not technologically sophisticated airliners. People are dead, a lot of them, because of a history of third-world style seat-of-the-pants duct-tape piloting and maintenance. Look at Lion Air’s safety record and compare it with Southwest Airlines. Flying similar planes, but vastly different outcomes. The FAA must be doing something right. Lion Air wasn’t a failure of the airplane, but a failure of the airline. This isn’t the first time Lion Air crashed a 737 either. Considering Southwest Airlines has flown over 40 years with only a single air mishap fatality, it’s pretty fair to say that Lion Air is horrific by comparison, considering their fatal crash record over just the past 10 years.
If we want to start complaining about the FAA, considering more people have died in Indonesian and Malaysian air crashes in the past 10 years than have died in American crashes despite the US flying several orders of magnitude more flights. Lion Air wasn’t even allowed into the E.U. until 2016 because of safety. The FAA and NTSB are among the best agencies in the world when it comes to aviation safety and the data supports it. If anyone should be held accountable for the Ethiopian Air crash, the airline itself should be at the top of the list: the copilot only had 200 total hours! That FAA you are complaining about requires 1500 hours of experience to sit in the right seat. But apparently in Ethiopia, a 200 hour student pilot is good enough to fly right seat when over a hundred lives are at risk.
Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max
#70Some points from personal experience from working at Boeing, family working at Boeing, and a close friend on the flight line for the 737-8; - not everything is back from the Lion Air incident, but internally there was strong confidence that a lack of pilot familiarity with the adjusted mechanics of MCAS contributed to the disaster - reproducing these failures has been extremely hard and has required a lot of cooperat…
> - Lion and Ethiopian Air are near the bottom when it comes to maintenance and follow up with Boeing
Another commenter mentioned that Ethiopian Airline is considered Category 1 by the FAA, and is a member of the Star Alliance. Surely that indicates a decent track record?
I'm not saying it _is_ the plane, but as the EASA Emergency Airworthiness Directive points out, while a connection between the two incidents cannot be established, neither can one be ruled out. And for that reason, they are grounding the planes as a prudent temporary measure till we know more.