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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

Especially one that the FAA tried to pooh pooh as long as it could. It was amazing to watch the goodwill and trust accumulated over decades crumble to nothing in a few hours as the European countries one by one banned the airline from their airspace but did not ground them. It was the EASA telling the FAA to do the right thing. They didn't and then finally the EASA did ground the plane. I really can't remember any other time when the EASA and the FAA disagreed especially this big.

https://www.thejournal.ie/us-ireland-boeing-4538567-Mar2019/

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It was the Chinese Authorities who moved first and the we-outsource-our-job-to-Boeing FAA last.

China has recently produced some competing planes and has more of an authoritarian hold on the industry. About 20% of the Max stock was across a few of Chinese airlines which wasn’t a huge number.

The last one also happened in SEA and had some initial duelling finger pointing so it worked well as a PR gambit to be the first to block it.

Especially in the middle of a trade war involving product quality issues and Boeing is the closest thing to a US state run aircraft manufacturer. It’s always been a beacon of American protectionism well before the recent administration.

So basically there was a ton of political will potentially involved here.

My perception is different.

It was appropriate, I think, for the FAA not to ground the fleet after the first crash. It was also arguably appropriate for the FAA not to ground the fleet immediately after the second crash, but then after some time when it became apparent that the failure mode was sufficiently similar (as they did).

However, what has emerged since then certainly damaged the reputation of the FAA. But it was not a matter of a few hours, it was a matter of careful investigation and evaluation over months.

Except there are reports some pilots had already raised concerns about the safety of the MAX, even before both of these crashes.

If true, that would indicate these pilot reports were not given the full scrutiny that they deserved.

Well, as you said yourself, the FAA itself calculated the chance of a MAX crash to be significant higher than other models.

Sure, those things take time, but a more decisive action should have been taken sooner.

It might not justify a full ground but at least it should have justified a very strongly worded Advisory Notice to pilots (not sure of the specific nomenclature for this document) also the AOA disagree light should have been made default ASAP.

So no, FAA has a lot to blame here.

It's been reported that an FAA analysis after the first crash concluded that - without modification - MCAS was expected to cause an additional 15 crashes over the service life of the 737 MAX. It seems that when the second aircraft crashed Boeing was already working on a new version of MCAS, but they and the FAA decided to keep this quiet and keep the aircraft flying. I think that this decision accepted rather a lot of risk to life, compared to what I would expect from civil aviation.

"Peter Defazio, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said an FAA analysis following the Lion Air accident but before the Ethiopian Airlines crash concluded there would be 15 fatal MAX accidents if there was no fix to MCAS. DeFazio asked Dickson why wasn’t airplane grounded then? He did not have an answer."

https://leehamnews.com/2019/12/11/faa-no-max-certification-u... (I think the first report was in the WSJ, but that's behind a paywall)

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