Hacker News Reader

Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

I just had a 737 MAX fly low almost over my house [1]. That descending left turn at around 2300 ft was centered on roughly my neighborhood. (The flight track shown on Flightware is displaced to the NW a bit).

[1] https://flightaware.com/live/flight/BOE1/history/20190403/17...

View on HN

That one was a Boeing 737 MAX 7 "Boeing 737 MAX 7 (twin-jet)".

Isn't it only the 737 MAX 8 + 9s that are grounded?

According to this article it is just the 8s and 9s.

> The United States will follow much of the rest of the world in grounding Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 jets after the models were involved in two deadly plane crashes in five months.

The Boeing 737 MAX 8s and 9s are the ones with the bigger engines and single sensor MCAS that is essentially a single point of failure.

The 737 MAX 8 and 9 are essentially new planes, they should have just made new versions but they wanted to squeeze this into existing certifications and training to cut costs for Boeing and airliners. No idea why the FAA allowed them to do this. It has some blowback for Boeing as now people think all 737s are bad.

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/13/18264348/t...

> No idea why the FAA allowed them to do this.

Because Boeing essentially is the FAA.

> The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faile...

Isn't it only the 737 MAX 8 + 9s that are grounded?

Only 8s and 9s have been produced so far. I'm not even sure that anyone other than Southwest has ordered the MAX 7 (it's less of an improvement over the -700 than the 8 and 9 are over the -800 and -900/-900ER). There are no big conspiracies here just no sense in grounding planes that don't exist (or haven't been delivered).

https://www.planespotters.net/production-list/Boeing/737/737...

Indeed, only max 8 and 9 are grounded afaik

Because no customers have MAX 7s and thus no MAX 7s could possibly be in revenue service with passengers. If Southwest tried to take delivery of and operate one of their MAX 7s in revenue service you can bet the FAA would have a conniption fit.

That's a MAX 7. Only the MAX 8 and MAX 9 are grounded. See the FAA order here: https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/Emergency_Order.pdf

> Effective immediately, this Order prohibits the operation of Boeing Company Model 737-8 and Boeing Company Model 737-9 airplanes by U.S. certificated operators. This Order also prohibits the operation of Boeing Company Model 737-8 and Boeing Company Model 737-9 series airplanes in the territory of the United States.

Apparently their CEO was in it, dogfooding https://twitter.com/BoeingCEO/status/1113539958139183104

47.734600, -122.604500

https://www.google.com/maps/place/47%C2%B044'04.6%22N+122%C2...

I thought they were grounded.

Edit: Checked flightaware, it was Boing itself flying it.

Only from commercial service

Sort of. All flights in U.S. territory, and by U.S. airlines anywhere in the world, are banned. Non-passenger flights can be authorized but they require either a Special Flight Permit (a specific process for authorizing ferry flights of any non-airworthy aircraft) or an Experimental Airworthiness Certificate (which you may know of from homebuilts, but in this case it's for testing design changes).[1]

1. https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/Emergency_Order.pdf

Boeing's flying test-flights to test software fixes etc out of their Seattle facility

Southwest Airlines was allowed to fly all of their grounded jets to a facility in Arizona a few weeks after the initial grounding. The FAA allows this as long as there are no passengers on board.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com