Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8 • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#151

Post by erokar » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

rfugger wrote: post #3

They claim this is based on new "validated" satellite tracking data they received this morning showing similar altitude fluctuations to the Lion Air crash. Somehow every internet forum had this figured out within hours of the crash using public flight tracker data. I find it worrying that it took them so long to come to the obvious conclusion for lack of "validation" of widely known information, and that it took so l…

Yes, the data has been available for days. It's obviously a convenient excuse for the late reaction.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#152

Post by Jach » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

jackschultz wrote: post #111

Gotta ask, when's the time to buy Boeing stock? It's like all these things happen, stock gets dumped quickly, but it's not like this hurts the overall value of the company. Anyone have other examples of events like this taking down a big company's stock price for a limited time, but not affecting it overall?

Tavis[0] buys every time a major data leak or whatever occurs. I don't think he's lost money yet...

[0] https://twitter.com/taviso/status/1068631118960766976

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#153

Post by helaoban » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

mzs wrote: post #127

js2 wrote: post #20

Having read many commments on HN and elsewhere since the crash, I know I’m in the minority here when I say this but to me it seems like the US airlines and FAA are following their procedures, the same procedures that make the US airlines the safest in the world, while the rest of the world is, I don’t quite want to use the word panicking, but at least giving into pressure from people who aren’t aviation safety expert…

WaPo's lead fact checker who covered FAA for four years as a journalist disagrees with you: https://twitter.com/GlennKesslerWP/status/110585814000275456...

Quote: "I covered airline safety and the FAA for four years, and I cannot remember a time when the FAA was so alone among world regulators on a serious safety issue. "

Neither viewpoint is supported here. The anomaly is that there is a disagreement between the FAA and the other aviation authorities, but no evidence has yet surfaced that would vindicate either party.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#154

Post by rinchik » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

mzs wrote: post #127

js2 wrote: post #20

Having read many commments on HN and elsewhere since the crash, I know I’m in the minority here when I say this but to me it seems like the US airlines and FAA are following their procedures, the same procedures that make the US airlines the safest in the world, while the rest of the world is, I don’t quite want to use the word panicking, but at least giving into pressure from people who aren’t aviation safety expert…

WaPo's lead fact checker who covered FAA for four years as a journalist disagrees with you: https://twitter.com/GlennKesslerWP/status/110585814000275456...

lead fact checker? Who fact-checks the lead fact checker, I wonder?

"I covered airline safety and the FAA for four years"..."and I can't remember"... it's not a fact tweet, it's an opinion tweet.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#155

Post by mikeash » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

jsharf wrote: post #134

mikeash wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if the alternative is even less safe. This is important when the alternative might be driving, as driving is orders of magnitude more dangerous. Safety measures that annoy people too much can end up with a net loss of life because of this. If there are other airliners that can be put into service to take up the slack, though, they’re very unlikely to be more dangerous.

By the way, the difference between the safety factors of driving and flying are not quite so straightforward. This is one of my favorite charts, which shows that per-mile, flying is safer, but per-journey, driving is safer (which makes some sense, since flying journeys are much longer, but 80% of accidents happen in the 5 minutes during takeoff/landing, so really in some sense, takeoff and landing are more dangerous…

Those numbers are for the UK in the 1990s. Commercial aviation is much safer today.

The fatality rate per journey for US airlines over the last ten years is approximately 0.14 per billion journeys, several hundred times better than the number from your link. (Roughly 700 million journeys per year on average, one fatality during that period.)

Cars have gotten safer too, but not nearly as much.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#156

Post by Cacti » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

mzs wrote: post #127

js2 wrote: post #20

Having read many commments on HN and elsewhere since the crash, I know I’m in the minority here when I say this but to me it seems like the US airlines and FAA are following their procedures, the same procedures that make the US airlines the safest in the world, while the rest of the world is, I don’t quite want to use the word panicking, but at least giving into pressure from people who aren’t aviation safety expert…

WaPo's lead fact checker who covered FAA for four years as a journalist disagrees with you: https://twitter.com/GlennKesslerWP/status/110585814000275456...

That journalist is not disagreeing, they are simply stating that they don’t remember a time like this in the 4 years he covered them. That is very different from what you are implying.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#157

Post by yingw787 » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

And then there was one.

I do wonder if we can halt and revert the deterioration of the Civil Service before the whole "civilization is two days worth of food and water" scenario arrives. If it does, I think it'll be through something that generates a disproportionate amount of fear and anxiety in people resulting in a significant impact to the economy in a sector where middle to upper class folks are heavily exposed to.

I think back to the government shutdown earlier last year, ended because 10 air traffic controllers couldn't come to work at LaGuardia, resulting in a domino effect of backlogged air traffic across airport hubs and airspace restrictions (including for private jets), resulting in POTUS making nice with House Speaker a few hours later.

So if you're concerned because Boeing's CEO is a Mar-A-Lago member with direct access to POTUS (who wants his club fees), and the Secretary of Transportation is the Senate Majority Leader's wife who is also lobbied by Boeing, and the FAA hasn't had an official administrator for two months, and the FAA can't approve safety fixes by Boeing due to government shutdowns, and aircraft manufacturing consolidation means Boeing is "too big to fail", I would just say "we" do have more power than we think.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#158

Post by Twirrim » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #113

peteretep wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US airlines the safest in the world Where do you people _get_ these ideas?!

Maybe from the fact that the last fatality in a US airline crash was over ten years ago?

That's hardly a unique thing about US airline safety. You're building one heck of a fragile claim there to superiority, a number of other countries can make similar claims, including countries that have similar or better safety records.

Just out of a quick wiki trawl over the last ten years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_1354 UPS airline plane crashed in 2013, killing all onboard.

In the same year, a commercial flight by Rediske Air crashed in Alaska, all 10 people on-board died.

While not technically a crash, there was a fatality involving US airline just last year, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380, making the US airline safety record worse than a good number of countries.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#159

Post by nickjj » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

vb6lives wrote: post #45

js2 wrote: post #20

Having read many commments on HN and elsewhere since the crash, I know I’m in the minority here when I say this but to me it seems like the US airlines and FAA are following their procedures, the same procedures that make the US airlines the safest in the world, while the rest of the world is, I don’t quite want to use the word panicking, but at least giving into pressure from people who aren’t aviation safety expert…

They have more than 5000 orders for this model of aircraft. Each one costs approx 120million. Which means there are approx $640 billion dollars on the line. It is imperative that Boeing keeps it's reputation and grounding flights would destroy it.

Would grounding it really destroy their reputation? Grounding it doesn't mean indefinitely.

If anything, it's a huge positive if they grounded it until they knew for certain what's wrong because then it's a double win. Firstly, on the ground the plane has a 0% chance of killing anyone (unless someone decided to jump off the top of a parked plane and commit suicide, etc.), and secondly Boeing's reputation goes up because now people have a chance to think "ok finally, they actually care about safety instead of profits".

Also, Southwest is the largest US flyer of this plane and it only makes up about 5% of their fleet, so it's not like the entire world's flight traffic gets disrupted. Lastly, I would think most people who are scheduled to fly on one of these planes will cancel or demand a plane switch, so the delays and flight traffic issues are still going to happen to some degree.

Currently, all I'm reminded about from this situation is how insanely corrupt the US govt is (I'm from the US btw) and how little Southwest cares about people because they won't even let you cancel without paying out of pocket, which is totally insane. You only have 1 life.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#160

Post by erokar » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

If this Reddit comment is true it's pretty damning. https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/b08h03/737_max_mega...

Claims intermittent fluctuations in AoA can activate the MCAS. So no need for the AoA indicator to be faulty then, means the risk of falsa MCAS intervention higher than previously believed.