Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 212 posts

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#201

Post by inferiorhuman »

FabHK wrote: post #92
dschuler wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't go as far as calling the Lauda Air anecdote "evidence of something", but there appears to have been a pattern whereby Boeing writes the rule book for test procedures, which are then adopted by the FAA as the standard. Of course, a manufacturer would not publish a set of tests, then promptly fail to pass them. So the question becomes - assuming this dynamic is still valid today: what independent mechanism e…

Worth pointing out that the FAA bought Boeing's claim that the 737 MAX 8, 9 did not require a new type certificate, and so did EASA. However, from what I gather, the Brazilian regulator deemed the MAX with MCAS sufficiently different from prior generations. So, there is some regulatory independence.

Worth pointing out that the FAA bought Boeing's claim that the 737 MAX 8, 9 did not require a new type certificate, and so did EASA. However, from what I gather, the Brazilian regulator deemed the MAX with MCAS sufficiently different from prior generations.

The Brazilians required that Boeing document MCAS and include it in the required differences training. MCAS was considered a fairly small difference (if memory serves — "B") by the Brazilians and the MAX is still operating on the same type certificate. The big question in my mind is: why did the FAA not do the same?

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#202

Post by inferiorhuman »

blahblahthrow wrote: post #108
FabHK wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth pointing out that the FAA bought Boeing's claim that the 737 MAX 8, 9 did not require a new type certificate, and so did EASA. However, from what I gather, the Brazilian regulator deemed the MAX with MCAS sufficiently different from prior generations. So, there is some regulatory independence.

It could be argued the Brazilian authorities are biased towards Embraer, much the same way US authorities might be biases towards Boeing.

What about the Canadians and Bombardier? The A220/C series is a much closer competitor to the 737 than anything Embraer has to offer and the Canadians still gave Boeing a pass on MCAS.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#203

Post by inferiorhuman »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #197
qaq wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we might be jumping to conclusions here a quote on the issue from pilots forum: "Runaway stabilizer procedures in the 737 have remained pretty much unchanged since its first flight. The same can be said for pretty much any Boeing airliner. 1 - Turn off the autopilot to see if it's causing the problem. 2 - Oppose the trim manually with the yoke. If that stops it, you're done. 3 - If that doesn't work, then you tu…

OK just random stuff I come up with as someone with no expertise in this field: > 3 - If that doesn't work, then you turn off the stab trim cutout switches. And.. If this doesn't work either? What if it seems to make things worse? Is that switch implemented in hardware or software? I don't mean the switch itself: does it just pull a pin high/low for some controller or does it fully disconnect/shut down the offending…

If you dig through the pprune thread on the Lion Air crash you'll find some schematics. The stabilizer trim switches cut power, but the circuits and switches are different between the NG and MAX generations. Assuming there was no damage from the near constant adjustment, disconnecting electrical power from the stabilizer trim motors almost certainly would've resulted in an improvement.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#204

Post by inferiorhuman »

whbk wrote: post #105
rob74 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, most airlines are seeing the 737-MAX 8 and its predecessor, the 737-800, as interchangeable (or they did until yesterday), so I doubt they will be able to say with certainty which aircraft type will operate a given flight...

Yeah, in my case it was a pretty straightforward situation with 1 airline not having the 8max at all (despite an article saying otherwise?) and my other flights being on 737-700's. I read a fair bit about this whole mess today and saw some posts saying there was a way to use SeatGuru to reliably distinguish between Max 8 / legacy 737-800, but I didn't need to dig that much myself and as you noted especially for fligh…

The MAX is pretty easy to identify visually. The engine nacelles have those chevrons like the 787 and the APU has a conical exhaust (look at the back of an older 737 and it's flat like a screwdriver turned sideways).

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#205

Post by [deleted] »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #80
toephu2 wrote: post #76

Because one plane went down now everyone is scared and going to cancel any 737 flights. Irrational humans that pay attention to the news. Your chances of dying in a car accident are much higher than dying from flying on a Boeing 737. Are you still going to drive to work tomorrow though? Edit: Yes it is good that 737s are being suspended and investigated but still, statistically speaking, flying is safer than driving.…

2 planes have gone down in 6 months, basically unprecedented in commercial aviation

[deleted]

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#206

Post by CydeWeys »

bouncycastle wrote: post #200
CydeWeys wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This discussion is divorced from reality. These two fatal crashes were not caused by stalls. The first was for sure caused by MCAS incorrectly pitching the nose down and the second appears likely to share the same cause.

Ok, I probably have no idea what I'm talking about. However, reading the early news reports, stories and comments, I don't think the journalists/commenters know either and some may be biased. Would be great to actually ask an experienced pilot who flies these things. The main thing I don't understand is, when a plane starts diving, first reaction would be to disable autopilot, and put the nose up, no? Also, pilots sh…

Yeah, you're missing a lot of background info on this topic. Start by reading here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane...

MCAS is not autopilot, and is not affected by autopilot system status. Indeed it is only enabled when the autopilot is off. And typical things you'd do to override autopilot, like applying stick input, do not override MCAS. The pilots did literally what you suggested their first reaction would be, and it wasn't sufficient to prevent fatal crashes.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#207

Post by SZJX »

alistairSH wrote: post #111
akg_67 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the reddit aviation answers be different if instead of China, it was Chinese (or another country’s) airlines were announcing one by one, they were grounding the planes?

Honest question... is there a difference between the Chinese government and the Chinese airlines? I know they're not literally led by the government, but I was under the impression the government still wielded disproportionate control over industry in Chine (relative to what we expect in the West).

Nah if you seriously think so you need to work a bit more on your mental models and probably try to get rid of the simplistic propaganda that you've read. All modern industries are subject to heavy regulations and in many cases the western regulatory system is still sounder than the Chinese one. China was more or less in a wild growth phase of capitalism in the last two decades. Now its regulators are catching up.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#208

Post by SZJX »

chvid wrote: post #71
akg_67 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, FAA didn’t ground 787 until both Japanese airlines had grounded the 787. With the number of fatalities and accidents new 737 had, it should be grounded by all airlines.

I was checking out a thread about the subject on reddit aviation; half the people are saying this is a political move by China - the other half are checking their flights to make sure they are not flying a 737 MAX. What happened to better safe than sorry? Obviously this type of plane needs to be grounded until issues are resolved or the two crashes can be definitely be dismissed as a freak coincedence.

I don't even understand the "political influence" talk. Political influence so what, China's domestic planes get preferred? There are literally only two brands of commercial planes out there, Boeing and Airbus. People's bias, hysteria and excuse finding are simply amazing.

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#209

Post by aaalucard »

sct202 wrote: post #170
throwaway66666 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before reading the article and before seeing your comment, I was chatting with my partner about the 737 Max, advising her to be wary. And lo and behold... You are definitely not alone in this. However, and to play a bit devil's advocate, China has a reputation as being a place that does not care about the value of human life, and the current climate is charged with USA advising people to ban Huawei's hardware, so thi…

China doesn't value the average person's life. But as you can see in the Huawei case, they seem to value some lives very highly. I suspect that the people flying are multiple times more valued by the Chinese government than normal citizens.

Funny that more countries are joining Chian while USA or Canada haven't announced anything yet. Do American politicians care a person's life or their relationships with companies like Boeing

Re: China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft

#210

Post by houseofzeus »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #177
houseofzeus wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Even if it turns out to be a different cause, who wants to be the airline that gives it the benefit of the doubt in the meantime? The optics at this point if it happens again while this one is still being investigated are awful. The Chinese decision here seems pretty rational.

I would go even further and suggest Boeing ought to ground them. If, as you mentioned, another accident were to happen, irrespective of the impact it would have on that airline, Boeing's reputation would be triply hammered.

Yeah, they dropped the ball on this one. Now they have a growing number of countries grounding it themselves which to me seems like a significantly worse look than if Boeing had proactively done it themselves (also keeps it in the news cycle longer as each new country adds itself to the list).
Post reply on HN