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Boeing B737-8 and -9 grounding

Peter wrote:

think the main difference is that the US is not too bothered about what Europe does

I don’t think so – there’s certainly a positive dislike of Europe (and it’s not a recent thing) in the upper echelons of US society.

Andreas IOM

Ibra wrote:

those limitations tends to be well documented and understood by manufacturers, regulators and users rather than sweeping dirt under the rug and paying the bill at later stage

You mean like this?

Antonio
LESB, Spain

IN France the issue became so terrible that the critical legal protection of Annex 13 investigations has been all but lost, with the judiciary taking over. This is adamant to the Swiss loss of protection for ATC and so on…

The end result is the halting of safety improvements stemming from voluntary reporting and candid collaboration with accident investigations (which are the root causes of the huge flight safety record in today’s commercial aviation).

Why would you volunteer safety critical information that could be used against you in a criminal process? Ordinary criminals have higher procedural protection.

Antonio
LESB, Spain

Oh, and for the record, despite the fact that the A320 was a new aircraft at the time and fault trees were not necessarily completely understood, the A320 never lost its airworthiness in the process subsequent to that crash…oh oooooh

And dont get me wrong, even though I like it less than the traditional Boeing philosophy, the A320, after all the changes in flight control laws and procedures, some communicated to flight crews, some not so, has gone on to become one of the most successful airliners in history. You can be sure this would not have happened had Airbus been subjected to a MAX-like crucifixion at the time…

Last Edited by Antonio at 24 Sep 07:03
Antonio
LESB, Spain

Antonio wrote:

Why would you volunteer safety critical information that could be used against you in a criminal process? Ordinary criminals have higher procedural protection.

Oh, and, in case anyone is interested in these and other legal aspects (Swiss ATC? ) there is an international congress on air and space law in Mallorca on 16-18 October. I think some of the conferences are in Spanish.

Antonio
LESB, Spain

It does not take a PHD in automation to see that number one cause of A320 airshow tragic accident is flying low and slow near MTOW full of pax that would happended in any other aircraft from any random factor you can name (e.g. 5kts gust), it is a bit like blaming gravity…

Everybody know about fly by wire and stall angle protection (including non-aviation public) long way before these things comes to production, of course they had automation design flaws and their abuse caused crashes

Last Edited by Ibra at 24 Sep 07:52
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Ibra wrote:

abuse caused crashes

Fact is rug-hiding and flight control law changes occurred with Airbus as a result…

I guess it is not as simple as:

  • ‘pilot abuse/pilot error’
    vs
  • ‘design flaw’ .

As in all of those cases there is a percentage of both with different shades of gray depending on how you look at it.

PR/political/media biasing in one or the other direction is arguably the difference between the MAX accidents and the Airbus accidents, much more so than the relative gravity of the design/piloting errors.

My point is that the MAX-like heavy bias towards design-error and OEM crucifixion, and the associated cultural change and cash-drain is not necessarily helping the safety cause, or a migration towards radically better (and much more corporate- and liability- risky ) future aircraft.

Last Edited by Antonio at 24 Sep 09:22
Antonio
LESB, Spain

Guys, it would really help to get the facts straight.

The accident had two catastrophic crashes in the first TWO YEARS since introduction, both linked to the same system, in an airframe with an otherwise good safety record. 350 people died.

The A320 had two catastrophic accidents in normal operations in the first FOUR years, but both were CFIT, not related to the flight controls. And these were the only ones in the first TWELVE YEARS.

So the accident record of the 737 MAX is an order of magnitude worse than the A320.

Biggin Hill

Well, Trump probably didn’t say this just to “please the europeans”. If he didn’t see a conspiracy from foreigners to harm the US, then…. there probably isn’t one!

QuoteWe’re going to be issuing an emergency order … to ground all flights of Boeing 737 Max 8 and 737 Max 9 and planes associated with that line,”

Last Edited by Noe at 24 Sep 11:51

Yes the stats are sadly, grossly and undeniably against the MAX with two accidents in the few hours flown by the type. It is mandatory that this prompts urgent action, which is different from a bottom-up re-evaluation of not only this particular FCC law but also the rest of the aircraft and its management, design and manufacture team and FAA relationships. Hopefully the outcome is good, but it sets the wrong precedent for flight saefty and evolution of commercial aircraft.

I definitely did not mean to imply there is any kind of anti-US EU conspiracy as part of the MAX-gate. I dont think it has been said here.
The bad thing about the EU reaction is that a lot of individual EU countries decided to close their airspace to the type without warning and with multiple overflights and inbound/outbound flights of the type already airborne, causing unnecessary risks.
If anything, the ‘conspiracy’ may be self-inflicted by Boeing’s own decision to hold its clients mostly harmless on the matter. After all the design is flawed and some processes failed in order to allow it to fly like that.

I still think the MCAS fault should be harmless enough to be no bigger than Airbus’s AOA and pitot issues or multiple flight control law upgrades. A 737 still behaves the same in 99.9% of the flight envelope with or without MCAS, AOA, and with auto/assisted or manual trim, as long as the pilot in command is so, whereas an A320 with more than one AOA and/or pitot-static failures is a whole different and potentially dangerous animal, requiring much more heroism

Yes, these statistics are hugely worrisome (ask the relatives of the over 300 dead) , but :

a) When the grand-total accident count is two the statistics are not that significant: only one of these and hopefully none should suffice to trigger urgent action (ie incident reports should suffice and have obviously failed here)
b) These overreactions do not help them or future passengers , or the obviously failed reporting and training system

Last Edited by Antonio at 25 Sep 16:14
Antonio
LESB, Spain
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