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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

This will be a difficult investigation.

As we have seen with other Boeing crashes, Boeing will blame everyone else before admitting anything.

Iran for sure won't admit it if they shot it down by mistake and if the US shot it down they wouldn't admit it either.

This was a 737-800. The first ones entered service in 1998 and around 5000 of them have been delivered since then. Comparing this aircraft to the 737 MAX is stupid.

My take away from the whole 737 MAX incidents is that the technical shortcomings on the 737 MAX is from Boeing's gross mismanagement and too close relationship with the FAA. It was all profits over safety and regulations. Can you really guarantee that this has not affected other aircraft or their maintenance?

Guarantee? No. But you have oversimplified the cause of the 737-MAX crashes. You have also ignored the safety record of 7,000+ examples over 23 years.

It is unlikely to be a design issue, that should have come out a long time ago. Having said that it is simply too early for anyone to know what happened here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_Next_Generation

It will be a difficult investigation if Boeing aren't allowed to participate due to US sanctions against Iran, or Iranian obstruction.

It'll be a very easy investigation: "pilot error".

This way there's no need to dig any deeper.

Is there actually any kind of believable “pilot error” that can cause a passenger 737-800 to catch fire in the air and crash?

Hitting another aircraft. See the psa flight that went down in San Diego years ago, they even have a few pictures of it after the hit and mid air fire.

No, there isn't. And an engine fire does not cause an airliner to crash. We all train those every 6 months in the simulator, if you get that wrong you'll fail the sim check and not get back to flying commercially until you've done remedial training and a satisfactory check fight.

So there is more to this crash than just an engine fire, or simple "pilot error"

The pilot failed to successfully evade an incoming missile?

> Is there actually any kind of believable “pilot error” that can cause a passenger 737-800 to catch fire in the air and crash?

Yes, here's one (on an A300) where pilot error while operating the rudder sheared off the vertical stabilizer and caused a crash:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587

There were reports of an explosion/fire in the air, as the plane pulled itself apart.

> The crash was witnessed by hundreds of people, 349 of whom gave accounts of what they saw to the NTSB. About half (52%) reported a fire or explosion before the plane hit the ground. Others stated that they saw a wing detach from the aircraft, when in fact it was the vertical stabilizer.

Luckily the whole industry stopped accepting "pilot error" as a cause for accidents in the 70s. If a mistake by a human can cause an airliner to crash, the processes and checks are wrong and will be changed.

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