UK joins countries blocking Boeing 737 MAX • Hacker News Board

Re: UK joins countries blocking Boeing 737 MAX

#21

Post by Reason077 » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #20

xiphias2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is scary way of thinking: ,,At this time there are no facts on the cause of the accident other than news reports,” American Airlines said. “We have full confidence in the aircraft and our crew members, who are the best and most experienced in the industry.” The airline added it would continue to monitor the investigation into the crash. An investigation that starts with having full confidence is not a real inves…

> “American Airlines extends our condolences to the families and friends of those on board Ethiopian Airlines flight 302. At this time there are no facts on the cause of the accident other than news reports,” American Airlines' statement feels a little disingenuous considering it is ignoring the context of the Ethiopian Airlines crash. The Lion Air crash has significantly more than just "news reports" including the F…

AA's (and Southwest's) 737 Max aircraft have some differences to those flown by most other operators, including Lion Air, with regards to the display of AOA indicators and the "AOA disagree" warning light.

I can imagine these optional indicators make it easier for pilots to quickly diagnose if an AOA sensor fault is causing misbehavior of the MCAS, and gives AA's pilots more confidence in their aircraft.

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines...

Re: UK joins countries blocking Boeing 737 MAX

#22

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: UK joins countries blocking Boeing 737 MAX

#23

Post by dustinmoris » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

This will probably get a lot of downvotes, but it's obvious that China, Singapore and the UK care more about their citizen and the safety of their people than the US currently does.

Re: UK joins countries blocking Boeing 737 MAX

#24

Post by Scoundreller » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #13

Scoundreller wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I get the logic, but dunno if this is common. Since the regulators are jumping the gun on these incidents before investigations are complete, it seems odd to ban overflying when 2 crashes at takeoff occurred. Though overflying could mean having to emergency land in your territory at any time.

The UK is surrounded by foreign airports. If the aircraft's flight plan would have taken it over the UK (e.g. Paris to Dublin, Dublin to Copenhagen) even a crash a few minutes after take-off could impact the UK. Banning it in the airspace makes it so flight plans cannot even place the aircraft there. If you're going to ban something at all, you might have well do it correctly. There's no value in half measures, or al…

I wonder what that means for ETOPS: do you have to exclude airspace that you cannot overfly?

Though it looks like more and more countries are closing their airspace. I’m guessing some countries are waiting for some flights to takeoff so they can ground them without stranding too many of their nationals.

Re: UK joins countries blocking Boeing 737 MAX

#25

Post by paulmd » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

La1n wrote: post #17

mnw21cam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be the perception, yes, and many people will go along with that. I disagree. My view is that it is too early for a strong view to be taken either way, therefore differing views are likely to be taken, and I don't think either side is stupid for doing so. If the FAA come out in a couple of days time and say that they want to ground the aircraft too, I also won't think they are losing face. It simply is a proc…

I wouldn't say it was picked at random when there is little information available. It seems to me like an application of the precautionary principle. In this case there is a plausible risk that the problem extents to other 737 MAX airplanes, and thus to prevent harm it's better to block the use until there is certainty about the situation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

It's likely a (deliberate) training fault on the part of Boeing here.

The new engines+nacelles change the handling characteristics of the aircraft and add a substantial pitch-up characteristic. Boeing wanted to brand this as a drop-in replacement for your existing 737 fleet requiring no additional re-training beyond normal ongoing certifications, so they added new systems to address this flight characteristic, and neglected to document this in their flight manuals or any of their training materials. The system activated erroneously in-flight and the pilots could not cancel a system they did not know existed.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/u-s-p...

https://outline.com/t78kad

https://youtu.be/zfQW0upkVus?t=220

There are other contributing factors here, there are apparently multiple failure conditions that can activate this system without appropriate degrees of redundancy (which is a design fault and will probably be rectified at some point), but the primary cause here is that Boeing suppressed information about this system's existence in an attempt to make their new aircraft more attractive compared to Airbus's alternatives.

The aircraft itself is not faulty in the sense that it cannot be controlled when these failure conditions occur. Boeing was negligent in its training and marketing of these aircraft.