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Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

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Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#241

Post by TearsInTheRain »

yingw787 wrote: post #157

And then there was one. I do wonder if we can halt and revert the deterioration of the Civil Service before the whole "civilization is two days worth of food and water" scenario arrives. If it does, I think it'll be through something that generates a disproportionate amount of fear and anxiety in people resulting in a significant impact to the economy in a sector where middle to upper class folks are heavily exposed…

> So if you're concerned because Boeing's CEO is a Mar-A-Lago member with direct access to POTUS (who wants his club fees), and the Secretary of Transportation is the Senate Majority Leader's wife who is also lobbied by Boeing, and the FAA hasn't had an official administrator for two months, and the FAA can't approve safety fixes by Boeing due to government shutdowns, and aircraft manufacturing consolidation means Boeing is "too big to fail" ...

Sure corruption is something we need to avoid but another way to look at this is that sure the high functioning successful people you want running the government are naturally going to have connections to high functioning successful people in the private sector. It is not in and of itself a bad thing.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#242

Post by isostatic »

nickjj wrote: post #159
vb6lives wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have more than 5000 orders for this model of aircraft. Each one costs approx 120million. Which means there are approx $640 billion dollars on the line. It is imperative that Boeing keeps it's reputation and grounding flights would destroy it.

Would grounding it really destroy their reputation? Grounding it doesn't mean indefinitely. If anything, it's a huge positive if they grounded it until they knew for certain what's wrong because then it's a double win. Firstly, on the ground the plane has a 0% chance of killing anyone (unless someone decided to jump off the top of a parked plane and commit suicide, etc.), and secondly Boeing's reputation goes up beca…

Had Boeing grounded the fleet in the hours following the second crash (we're confident there's no problem however due to the highly unlikely coincidence we are proactively taking this step out of an abundance of cation), sure. When the truth comes out they'd be respected regardless of the outcome.

Too late now though. If the truth comes out and it's not a Boeing problem, their reputation suffers for "what might have been". If it is, their reputation suffers for "profits over safety"

Southwest, for what it's worth, were offering free changes of ticket for those on a max. American weren't.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#243

Post by pbarnes_1 »

davidw wrote: post #83
pbarnes_1 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kleptocracy kills. The current "admin" is full of Boeing people. Also, there's no one doing anything at the FAA.

Also: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/13/18263719/b...

The most unsurprising development in the history of things that have happened: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/surprise-trump-kept-...

Ah, good old kleptocracy. Who could have predicted this?

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#244

Post by kevin_nisbet »

danepowell wrote: post #228
js2 wrote: post #20

Having read many commments on HN and elsewhere since the crash, I know I’m in the minority here when I say this but to me it seems like the US airlines and FAA are following their procedures, the same procedures that make the US airlines the safest in the world, while the rest of the world is, I don’t quite want to use the word panicking, but at least giving into pressure from people who aren’t aviation safety expert…

I understand and agree that we don't want knee-jerk reactions on the part of regulators. I'm only an aviation enthusiast and by no means an expert, and fully admit that I could be wrong, and even with my natural inclination to reserve judgement, to me it seems obvious that grounding is warranted purely from a statistic viewpoint. Compare the release of the 737 MAX 8 with the release of other recent-ish models like th…

Also, don't forget that the 787's were also grounded when they were new for their battery problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_...

It's a bit of a different situation, but they were grounded for a problem that I don't believe caused a single fatality, but had more incidents in a shorter time period.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#245

Post by helaoban »

danepowell wrote: post #228
js2 wrote: post #20

Having read many commments on HN and elsewhere since the crash, I know I’m in the minority here when I say this but to me it seems like the US airlines and FAA are following their procedures, the same procedures that make the US airlines the safest in the world, while the rest of the world is, I don’t quite want to use the word panicking, but at least giving into pressure from people who aren’t aviation safety expert…

I understand and agree that we don't want knee-jerk reactions on the part of regulators. I'm only an aviation enthusiast and by no means an expert, and fully admit that I could be wrong, and even with my natural inclination to reserve judgement, to me it seems obvious that grounding is warranted purely from a statistic viewpoint. Compare the release of the 737 MAX 8 with the release of other recent-ish models like th…

By this argument, all Boeing 777s should have been grounded after the loss of Malaysia 370 and Malaysia 17. Same plane, both incidents within 5 months of each other.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#246

Post by isostatic »

Scarbutt wrote: post #161
js2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another 737 Max crashing in the face of the current scrutiny would destroy it even worse, wouldn’t it? Is that just a calculated gamble?

Is that just a calculated gamble? Yes, because by now, every pilot still flying that plane has been trained to deal with the issue.

That was the Lionair aftermath.

If this issue did occur again (and that's not proven), the question is why didn't the pilots deal? Were they operating past their limits for whatever reason, like with UPS1354? Or is it that the problem isn't something that can reasonably be dealt with.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#247

Post by dragonwriter »

linuxftw wrote: post #233
yingw787 wrote: post #157

And then there was one. I do wonder if we can halt and revert the deterioration of the Civil Service before the whole "civilization is two days worth of food and water" scenario arrives. If it does, I think it'll be through something that generates a disproportionate amount of fear and anxiety in people resulting in a significant impact to the economy in a sector where middle to upper class folks are heavily exposed…

The problem, I think, is there's no established protocol in this situation. Congress leaves entirely too much decision making up to the executive branch. How hard is it to write a law such as "If the same (public) commercial model plane crashes with fatalities more than once in an 18 month period, that model plane shall be grounded indefinitely until a root cause is established and mitigated" This would have some int…

> How hard is it to write a law such as "If the same (public) commercial model plane crashes with fatalities more than once in an 18 month period, that model plane shall be grounded indefinitely until a root cause is established and mitigated"

The problem is if you write a law like that, then even if the FAA still otherwise nominally retains its existing power, the mere fact of the "2 in 18-months" rule in statute will have an effect of discouraging groundings with less than two crashes, or with 2 crashes more than 18-months apart. So, unless Congress is going to replace the FAA's decision making role and manage the details of response to each incident, which I think we can all agree would be a disaster itself, its probably not a good idea.

EDIT: Which is why Congress' role of executive oversight and accountability is as important as its role of writing legislation; sometimes there is no good safeguard available through more statutory rules, the best you can do is assure competence and dedication in the executive and apply consequences if there are shortfalls.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#248

Post by DavidSJ »

dahdum wrote: post #175
notJim wrote: post #100

Is it normal for there to be this kind of obsession about a particular plane following a crash? I feel like I've never seen this before. I literally saw someone on Twitter suggesting that you print out a page of the manual and hand it to your pilot…

The obsession is because the plane is new (<2 years) and there have been two fatal crashes in the past 6 months, making it by far the most dangerous plane in the skies today.

We don't know that it's the most dangerous plane in the skies today. It may be, and some of the publicly known facts are suggestive of that but not conclusive. What we know is that its accident rate is by far the worst, but on a small enough sample size that statistical anomaly cannot be ruled out.

Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

#249

Post by xutopia »

js2 wrote: post #20

Having read many commments on HN and elsewhere since the crash, I know I’m in the minority here when I say this but to me it seems like the US airlines and FAA are following their procedures, the same procedures that make the US airlines the safest in the world, while the rest of the world is, I don’t quite want to use the word panicking, but at least giving into pressure from people who aren’t aviation safety expert…

There is reason to believe that the FAA has bad actors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Elwell

Trump has appointed people in various areas of the government based on their contentious views with the departments they would oversee. This makes many in the international community question Dan Elwell's position and influence at the FAA.

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