UK joins countries blocking Boeing 737 MAX | Hacker News Reader

UK joins countries blocking Boeing 737 MAX

caa.co.uk

46 pointslloyd67822 comments

Test of credibility for the FAA and China’s aviation authorities.

If the crash was due to pilot or maintenance error, the FAA’s prudent process is re-affirmed. If it was a certification mistake, Beijing will have a legitimate claim to being a new global aviation authority.

Two different incidents of a similar nature in the span of six months suggests that there is something wrong with the aircraft. China may be playing politics, but the operators have zero incentive to do so. The FAA should begin an investigation and ground the plane if necessary to do so ASAP.

> China may be playing politics

all grounded 737 max in China were replaced by 737-800, playing politics to support and promote 737-800 from the exact same company?

that is a cute idea.

Any sources of report on 737 800 replacing the 737 max? Hope that the 800 does not have the same issue.

The 737-800 is part of the 737 "NG" series and does not have the MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System). This is a feature of the MAX series which has been implicated in the Lion Air crash:

http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm

> Hope that the 800 does not have the same issue.

No "hope" required - it doesn't.

Agree, that's a winning twice the jackpot at the lottery kind of probability that the plane is not involved.

That may be the perception, yes, and many people will go along with that. I disagree.

My view is that it is too early for a strong view to be taken either way, therefore differing views are likely to be taken, and I don't think either side is stupid for doing so. If the FAA come out in a couple of days time and say that they want to ground the aircraft too, I also won't think they are losing face. It simply is a process of giving out the best advice available at the time, and revising it when more information is available.

Sometimes a person/organisation picks a decision at random, with too little information. The ones that get it right are praised, and people think that they are better than the ones that got it wrong. However, if it truly was picked at random with too little information, then no one side is better than the other, regardless of which one "won".

I wouldn't say it was picked at random when there is little information available. It seems to me like an application of the precautionary principle. In this case there is a plausible risk that the problem extents to other 737 MAX airplanes, and thus to prevent harm it's better to block the use until there is certainty about the situation.

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

It's likely a (deliberate) training fault on the part of Boeing here.

The new engines+nacelles change the handling characteristics of the aircraft and add a substantial pitch-up characteristic. Boeing wanted to brand this as a drop-in replacement for your existing 737 fleet requiring no additional re-training beyond normal ongoing certifications, so they added new systems to address this flight characteristic, and neglected to document this in their flight manuals or any of their training materials. The system activated erroneously in-flight and the pilots could not cancel a system they did not know existed.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/u-s-p...

https://outline.com/t78kad

https://youtu.be/zfQW0upkVus?t=220

There are other contributing factors here, there are apparently multiple failure conditions that can activate this system without appropriate degrees of redundancy (which is a design fault and will probably be rectified at some point), but the primary cause here is that Boeing suppressed information about this system's existence in an attempt to make their new aircraft more attractive compared to Airbus's alternatives.

The aircraft itself is not faulty in the sense that it cannot be controlled when these failure conditions occur. Boeing was negligent in its training and marketing of these aircraft.

I can't believe how many comments I've had to wade through to find the one person in these threads talking any sense. This isn't an "us vs them" situation. Different countries and organisations have different approaches, procedures, and decision making processes in place when dealing with these things.

Nobody has to be "right" or "wrong". It's a complicated situation with incomplete information and no right answer.

Related current discussions:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19367871

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19365108

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19365179

This is scary way of thinking:

,,At this time there are no facts on the cause of the accident other than news reports,” American Airlines said. “We have full confidence in the aircraft and our crew members, who are the best and most experienced in the industry.” The airline added it would continue to monitor the investigation into the crash.

An investigation that starts with having full confidence is not a real investigation. First get the facts, then have confidence.

> “American Airlines extends our condolences to the families and friends of those on board Ethiopian Airlines flight 302. At this time there are no facts on the cause of the accident other than news reports,”

American Airlines' statement feels a little disingenuous considering it is ignoring the context of the Ethiopian Airlines crash. The Lion Air crash has significantly more than just "news reports" including the FAA Emergency Airworthiness Directive (2018-23-51) and a Continued Airworthiness Directive (2019-03-11), and a preliminary report.

AA's "full confidence" in the aircraft seems to contradict even the FAA which has already requested that Boeing make changes to the aircraft.

AA's (and Southwest's) 737 Max aircraft have some differences to those flown by most other operators, including Lion Air, with regards to the display of AOA indicators and the "AOA disagree" warning light.

I can imagine these optional indicators make it easier for pilots to quickly diagnose if an AOA sensor fault is causing misbehavior of the MCAS, and gives AA's pilots more confidence in their aircraft.

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines...

Is it typical to not only ground a plane in your country, but to also ban overflying?

Sure. If aircraft are falling out of the sky, it poses a risk not only to people in the air but to those on the ground, especially in a densely-populated country like the UK.

Oh, I get the logic, but dunno if this is common.

Since the regulators are jumping the gun on these incidents before investigations are complete, it seems odd to ban overflying when 2 crashes at takeoff occurred.

Though overflying could mean having to emergency land in your territory at any time.

I don't think it's unusual. The EU, for example, maintains a list of airlines banned from entering EU airspace because of safety deficiencies:

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

The UK is surrounded by foreign airports. If the aircraft's flight plan would have taken it over the UK (e.g. Paris to Dublin, Dublin to Copenhagen) even a crash a few minutes after take-off could impact the UK. Banning it in the airspace makes it so flight plans cannot even place the aircraft there.

If you're going to ban something at all, you might have well do it correctly. There's no value in half measures, or allowing loopholes.

I wonder what that means for ETOPS: do you have to exclude airspace that you cannot overfly?

Though it looks like more and more countries are closing their airspace. I’m guessing some countries are waiting for some flights to takeoff so they can ground them without stranding too many of their nationals.

This will probably get a lot of downvotes, but it's obvious that China, Singapore and the UK care more about their citizen and the safety of their people than the US currently does.

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