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

E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 365 posts

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#231

Post by azernik »

lostlogin wrote: post #123
bengotow wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/...

Many of those countries are friendly (extremely so) to the US. For example, the US is perfectly happy to ship aircraft parts (and even fully functional military aircraft) to Afghani buyers; they just give non-binding advice to US citizens that traveling to a war zone is maaaaaybe not the safest idea.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#232

Post by phkahler »

throw7 wrote: post #141

The FAA isn't passing the smell test. If both previous crashes happened with US carriers taking off from US airports, you better believe the FAA would ground these boeing max jets.

>> If both previous crashes happened with US carriers taking off from US airports, you better believe the FAA would ground these boeing max jets.

You're not wrong. But do you think the EU banning them couldn't possibly have anything to do with who makes them or the competition between Airbus and Boeing? Even as a secondary factor?

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#233

Post by objektif »

dalbasal wrote: post #195
odorousrex wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try the fact that the fuel efficiency saves the airline lots of $$$ on fuel, but yet they haven't reduced fares any. Go figure.

IDK how things are in your sphere, but in the context of where I live, I have watched overseas travel go from bougie luxury to something everyone can do over the last 20-25 years.

I am not sure if that is a result of fuel efficiency or intense competition.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#234

Post by jostmey »

sfilargi wrote: post #146

I urge people to read the discussion by pilots regarding the 737 MAX. https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/safety/120514-ethiopian-7... It all comes down to this: "There are far too many aerodynamic bandaids that are permitted to pass the current standards. Not just this particular airplane, but a whole bunch of airframes. If the basic aerodynamics won't pass without the pushers, pullers and now AOA induced changes to…

I interpret this as an indication that the United States policy and law is run by Wall street and is corrupted. Boeing didn't want to develop a new airplane, cut costs, and doesn't want to lose money, so the FAA is not allowed to ban the plane

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#235

Post by SilasX »

structural wrote: post #130
SilasX wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wasn't proposing that any of that and I'm not sure it's relevant (e.g. in this case it's a software update that can be done without moving the plane); I agree they wouldn't want to take over a dead airline, and such an agreement doesn't get the incentives right. But it's common for OEMs to take the hit for things that are their own fault, if it isn't legally required.

And the rarity of the incidents plus Boeing's asymmetric knowledge of them would favor Boeing being a guarantor. And remember, I just said the design issues. Obviously the airline would be expected to take hits from e.g. FAA groundings from their own maintenance failures.

Edit: That leaves asymmetric bargaining power in your reply, but I don't see OEM aircraft competition as being so monopolized that they wouldn't compete on "hey this company makes us bear the costs of their design problems but this one doesn't".

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#236

Post by hexane360 »

kharms wrote: post #189
oppositelock wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FAA and Boeing need to investigate this, but you can't make such statistical inferences, since you simply don't have enough data points. There could be no more crashes for the next few years with those 350 planes. The FAA and NTSB are very good at what they do, one of the very few examples of government services that work well together with industry, give them some time.

We have some idea of a crash rate for safe airplanes. Something like: P(Crash|Miles Flow & Hull Age) If we assume this airplane is safe, we can apply that probability to it and then ask P(2 Crashes|N Miles & 350 New Planes). You would then have a probability for this just being bad luck, and compare that against your prior that this is a safe plane. I haven’t done the math, but my gut says it would point to grounding…

>I haven’t done the math, but my gut says it would point to grounding the plane.

"Guts" are notoriously good at statistical inference

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#237

Post by Scoundreller »

usrusr wrote: post #116
Scoundreller wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speculate we’ll see more airspace closures once countries give enough time to avoid stranding their nationals. I wonder if, say, Germany, waited until its planes had to chance to land before closing their airspace, while other countries/companies, like Norwegian got caught by surprise. Convenience over safety? Total speculation on my part.

The closest thing to a German 737 MAX are 15 owned by TUI, which seem to all be based in the UK. There hasn't been much fleet renewal in the German market in recent years, just lots of consolidation (it's actually a bit of a lottery to buy a ticket in advance due to all the bankruptcies)

I didn’t single-out Germany for its fleet, just that it was one of the countries with a delayed closure of its airspace.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#238

Post by objektif »

oppositelock wrote: post #137
anoncoward111 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The FAA and Boeing need to investigate this, but you can't make such statistical inferences, since you simply don't have enough data points. There could be no more crashes for the next few years with those 350 planes. The FAA and NTSB are very good at what they do, one of the very few examples of government services that work well together with industry, give them some time.

If they need time shouldn't the first course of action be grounding this aircraft?

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#239

Post by hexane360 »

freehunter wrote: post #220
ams6110 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True randomness does not preclude clusters of events. In fact that's the nature of random events. Not saying I think these are completely random. But since we don't even know the cause of the Ethopian crash yet, who's to say? The causes may very well be unrelated.

The FAA is not an agency that should be assuming something is safe by default. It is an agency that should be assuming something is unsafe by default and demanding the manufacturer prove it is safe. If it's random chance, Boeing should be able to prove it is random chance. Until then, the FAA should ground them.

How do you suggest Boeing "prove" that there are no links between the events? You can't prove the null hypothesis.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#240

Post by Scoundreller »

Svip wrote: post #38
jka wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a reference to confirm that this was a knee-jerk/optics reaction, out of interest? (definitely curious to see how airlines/authorities are reaching these decisions) The MCAS system and the way it was introduced sound a little like a patch, and slightly haphazard. While training & runbooks and procedures are important, take-off is a busy time, and the Max-8 is (afaik) intended to operate very-nearly-like a…

Over 300 people dead sounds pretty serious to me. It's probably safest to ground the plane model until we know more.

If it was 2 freighters, would we have done the same?
Post reply on HN