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US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

bbc.com

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Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#71

Post by kalleboo »

twblalock wrote: post #50

Lots of jumping to conclusions going on in this thread, blaming the FAA, lobbyists, and politicians for being in the pocket of Boeing. Nobody knows why this plane crashed. The flight recorders have just been recovered and so far there has been nothing in the news about what was on them. The plane might be to blame. The airline or the pilots might be to blame, and by the way, that airline has a bad safety record. It m…

> If it turns out this was not Boeing's fault, a lot of people are going to have to eat their words, and millions of dollars will have been wasted for nothing.

And if it turns out there is a fault, hundreds of lives can be saved. What losing side of the wager do you want to be on?

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#72

Post by cmurf »

prostoalex wrote: post #24
stirlo wrote: post #15

It’s scary to think how complicit the FAA was in granting Boeing’s wish that this 30 year newer plane with substantially larger engines only required 2-3 hours of new training and said training was able to miss covering entire systems like MCAS. Now 350 people are dead, all the FAA can be thankful of is the dead are foreigners so it’s unlikely they’ll be held properly accountable.

While you may end up being entirely correct, it is too early to start finger-pointing before the investigations are finished. Neither Lion nor Ethiopian had stellar safety records, e.g. * https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/asia/lion-air-crash... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_accidents_a... The training hours should also be looked in the context of the total hours flown on that specific mode…

Rather important is that it was in fact considered to have substantially different enough behavior to warrant a required type rating for pilots, obviated due to the software abstraction provided by MCAS. However, this abstraction is effectively disabled when setting stabilizer trim to cutoff which is one of the later steps in the normal troubleshooting sequence. OK? So the airplane is in an emergency situation, with a flight characteristic normalizing software routine disabled, thereby making it possible for the airplane to exhibit the very behavior that pilots were never informed of, never trained for, and not required to have a type rating for, that MCAS existed for in the first place.

I think that's quite a lot more relevant than airline safety records. Ethiopian Airlines has a good recent safety record anyway. And the outcry, upon MCAS being publicly revealed, among the U.S. pilot community I also think demonstrates important relative concern.

And, quite a concerning story about U.S. 737 MAX pilots using the anonymous aviation safety reporting system to communicate their concerns, whether instead of or because of the normal channels for doing so.

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2019/03/12/boei...

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#73

Post by crubier »

twblalock wrote: post #50

Lots of jumping to conclusions going on in this thread, blaming the FAA, lobbyists, and politicians for being in the pocket of Boeing. Nobody knows why this plane crashed. The flight recorders have just been recovered and so far there has been nothing in the news about what was on them. The plane might be to blame. The airline or the pilots might be to blame, and by the way, that airline has a bad safety record. It m…

> The sudden rush to judgment on this case is unjustified by the evidence.

It might not be justified by a theoretical formal proof. It irks me that a lot of the HN population seems to always want to reason using formal proofs like if it was a silver bullet.

In this situation, bayesian inference is appropriate, and tells us that grounding planes is highly justified. This succession of two relatively similar events in a new plane is enough to raise the probability of "this aircraft model has a problem" a lot, and definitely enough to justify grounding them.

Also, the risk / benefit ratio is not symmetric, what is better:

- Ground them for nothing and lose money

- Not ground them to save money, and see a third crash happen, killing 150 again

If you take into account those two effects, it's clear that grounding the planes is a sane option.

Finally ask yourself: would you board this plane today if you had a ticket? What would you think when there is turbulence after takeoff and the plane suddenly pitches down for a second? What color would your pants be?

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#74

Post by isostatic »

Svip wrote: post #70
_cerv wrote: post #45

Some points from personal experience from working at Boeing, family working at Boeing, and a close friend on the flight line for the 737-8; - not everything is back from the Lion Air incident, but internally there was strong confidence that a lack of pilot familiarity with the adjusted mechanics of MCAS contributed to the disaster - reproducing these failures has been extremely hard and has required a lot of cooperat…

> - Lion and Ethiopian Air are near the bottom when it comes to maintenance and follow up with Boeing Another commenter mentioned that Ethiopian Airline is considered Category 1 by the FAA, and is a member of the Star Alliance. Surely that indicates a decent track record? I'm not saying it _is_ the plane, but as the EASA Emergency Airworthiness Directive points out, while a connection between the two incidents cannot…

Quite. That doesn’t pass the sniff test.

If it turns out this is Boeing’s fault, for the reasons suspected, and the FAA have staked their reputation on it - I fear for the future of airline safety.

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#75

Post by briandear »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #60
prostoalex wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you may end up being entirely correct, it is too early to start finger-pointing before the investigations are finished. Neither Lion nor Ethiopian had stellar safety records, e.g. * https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/asia/lion-air-crash... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_accidents_a... The training hours should also be looked in the context of the total hours flown on that specific mode…

Nonsense. Ethiopian airlines is rated Category 1 by the FAA and can thus fly direct to the US and they are a member of the star alliance. Just because they are the largest carrier in Africa does not imply dubious safety or maintenance.

They had a 200 hour pilot flying in the right seat of the crashed airplane. Star Alliance or not, who in the hell defends a low-time student pilot flying right seat in an airliner? In the US, that would be illegal as a first officer has a 1500 hour requirement along with significant multi-engine turbine training. That copilot wouldn’t even have enough hours for a commercial certificate, let alone ATP.

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#76

Post by rimliu »

_cerv wrote: post #45

Some points from personal experience from working at Boeing, family working at Boeing, and a close friend on the flight line for the 737-8; - not everything is back from the Lion Air incident, but internally there was strong confidence that a lack of pilot familiarity with the adjusted mechanics of MCAS contributed to the disaster - reproducing these failures has been extremely hard and has required a lot of cooperat…

  > - not everything is back from the Lion Air incident,
  >  but internally there was strong confidence that a lack
  >  of pilot familiarity with the adjusted mechanics of
  >  MCAS contributed to the disaster
  >  
  > - training for the 737-8 and -9 was just short of non
  >  existent because in practice, these planes don’t fly
  > differently.
Don't you think these two statements are at odds? If there is no difference in practice then why does unfamiliarity kill?

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice it is different".

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#77

Post by _lbaq »

_cerv wrote: post #45

Some points from personal experience from working at Boeing, family working at Boeing, and a close friend on the flight line for the 737-8; - not everything is back from the Lion Air incident, but internally there was strong confidence that a lack of pilot familiarity with the adjusted mechanics of MCAS contributed to the disaster - reproducing these failures has been extremely hard and has required a lot of cooperat…

>Ethiopian Air are near the bottom

This is ignorance, Ethiopian have been flying for 70 years and have an excellent safety record on par with most western airlines.

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#78

Post by crubier »

wallace_f wrote: post #58
Legogris wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sudden rush to judgment on this case is unjustified by the evidence. If it turns out this was not Boeing's fault, a lot of people are going to have to eat their words, and millions of dollars will have been wasted for nothing. The prudent thing would be to err on the side of caution and suspend it until we know. What's millions of dollars (which I think is way exaggerated for a temporary suspension until the ev…

Millions of dollars could save a lot of human life right now, even in America. Who in their right mind downvotes this? I realize HN is not representative of America, but I think if you take a moment to notice all the homeless people you step over on your way to work in SV you'd reconsider.

Sure, then let's fly other unsafe planes types as well to save money, and hand the benefits to the poor!

Except, in which universe do airlines hands out their revenue to the poor ?

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#79

Post by wtdata »

The title itself is unnecessary fear mongering. I actually went to confirm if the BBC actually wrote "crash aircraft" or it was just the poster that altered the title.

It seems that not even the once respectable newspapers can keep away from easy sensationalism these days.

Re: US refuses to ground Boeing 737 Max

#80

Post by nolok »

_cerv wrote: post #45

Some points from personal experience from working at Boeing, family working at Boeing, and a close friend on the flight line for the 737-8; - not everything is back from the Lion Air incident, but internally there was strong confidence that a lack of pilot familiarity with the adjusted mechanics of MCAS contributed to the disaster - reproducing these failures has been extremely hard and has required a lot of cooperat…

> - training for the 737-8 and -9 was just short of non existent because in practice, these planes don’t fly differently.

Except for, you know, that computer system that throws people into the ground if a probe malfunction, and that the "just short of non existent" training doesn't seem to cover properly.

I don't know how this part works, when a manufacturer says "this plane doesn't require full training but merely a small top up since it's the same as plane X before", I assume the FAA needs to validate this matches reality ?

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