Maybe from the fact that the last fatality in a US airline crash was over ten years ago?
As far as I could find, there were no Canadian airline crashes in the same time frame. Unless you include small charter-airline type crashes, which would mean some american crashes would be counted too (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Rediske_Air_DHC-3_Otter_c... )
With less than 1/10th the number of passengers, that’s significantly less meaningful. It does indicate they’re about on an equal footing, though.
By now its safe to assume that most pilot will know about this specific issue and know how to handle it. Well, except those Ethiopian pilot. I don't see reason to ban.
That feels like average software development mindset applied to airplanes to be honest. An airplane nosediving on sensor malfunction from time to time is not acceptable behavior that could be considered fixed by telling the pilots to disable the autopilot.
But that's the issue here. In the default configuration for the 737-M8. It's not disabled with the autopilot like it has been in previous generations and in other planes. There's an extra step that has to be taken that not all pilots are trained on, or that they might not recall in a panic/emergency when they're fighting the plane.
At least according to Southwest’s pilots union SWA has seen no MCAS issues in its fleet (edit: this may not be correct - see reply from antsar) and its pilots are prepared to handle any MCAS issue were it to occur.[1] I think a worse scenario is if the Ethiopian flight crashed due to some other not yet known issue specific to the Max. [1] https://swaparesources.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/pdf...
Why is this down-voted? Your first statement is a statement of fact with a citation. Your second statement is a perfectly reasonable opinion (in what universe is a second distinct crash causing defect not worse?). It seems like anyone who dares say something that isn't proclaiming enthusiastic, blind and unquestioning support for the "ground them all this nanosecond, this problem is unambiguously MCAS related" line o…
The number of times I have seen "why is this being down voted" over the past week or so is absolutely insane. More so when most of the subjects of the downvoting complaints aren't actually below 0.
People need to chill about about voting. The guidelines even say "don't complain about votes".
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…
Canada is extremely tightly tied to the US economy, and the US government is still taking Boeing’s side on this. I wish this didn’t have to be about politics.
It's not so much about politics as process. Canada and the U.S. have a bilateral acceptance process, whereby airworthiness in one country is accepted in the other. Since the FAA was the certifying authority in this case, the default position would be to trust their process until evidence suggested otherwise.
Non-paywall: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/13/ethiopian-airl... > The airline is planning to send the 737 Max 8 plane’s flight data recorder to Europe rather than the US for analysis, he said. That seems to be shocking news. Is it that they don't trust the FAA?
Also, why not both? Is the data in some... Non-copyable format? Is the physical device needed for some reason?
The "flight data recorder" is the physical product.
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…
It is therefore important to use each statistic in a proper context. When it comes to a question about risks associated with a particular long-range travel from one city to another, the most suitable statistic is the third one, thus giving a reason to name air travel as the safest form of long-range transportation.
By now its safe to assume that most pilot will know about this specific issue and know how to handle it. Well, except those Ethiopian pilot. I don't see reason to ban.
..or perhaps Boeing should not make software that is apparently counter-intuitive for the average airliner pilot.
..not even the average. The reports I've read said the pilots in both crashes were career pilots with years of experience flying.
- We have a preliminary report from Lion Air, including a Emergency Airworthiness Directive and a Airworthiness Directive suggesting MCAS (w/faulty single AOA sensor) was closely tied to the accident. - The Lion Air flight had a certain aerial profile before the crash (a wave, as MCAS fought the pilots). - The Ethiopian Airlines aircraft has the same tell tale aerial profile It would be better to have the black box d…
At least according to Southwest’s pilots union SWA has seen no MCAS issues in its fleet (edit: this may not be correct - see reply from antsar) and its pilots are prepared to handle any MCAS issue were it to occur.[1] I think a worse scenario is if the Ethiopian flight crashed due to some other not yet known issue specific to the Max. [1] https://swaparesources.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/pdf...
Southwest is also a unique case, as they had their Max 8s fitted with a sensor and warning to indicate problems with the AOA sensor that it implicated with MCAS.
So Southwest's position is rational, but doesn't scale well to other airlines using the standard Max 8.
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.
See, and I thought the aviation industry’s stellar safety reputation has been built on their willingness to ground planes at the smallest glimmer of a problem. It’s what tells the public, “hey, we don’t mess around.”
Private pilot here. That is exactly right, based on everything that I've read and heard from other pilots, some of whom fly the Max 8.
Other articles posted said there is a way to turn off the auto-correction, but it's not intuitive. On earlier 737s which had this, it came on when engaging automatic ascents/descents and was disabled when a pilot disabled those systems. In the case of the Max8, it's always on and there is additional training needed to react quickly when this happens. I think all current pilots who are watching this situation should k…
Knowing what to do and actually doing it under stress are two very different things. The aircraft that I fly, a Cirrus SR22, also has an electric trim and so there is the potential for something to go wrong and the trim to go rogue. When that happens, dealing with it is a "simple" matter of pulling the right circuit breaker. But the circuit breakers are on a panel located near your right shin. They are not easy to see nor to reach, and if you don't have the location of the trim breaker memorized, the odds of being able to find it and pull it while the plane is trying to kill you are rather low. Happily, there has never been a runaway trim on an SR22 (AFAIK) so this doesn't keep me up at night. But I can certainly understand how even a pilot that was prepared for this eventuality might fail to deal with it properly while under duress.