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Comment by ergothus | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have any idea WHY the US was the holdout here? I'm not well-versed, but my understanding is that aviation safety is generally very good, and that the US is not an outlier on the bad side. While grounding a plane at this point is premature from the stance of conclusion, it seems reasonable from the standpoint of excessive caution that seems to be the norm for the industry.

I can conjecture about Boeing being a big US manufacturer, etc, but is there any evidence at all for why the US held out on this one? My initial reaction was that there must be a good reason for the holdout, given our safety record, but on reading more about it, I've not seen one. (Again, relative to the stance of excessive caution).

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For the sake of argument: their historical reputation allowed them to make determinations of safety independent of political considerations that other aviation authorities must make.

While it certainly sounds like there is a flaw in how the system handles erroneous sensor data, or that the interface promotes incorrect actions, the independent groundings of 737 MAX 8 planes probably are not independent in sense of each authority coming to its own determination based on their professional opinions alone. It would be politically foolish to be the lone holdout in your region.

There is a real cost to grounding these aircraft, and I'd imagine that if they are grounded without specific questions that need to be answered or problems that can be fixed, it becomes even more difficult to un-ground them later.

Boeing and the FAA have a deal to let Boeing self regulate. In exchange they are supposed to tell the FAA of any internal issues. [1]

This of course is insane when you are talking about a for profit business.

[1] https://youtu.be/vWxxtzBTxGU 20min in.

It's a shame this is getting upvoted because it's an incomplete picture.

FAA Delegated Organizations

Page: https://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/designees_...

"Regular FAA oversight of an ODA is accomplished by a team of FAA engineers and inspectors to ensure the ODA holder functions properly and that any approvals or certificates issued meet FAA safety standards."

List of delegated organizations: https://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/designees_...

Spoiler: there's a lot more than Boeing on there.

I don't know about the specific concerns in that video, just replying to the insinuation that Boeing has some strange deal that exempts their planes from oversight by the FAA. They don't.

While there might be issues of regulatory capture (ie too much influence of the regulatee (<- not a word, but it should be...) on the regulator)), my personal opinion is that there were two consistent courses of action:

1. Ground the MAX after the reasons for the Lion Air crash had became clear, as it's not airworthy.

2. Do not ground the MAX, as it's sufficiently airworthy.

This new crash had not provided enough information initially to conclude otherwise.

However, the FAA is sort of arguing that there is now enough new information from the second crash to support the decision to ground it.

This is the answer. The FAA considered the Max 8 after the Lion Air crash and determined that it was safe to fly, even taking into account the cause of the Lion Air crash.

If that was determination was done correctly, then there is no reason to ground every plane of that model, just because another one crashes shortly thereafter.

The FAA obviously is inclined to believe that they did that determination correctly. Of course, they could be wrong.

It will be very interesting to see how the Ethiopian investigation turns out. If the cause was the same as Lion Air, then the FAA will come under tremendous pressure to reconsider what constitutes "safe to fly".

(IMO the industry in general will come under hard questioning about the role of software in compensating for aerodynamic issues. Yeah the military does it, but we have different standards for airlines.)

But if it turns out that some other factor caused the crash, unrelated to the Lion Air cause, then the FAA will come off looking insensitive but ultimately justified in their determination.

Theories I've read so far:

1. Ineptitude 2. Corruption/Greed 3. US planes don't have the same issues that is suspected to be the root cause of other crashes.

4. The issue was pilot operation of the aircraft. Apparently it was possible to disable the old 737 autopilot with stick input despite that not being the method prescribed by the procedures. MAX didn't involve simulator training, so a less disciplined crew in MAX might not correctly disable autopilot in an emergency despite the procedures for doing so still being correct.

This is incorrect. The MCAS doesn't even get triggered when autopilot is on. And surely when a system malfunctions, the issue is not entirely pilot operation.

Terminology issue in the parent: I believe the correct statement would be that in the non-MAX 737, extreme stick movement would countermand auto-trim. In the MAX, this is not the case (at least when MCAS is the bit making adjustments). It was an "undocumented feature" that (less experienced?) pilots were relying on.

I don't know, but I wonder whether they were expecting to have preliminary findings within a few days that would clarify the choice. I gather that it's a more disruptive move for the US than for many of the countries that grounded the plane sooner because the US fleet may be larger.

It's not. Out of US carriers, only Southwest and American fly 737 MAX planes, and they're not a significant part of either fleet.

Is the count not also significant? I don't know enough about the industry to know.

I mentioned it because when I first heard that there were so many other regulatory bodies grounding the fleet, I was surprised about the FAA. When it was pointed out that many of those regulatory bodies represent countries having a handful of these planes to begin with, I was still surprised, but it made a little more sense that the FAA might have more to lose if the decision proved rash.

Southwest has 35 MAX8s (out of a total of 755 aircraft)[0]. American has 24 MAX8s (out of a total of 962 aircraft)[1].

Not a trivial number for either fleet, but I imagine it won't significantly impact their business either.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_fleet

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_fleet

United has a few as well

It looks like they have 14 MAX9s in service. Does the MAX9 have the same issue as the MAX8, and is the MAX9 included in the ground order?

Regulators come and go. The person holding the reigns at even given point in time is potentially not as good or unbiased as the predecessors.

From what I've read so far, there's absolutely no clear indication at this point it was solely pilot error, and common sense dictates you ground the planes before more crashes happen.

Short answer: Capitalism, lobbying, and putting profits over everything.

LOL, every looked at Aeroflot's crash record? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air#Incidents_and_acciden...

5 times as many people died on Aeroflot than any other airline during the Soviet Era.

I believe that the FAA has a strong tradition of acting on evidence, not presumption. It's the flight certification equivalent of "innocent until proven guilty" (although they usually operate at a much lower level of proof than a court of law.)

I don't usually make libertarian-style arguments, but until there's evidence pointing to a specific safety of flight issue from the latest crash there's no justification for the government effectively "taking" airplane owners property by preventing its use.

At the moment there is specific evidence, I have no doubt the FAA will act swiftly.

> effectively "taking" airplane owners property by preventing its use.

...its use for transporting OTHER people/stuff in air over OTHER people's property (and lives). I'd be surprised if the FAA licenses didn't have clauses that basically allowed explicitly this.

Regardless, I don't find your arguments persuasive. The FAA didn't wait for "evidence" before banning cellphones, e-readers, etc on flights; they've grounded planes before investigations were complete before...which was why I asked my initial question: What was different this time.

I agree that the definition of "evidence" they use isn't obvious, and I'm not at all familiar with where the rules for cabin electronics come from.

I'm not saying they can't do it, they obviously can (and just did.) All I'm saying is that there has to be some evidence that the crash is for a reason that implies other aircraft are affected. And obviously the standard for transport category aircraft is higher than for smaller airplanes. But it can't just be "we gotta be sure", because then you can't let anything fly at any time.

Imagine if every time someone had an accident in the same model car you own, the DOT prohibited that model car on the roads "out of an abundance of caution" until it was proven that it was not a design fault in the car. While there arguably would be an improvement in safety, it would also be incredibly disruptive.

What standard of risk would you apply? Because you have to draw the line somewhere.

> What standard of risk would you apply?

Separate question - and your arguments are all logical. My question was "given the standard of risk that HAS been applied, why was this time different?"

The safety record of car travel in the US is dramatically different than the safety record in air travel.

The empirical evidence is there: two crashes.

If an airplane crashes because it's hit by a missile, or because there's a bomb aboard, or because a suicidal pilot flies it into a mountain, that is no reason to ground it.

Thus, more evidence is required to ground an airplane (that has, after all, gone through the certification process), than two crashes.

Two similar crashes within 5 months with an obvious candidate for the root cause https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faa-e...

I agree with the assessment that the MAX has a problem; I'm saying "oh, two crashes" by itself is not sufficient evidence for that conclusion.

As someone pointed out in this thread, there were three B767 hull losses between September and November 2001, but two of those were caused by 9/11 terrorists and don't tell you much about the airworthiness of the aircraft.

It's kind of pedantry to bring up here, though, and distracts from the discussion.

FWIW, IMHO it's not pedantry, it's precisely the core of the discussion. The 737 MAX was deemed airworthy during certification, and deemed airworthy after Lion Air, and a further crash by itself does not change that. It is only the details and circumstances of the second crash that can provide evidence to challenge the conclusion of airworthiness. Just reflexively saying "crash, ground it all" is mistaken.

It is pedantry because the details and circumstances of the second crash are indicative of the same root cause issue.

The point I'm trying to make all along is that it is precisely "those details and circumstances of the second crash" (that have emerged over the last few days) that make it so worrisome and warrant a grounding. It is not the fact of a second crash by itself.

The fundamental question is this: should the plane have been grounded immediately after the second crash? Many here seem to think that yes, obviously. I think that no, one unexplained crash of a certified plane does not warrant grounding. Once details and circumstances emerge that are indicative of some fundamental design flaw, or multiple unexplained crashes (as with the comet), of course ground it.

Is that a substantive disagreement, or "pedantry"?

When the second crash occurred, that was then TWO unexplained 100% fatal crashes within 5 months, with extremely similar circumstances and evidence pointing to the same root cause. Basically, the first crash with lion air had them on red alert for this model of plane. The second crash was nearly identical and was all they needed to ground them instantly.

Has the A320 ever been grounded?

On 24 March 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525, using an Airbus A320, flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf crashed near Digne in the Southern French Alps, killing all 150 on board. They didn't know it was a suicide pilot until after they investigated. Yet, A320s kept flying in the meantime.

On 29 March 2015, Air Canada Flight 624, using an Airbus A320, flying from Toronto to Halifax carrying 138 people crash landed short of the runway. The aircraft was badly damaged and 23 people were injured.

On 14 April 2015, Asiana Airlines Flight 162, an Airbus A320 with 82 people on board, lost height on final approach to Hiroshima Airport in Mihara, Japan, struck an antenna, and skidded onto the runway on its tail, spinning 180 degrees before coming to a stop. Its main landing gear collapsed and the aircraft suffered damage to its left wing and left engine. 27 of the 82 people on board were injured.

Three incidents, on respectable, high-safety airlines within 3 weeks of each other all with the Airbus A320. Yet, those planes weren't grounded, not even for five minutes. Three serious incidents within 3 weeks of each other is "empirical evidence" that the A320 is unsafe.

But we have a crash from Ethiopian Air, on a plane where the first officer had only 200 hours of total flight experience. And another crash months ago on Lion Air (a ridiculously unsafe airline) and that's "empirical evidence" that the airplane is bad?

Read About Lion Air's "safety" culture: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/asia/lion-air-crash...

Lion Air should be grounded. Ethiopia shouldn't be flying planes with student pilots in the right seat. There may be issues with the 8 Max, however, it's a fact that inexperienced pilots, bad maintenance, inferior safety processes and negligence will exacerbate any potential flaws in the aircraft. The fact is that in the case of Lion Air, if it were Southwest Airlines operating those flights in Indonesia, flight 610 never would have crashed. Lion Air had days of reported issues before the crash and they ignored them. Look at Lion Air's incidents and accidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air#Incidents_and_acciden... It seems that can't even taxi a 737 safety, let alone be trusted to fly one. And right now we're complaining about the FAA? We should be complaining about airlines that are being allowed to operate with this slipshod respect for safety.

The US, Canada and Europe hasn't had any 8 Max incidents -- the incidents happened in organizations that were operating in ways that would never be allowed in US, Canada, or Europe. That fact seems to be getting ignored in favor of complaining about the FAA or Boeing. The US flies a lot more 8 Maxes than Ethiopia or Lion Air, yet not a single crash. Is that just coincidence or does the US/Canada/Europe just do a better job?

The situation is radically different:

Asiana Airlines Flight 162 was an Airbus A320-232, manufactured in 2007

Air Canada Flight 624 was an Airbus A320-211 manufactured in 1991

Germanwings Flight 9525 was an Airbus A320-211 manufactured in 1990.

The Asiana and Air Canada incidents were similar, but the aircraft were of different models, one was 7 year old and the other was 24 year old. The German Wings and the Air Canada aircraft were similar models, but both planes were 23-24 year old, and the incidents were completely different.

Compare that to the 737 MAX 8. Two fatal crashes, during the same stage of flight, with identical models, of similar age. 2 out of 350 planes crashed, where the fleet is barely one year old on average.

The two MAX crashes are significantly more severe than the examples you listed (all passengers killed) and both crashes were potentially caused by this specific design flaw https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faa-e...

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