This goes beyond aircraft at the moment. The NTSB and America in general used to lead. Now it seems the world is going to get on without them.
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Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
71–80 of 304 posts
Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
#72This goes beyond aircraft at the moment. The NTSB and America in general used to lead. Now it seems the world is going to get on without them.
The US Government is sadly conflicted. FAA claiming there is "no evidence" of this aircraft having a systemic flaw. Meanwhile: Boeing brought $70B into Washington State's economy in one year. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeingrsquos-economic-... Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military.
Can an argument not be made for EU and China grounding the aircraft as well?
The EU produces the only real competitor (Airbus A320), and China is in the middle of a 'Trade War' with the U.S and is trying to create a serious airplane manufacturer of their own.
>Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military.
I don't even know what that has to do with it, do you think if the FAA grounded 737's Boeing would... cancel all existing contracts with the World's largest military?
Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
#73This goes beyond aircraft at the moment. The NTSB and America in general used to lead. Now it seems the world is going to get on without them.
The US Government is sadly conflicted. FAA claiming there is "no evidence" of this aircraft having a systemic flaw. Meanwhile: Boeing brought $70B into Washington State's economy in one year. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeingrsquos-economic-... Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military.
Kleptocracy kills.
The current "admin" is full of Boeing people. Also, there's no one doing anything at the FAA.
Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the same procedures that make the US airlines the safest in the world Citation needed? > Let the downvotes begin. Bracing for impact doesn't invalidate the cause of it.
> Citation needed You’re probably asking for a citation that the US airlines are safest due to their procedures and not for other reasons. I don’t have a ready citation for that. But as to US airline safety: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielreed/2016/12/28/in-the-la... > Bracing for impact doesn't invalidate the cause of it. Fair, I should have left that out, but I won’t ninja edit it on you now. (And I have no ide…
That link does not support your statement. There are countries with the same safety record and with a higher percentage of their airlines ranking higher in safety than US airlines.
Lumping the US versus 'the rest of the world' together does not compare single countries against each other.
The US is safe for air travel, but that does not show that it is the safest.
Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I understand about the issue so far, the systemic flaw is not in the aircraft, but in the training of the pilots. Or the lack thereof. Boeing wanted the 737 MAX to be considered just another 737 that didn't require any new training, but there are apparently significant changes compared to other 737 models that leave pilots feeling ill-prepared.
My understanding is that it's a bit of both. This Slate article[1] described it as both a design flaw and an effort to paper over that design flaw by tweaking the autopilot system. >Boeing swapped out the engines for new models, which, together with airframe tweaks, promised a 20 percent increase in fuel efficiency. In order to accommodate the engine’s larger diameter, Boeing engineers had to move the point where the…
Yeah, my understanding is essentially, the changes made the Max 8 not behave aerodynamically like other 737s. This would normally mean that pilots would need to requalify on it as a new plane type, in order to legally fly one.
But that's more expensive for Boeing's customers, so to make it more attractive, they decided to "paper over" the differences in behaviour with software. Fly it like any other 737, and if it starts to stall in conditions where other 737s wouldn't, the software corrects things!
Except, except, like all abstractions, this one's leaky -- and they've only shifted the difference in behaviour from "stalls at angles that would surprise a 737 pilot" to "noses-down in ways that would surprise a 737 pilot" along with "can't be muscle-overridden the way the autopilot on other 737s can be".
Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
#76They claim this is based on new "validated" satellite tracking data they received this morning showing similar altitude fluctuations to the Lion Air crash. Somehow every internet forum had this figured out within hours of the crash using public flight tracker data. I find it worrying that it took them so long to come to the obvious conclusion for lack of "validation" of widely known information, and that it took so l…
Canada is extremely tightly tied to the US economy, and the US government is still taking Boeing’s side on this. I wish this didn’t have to be about politics.
> Canada is extremely tightly tied to the US economy
Canada also is home to one of the four major aerospace companies that make planes people are willing to fly on. Think of all the CRJ700s you could sell if people got flighty about using 737s.
I'm sure the Canadians are grounding them for all the right reasons, but let's be clear: they stand to gain if the 737 loses favour.
Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US Government is sadly conflicted. FAA claiming there is "no evidence" of this aircraft having a systemic flaw. Meanwhile: Boeing brought $70B into Washington State's economy in one year. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeingrsquos-economic-... Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military.
Can an argument not be made for EU and China grounding the aircraft as well? The EU produces the only real competitor (Airbus A320), and China is in the middle of a 'Trade War' with the U.S and is trying to create a serious airplane manufacturer of their own. >Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military. I don't even know what that has to do with it,…
My feeling is that if there is irrational decisionmaking by the FAA in Boeing's favour, it's not because of some grand strategy but more because FAA people are friends with Boeing people and don't want to upset them before their next golf game or fundraising event or whatnot. Friends of friends and a few phone calls...
Maybe I'm very wrong. I hope I am. But it's the sense I've gotten about American politics and regulatory capture.
Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
#78Having 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…
The level of certainty required for an action changes depending on the downside risk of action vs inaction. For example, if I am 20% certain that you have a pulmonary embolism, the correct action is to start treatment immediately; the risks of treatment are low relative the harm of waiting for further testing. The FAA and NTSB are rightly very conservative and cautious with respect to approving new designs, since the…
> the risk of grounding planes is operational inconvenience
Is it possible there is a safety risk to grounding the 737 Max that outweighs the risk of allowing it to fly?
Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I understand about the issue so far, the systemic flaw is not in the aircraft, but in the training of the pilots. Or the lack thereof. Boeing wanted the 737 MAX to be considered just another 737 that didn't require any new training, but there are apparently significant changes compared to other 737 models that leave pilots feeling ill-prepared.
My understanding is that the Boeing 737 max jet is unstable. Instead of redesigning a new plane from the ground up, Boeing placed the larger engines forward and upward on the wings. Boeing then tried to issue a "software patch" on a bad hardware design. Boeing came up with an automated system to seize control of the aircraft in the event that the flight became unstable and neglected to inform pilots of this new autom…
Private pilot here. That is exactly right, based on everything that I've read and heard from other pilots, some of whom fly the Max 8.
Re: Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US Government is sadly conflicted. FAA claiming there is "no evidence" of this aircraft having a systemic flaw. Meanwhile: Boeing brought $70B into Washington State's economy in one year. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeingrsquos-economic-... Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military.
From what I understand about the issue so far, the systemic flaw is not in the aircraft, but in the training of the pilots. Or the lack thereof. Boeing wanted the 737 MAX to be considered just another 737 that didn't require any new training, but there are apparently significant changes compared to other 737 models that leave pilots feeling ill-prepared.
Reminds me of a company I used to work for where when we updated our PCIe NICs, we would never, ever change the PCIe device or sub-device ID. This was to avoid a triggering a re-certification from various companies (MS WHQL, Vmware ESX testing, etc). The first thing the driver did was to talk to the firmware and ask it for a set of supported features..