Companies should just take it upon themselves

Canada following the USA I do not know how they are not grounding the plane when so many countries are and the fact that Boeing says they have a software upgrade.

You guys talk like these planes are dropping out of the sky like dead birds.

And haven't actually responded with a reason that they should be grounded based in actual facts.

Look Shuffle, I can find experts too!

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/busi...space-in-wake/

I know this is good politics and good punditry. And definitely what people want to hear. But... uh... its pretty stupid to think that anybody in any industry can do this.

Two did. What number and how many lives lost is your threshold?

Do you drive a car?

Straw man.

If the bolded is in fact the problem (and neither of us know, so it really doesn't matter), it would be completely unacceptable in the industries I've worked in. Considering the consequences for the pilot not knowing which system to turn off or you know, having a brain fart, it's kinda crazy that the planes are still flying without the software being fixed.

jt217, I'm not sure exactly what you mean?

I think its unacceptable in terms of the first accident. And I suspect that will be a factor in the report for that accident. That being said, there are reports that on a preceding flight the pilots hit this problem and knew to turn it off. So it may be a matter of insufficient documentation / training combined with a system that shouldn't rely on training.

In terms of where we're at now, it doesn't seem unacceptable to me at all (In terms of planes should be grounded). Pilots have a number of procedures they need to memorize and know how to carry out for problems like this. Obviously you need to minimize the number of these procedures which is why a software fix to decrease the likelihood of MCAS failures is being worked on.

Planes are dropping out of the sky by airline industry standards

I am not an expert on the 737, but from what I have heard turning off the system is the the same procedure as dealing with runaway trim. Runaway trim is a problem in all aircraft with a powered trim system (every modern airliner and most small planes). It will quickly force a plane into the ground or pitch up into a stall, which is why it is part of the training for all pilots to deal with it, and as I understand the MCAS system uses the same procedure to turn it off.

That being said, it is suspicious that the Ethiopan crew didn't use that procedure because if you're flying a 737 Max surely you'd be familiar with the Lion Air crash? Two crashes from what look like the same cause in 52,000 hours looks real real bad. So my first thought was that they ought to ground the fleet. But NOT grounding it is not evidence of regulatory capture, and neither is issuing an AD(airworthiness directive) that gives a grace period to fix an issue.

ADs like that occur all the time with EVERY aircraft type, and only a very small percentage would ground a fleet until the issue is fixed. Simple, small aircraft will have dozens of ADs published for the type over the years, and an airliner would likely have hundreds of ADs out, with usually none of them grounding the fleet.

It's possible that the other countries grounding their 737 Max aircraft is just out of panic and political pressure, and the FAA is the just being rational. Or maybe the FAA is making a mistake. If it is a mistake I'd be surprised if it was due to regulatory capture. Their incentives are about 100x stronger in the other direction: if they allow unsafe aircraft to fly and there's a crash they will be absolutely crucified.

I’ve got a flight via Southwest on a 737 MAX next month to a poker tournament. I understand that these incidents are so tiny with how many flights there are, but part of me wants to change my flight.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It is an interesting exercise in risk assessment. The current possibilities include (1) the second accident is completely unrelated to the first accident (2) the pilots or maintenance guys in Ethopia screwed up in the fix or training in how to respond to it or (3) there exists a yet undiagnosed flaw that could lead to crashes despite following the best current recommended practices. Obviously some countries believe that the downside of #3 is so high that they should ground the planes just in case that is what is going on. What percentage of risk justifies that decision? What if it is only 1% to be #3? At what level of risk would you take that action? If the plane in question was the newest Airbus, would that affect the decision making at the FAA?

I flew on a 737-Max today. It was uneventful although a number of people tried to get changed to a different flight.

Add whole of the EU and Indian Airspace

Usa #1
Money talks
Usa #1

No, just Shuffle.

NEW: CEO Dennis Boeing spoke by phone with TRUMP this a.m.

Fixed tweet to save time.

As a total aviation layman but Air Disaster's TV show fan, this seems like the right idea. Won't be a while until we know for sure. They should be able to figure out what went wrong with time.

Could USA not grounding them be because there is some sort of known issue and our companies have compensated for it in some way better than the foreign companies through enhanced training, protocols or whatever? Or that just wishful thinking?

Otherwise Occams Razor strongly favors something being seriously wrong with the plane given the relative rarity of crashes in planes overall.

It's unlikely those three incidents have anything to do with the MCAS. The autopilot was on for all three and MCAS is not supposed to activate unless they're in manual mode.

Those incidents of uncommanded trim do sound concerning by themselves, though I don't know how that compares to other aircraft.

Sounds like delusional thinking.

No no. Ethiopian Airlines is clearly the pinnacle of commercial aviation.

There could easily be information that's not available to us, but it really seems to come down to the judgement call on if relying on pilots being aware and able to address this issue with training in the short term is sufficient risk mitigation.

Reasonable people can probably disagree on the judgement call there.

Saying they should be grounded because two planes have crashed seems insufficient to me though given that enough time has passed that we actually have a fairly good idea of what happened in the first crash. The chance of there being some other fatal flaw in the 737 MAX that has been yet undiscovered is really quite low. I guess reasonable people can disagree here as well - but I suspect the people thinking we should ground the plane don't really have a good sense of the risks we're already taking. You could basically make the argument (for safety!) that since plane crashes are so rare any single crash of a plane should ground that model. There are definitely many cases where a crash exposes some "flaw" in the design of the plane that needs to be remediated.

The fact that modern airliners are so safe is what makes it trivial to conclude that the MAX 8 is much less safe. It is absolutely exactly the scene from Casino where the politically connected nephew lets a crooked operator win a slots jackpot three times. The first crash can be chance, but the second crash ~proves that there's something else going on. If you fly the plane until there's a third crash, you're either crooked or you're too dumb to be deciding whether planes are safe.