US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

One of the two planes was downed by a missile, and this was clear from the start. The only question was who was responsible for firing the missile.

Your argument is extremely forced.

That's consistent with my first-hand understanding that Germans are culturally opposed to drinking plain water. You'll never be offered tap water at any restaurant or café, and if you ask for Leitungswasser (tap water, literally "plumbing water"), you'll get an eye-roll or disgusted look, partly because that saves you the cost of a bottle of water.

From the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association statement released yesterday:

I have been in numerous conversations today with Southwest Vice President of Flight Operations Captain Alan Kasher, who informed me that the MAX aircraft has 17,000 recordable parameters and Southwest has compiled and analyzed a tremendous amount of data from more than 41,000 flights operated by the 34 MAX aircraft on property, and the data supports Southwest's continued confidence in the airworthiness and safety of the MAX.

I have also had conversations with TWU 556 President Lyn Montgomery, who represents Southwest Flight Attendants, AMFA National President Bret Oestreich, SWAPA Safety Committee and SWAPA Government Affairs Committee members, as well as leaders from other Pilot labor unions. I relayed to them that SWAPA is extremely confident that our entire fleet, including the MAX, is safe based on the facts, intelligence, data, and information we presently have. We fully support Southwest Airlines' decision to continue flying the MAX and the FAA's findings to date.

I will continue to put my family, friends, and loved ones on any Southwest flight and the main reason is you, the Pilots of SWAPA. We have lobbied hard for our training to continue to evolve and improve, and due to having the finest union Training and Standards Committee in the industry, that is occurring.

We now have Extended Envelope Training (EET) in addition to our regular annual training and since SWAPA and others have brought awareness to the MCAS issue, we have additional resources to successfully deal with either a legitimate MCAS triggered event or a faulty triggered MCAS event. SWAPA also has pushed hard for Angle of Attack (AOA) sensor displays to be put on all our aircraft and those are now being implemented into the fleet. All of these tools, in addition to SWAPA Pilots having the most experience on 737s in the industry, give me no pause that not only are our aircraft safe, but you are the safest 737 operators in the sky.

https://swaparesources.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/pdf...

via https://www.swapa.org/

It's some years on, and clearly all routes aren't closed - nor were they -- planes still flew into Kiev for example. Overflights too -- TUI are currently overflying western Ukraine on a Phuket-Stockholm routing. Airlines may have routed away from the entire of Ukraine but I don't believe there were any NOTAMs for western ukraine

If it was a "similar cause", it is absolutely pilot error.

The MCAS system, at fault in the first crash, may be disabled via a cockpit control. In other 737s, moving the stick was sufficient to disengage it. For some reason, this was changed in the Max, and you must use the other control. However, any competent pilot would know every control in the cockpit. The captain of the latest flight to crash allegedly had 8,000+ hours of flight time.

If an aircraft begins behaving incorrectly, the first thing a flight crew should do is disable automation and try and fly it manually. That wasn't done if MCAS caused the crash. This was an emergency that developed over minutes, not seconds, and there's really no excuse.