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Lots of jumping to conclusions going on in this thread, blaming the FAA, lobbyists, and politicians for being in the pocket of Boeing. Nobody knows why this pl

Lots of jumping to conclusions going on in this thread, blaming the FAA, lobbyists, and politicians for being in the pocket of Boeing. Nobody knows why this plane crashed. The flight recorders have just been recovered and so far there has been nothing in the news about what was on them. The plane might be to blame. The airline or the pilots might be to blame, and by the way, that airline has a bad safety record. It might have been a bomb, or a fire caused by a passenger, or many other things. The sudden rush to judgment on this case is unjustified by the evidence. If it turns out this was not Boeing's fault, a lot of people are going to have to eat their words, and millions of dollars will have been wasted for nothing.

sankoz 8y ago
> that airline has a bad safety record Could you substantiate the above claim ? Whatever I have read indicates Ethiopian has a very good safety record. e.g. The airline has a safety rating of six stars out of a possible seven on respected aviation site AirlineRating.com. Source: https://thepointsguy.com/news/despite-recent-crash-ethiopian-airlines-has-strong-safety-record/ https://thepointsguy.com/news/despite-recent-crash-ethiopian...
Legogris 8y ago
> The sudden rush to judgment on this case is unjustified by the evidence. If it turns out this was not Boeing's fault, a lot of people are going to have to eat their words, and millions of dollars will have been wasted for nothing. The prudent thing would be to err on the side of caution and suspend it until we know. What's millions of dollars (which I think is way exaggerated for a temporary suspension until the evidence is in) compared to a real risk of loss of human lives?
- em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
  There is risk most any human activity. Your prudent thing would result in suspending any beneficial activity with any possible risk. The a prudent thing would be to err on the side of still receiving the benefits of 737 air travel.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Nobody is talking about ground the 737 - a very safe plane used thousands of times a day This is the 737-max, a new plane with very little history, barely used, and had been involved in two crashes with similar circumstances in the last 6 months.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Nonsense. This plane right now has two out of about four hundred that crashed, which for a new plane is more than enough reason to hit the 'pause' button for a bit until we know or least think we know what went wrong. Thinking like that does not result in 'suspending any beneficial activity with any possible risk', it just suspends this activity with a roughly 0.5% risk of incidence until the causes are clear. There are plenty of other aircraft in the world, also many non-Max 737's.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- wallace_f 8y ago
  Millions of dollars could save a lot of human life right now, even in America. Who in their right mind downvotes this? I realize HN is not representative of America, but I think if you take a moment to notice all the homeless people you step over on your way to work in SV you'd reconsider.
  - crubier 8y ago
    Sure, then let's fly other unsafe planes types as well to save money, and hand the benefits to the poor! Except, in which universe do airlines hands out their revenue to the poor ?
    - wallace_f 8y ago
      That's not the point. The point is that the comparison between people's lives and money is invalid. Because scarce resources are a real thing, there necessarily should be a value to life, otherwise you are just ignoring reality.
      - wallace_f 8y ago
        I like how people downvote this, yet when stepping over homeless people in SV think "I only make $100,000+, and I need every bit of it, even if $20 could drastically improve this human's welfare. Then when they board a flight on their own: "millions is not too much to spare! No cost is too great for my life!" It is a double standard.
- briandear 8y ago
  Did the E.U. ground the A320 when the Germanwings suicide pilot crashed the plane in the Alps, killing 150? Investigators didn’t know what brought that plane down for several days. Wouldn’t the prudent thing to do be to ground all Airbus A320s until the cause was confirmed? Did they ground the A320 after the Egyptair crash? They still aren’t sure what brought that plane down. But they didn’t ground the fleet. How about the Metrojet flight that crashed just a year earlier? At least 3 A320 crashes in as many years, but they don’t ground Airbus. If it were a Boeing airplane, you can bet the EU would have grounded them. Given the E.U. has provided about $22 billion in subsidies to Airbus, it makes perfect business sense for the E.U. to ground Boeing 737s, but not ground Airbus when there are Airbus crashes. In 2012, Australian safety engineers called for the grounding of the A380 due to significant structural cracks, in Qantas and Singapore airplanes, yet Airbus refused. Is it fair to say that the E.U. and Airbus cared more about profits than safety back in 2012? Has the E.U. ever grounded an Airbus plane ever? Let’s not make the mistake of assuming benevolence that which is better explained by profit or politics.
  - deugtniet 8y ago
    Your comment is a very nice example of whataboutism. Let's remain on topic about two crashes, with very similar characteristic, with two brand new aircraft of the same model. This is unheard of in this day and age of stellar aircraft safety. If that's not reason for concern, I don't know what is. Another commenter has said to err on the side of caution, that's something the US / FAA should do in this case, but somehow is not. You can give all the reasons you want, but the facts take precedent: ~350 people killed in the same model aircraft and in a similar way, the FAA should act.
  - Angostura 8y ago
    > Did the E.U. ground the A320 when the Germanwings suicide pilot crashed the plane in the Alps, killing 150? Was there a similar-seeming crash of the same model a few months before?
  - lagadu 8y ago
    Interesting that you mentioned Australia, who also grounded the plane. Clearly they're in the EU's pocked, right? Despite that Qantas' Boeing fleet is more than twice as numerous as their Airbus fleet.
kalleboo 8y ago
> If it turns out this was not Boeing's fault, a lot of people are going to have to eat their words, and millions of dollars will have been wasted for nothing. And if it turns out there is a fault, hundreds of lives can be saved. What losing side of the wager do you want to be on?
crubier 8y ago
> The sudden rush to judgment on this case is unjustified by the evidence. It might not be justified by a theoretical formal proof. It irks me that a lot of the HN population seems to always want to reason using formal proofs like if it was a silver bullet. In this situation, bayesian inference is appropriate, and tells us that grounding planes is highly justified. This succession of two relatively similar events in a new plane is enough to raise the probability of "this aircraft model has a problem" a lot, and definitely enough to justify grounding them. Also, the risk / benefit ratio is not symmetric, what is better: - Ground them for nothing and lose money - Not ground them to save money, and see a third crash happen, killing 150 again If you take into account those two effects, it's clear that grounding the planes is a sane option. Finally ask yourself: would you board this plane today if you had a ticket? What would you think when there is turbulence after takeoff and the plane suddenly pitches down for a second? What color would your pants be?
- nraynaud 8y ago
  And there is a perfectly plausible scenario in Lions air and preliminary data on the new crash point in the same direction (erratic altitude before the crash). It’s not like there is nothing, there are technical details that do match.
- cesarb 8y ago
  There are three scenarios, not two: - Ground them for nothing and lose money - Not ground them to save money, no crash happens before the cause is found and a fix is deployed - Not ground them to save money, and see a third crash happen, killing 150 again And that also doesn't consider secondary effects, like the loss of confidence from the public on that aircraft type, or the potential confusion from the public between 737-MAX8 and 737-800.
  - lagadu 8y ago
    Those secondary effects are all part of the first point: "lose money".
    - 8y ago
nraynaud 8y ago
Let it be clear that even if Boeing is not at fault grounding the plane is the best course of action in front of the limited evidence. Insight is 20/20, but we don’t have it. There are 2 planes whose altitude was erratic before their crash and a plausible common scenario to explain them.
Animats 8y ago
Nobody knows why this plane crashed. The flight recorders have just been recovered and so far there has been nothing in the news about what was on them. Yes. And the recorders have angle of attack data. We'll know within days if it's another AOA sensor problem. Southwest, the biggest US operator of 737 MAX aircraft, bought the "AOA Disagree" option on their aircraft, and recently added an AOA indicator. Many operators didn't get that option; Lion Air didn't have it. If you have that, you get a warning that the flight control system is seeing bogus AOA data. It is somewhat less of a safety issue if you have the backup systems. Why this aircraft was ever offered without "AOA Disagree" sensing is unclear. The single active AOA sensor can force the nose down. The pilots can switch to the other flight control computer and use the other AOA sensor, but at that point they're losing control of the aircraft.
- Kipters 8y ago
  > Southwest, the biggest US operator of 737 MAX aircraft, bought the "AOA Disagree" option on their aircraft...If you have that, you get a warning that the flight control system is seeing bogus AOA data How can something that important be an option?
  - addictedcs 8y ago
    Greed.
  - AsyncAwait 8y ago
    Corporate greed.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    It's starting to seem like the plane is not safe to fly without that option (and potentially some other changes that haven't been finalized yet). I'm surprised; I thought that the "nothing at the expense of safety" ethos was still followed in the airplane industry.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    > How can something that important be an option? Based on other comments here and in other discussions, it seems like adding that feature would increase the training requirements for the pilots since it is an additional instrument in the cockpit. I don't know whether it was Boeing, Boeing's customers, or both who pushed for the instrument to be an option. Any combination is plausible, and I'm not going to rush to judgement like a couple of my sibling commenters just because it's the fun and popular thing to do.
gdubs 8y ago
I have a hard time feeling bad for Boeing in this scenario — playing ball in aviation means assuming a huge amount of risk, and meeting a ridiculously high standard. In return they have a fairly captured market, and a huge amount of political power. Historically that means you ground a plane and take the loss until you figure out what’s going on.

sankoz 8y ago

> that airline has a bad safety record Could you substantiate the above claim ? Whatever I have read indicates Ethiopian has a very good safety record. e.g. The airline has a safety rating of six stars out of a possible seven on respected aviation site AirlineRating.com. Source: https://thepointsguy.com/news/despite-recent-crash-ethiopian-airlines-has-strong-safety-record/ https://thepointsguy.com/news/despite-recent-crash-ethiopian...

Legogris 8y ago

> The sudden rush to judgment on this case is unjustified by the evidence. If it turns out this was not Boeing's fault, a lot of people are going to have to eat their words, and millions of dollars will have been wasted for nothing. The prudent thing would be to err on the side of caution and suspend it until we know. What's millions of dollars (which I think is way exaggerated for a temporary suspension until the evidence is in) compared to a real risk of loss of human lives?

em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
There is risk most any human activity. Your prudent thing would result in suspending any beneficial activity with any possible risk. The a prudent thing would be to err on the side of still receiving the benefits of 737 air travel.
- isostatic 8y ago
  Nobody is talking about ground the 737 - a very safe plane used thousands of times a day This is the 737-max, a new plane with very little history, barely used, and had been involved in two crashes with similar circumstances in the last 6 months.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Nonsense. This plane right now has two out of about four hundred that crashed, which for a new plane is more than enough reason to hit the 'pause' button for a bit until we know or least think we know what went wrong. Thinking like that does not result in 'suspending any beneficial activity with any possible risk', it just suspends this activity with a roughly 0.5% risk of incidence until the causes are clear. There are plenty of other aircraft in the world, also many non-Max 737's.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
wallace_f 8y ago
Millions of dollars could save a lot of human life right now, even in America. Who in their right mind downvotes this? I realize HN is not representative of America, but I think if you take a moment to notice all the homeless people you step over on your way to work in SV you'd reconsider.
- crubier 8y ago
  Sure, then let's fly other unsafe planes types as well to save money, and hand the benefits to the poor! Except, in which universe do airlines hands out their revenue to the poor ?
  - wallace_f 8y ago
    That's not the point. The point is that the comparison between people's lives and money is invalid. Because scarce resources are a real thing, there necessarily should be a value to life, otherwise you are just ignoring reality.
    - wallace_f 8y ago
      I like how people downvote this, yet when stepping over homeless people in SV think "I only make $100,000+, and I need every bit of it, even if $20 could drastically improve this human's welfare. Then when they board a flight on their own: "millions is not too much to spare! No cost is too great for my life!" It is a double standard.
briandear 8y ago
Did the E.U. ground the A320 when the Germanwings suicide pilot crashed the plane in the Alps, killing 150? Investigators didn’t know what brought that plane down for several days. Wouldn’t the prudent thing to do be to ground all Airbus A320s until the cause was confirmed? Did they ground the A320 after the Egyptair crash? They still aren’t sure what brought that plane down. But they didn’t ground the fleet. How about the Metrojet flight that crashed just a year earlier? At least 3 A320 crashes in as many years, but they don’t ground Airbus. If it were a Boeing airplane, you can bet the EU would have grounded them. Given the E.U. has provided about $22 billion in subsidies to Airbus, it makes perfect business sense for the E.U. to ground Boeing 737s, but not ground Airbus when there are Airbus crashes. In 2012, Australian safety engineers called for the grounding of the A380 due to significant structural cracks, in Qantas and Singapore airplanes, yet Airbus refused. Is it fair to say that the E.U. and Airbus cared more about profits than safety back in 2012? Has the E.U. ever grounded an Airbus plane ever? Let’s not make the mistake of assuming benevolence that which is better explained by profit or politics.
- deugtniet 8y ago
  Your comment is a very nice example of whataboutism. Let's remain on topic about two crashes, with very similar characteristic, with two brand new aircraft of the same model. This is unheard of in this day and age of stellar aircraft safety. If that's not reason for concern, I don't know what is. Another commenter has said to err on the side of caution, that's something the US / FAA should do in this case, but somehow is not. You can give all the reasons you want, but the facts take precedent: ~350 people killed in the same model aircraft and in a similar way, the FAA should act.
- Angostura 8y ago
  > Did the E.U. ground the A320 when the Germanwings suicide pilot crashed the plane in the Alps, killing 150? Was there a similar-seeming crash of the same model a few months before?
- lagadu 8y ago
  Interesting that you mentioned Australia, who also grounded the plane. Clearly they're in the EU's pocked, right? Despite that Qantas' Boeing fleet is more than twice as numerous as their Airbus fleet.

kalleboo 8y ago

> If it turns out this was not Boeing's fault, a lot of people are going to have to eat their words, and millions of dollars will have been wasted for nothing. And if it turns out there is a fault, hundreds of lives can be saved. What losing side of the wager do you want to be on?

crubier 8y ago

> The sudden rush to judgment on this case is unjustified by the evidence. It might not be justified by a theoretical formal proof. It irks me that a lot of the HN population seems to always want to reason using formal proofs like if it was a silver bullet. In this situation, bayesian inference is appropriate, and tells us that grounding planes is highly justified. This succession of two relatively similar events in a new plane is enough to raise the probability of "this aircraft model has a problem" a lot, and definitely enough to justify grounding them. Also, the risk / benefit ratio is not symmetric, what is better: - Ground them for nothing and lose money - Not ground them to save money, and see a third crash happen, killing 150 again If you take into account those two effects, it's clear that grounding the planes is a sane option. Finally ask yourself: would you board this plane today if you had a ticket? What would you think when there is turbulence after takeoff and the plane suddenly pitches down for a second? What color would your pants be?

nraynaud 8y ago
And there is a perfectly plausible scenario in Lions air and preliminary data on the new crash point in the same direction (erratic altitude before the crash). It’s not like there is nothing, there are technical details that do match.
cesarb 8y ago
There are three scenarios, not two: - Ground them for nothing and lose money - Not ground them to save money, no crash happens before the cause is found and a fix is deployed - Not ground them to save money, and see a third crash happen, killing 150 again And that also doesn't consider secondary effects, like the loss of confidence from the public on that aircraft type, or the potential confusion from the public between 737-MAX8 and 737-800.
- lagadu 8y ago
  Those secondary effects are all part of the first point: "lose money".
  - 8y ago

nraynaud 8y ago

Let it be clear that even if Boeing is not at fault grounding the plane is the best course of action in front of the limited evidence. Insight is 20/20, but we don’t have it. There are 2 planes whose altitude was erratic before their crash and a plausible common scenario to explain them.

Animats 8y ago

Nobody knows why this plane crashed. The flight recorders have just been recovered and so far there has been nothing in the news about what was on them. Yes. And the recorders have angle of attack data. We'll know within days if it's another AOA sensor problem. Southwest, the biggest US operator of 737 MAX aircraft, bought the "AOA Disagree" option on their aircraft, and recently added an AOA indicator. Many operators didn't get that option; Lion Air didn't have it. If you have that, you get a warning that the flight control system is seeing bogus AOA data. It is somewhat less of a safety issue if you have the backup systems. Why this aircraft was ever offered without "AOA Disagree" sensing is unclear. The single active AOA sensor can force the nose down. The pilots can switch to the other flight control computer and use the other AOA sensor, but at that point they're losing control of the aircraft.

Kipters 8y ago
> Southwest, the biggest US operator of 737 MAX aircraft, bought the "AOA Disagree" option on their aircraft...If you have that, you get a warning that the flight control system is seeing bogus AOA data How can something that important be an option?
- addictedcs 8y ago
  Greed.
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  Corporate greed.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  It's starting to seem like the plane is not safe to fly without that option (and potentially some other changes that haven't been finalized yet). I'm surprised; I thought that the "nothing at the expense of safety" ethos was still followed in the airplane industry.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  > How can something that important be an option? Based on other comments here and in other discussions, it seems like adding that feature would increase the training requirements for the pilots since it is an additional instrument in the cockpit. I don't know whether it was Boeing, Boeing's customers, or both who pushed for the instrument to be an option. Any combination is plausible, and I'm not going to rush to judgement like a couple of my sibling commenters just because it's the fun and popular thing to do.

gdubs 8y ago

I have a hard time feeling bad for Boeing in this scenario — playing ball in aviation means assuming a huge amount of risk, and meeting a ridiculously high standard. In return they have a fairly captured market, and a huge amount of political power. Historically that means you ground a plane and take the loss until you figure out what’s going on.