I guess to put it another way, it's the difference between engineering controls (or outright elimination) and administrative controls, which aren't as effective. What's crazy is that there seems to be a fix just a couple months away, so we're basically putting a bunch of people at risk of death because we don't want boeing to lose money. It's definitely pretty basic risk management.

US pilots confident in the Boeing 737 Max planes following second fatal crash in 5 months

The US is going to end up being the only country to allow these things to fly. Hopefully the airlines using them end up with a bunch of passengers refusing to board or something.

Would know what exactly? Knowledge that no one on earth currently has?

There is a concept called redundancy in engineering when human life is at risk. Having backups to the backups. Fitting the subject...this most often applies to airplane design. This same concept of redundancy (hyper caution) should be carried over to airplane incidents and precautionary measures.

Yes plane crashes are rare. Yes people overreact. But 2 new planes of the same model crashing in a similar pattern over a 5 month span is cause for major concern. The ROW agrees.

Except this still misses the point that from what’s been released we have a good idea of the causes of the first crash and that seems very likely to be the same cause as the second if they are in fact related.

So, absolutely, if two planes crash and we don’t know why we should ground the model until we figure out why. Probably not a coincidence and without taking some action it seems risky that something else will happen again.

But in this case we know more than that and actions have been taken. It’s not the same risk level at all.

I’m not sure you realize that planes already depend on a number of ‘administrative controls’ that rely on pilots memorizing a set of actions that need to be taken in various emergency situations.

I also don’t fee like people realize the effects here aren’t just Boeing losing money. It’s lots of other people and companies losing money. It’s peoples lives being disrupted with cancelled flights and cancelled trips. It’s people missing important family events. Yadda yadda yadda.

The idea that we need 100% safety in air travel seems silly to me and is of course impossible despite what a bunch of politicians are demanding.

Why? The decision to continue flying the model at this point has nothing to do with the feelings of these families. It’s also totally possible that the plane should have been grounded before this flight and now it’s safer.

The whole history of air flight is based on things being safer now than they were before an accident.

Your posts are full of just terrible logic and reasoning.

I guess I understand this position even less than the one I thought you were advancing. You're agree that we can be confident that there was a serious safety flaw that caused both crashes, but it's an issue that's been figured out and solved, and we can also be adequately comfortable that the reason it caused the recent crash is [some particular factor relevant to that case--poor training?] and not some aspect of the technical problem that isn't adequately addressed by the solution implemented after the first crash? That seems like a lot of things to believe with high confidence.

The technical issue seems most likely to be a system not being as redundant as it should be.

If pilots were aware of this issue and trained on the procedure for dealing with it, then the expectation is that the technical issue wouldn't result in a crash.

It seems plausible that after the first crash and the communication from Boeing, the FAA, etc. that some pilots were still unaware of the issue and/or not trained properly in how to react. This wouldn't be the first time that this has happened. There are many of these communications that come out and pilots can miss them or not really grok the implications.

The chance that after this second issue that 737 MAX pilots are unaware of this problem and how to deal with it seems vanishingly small at this point.

Similarly, the sensor that malfunctioned in the first crash that caused the MCAS system to malfunction was originally treated as a not-urgent repair. Planes were allowed to fly with it broken. Again, especially after this second crash, that seems very unlikely to happen. Nobody is sending a plane out with this sensor broken.

Again, you can weigh all these factors and come to different conclusions in terms of the risk. But its not at all as simple as saying two planes from the same model crashed within 6 months of each other.

Obviously these calculations becomes different if we get different information.

One possibility is that the second crash actually sheds light on the first crash and reveals the possibility that there was a cause or major factor that wasn't previously being considered.

Planes being grounded in U.S.

But why do we need to wait for more info before grounding the plane? The fact that we don't have the info is why they should be grounded.

Bobman's point seems rock solid to me. Airplanes are like 99.9999% safe. The same plane crashing twice in a small timeframe makes it a near certainty that it's not a coincidence. But while we gather the data, we're going to keep rolling the dice while we try to figure it out? How does that make any sense? We already know it's far less safe than normal planes, we just don't know exactly why.

--

Edit to add: The statement the FAA made yesterday is pretty indefensible imo. "Nobody has provided data to us that would warrant action". Uh, how about the data that two of the planes crashed? This idea that you wait until you figure out exactly what causes the crash is idiotic. Oh, hey, people who eat this mushroom seem to die a lot, but we don't know exactly how the mushroom killed them so I proclaim SAFE TO EAT.

Good on them for finally standing up to the Boeing CEO and catching up to the rest of the world though, I guess.

Finally

Lol, shuffle. Nice cutting off my next sentence. Yup, you're just a logically sound, totally reasonable person.

Because its unlikely. Unlikely enough, imo, to be an acceptable risk.


Um... I addressed this. [Hint: We have more evidence than just the two planes crashed]

Yes. It's what we do every time a plane crashes. A plane crash of a model absolutely makes that model less safe than we thought the day before.

Fair enough. I don't think most people define one crash every few months as an acceptable risk. And I doubt the FAA does, either.

It seems I can say it until I'm blue in the face, so this will be my last time: the probability of a crash now is lower than the probability of a crash before these accidents.

Even IF the odds of a plane crash was one every 5 months (it wasn't), that is no longer the odds now.

According to this Slashdot post:

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/0...ckpit-software

it appears that the problem may be linked to faulty or confusing data from a single sensor in the flight control system's stall avoidance software. There have been previous crashes (and near crashes) where the root cause was faulty sensor data leading to pilot confusion and error, so an immediate grounding is justified.

No one knows that at this point.

.

Says nothing about the recent crash. Would it be surprising if it was the same reason? No. But we still don't know about this one.

ok ikes

Is that some sort of politard slam?

You have no idea what the exact probability is because you don't know what caused the accidents. It could theoretically be something that becomes more of a problem over time, so the probability isn't necessarily lower.

And even if I granted your assumption, you would still have no idea where the probability falls between 2 crashes every 5 months and normal plane safety. It could still be far below an acceptable level, and indeed, I'd say that is much more likely again given what bobman explained. "More safe than 2 crashes every 5 months" can still be very unsafe!

IMO the scrutiny is good for passenger safety on this type of plane that rates to grow increasingly popular over time. The added urgency of the grounding will probably expedite things, and even if we can’t 100% sniff it out I’m sure some things will be enhanced. Shining a light on safety seems fine.