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Comment by tzakrajs | Hacker News Reader

What does the US know that the EU or China doesn't which gives them such confidence? Any clues?

In short, the Max-8 ships with a shitty default configuration. After the first crash, the FAA and the major american airlines with these planes aggressively updated the instrument panel settings, warnings and processes to ensure pilots were aware if there was a sensor disagreement that could cause the MCAS system to accidentally stall. (I know this is true for Southwest, I assume the rest followed suit.) While the default configuration and the behavior of the MCAS system are both hideously awful, the FAA trusts their process to have fixed it, and I think their results back up the call.

You mentioned "know this is true for Southwest" do you have a source by chance?

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

"Shitty default configuration" I suspect this goes by another name: it's a configuration that focus on commonality with the previous generation

Because adding the indicator and how to handle situations will add training hours, this is not done.

But I'm glad Southwest is doing it.

Safety is always a priority, but it's never the only one: There's also an economical factor in the equation. Other nations have less to lose by grounding these planes, leading to a different result between 'risking human lives' vs 'causing financial impact'.

Finally, airplanes may have different configurations. I only skimmed some discussions and I'm not well versed in the subject so take what I say with a grain of salt, but there seem potential differences in configurations, e.g. AOA disagree indicators (which is related to the potential cause for both accidents); Some airlines (I think South West at least) also announced changes w.r.t. those systems after the Lion Air accident. That might also change the 'risking human lives' variable in the equation.

> Other nations have less to lose by grounding these planes

By what measure?

By financial measure. If Norway grounds the plane (by not allowing it in its airspace), it impacts their (and other nations) airlines. If the US ground the plane, it impacts their (and other nations) airlines, and their airplane manufacturer. (The impact for the latter is hard to measure, particularly for the long-term).

This is a very new plane, and most deliveries so far have been in the US or China. In particular, it's easy for EASA to ground it; there are only a handful operating in Europe anyway. Impact of the China grounding would be larger, tho.

These other nations are staffed by people just like you and I who understand why the US (as in the regulator, head of the executive branch, the states, and the discretion of the private companies involved) would be incapable of doing the same calculus.

They know of the incestuous relationship with the regulators and private industry and its history, just as much as a US citizen is aware of an irrelevant country's corruption and that country's chronic inability to reform it.

So they just make the call: ground it, the US can't, but they will do a comprehensive investigation. Let it play out.

They know Boeing makes up 10.5% of the Dow... [1] or it did before these crashes, currently under 10% due the the stock price dropping

[1] http://indexarb.com/indexComponentWtsDJ.html

The FAA was intentionally made independent of airline advocacy to avoid conflicts of interest that previous government agencies overseeing air travel in the past had. So it’s odd if it’s not based on the data.

If it's based on data why not publishing it?

That's exactly the thing. There is no data to the contrary. You can't prove that the FAA is wrong, because we don't know why both planes crashed.

We have assumptions, and there's a public perception - but it may not be correct.

> You can't prove that the FAA is wrong, because we don't know why both planes crashed.

From an outsider's perspective is the FAA's task to prove that both those crashes were unrelated to each other, because for a very safe industry like aviation a slight correlation (two almost identical planes crashed in a span of 6 months in clear-weather conditions) is often times seen as causation by most of the people directly involved: potential customers, the general public that helps pay the taxes that keep both Boeing and Airbus making airplanes etc.

But we do have data: two airplanes of the exact same model crashed within less than 6 months, sure maybe that's just an outlier and not indicative of poor safety but at this point it falls on them to prove that.

Well they’re saying there is no data to indicate a systemic problem at this point, which at face value seems fair since very little is known. They tend to not jump to conclusions since they’ve had some pretty bad experiences in the past doing that.

So you are saying they don't have data to rely on, then? Finally it's the same information US and EU authorities rely on: Two incidents with planes in short order where the manufacturer withheld crucial information. I think it's fair to say that either the EASA or the FAA decision was politically motivated.

You can’t have a systemic problem based on withheld information after that information has been disclosed. It’s known at this point, so that means they don’t know what the issue is.

> "The FAA was intentionally made independent of airline advocacy"

The FAA is currently lead by an airline lobbyist, so that's a fucking joke.

Boeing’s share price is currently 375

In December it was 316.

It’s lost 2 months of gains.

Dow is a horrible index. It's price-weighted, i.e. higher priced stock has a greater influence than lower priced stock on the index. Apple at $180/share has 2+ times less influence than Boeing at $375/share on the index, and yet Apple's market cap is $850B, 4 times of Boeing's $212B market cap.

The Dow index is pure BS.

It boggles my mind that news reports feature the Dow so prominently given how much worse it is than the S&P 500. The Dow is pretty much unsuitable for any purpose save for historical comparisons dating back prior to the advent of the S&P 500.

The cost of grounding.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/...

They know that they have to protect the economic interests of their companies and if that means blaming everything on '3rd world pilots', (with the implied racism and all that), so be it.

Nothing. Boeing lobby power in US is exceptional. That's the only reason.

Our actual current Secretary of Defense spent 30 years at Boeing.

And that has zero relevance here as the FAA is Department of Transportation.

Right, and the departments are completely separated and don't work on a 'You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' basis, ever. /s

Money.

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