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Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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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.

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.

> 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.

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

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?

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