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Comment by hu3 | Hacker News Reader

A slap in the face to the comments that were dismissing concerns as overreactions and stating that 737-MAX would return to operation shortly. Not in EU at least.

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As far as I know this is one of the rare few, read I can't recall one, occasions in which EASA didn't accept FAA certification. Usually it is cross- certification between the two. Things are getting interesting and not necessarily in a good way as cooperation is reduced. That it makes sense in this special case is only further proof.

I think EASA doesn't trust the FAA here because the FAA had less involvement in the original certification than some are comfortable with. So rather that asking the FAA to certify the entire plane and maybe risk a similar procedure (Boeing self-certifies most of it), they'll do it themselves.

What I'm curious is whether EASA has similar certification shortcu... optimizations for Airbus.

I hope they don't. But Boeing not being trustworthy does not mean that Airbus isn't.

Just over a year ago Airbus paid a fine to Germany for bribery. So it appears they have their own corruption problems.

Wasn't that for sales though?

I'm not sure I'm willing to narrow the goalposts that much just so I can absolve Airbus from misbehaving. And that's just the most recent example easy to find with a quick Google search.

Of course Airbus misbehaved and is probably still misbehaving in some manner. The question is whether they are misbehaving when it comes to safety.

Yes, those were bribes that Airbus discovered in their sales department and reported to the authorities. The issue seemed to revolve around paying middlemen for introductions in certain countries.

It’s worse than that, the FAA has begun to have an attitude that keeping Boeing’s profits up is important, as managers within the FAA constantly pushed to delegate certification authority to Boeing itself.

I do know that certain certification tasks actually cam be done by the designing company if that company is properly audited and certified by EASA. Just how broad this is and what the differences are between FAA and EASA procedures, details are the very important factor here, I don't know. I was just involved in some EASA-derived certification questions for military aircraft for a short time to provide some logistics perspective. So I am by no means an expert on that.

After 346 people died and what we know now, it's obvious that the FAA is not a trusted partner.

Very true. And by being sloppy the FAA and Boeing are risking to throw the years of work that went into harmonizing aircraft certification away.

And they risked the lives of passengers and crew. Which, at least in my book, are cardinal sins in aerospace. A sector that brides itself with safety. This just cannot happen and yet it did. That now Boeing and others are trying to blame dead pilots is only making things worse.

Yes, it necessarily IS a good thing for cooperation to be reduced: the FAA has proven that it cannot be trusted at all for airplane certification. The EU needs to stop trusting the US for anything at all, and start doing more for itself.

When the US elected Trump, that should have been the signal that the US could no longer be relied on. Of course, there were many signs and problems before (like when W. Bush was elected and started 2 wars), but Trump being elected should have been the obvious last straw.

Less cooperation between the FAA and EASA is not at all good. The whole reason aviation is so safe these days is because we've had good international cooperation from the beginning. The correct answer here is to work together to build/rebuild trust as necessary.

No, it's not, unless you're somehow going to wipe out all the leadership of the FAA and start all over. That obviously isn't going to happen any time soon, and "we're sorry" isn't going to cut it when the FAA is obviously more interested in Boeing's corporate profits than passenger safety, so they simply cannot be trusted again any time soon.

Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. The 737 MAX was type certified by the FAA on March 8, 2017. That seems like rather a stretch to blame the 737 MAX certification on Trump's election.

The corruption problems at the FAA predate Trump, it's true, but his election is just the latest thing showing just how bad things are.

Oh, I'll agree that Trump's election shows that there are problems. It just doesn't show that there are problems at the FAA. And the 737 Max shows that there were problems at Obama's FAA.

The FAA would lead and the rest of the world would follow. This is now history.

I think even more so than Boeing itself, people's confidence in the FAA has been completely shattered. Personally I'm not going to take their word anymore for the safety of the planes I fly on; I'll be looking at the EASA's rulings.

Things are certainly looking bullish for Airbus in the aftermath of this.

And they just extended the range of the A220.

For people who want to learn more

https://simpleflying.com/airbus-a220-upgrades/

Time to extend the plane and make it an A320/738-8 sized A220-500!

Make it a double decker single-aisle 2/3 seat split and name it A280.

Love it ;) Upper deck is a business 1/1

Tongue-in-cheek? I thought this kind of extending was what people are blasting Boeing for?

I think they will need to go easy on this in order to avoid White House getting involved.

To be honest, if the American government got involved to protect Boeing, that would be even worse for Boeing, and nearly fatal to the authoritative status of the FAA. It would pretty much confirm what most air travelers are thinking. That the US government cares a good deal more about keeping Boeing afloat than it cares about our safety.

At the same time, Boeing and the FAA have already taken pretty big hits. So game theoretically speaking, why not go all in?

Tough to say which is the worse tactic for the US government to follow right now? (If we're talking about landing in the best position long term.) Taking the high road? Or just letting the corruption show?

I'm no Trump fan but he actually did the right thing in this case (force the grounding of the MAX when the FAA was still in denial).

There was an interesting Mentour Pilot about this, essentially the lead time for a new airplane order is in the order of years, and there are other costs as well. If you've built your business around one specific type of jet it's costly to move to the competitors, which is why the "no type rating change" was so important for the max.

Perhaps for future large orders this may be a boon for Airbus, but that would be in the longer medium term, and a lot can happen between then and now.

As it is, having two large companies trading blows is better than one dominating the market, so I hope Boeing are humbled, have a root and branch overhaul of how they conduct business, and shareholders take a hit, but that they survive.

You still have the FAA and related regulations issues, this kind of unsafe behavior should have been caught early. Is FAA regulating other companies and products? those also would need investigated

Most definitely - and the way that FAA essentially outsources the approval back to the manufacturer is something that needs to change ... but is there the will in the Senate and White House to spend more on the FAA?

From what I read the FAA people were paid by Boeing in the past but they were reporting to FAA, it makes sense , you want your plane,drone other device certified you pay the expenses of the engineers that will do the checks, there should be no need to pay them with public money.

> If you've built your business around one specific type of jet it's costly to move to the competitors, which is why the "no type rating change" was so important for the max.

Yes it is costly but you know what? It's BS

Because the 737 line (nor the A320 nor any other line) is not going to last forever. (Especially wrt widebodies but that's another issue as I don't know if the A330Neo and the 777X have the same type as their predecessors)

EVERY airline should be planning ahead. I'm thinking if Southwest and/or Ryanair are not thinking about keep flying their NGs and forget all about this MAX stuff for one or two years at least (FR delayed their MAX deliveries last I heard)

Now Airbus just put out the NEO and they probably have room for another refresh on that platform but probably not two refreshes. But again, it won't last forever

Though the tough part for airlines is two: pilots can't switch between 2 types and bringing another type slowly is hard. But it is something they will have to do eventually

Just because they'll have to fly two types eventually doesn't mean they want to spend on making the switch now, especially not with an airframe that is an incremental improvement in fuel economy. (Not to mention that other OEM offerings suddenly look a lot more viable for operators wanting newer generation narrowbodies if they're forced to change type certificates regardless)

Genuinely new types that might offer a step change in operating economics that's worth all the hassle carry the risk of more aircraft programme delays and early operational issues anyway.

And Boeing's original plan was to do a clean-sheet redesign, but Airbus launched the A320neo which within six months had over 1k orders, and Boeing felt commercial pressure from its customers to launch something comparable (a re-engining, not a clean-sheet design) so its customers weren't being undercut by their competitors (who would then have lower fuel costs, etc.).

Airbus notably have recently been hiring for a clean-sheet A320 successor (though there's no firm commitment to that, yet), despite it being a 20 year newer design than the 737.

A330, A340 and A350 have the same type so the A330Neo almost certainly does.

I'm not sure.

First of all they will not capitalize on this. Airlines as well as manufacturers never use (lack of) security with a competitor as a marketing argument.

Moreover. Order books for the main competitor, The A320NEO and derivatives, are full until something like 2025.

It's possible that it's an advantage for the A220 (Bombardier C series) as some commenter pointed out. Which, incidentally, is a fantastic passenger experience for short - to medium haul flights.

> Airlines as well as manufacturers never use (lack of) security with a competitor as a marketing argument.

Suspect they're very happy to use consumer confidence as a marketing argument though.

I wish Boeing would rather FINALLY do the right thing, take their billion dollar earnings and putting it into R&D to build a new, modern 2020s design aircraft into the sky for the next decades rather than it's umpteenth warm-up of their 1960s design.

Boeing is an American corporation, so they're not going to do that. That kind of strategy doesn't yield maximum next-quarter profits.

Very very true. No one builds long term value anymore. All chase the mighty 3 month cycle of doom!

HN is traditionally quite pro-US to the point that many here were defending Boeing during the 737 Max fiasco. Not to mentions the vitriol against the EU when it fined American tech giants.

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