Does this "defer to the experts" philosophy apply to experts in Australia, Austria, Belgium, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the UAE, the UK, and a dozen or so others, or just to Americans?
"Boing to make key changes in cockpit software" doesn't exactly give me a warm fuzzy. Maybe it's just my bad luck but "new" software doesn't make it "better" software. Changed/new software comes with it's own glitches and the words "damn! I've never seen it do this before" are the famous last words I wouldn't want to hear if my family members are involved. Just sayin'
The Super Max was the result of a choice by Boeing: save huge $ by upgrading the existing 737, even though the only way to do it was by repositioning the wings and compensating for the change in handling with auto trim. According to a couple of articles I've seen, Boeing wanted to avoid the mess they had by going off a clean sheet with the 787. Regardless of the outcome of the outcome of the current investigation I'm wondering if Boeing is going to end up having to go with a clean sheet design for a 737 replacement anyway, thus getting hit on both ends...sunk costs on the 737 Super Max and the development costs of a new 797.
And 72 hours later, Canada finally does the right thing. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/garneau-boeing-ethiopia-crash-1.5054234 Looks like the FAA and America stand alone.
I saw on the news that a number of veteran pilots have talked about natural flying skills among pilots have declined a great deal thanks to so much automation in modern cockpits.
Oversimplified. American (and I would bet Canadian) pilots tend to come up with far more flying hours than a lot of foreign pilots. They may start with Civil Air Patrol, sail planes, RC planes, work their way through military piloting careers and build up a huge amount of experience that leads to the kind of "instinctive" reactions that helped Capt. Sullenberger pull off the "Miracle on the Hudson". Contrast that with the Korean Airlines tail dragger incident in San Francisco. The pilots didn't have that kind of background. The Air France disaster shows that they weren't fully trained to the point where they "instinctively" knew how to handle the situation. Despite the effort to put it into a bumper sticker type of slogan, it's more complicated than that.
To be fair about it, Trump's announcement was measured, calm and appropriate. Maybe his best moment as president.
So the guy who may have caused the problem (delay in software upgrades due to government shutdown) is now the guy trying to look like a saviour?
I am going to have to give trump some credit on this one. If the planes had a huge problem before the shutdown that causes crashes they should not have been flying in the first place, and the shutdown did not cause the problem to begin with. I also have to say I really doubt any other president would have grounded these planes and sent a message that boeing had made unsafe planes to begin with. Their corporate overlords would have never let such a message be sent out. There is no way Clinton (either one), Bush (either one), Reagan, or Obama would have ever had the nerve to do this sort of thing without huge amounts of evidence the jets were unsafe, and even then they would have probably just put out a warning and let people fly in them anyway. In this case he came out on the side of safety and when even twitler realizes your jets are flying death traps you fucked up big time.
Trump privately disparaged the 737 in discussion with officials over the issue, saying "it sucks", comparing it negatively to the 757 that is his own private jet and saying he would have never bought it for his (failed) airline Trump Shuttle, which admittedly only nosedived once. https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...5b8d80a1e4f_story.html?utm_term=.4463c38c5563 This is despite saying that "maybe" he didn't have to make the decision to ground the model.
Uhh, point to where I said that? I said YOU didn't know jack shit. And now 'the experts' have made a decision to ground the planes- and done so. Personally, I think they were less worried about the planes themselves and more about the optics after EVERYONE ELSE went and did it.
Well, Marso's bosses seem to think fuck the optics, let's pile on Boeing some more because they done fucked up good:
Bloomberg reports that Lion Air has cancelled $22 billion worth of Boeing orders and switched over to the A-321. This strengthens my opinion that Boeing will have to offer up an entirely new replacement for the 737.
I hope that's good news. Wasn't it the Airbus that had a tendency to blow off the rear doors on flights to Hawai'i? I've flown with them since, but I dunno what's safe anymore. Now, some genius trot out the old "You're far more likely to die in a MVA than in a plane" screed.
Hmm. The FAA is a government organization. They rarely make a 'safety decision' until there is a body count to justify it. This latest case is merely the latest- the difference being that the 'body count' wasn't officially a 'U.S.' body count. Hence the delay, and the inevitable cave after the rest of the world led the way. The FAA walks a fine line between being the aviation safety organ of the U.S. Government and having to guard the sanctity of U.S. based businesses in terms of aviation and aeronautical engineering. Like all other organs of government, they are subject to lobbying, congressional influence, and foreign influence. As such, they are inherently corrupt as are all government organs. Bottom line: nobody's an angel, and as always, look to your own ass and don't depend on the government to do it for you. All that aside, you can get on a 737-Max-8 in the USA TOMMORROW and be two orders of magnitude safer than you were driving to the airport in the first place- and I'd back that with my own ass, either in the pilot's seat or riding in the back. I know how to counter an auto-trim malfunction in any airplane, and I guarantee after this that every U.S. super-8 pilot is spring loaded to the proper response if there's a problem. Hell, on that basis alone they are probably the safest airplane flying right now- if they were flying.
