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Cool fact: Niki Lauda is a former F1 driver who is most famous for having severe facial and lung damage from a fiery crash, then returning while his burns were still healing.

The doctors said he still had more operations to undergo to complete his recovery, but when pressed, admitted that the additional operations were for cosmetic reasons and would not affect his ability to drive.

He raced in F1 races with open wounds weeping into his balaclava.

To this day he's known for having only half an ear on one side and very little hair on his head, but until last year when he had a severe lung problem (likely as a consequence of his aforementioned accident)he happily appeared in public at F1 races.

He retired from F1 to focus on his airline, but un-retired and won another F1 championship.

He ran his airline for a while but now is more of a public figure for one of the F1 teams.

The Ron Howard movie Rush is a great treatment of his time in F1.

> The Ron Howard movie Rush is a great treatment of his time in F1.

Agree, probably one of the best racing movies in general.

> People seem to think this is a political move by the China, which may be true

Categorically FALSE. Let's get the facts straight.

1. The initial mandate was only to temporarily ground all 737MAX series for one(1) day (March 11th) not indefinitely. The CAAC (equiv. of FAA in the US) will determine the further action upon an initial report result is released. [1] It also mentioned that CAAC takes zero tolerance to air safety issues, which is consistent in the past 40 years.

2. Out of 350 Boeing's 737MAX series delivered since 2017, about one thirds (96 according to the Chinese news) went to China. To speed up delivery and reduce cost, Boeing actually opened and operated a brand new factory in Zhoushan, China for all deliveries to Chinese market. So Chinese airliners are one biggest early adopters and Boeing's biggest market. The Zhoushan Boeing factory is joint venture with CMAC (a State owned aircraft manufacturer).[2] So a politically move to ban 737Max that may cause significant economical impact for their own state-owned enterprise, which made no sense.

[1]: http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2019-03-11/doc-ihsxncvh1490704.sht...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Program_launch

>I wouldn't put faith in the FAA to be beyond political influence and crack down on an American manufacturer quickly.

I would. The FAA grounded the Boeing 787 after some widely publicized battery fires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_.... I would assume that they would do the same thing here, if this also turned out to be a widespread issue not related to aircraft maintenance or pilot training.

> I would assume that they would do the same thing here, if this also turned out to be a widespread issue not related to aircraft maintenance or pilot training.

Two brand new 737 Max from two different types of airlines crashed in 6 months, what else you need to establish the fact that 737 Max worth to be grounded for a full investigation? How "widespread" it need to be? Maybe a few more crashes are required for FAA to make a move?

FAA's refusal to immediately ground all 737 Max is a pure political move to defend a faulty design that have already killed hundreds of people.

It depends on who died.

Indeed. If this happened to a US airline, I bet the reaction would be quite different.

Yes because FAA understands well the maintenance and training standards of US airlines. These are factors that depend on airline, not airframe, and affect the likelihood of crashes.

I can not speak to Lion Air, but Ethiopian Airlines has a good maintenance and training record. It is widely considered the best airline in Africa and does maintenance for a lot of other airlines on the continent.

All airlines that fly into the US - including Ethiopian - follow FAA rules on maintenance and training. So the FAA already understands the Ethiopian standards well, since they set them.

The cause of this crash hasn't been determined, some witnesses described seeing flames before the plane hit the ground, so it's entirely possible that a cargo hold fire took the plane down.

the black box should be relatively easy to find (assuming it survived), so investigators should have a better idea about the cause soon.

> The cause of this crash hasn't been determined

that is the exact reason why all 737 Max should be immediately grounded for a full investigation.

or are you suggesting to further risk lives just to protect the interests of a company which had two of its brand new jets crashed in 6 months? Will you defend a Russian/Chinese manufacturer posing similar obvious fatal risks to the public when FAA orders all of them to be grounded in the US?

Touché

> Will you defend a Russian/Chinese manufacturer posing similar obvious fatal risks to the public when FAA orders all of them to be grounded in the US?

The person you are replying to made no reference to the countries/governments involved. Please do not assume someone's argument is politically charged if they have said nothing to imply that it is. It assumes the worst of people with no impetus.

The pilots indicated a difficulty controlling the plane before it went down. We certainly can't rule out a cargo hold fire severing control avenues, but it's hard to shake the possibility that the flight software did something goofy after the Lion flight that went down.

what else you need to establish the fact that 737 Max worth to be grounded for a full investigation?

With all my respect, this is an opinion, not a fact. A fact has to be proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Here it's just "likely to be true" at best.

This isn't a court of law. People have died on this aircraft twice in 6 months. Fact beyond reasonable doubt is not the threshold for taking actions of prevention while make sure nothing is wrong with that airframe.

Yes, indeed courts also use "balanced of probabilities" in civil cases which is a much lower threshold that may well be met here.

IIRC, FAA didn’t ground 787 until both Japanese airlines had grounded the 787. With the number of fatalities and accidents new 737 had, it should be grounded by all airlines.

I was checking out a thread about the subject on reddit aviation; half the people are saying this is a political move by China - the other half are checking their flights to make sure they are not flying a 737 MAX.

What happened to better safe than sorry? Obviously this type of plane needs to be grounded until issues are resolved or the two crashes can be definitely be dismissed as a freak coincedence.

Will the reddit aviation answers be different if instead of China, it was Chinese (or another country’s) airlines were announcing one by one, they were grounding the planes?

Honest question... is there a difference between the Chinese government and the Chinese airlines? I know they're not literally led by the government, but I was under the impression the government still wielded disproportionate control over industry in Chine (relative to what we expect in the West).

I'd have thought the UK government [and others in The West] had the ability to legally compel airlines not to fly particular models of aircraft?

If not, then the Chinese system would appear to be superior as safety can trump commercial considerations then.

FAA certainly can do so. Either by decertifying a pane, or issuing various air worthiness directives or other instructions.

Nah if you seriously think so you need to work a bit more on your mental models and probably try to get rid of the simplistic propaganda that you've read. All modern industries are subject to heavy regulations and in many cases the western regulatory system is still sounder than the Chinese one. China was more or less in a wild growth phase of capitalism in the last two decades. Now its regulators are catching up.

It's unusual for airlines to announce that they are grounding planes, but countries do it once in a while.

It would be a very suspect thing.

What you're somewhat observing is the split between Boeing and Airbus fans - if you only wade into airliner discussions periodically you might miss that there are two very entrenched and passionate groups of supporters who take the brand issue all too seriously

I agree. Even if it turns out to be a different cause, who wants to be the airline that gives it the benefit of the doubt in the meantime? The optics at this point if it happens again while this one is still being investigated are awful. The Chinese decision here seems pretty rational.

I would go even further and suggest Boeing ought to ground them. If, as you mentioned, another accident were to happen, irrespective of the impact it would have on that airline, Boeing's reputation would be triply hammered.

Yeah, they dropped the ball on this one. Now they have a growing number of countries grounding it themselves which to me seems like a significantly worse look than if Boeing had proactively done it themselves (also keeps it in the news cycle longer as each new country adds itself to the list).

I don't even understand the "political influence" talk. Political influence so what, China's domestic planes get preferred? There are literally only two brands of commercial planes out there, Boeing and Airbus. People's bias, hysteria and excuse finding are simply amazing.

Please don't try to change history. The FAA only took action after the Japanese (the only major operators at the time) stopped flying them.

The same FAA who is in bed with Boeing I might say. Where in the world can you self-certify anything? What's the point of getting certified if you can do it yourself? Reminds me of self-grading in school. That was only in classes noone ever cared about.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/faa-faulted-for-ou...

German car manufacturers self-certify the CO2 exhausts.

TEPCO certifies their Japanese nuclear plants.

Works great, doesn't it?

It was NOx, and they didn't self certify, they cheated the tests.

Car companies operate their own testing units at their factories. I don’t see how this is different from self certification.

Ex: “Today in Tokyo, Nissan joined the increasing list of automakers who have admitted to falsifying emissions and/or fuel economy figures. The company said it had uncovered falsified data from car exhaust emissions tests at most of its plants based in Japan.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2018/07/09/nissan-adm...

Trust but verify is common worldwide for this stuff. Otherwise governments would need to install and operate a lot of equipment at every factory worldwide.

True, but an entity that goes so far as to cheat on tests is hardly likely to honestly self-certify - it is further evidence that some non-trivial form of verification is necessary.

I am not, however, going to take any position on whether Boeing has done anything wrong until the accident analysis is complete.

> Where in the world can you self-certify anything?

In the US. Self-certification is pervasive in the aviation industry. For ex., an A&P self-certifies her own work. A pilot self-certifies night landing and instrument currency.

Unfortunately, how the FAA acted under a previous administration doesn't tell us much about how it will act under this one. While the permanent civil service has historically been pretty apolitical, that is one of many norms/institutions the Trump administration has aggressively sought to undermine. As a result, some agencies such as the FDA are severely diminished. Why would we expect the current FAA, under an acting administrator while Trump tries to install a Delta exec as its head (after failing to do so for his personal pilot) to act assertively?

if you wait until the extant fleet is already grounded, then re-ground them, then there is no political influence.

Firstly I want to make it clear I agree that without strong evidence otherwise this decision should be assumed to be a technical/bureaucratic one.

However, citing single a 1991 crash as evidence of something 30 years later is a bit extreme - that isn't even in the same century any more. If it was geopolitics or community attitudes, sure. But extrapolating present attitudes from a technical decisions about a thrust reverser is too far.

I couldn't find a milder way to say that while capturing the point. I'm more amused at attitudes to airline safety than anything else.

I wouldn't go as far as calling the Lauda Air anecdote "evidence of something", but there appears to have been a pattern whereby Boeing writes the rule book for test procedures, which are then adopted by the FAA as the standard. Of course, a manufacturer would not publish a set of tests, then promptly fail to pass them.

So the question becomes - assuming this dynamic is still valid today: what independent mechanism exists to ensure Boeing's standards are sufficient?

Worth pointing out that the FAA bought Boeing's claim that the 737 MAX 8, 9 did not require a new type certificate, and so did EASA. However, from what I gather, the Brazilian regulator deemed the MAX with MCAS sufficiently different from prior generations.

So, there is some regulatory independence.

It could be argued the Brazilian authorities are biased towards Embraer, much the same way US authorities might be biases towards Boeing.

It would be a good argument, one that I am interested in hearing.

Do you have some examples to give?

But Embraer doesn't compete directly with that 737

What about the Canadians and Bombardier? The A220/C series is a much closer competitor to the 737 than anything Embraer has to offer and the Canadians still gave Boeing a pass on MCAS.

Worth pointing out that the FAA bought Boeing's claim that the 737 MAX 8, 9 did not require a new type certificate, and so did EASA. However, from what I gather, the Brazilian regulator deemed the MAX with MCAS sufficiently different from prior generations.

The Brazilians required that Boeing document MCAS and include it in the required differences training. MCAS was considered a fairly small difference (if memory serves — "B") by the Brazilians and the MAX is still operating on the same type certificate. The big question in my mind is: why did the FAA not do the same?

>However, citing single a 1991 crash as evidence of something 30 years later is a bit extreme - that isn't even in the same century any more.

2001 and 2000 aren't the same century, doesn't mean there was much change.

These incidents also somewhat echo the earlier 737 rudder issues, which also had multiple total airframe losses with 100%+ fatalities and multiple incidents before it was fully resolved a decade later

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues

Well we might be jumping to conclusions here a quote on the issue from pilots forum: "Runaway stabilizer procedures in the 737 have remained pretty much unchanged since its first flight. The same can be said for pretty much any Boeing airliner. 1 - Turn off the autopilot to see if it's causing the problem. 2 - Oppose the trim manually with the yoke. If that stops it, you're done. 3 - If that doesn't work, then you turn off the stab trim cutout switches.

If MCAS is getting some kind of erroneous AOA signal and inputting an unwanted nose down pitch, guess what? Those procedures will stop it. If pilots at airline X get to step 2 and think they're good and MCAS starts another input after it's initial 10 second trim, then they go to step 3.

If you want to speculate about something, why not start with what position investigators in both of these crashes are going to find the stab cutout switches. If they're not "off", why? MCAS or poor procedures? " https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/2779459-post40.html

OK just random stuff I come up with as someone with no expertise in this field:

> 3 - If that doesn't work, then you turn off the stab trim cutout switches.

And.. If this doesn't work either? What if it seems to make things worse? Is that switch implemented in hardware or software? I don't mean the switch itself: does it just pull a pin high/low for some controller or does it fully disconnect/shut down the offending part?

Especially for the case of "it actually makes things worse" finding that the switch was ultimately left in the "on" position doesn't really help; quite the opposite I'd say (but I'd assume any change to the switch would be logged by the black box to be able to identify this case).

Actually when I saw the altitude log of the first crash I wondered why there was such a steep descend the first time, while the following cycles were much less extreme. So that's my buildup for tomorrow's conspiracy theory, someone else do the flesh out. ;-)

If you dig through the pprune thread on the Lion Air crash you'll find some schematics. The stabilizer trim switches cut power, but the circuits and switches are different between the NG and MAX generations. Assuming there was no damage from the near constant adjustment, disconnecting electrical power from the stabilizer trim motors almost certainly would've resulted in an improvement.

The problem is not the questionable safety record. The problem are the latest revisions 8 - 10 of the flight software, which enabled the new anti-stall feature by default automatically.

Previously anti-stall just signaled a warning, now it automatically turns the nose down, fighting the pilots attempt to ascend the machine after a start.

This is a serious security defect.

#1 anti-stall being fooled by some strong AOA sensor signal on initial ascend. This is not a stall, this a normal start procedure.

#2 anti-stall turned on by default automatically.

This already caused two major crashes with zero survivors. The attempt to blame the pilots not reading the updated documentation is also criminal behavior. Boeing might go bankrupt over this. I hope so.

> This already caused two major crashes with zero survivors.

Has that been confirmed or are you just assuming it was the cause of the second crash?

The public flight data looks very similar; for lack of any further details people will assume the problem had a similar root cause. Either way, his point isn't wrong- enabling a feature that can take control of the aircraft where it could not previously needs to be properly communicated. If pilots flew the older generations for several years they would not expect this behavior.

Not yet confirmed, but all evidence points to it.

Even without a single confirmed crash it's a strong SW security problem.

I disagree your conclusions, as the cause of the two crashes was not determined yet to my knowledge. But your description of the problem sounds plausible at least, so I upvoted your comment anyway.

> or to perform a test flight with him and two pilots attempting a deliberate reverse thrust deployment mid-flight

Reminds me of the scene in "Battleship" when Liam Neesons character tells the gov big-wig he will fly into the barrier-like thing as soon as he would come down to strap himself into the co-pilot's seat.