301–310 of 347 posts
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Yeah, this is better than their initial "what, me worry" response. They should just own up to their screw up. They will owe giant fines and be sued. Their reputation is what is more important long term. Own up to the change.
I would trust them infinitely more if they could just say we fucked up, sorry, we'll fix it properly, then take a hard look in the mirror, and change.
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>The FAA also lost a lot of trust, for rubber-stamping this. I wonder if the European agency (don't remember the name) will stop trusting the FAA from now on and do their own tests. I'd thank them for that. (According to what I read here, the European agency doesn't do exhaustive tests because they mostly trust whatever the FAA says; maybe that's false)
Europe and the FAA have Cross-certification schemes. In reverse, Airbus is certified primarily in Europe. The same happens to varying degrees in medicines, appliances, etc. This is unlikely to change. It’s expected that some changes will occur at the FAA. Certifying an airliner is also a prohibitively expensive undertaking, which is part of the reason for this mess in the first place. It would take years even to trai…
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Can you provide evidence the FAA lacks sufficient expertise?
It is unclear if they are lacking technical expertise, but they are certainly being significantly more lax than one would want a regulatory body to be. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/04/709431845/faa-is-not-alone-in...
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Economists don't disagree on most things, but people who don't like to adjust their beliefs according to Economic science often like to think that. To be fair, Public Choice theory is certainly on the more controversial half of the subfields. And of course you shouldn't blindly take some random post on this forum as complete proof of how the world works. That would be a foolish gullibility. Then again, completely rej…
'Economic science'? When has economics ever been a science?
But that's a small part of Economics, and the field in general is as hard as any science outside of physics, and had given us an enormous amount of insights we lacked 200 years ago, and contributed immensely to the relative peace and prosperity the world enjoys today.
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"It's now fairly obvious MCAS was at the root of those two crashes. But, did it save lives in other circumstances?" Very possible. The question is, should you use a plane with an unstable design in civilian air transport? AFAIK, a stealth bomber can't fly without the help of a computer to keep in in the air. But for a civilian aircraft this should be a very conscious decision and nothing that is hidden under band aid…
If you don't want to fly in a aircraft which requires a computer to fly then avoid anything Airbus and almost all other modern passenger jets. The 737 is literally as close to that ideal as you'll find in service today. If an EMP goes off your are still in trouble though, the engines have FADEC, so they'll probably shut down.
This has been a 50 year problem in the making, and whether it's for better or worse should be more carefully studied. Because here's my understanding of the history: Through WW2 and the proliferating age of defense contractors, the government (mostly defense department, but also civilian agencies) stood almost on equal footing with contractors in their ability to design, scope, and evaluate big projects. You would se…
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Well, then I'm irrational too, because I won't set foot in a 737 MAX after this shitfest. The FAA also lost a lot of trust, for rubber-stamping this. The first accident was maybe understandable. We all know that shit happens. But Boeing has zero excuses for not immediately grounding the whole fleet after, and for putting out that useless recovery procedure which didn't work in this case. They let a deadly plane fly f…
I will. I like flying places, and I'm not going to let some unfortunate hiccups get in the way of that. I trust Boeing and the people who work on airline safety a heck of a lot more than I trust ride share drivers who flip U-turns in the middle of the block, slam on the brakes, narrowly miss bicycle riders, etc. And I use the heck out of Lyft & Uber. I've got better things to worry about.
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That's a terrible show of confidence. What are the chances that the next plane to have an accident is carrying the CEO? What is the average expected punishment to the CEO for getting it wrong? It's probably less risk than BASE jumping. I would rather there be guaranteed liability: have the execs set up a legal system to refund the entire order book and voluntarily plead guilty to federal charges in the event of anoth…
I haven't seen any mention yet specifically, are they being held liable for the deaths and forced into some financial penalties or has this case been relegated to the right-wing "The free market will adjust and discourage consumers" sort of liability?
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Read the narrative in the report. Why do you suppose that after they got the same initial signs of trouble that the Lion Air flight had (stick shaker on left side, disagreement in airspeed values, etc. immediately after takeoff) that the captain tried to engage autopilot and instructed the first officer to retract flaps and inform controllers they were proceeding to climb to FL 320 (32,000 ft). Why not instead turn b…
With hindsight, we know that retracting the flaps was a bad idea. But check Boeing's MCAS bulletin, which is the only official information pilots received about MCAS at the time of the flight. http://www.b737.org.uk/images/aoa-bulletin.jpg It makes zero mention of flaps. It doesn't recommend avoiding retracting them or trying to land as soon as possible. Trying to land as fast as possible is typicality a bad idea. Pl…
I don't know the most likely consequence of flying with flaps 5 above Vfe. Maybe flaps would (asynchronously) depart the airplane, or induce flutter at a much lower than usual airspeed. Either of those is an extremely high risk of losing the aircraft.