EASA has just banned 737 MAX jets throughout Europe.
https://www.easa.europa.eu/newsroom-and-events/press-release...
E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
121–130 of 365 posts
Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
#122At the gym today, on all the TVs, the media talking heads were crucifying the FAA for being "unsafe" or playing fast and loose with passenger safety (for not grounding the planes). I've always held the FAA in high regard, and think they do a good job. Are they really being negligent here? Or is the media just looking for something to spark outrage? Can anyone with more specific knowledge of aircraft safety weigh in?
Two crashes in 6 months and there's only 350 planes in existence is a pretty bad safety record that is probably on par with Tupolev. The US can tacitly blame "third world" pilots all they want, but with 300 people dead already, I think it's important for the FAA and Boeing to say exactly what is going on, especially since the planes are in use in the USA. There is a debate over if the plane's hardware, software, or p…
From what I gathered so far, it looks like airplane design was made with many compromises that made it complicated to pilot planes properly.
Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems like a disincentive to buy American aircraft. If you're a reasonably sized international airline, it seems like a reasonable possibility that you'd have to (or want to) land in a territory that the US in unfavourable toward. Why take the risk?
This is somewhat true, but to be fair there are only a few countries the US and it’s allies don’t do business with - as long as you don’t land in Iran or North Korea you’d be in pretty good shape.
Not so sure about that.
The US Government lists 13 places as “Do not travel” and 15 as “reconsider travel”. Looking at the list, it doesn’t seem unreasonable advice. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...
Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on how big the airline is, what percentage of its fleet consists of max 8s, etc. Generally, planes like this have high operating costs, and usually are kept in the air pretty much constantly to be able to make a profit. Having one grounded potentially means losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars a day.
Surely airlines purchase insurance to hedge against this sort of thing?
IANAL, but I would not want to deal with the headache of underwriting whatever plan you're thinking about. Who would they be buying this insurance from? What specifically could it be protecting against?
Seems much more likely that they'd need to seek restitution against the producer of the planes through civil court channels. "You sold me a faulty plane/didn't explain what your product did well enough and now you need to refund my money" but on a multi-million dollar scale.
Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
The linked article also mentions the plane was smoking, and fire was coming from the engines. This is new information to me that I think is being overlooked, because if MCAS was enabled erroneously, it's unlikely the plane would have caught fire. The Lion Air Max 8 wasn't reported to be smoking/on fire. If something else made the engine(s) catch fire and become inoperative, and the MCAS system enabled correctly due t…
Bear in mind that eyewitness reports of events like this are notoriously unreliable.[1,2] Yes, it may turn out that this incident bears no relation to the Lion Air one, but I think it's much too early to make any such assumption. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/23/weekinreview/ideas-trends... [2] https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&co...
Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
#126American and Southwest Airlines are still flying the Max 8/9, and are refusing refunds (Southwest/American) and charging change fees (American) for customers concerned for their safety. I don't understand this logic. They are essentially risking their entire company over the safety of this plane. If something happens now they'll be driven to bankruptcy at record speed.
One thing to note is that both American and Southwest's 737 Max aircraft are configured differently to those flown by most other operators, with regards to the display of AOA indicators and the "AOA DISAGREE" warning light. These features are optional and the fact that they are not present on Lion Air's aircraft may have contributed to that crash. https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines...
It would still be prudent to ground them anyways until they know for sure they avoid the problem with their solution.
Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
The engines are larger than previous models and had to be moved forward, which causes it to (potentially) stall, so they implemented an anti-stalling mechanism called MCAS which relies on a particular sensor, which can malfunction potentially. They also didn't inform pilots that this system even existed which means they have trouble diagnosing the problem and will potentially only make it worse by trying other things…
The linked article also mentions the plane was smoking, and fire was coming from the engines. This is new information to me that I think is being overlooked, because if MCAS was enabled erroneously, it's unlikely the plane would have caught fire. The Lion Air Max 8 wasn't reported to be smoking/on fire. If something else made the engine(s) catch fire and become inoperative, and the MCAS system enabled correctly due t…
An engine compressor stall (which is more common at low altitude and high thrust) can cause fire to come from the engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQWYhsYfMxE (jump to 1 minute for an example, found in an earlier HN thread).
Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
#128American and Southwest Airlines are still flying the Max 8/9, and are refusing refunds (Southwest/American) and charging change fees (American) for customers concerned for their safety. I don't understand this logic. They are essentially risking their entire company over the safety of this plane. If something happens now they'll be driven to bankruptcy at record speed.
One thing to note is that both American and Southwest's 737 Max aircraft are configured differently to those flown by most other operators, with regards to the display of AOA indicators and the "AOA DISAGREE" warning light. These features are optional and the fact that they are not present on Lion Air's aircraft may have contributed to that crash. https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines...
That would mean Southwest strongly believes the lack of "AOA DISAGREE" caused the crashes, so they are safe to continue flying their fleet. If so, they should come out and say it.
Right now, 737 Max Fleet is the deadliest plane per mile that is in the air [1], by a wide margin. Maybe it's an anomaly and the rate is much lower, but by the same reasoning, it could be worse. I'm not flying on one, and my opinion of Southwest and American is at a new low.
1. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-boeing-737-max-is-now-the...
Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
The engines are larger than previous models and had to be moved forward, which causes it to (potentially) stall, so they implemented an anti-stalling mechanism called MCAS which relies on a particular sensor, which can malfunction potentially. They also didn't inform pilots that this system even existed which means they have trouble diagnosing the problem and will potentially only make it worse by trying other things…
The bottom of the engines are a mere 40cm of so above the ground when the plane is on the runway. Hence the tight fit and need to move the engines forward so they would fit. Then the auto-fix-the-stall software isn't something the pilots are told about. They didn't come up with a common sense solution, doing so would have costed many billions for a new airframe with longer legs for the landing gear. This is how I und…
> The bottom of the engines are a mere 40cm of so above the ground when the plane is on the runway
Jeez. How are pilots supposed to land that thing in heavy wind scenarios? One wind blow at the wrong moment and it will make ground contact.
Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
#130What would financially happen to an airplane company with a fleet of dozens of Max 8s?
Naive me would expect that these are typically lease agreements whereby the OEM promises an SLA with compensation if they have to take the aircraft out of service for design issues? If they don't do it that way, why not?
First, because taking aircraft out of service for design issues is incredibly rare (less than once a decade across all kinds of passenger aircraft).
Second, because airplane manufacturers have a significant amount of negotiating power, combined with airlines very often not being in a great financial position: Boeing certainly wouldn't want to be liable for storage costs and the logistics of getting a fleet of planes back to a central facility if an airline went bankrupt, for example. Leases also get legally interesting when the assets involved move internationally on a daily basis...