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EASA Insists on Testing Boeing 737 Max Itself Before Lifting Ban

218 points by kunkurus 7y ago

CaliforniaKarl 7y ago
I think this isn't just a test of Boeing, it's a test of the FAA. If the EASA finds issues that the FAA didn't (either because they were missed, or not brought up), that'll hurt the FAA's reputation even more.
- nolok 7y ago
  If the EASA finds real major issue that the FAA didn’t find then the FAA being the world validation office for Boeing planes is over. But I don’t think this will happen, the FAA seem to have realized how angry the rest of the world agencies are. 350 dead because they screwed up, and their first reaction was to say it was the dead pilots fault...
  - neuronic 7y ago
    The era of American exceptionalism is coming to an end and Americans are screeching from the pain. As technology leader and economic powerhouse, the US has left its cultural, political and financial footprint in Europe in the past decades but the extent of that influence is now downgraded. And the reason is inner decay. When the wall came down in Eastern Germany, we tuned into Knight Rider and MacGyver. The A-Team and the Power Rangers were on and life seemed to change for the better as the German East experienced American liberalism after decades of authoritarianist socialism. I glorified America growing up and as a 11 year old. In 2000, I was more excited to see the Statue of Liberty the first time than for any Christmas before. Nothing came close to seeing the city of my childhood heroes (the Ghostbusters) and seeing WTC/Empire State when driving in from JFK. But 9/11 happened and somehow America sold its soul. Not that Gulf War or Vietnam didn't happen, but it changed everything about the tiny bits of the amazing USA that I had always imagined. Post-9/11 I ended up living for nearly 6 years in the US and all the problems became apparent to me as a growing teenager. America was not nearly as great as propaganda made it out to be. Back home in Europe, I never once worried about health. Going to the doc was normal and expected. Emergency procedures were performed without a second thought to cost. In the US, I was billed $800 for 3 stitches when I cut my thumb (deeply) and I got lucky because university ambulance transported me. In Europe, in my hometown of around 1 million people, I got into problems with bullies and ran into thieves/thugs and it definitely sucked. But in the US, I experienced muggings at gun point, one mass shooting (~13 dead), one fatal stabbing on campus, one robbery in my SO's home, arson in the house across my street and one meth lab explosion... it felt absolutely surreal (happened all in Binghamton, NY - not really a prime example of a blossoming economy, I know). In classes, people were overtly concerned with political correctness and yelled at Middle Eastern history professors for using specific "offending" terms. Also, excluding God from the evolutions lecture was a highlight. Every single international student felt cringe and embarrassment when that Midwestern girl yelled at 300 people that evolution is just a theory and intelligent design ought to be taught with as much dedication and she feels offended. Personally, America often felt like it was run by corrupt cronies who torpedoed education where ever possible. College is a for-profit business rather than an investment into the next generation of citizens. It felt so weird and I think the social cracks that were apparent 15 years ago are now leading to structural failure in society. There are many smart and capable people in the US. Whether they did amazing stuff for their local hospital, took part in the Apollo program or engineered comms for Lockheed Martin. I met so many amazing folks. I hope that their rational influence can be stronger again. Now I will go back and concern myself with Europe's own massive problems. I carry the US in my heart, as I lived there for half a decade. I hope that the country is in a local minimum right now and that the path out is already in view.
    - ta6091234 7y ago
      Very well put. I hold a similar sentiment (from India, lived in US for years, now live in UK).
    - martin_a 7y ago
      While I have never been to the US, this somewhat reflects my feelings and thoughts, too. When I was younger I thought I really needed to go and see the USA. Then 9/11 happened and it started to go down. These days I feel sorry for probably not being able to see the US and the landscape and whatnot that is great about it, but I really can't stand the political "atmosphere" and how this influences the whole world in a negative way.
    - vinay427 7y ago
      > In the US, I was billed $800 for 3 stitches when I cut my thumb (deeply) and I got lucky because university ambulance transported me. I was billed about that much, also in "Europe", when an ambulance was called, no treatment was performed on me, and I wasn't even transported by the ambulance. This was in Switzerland despite having health insurance. There's no general European health insurance system.
      - missjellyfish 7y ago
        Switzerland is not part of the EU, so different rules apply. As far as I know, a EU health insurance would have covered you (retroactively; as in: pay $800 and send the invoice + proof of payment to your insurance and you'd get reimbursed), but when traveling outside the EU it is always a good Idea to carry a travel health insurance with you that covers these.
        vinay427 7y ago
        I think you may have misunderstood. I'm talking about having Swiss health insurance in Switzerland. The standards for health insurance and cost for treatment in "Europe" are not always lower than in the US as the parent commenter implied.
      - 7y ago
  - addicted 7y ago
    Sure the FAA realizes that, but does the FAA, which has been hemorrhaging expertise as they started relying on Afompany experts, instead of their own, have the capability to find all issues?
  - jussij 7y ago
    The FAA lost a big chunk of it's credibility in the way they handled the fist MAX 737 crash. The fact Ethiopa insisted on sending the flight records for their MAX 737 crash to Europe and not to the US shows some serious loss of trust in the FAA had occurred. And that was not helped when the USA was the last country to ground the aircraft.
    - nolok 7y ago
      Well when they made that decision every country in the top 10 by air traffic volume had banned the plane except for the USA and Japan (who basically does what the FAA says on such issues), and the FAA and Boeing were still saying it was pilot error and basically blaming the dead people. I don’t see how any self respecting country could have trusted them with the black box in those conditions
      - vinay427 7y ago
        > basically blaming the dead people This is strange wording to me. There's nothing inherently wrong with blaming "dead people" for something, because many accidents caused by user error result in death of the user. However, in this situation, it certainly seems rather hasty and inappropriate.
        ddalex 7y ago
        blaming dead people may be a misnomer for a common cover-up technique in communist-countries investigations: the dead people are at fault, because then you don't have to punish anybody living, and the dead people are already dead, what you gonna do to them ?
        tialaramex 7y ago
        Well first of all blaming people is the wrong thing for an accident investigation to be doing anyway. The purpose of accident investigation is not to fuel Americans' apparently insatiable appetite for revenge, you already have plenty of means for that, the purpose is the Prevention of Future Harm. Why Future Harm? Because we don't have time travel. You clearly won't prevent any future harm by blaming anybody, whether alive or dead. To prevent future harm you will need to change what is done or how. Almost invariably‡ the Right Thing™ will be some mix of procedural changes and engineering changes. For example ensuring that the right staff are empowered to stop something that's a bad idea being done even if senior management are short-sighted enough to demand it. So the result is never "Bob is to blame because Bob did X" but rather e.g. "Bob did X. The Foozle should be modified to prevent doing X" or "Bob did X. Company policy did not say that doing X was forbidden. Change policy to forbid X". ‡ I've written about this before on HN. The one investigation report I've seen that did _not_ have any actionable recommendations was into an accident where two people died when their fishing boat sank. The cause? They'd taken so much heroin they couldn't operate the boat safely. Why no recommendation? Using heroin is already illegal. Using any intoxicating substance while in charge of a boat is already illegal. This was already obviously a terrible idea.
broahmed 7y ago
Good. The FAA should have realized their insistence that the 737 Max was safe to fly despite evidence otherwise was likely to shake both confidence and respect for them as a regulatory body. It shouldn't have taken the intervention of the President for them to do their job. Time for them to reap what they've sown.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > It shouldn't have taken the intervention of the President for them to do their job. That's your takeaway of what happened? My takeaway is that the president 'intervened' only after it was clear that the combined Boeing/FAA/US position became untenable after other regions local air authorities and airlines declared the plane unfit to fly. Trump threw the FAA under the bus to make himself look good, but the weeks before he was pressuring them to keep the planes flying on behalf of Boeing. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/surprise-trump-kept-737-max-jets-flying-after-personal-call-from-boeing-ceo https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/surprise-trump-kept-...
  - nolok 7y ago
    Agreed, they didn’t do it when the risk became clear, they didn’t do it after several big European countries banned it, they only changed their position once the ban was moved at the entire EU level. By that point they were getting their thunder stolen by the EASA and it felt protecting themselves was a much bigger motivation than protecting the passengers for who they actually work for.
    - notimetorelax 7y ago
      I wonder how much pressure airline companies put on FAA to ground the plane as I remember people getting very concerned about flying on that plane.
  - magduf 7y ago
    Yep, this is exactly the way it looked to me too. He was good buddies with the Boeing CEO and supporting them up until he reversed course and threw them under the bus. I guess that's one good thing about having a narcissistic President who only cares about his own ego: he'll happily change course if it suits him and makes him look good, instead of digging his heels in.
generatorguy 7y ago
The EASA says there is “still no appropriate response to Angle of Attack integrity issues.” I can’t believe they haven’t got a plan yet!
- dvdbloc 7y ago
  I wish we had a graph of their attrition rate since the incidents occurred
  - appleflaxen 7y ago
    Whose attrition rate? The EASA? Boeing?
    - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      Boeing I guess, maybe FAA. Why would ESA loose people from this?
      - Retric 7y ago
        EASA rubber stamping the FAA’s rubber stamping of Boeing is still EASA making a mistake just as much as it’s the FAA’s mistake. This has become a major public issue, bet the problems started when the aircraft entered service.
        throwaway5752 7y ago
        It's nowhere near as big of a mistake on the EASA's part. You don't understand how international regulatory and standards bodies interact with each other. There are explicit agreements between the EASA and FAA in order to reduce duplicated work (https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=88965 https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=88965) This is extremely bad. It it will be bad for any US regulated product used in EU markets like food, medical devices and equipment, pharmaceuticals, among others.
        7y ago
olliej 7y ago
This is the long term cost of the defunding of the FAA and delegation of certifying a company's aircraft to that company. As we move forward fewer and fewer other countries will feel that deferring to US agencies is the wrong call and will move to (in this case) EASA. I wouldn't be surprised if more and more other countries start looking into approvals from US agencies, and investigating how independent those agencies actually are :-/
- jacquesm 7y ago
  It is more that this was the cost of failing to operate the FAA as an independent entity, but to get it to rubberstamp Boeing's airworthyness on behalf of Trump after it was clear that there were issues.
- jbverschoor 7y ago
  Good
xxpor 7y ago
Frankly, this is good IMO. It should also go in reverse. The FAA should have to independently certify Airbus/Embraer too.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  I would argue this should be dependent on the level of self certification, which EASA allows Airbus. As this pustule of a scandal more and more pops out it turns out that Boeing essentially rubber stamped its own certificates. I'm not sure about the level Airbus is allowed to do that.
  - jerven 7y ago
    EASA tended to certify on the same day as the FAA. FAA tended to certify a month or two after FAA. Now EASA no longer trusts FAA like FAA didn't quite trust EASA.
- rurounijones 7y ago
  You got downvoted heavily, I suspect, because you left out the reasoning behind your statement. Do you think it should be the other way around in tit-for-tat political reasons? Or because "Many eyes makes all bugs shallow" or some other reason?
  - xxpor 7y ago
    Good point. Completely for many eyes reasons. Nearly everything in a plane has a backup. Why not do 2 independent analyses of the systems? The timeline for a new plane is already measured in years. Another 6 months can't be that bad, right?
- rswail 7y ago
  It should operate how the judicial systems operate in Anglo-related countries. The US SCOTUS has used legal rulings from the UK and vice versa as "guidance" to their own legal rulings, but not as authoritative. The FAA/EASA/ATSB/* should refer to each other. To quote Ronald Reagan, "Trust but Verify".
paggle 7y ago
Why wouldn't they? The FAA has lost its credibility and can now be considered a subsidiary of Boeing.
- PedroBatista 7y ago
  This is unfortunately accurate. And has been for more or less 20 years.
  - paggle 7y ago
    Yes, the upside of the terrible MAX crashes is that it was a good alert that the FAA is not trustworthy. Without them, we might have been relying on a smoke detector with a dead battery.
nolok 7y ago
It’s important to understand that the main threat to both agency from this issue is very different. The threat to the FAA is external, they risk losing their worldwide stamp “if we validate it then the rest of the world do”. That means the long term damage they risk is much bigger, but the short term and political one is non existent, they just need to convince everyone that nothing happened and they’re back at their game. For the FAA either nothing change or they lose some standing and power, there is no path where they come out better than before. The EASA complaints are internal, each country and the remnants of their own agency blaming them for accepting the plane validation from the FAA when it’s clear they shouldn’t have. Short term they look stupid, but either they go back to the old position like nothing happened, or they make themselves more powerful and independent compared to the FAA on such issue, possibly getting other countries outside EU/USA to listen to them as much if not more than to the FAA. Up until now the word of the FAA may as well have been the word of god in that field, they risk losing it, and the EASA is in a good place to get a good piece of it. So the FAA needs to downplay it as much as possible, and the EASA needs to instead make it into as much of a big deal as possible. Of course the EASA is very much helped by the fact that it was indeed a totally avoidable yet complete failure and disaster that, from a regulatory perspective, can be entirely pinned down on the FAA. All they need to do is point at the fact unaltered, and say “the only way we can stop that from happening again is if you agree to give us authority to check all the plane ourselves without automatically accepting the FAA approval”. I just hope it will give us better oversight, Boeing, Airbus, newcomers from China etc ... We can’t afford so many death for such stupid reasons. The max fiasco is really an insult to the entire industry, and I’m sure many “older” people in Boeing feel ashamed of how far their company has fallen.
- Nokinside 7y ago
  Trump attempted to nominate his personal pilot to run FAA. When it did not go trough, FAA was run by acting director until this July. Trump government seems to sell influence in government organizations to companies they are supposed to oversee, so I don't know if Stephen Dickson is step for better or worse.
  - nolok 7y ago
jwr 7y ago
This is excellent news. The FAA has lots its credibility by rubber-stamping whatever Boeing said in recent years. This will both mean an independent review (and re-certification of what is a effectively different airplane) and additional pressure on the FAA to actually do its job.
- AmVess 7y ago
  Not recent years. Decades. FAA has been under regulatory capture by Boeing for decades. The world ignoring anything the FAA has to say about anything is a stance that's long overdue.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    So the safest mode of travel is the one without real regulation for decades?
    - jquery 7y ago
      I really think HNers in this thread are overselling the so-called "lack of regulation" that airlines and jet makers operate under. My father worked in the industry for decades, it is highly regulated to the extent few industries are more regulated (medicine, perhaps?)
  - vinay427 7y ago
    > FAA has been under regulatory capture by Boeing for decades. > The world ignoring anything the FAA has to say about anything is a stance that's long overdue. I don't see how the second part follows from the first. Can you elaborate on how regulatory capture by Boeing affects FAA regulations on everything they do?
    - michaelt 7y ago
      If, due to regulatory capture, the FAA has been wrongly approving Boeing designs, the rest of the world is wise not to blindly accept FAA approval. Of course, outside of the specific domain of approving Boeing designs, if the FAA says something isn't safe, or produces a report on a crash or suchlike, the world may want to pay heed.
cadence- 7y ago
Americans have been dismantling and weakening their regulatory bodies for quite a while now. The idea is that this will unshackle big corporations and allow them to innovate faster. This sounds like a great idea, until you realize that this “innovation” is most often about increasing profits. And the quality of the product is often sacrificed to increase profits. Just look at what is happening to telecommunication services, with big corporations growing their profits while Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries. Lack of proper regulation (or enforcement) might lead to short-term gains in some economic indicators, but in the long term will lead to worse quality, relative decline of America comparing to other countries, and sometimes -like in this case- avoidable deaths of hundreds of innocent people.
- tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
  This is a common misunderstanding I see repeated a lot. The idea isn't unshackling big corporations, it's about unshackling small to medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs. Big corps actually love regulations for the barriers to entry they create, and most of them already have a whole host of regulatory compliance teams armed and ready to dissect the next big regulation that comes. > Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries. Internet speeds in most suburban, and urban locations in the US have dramatically increased as of late due to increased threat of competition (namely Google Fiber, which prompted AT&T to start heavily developing Fiber, which prompted the Spectrums of the world to increase speeds) and could be further accelerated by deregulation. Regulations are actually the primary reason that keeps cable companies in their monopolistic/oligarlistic positions. As far as I am aware, the only western countries that have surpassed the US in internet speeds and stability for the majority of its populace are actually east, in countries like S.Korea and Japan. Interestingly enough, Japan is mostly voluntarily self regulated.
  - minikites 7y ago
    >Big corps actually love regulations for the barriers to entry they create, and most of them already have a whole host of regulatory compliance teams armed and ready to dissect the next big regulation that comes. So then why do big corporations spend so much time and money lobbying against regulation?
lefty2 7y ago
People may not realise that Boeing was depending on a October return to service for the 737. If that doesn't happen it has to shut down it's production line and that's going to be expensive. They had put a lot of pressure on the FAA to quickly approve their latest changes.
Angostura 7y ago
As a matter of interest, does the FAA accept EASA's certification of Airbus planes? I foresee a possible tit for tat.
- notimetorelax 7y ago
  I think this should not matter. The primary objective is safety.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    It should. I could see an embarrassed FAA opting to drop reciprocity to try and avoid looking (so) bad.
    - dahart 7y ago
      That would make the FAA look bitter and petty in addition to incompetent, it would trumpet their embarrassment and make them look worse than they already do, not avoid it or hide it. But in the long term, agency politics aside, it would be better for all of us if these agencies did independent reviews.
  - alexis_fr 7y ago
    If safety matters, perhaps we should not trust the regulatory body of a country on approving the aircraft built by that country. The conflict of interest is highly possible.
- landryraccoon 7y ago
  This is a matter of public trust. As an American I might trust the EASA’s certification more than the FAA, and that’s a really bad spot for the FAA to be in. International drama about who accepts who is just a side effect of lack of trust in the FAA.
Havoc 7y ago
Makes sense given FAA recent history
everybodyknows 7y ago
EASA budget for 2018 was only 161 million Euros: https://www.easa.europa.eu/the-agency/the-agency https://www.easa.europa.eu/the-agency/the-agency OP offers no hint just how such great additional effort is to be paid for.
- arcturus17 7y ago
  What’s your implication here? That they won’t be able to do it? Or are you solely concerned with the good budgetary health of EU institutions?
- oaiey 7y ago
  They will let Boing pay for it in form of regular fees. Boing is essentially asking for approval.
- theYipster 7y ago
  The FAA and EASA have very different operating models, so budgets are not comparable. FAA certification efforts are tax-payer funded, whereas EASA’s efforts are funded by industry in a pay-for-service model.
  - rswail 7y ago
    Regulators paid by the industry they regulate is the most obvious of perverted incentives that I can think of. Air transport safety supervision and regulation should be paid for by those using it, ie by taxes on the end user.
mannykannot 7y ago
Having to satisfy EASA as well as the FAA is big enough a threat that it might actually be the stick to get Boeing to back off on its regulation-busting behavior. On the other hand, can we expect US trade sanctions against the EU in response to this move?
yourapostasy 7y ago
I wonder how much Boeing's strategy to reduce regulatory oversight as much as possible is going to cost Boeing shareholders going forward. Share price may have benefited for a few decades, but Boeing's image will be tarred with this for quite a few decades with far higher certification costs worldwide in numerous jurisdictions. There are many potential jurisdictions [1] looking out for their own interests, and may choose to defensively force a certification on Boeing instead of trusting the FAA. That will cost Boeing a lot of money. If the 737 line is continued at all, every single 737 variant that comes out after this will have a really steep hill of sales objections to climb, and they'll be handing out steeper discounts and lower profits to counter those objections. It may turn out that accepting an adversarial relationship with the FAA instead of lobbying to co-opt it was the optimal profit strategy in the long-term. If it pans out this way, then the optimal profit strategy is to encourage the most stringent regulatory regime in the corporation's home country that all others hold up as the gold standard and follow without question. This avoids the multiple costs individual certification efforts rack up because no one can trust each others' certification results because they all recognize they're too weakened by industrial lobbying efforts. A strong, quasi-centralized regulatory body then acts as the company's buffer to buy the benefit of the doubt, an insurance policy against a prolonged period when the company's culture is called into question. [1] http://www.dgca.nic.in/Global_Links.pdf http://www.dgca.nic.in/Global_Links.pdf
Haga 7y ago
Proper regulations will just be declared acts of trade war and parts of the world will have a american plane blacklist for airports. Then the empire will bully those one by one to accept the airducttapeworm back into service. And America will continue to shout that their tech is the greatest while it's actually falling further behind.

218 points by kunkurus 7y ago

I think this isn't just a test of Boeing, it's a test of the FAA. If the EASA finds issues that the FAA didn't (either because they were missed, or not brought up), that'll hurt the FAA's reputation even more.

nolok 7y ago
If the EASA finds real major issue that the FAA didn’t find then the FAA being the world validation office for Boeing planes is over. But I don’t think this will happen, the FAA seem to have realized how angry the rest of the world agencies are. 350 dead because they screwed up, and their first reaction was to say it was the dead pilots fault...
- neuronic 7y ago
  The era of American exceptionalism is coming to an end and Americans are screeching from the pain. As technology leader and economic powerhouse, the US has left its cultural, political and financial footprint in Europe in the past decades but the extent of that influence is now downgraded. And the reason is inner decay. When the wall came down in Eastern Germany, we tuned into Knight Rider and MacGyver. The A-Team and the Power Rangers were on and life seemed to change for the better as the German East experienced American liberalism after decades of authoritarianist socialism. I glorified America growing up and as a 11 year old. In 2000, I was more excited to see the Statue of Liberty the first time than for any Christmas before. Nothing came close to seeing the city of my childhood heroes (the Ghostbusters) and seeing WTC/Empire State when driving in from JFK. But 9/11 happened and somehow America sold its soul. Not that Gulf War or Vietnam didn't happen, but it changed everything about the tiny bits of the amazing USA that I had always imagined. Post-9/11 I ended up living for nearly 6 years in the US and all the problems became apparent to me as a growing teenager. America was not nearly as great as propaganda made it out to be. Back home in Europe, I never once worried about health. Going to the doc was normal and expected. Emergency procedures were performed without a second thought to cost. In the US, I was billed $800 for 3 stitches when I cut my thumb (deeply) and I got lucky because university ambulance transported me. In Europe, in my hometown of around 1 million people, I got into problems with bullies and ran into thieves/thugs and it definitely sucked. But in the US, I experienced muggings at gun point, one mass shooting (~13 dead), one fatal stabbing on campus, one robbery in my SO's home, arson in the house across my street and one meth lab explosion... it felt absolutely surreal (happened all in Binghamton, NY - not really a prime example of a blossoming economy, I know). In classes, people were overtly concerned with political correctness and yelled at Middle Eastern history professors for using specific "offending" terms. Also, excluding God from the evolutions lecture was a highlight. Every single international student felt cringe and embarrassment when that Midwestern girl yelled at 300 people that evolution is just a theory and intelligent design ought to be taught with as much dedication and she feels offended. Personally, America often felt like it was run by corrupt cronies who torpedoed education where ever possible. College is a for-profit business rather than an investment into the next generation of citizens. It felt so weird and I think the social cracks that were apparent 15 years ago are now leading to structural failure in society. There are many smart and capable people in the US. Whether they did amazing stuff for their local hospital, took part in the Apollo program or engineered comms for Lockheed Martin. I met so many amazing folks. I hope that their rational influence can be stronger again. Now I will go back and concern myself with Europe's own massive problems. I carry the US in my heart, as I lived there for half a decade. I hope that the country is in a local minimum right now and that the path out is already in view.
  - ta6091234 7y ago
    Very well put. I hold a similar sentiment (from India, lived in US for years, now live in UK).
  - martin_a 7y ago
    While I have never been to the US, this somewhat reflects my feelings and thoughts, too. When I was younger I thought I really needed to go and see the USA. Then 9/11 happened and it started to go down. These days I feel sorry for probably not being able to see the US and the landscape and whatnot that is great about it, but I really can't stand the political "atmosphere" and how this influences the whole world in a negative way.
  - vinay427 7y ago
    > In the US, I was billed $800 for 3 stitches when I cut my thumb (deeply) and I got lucky because university ambulance transported me. I was billed about that much, also in "Europe", when an ambulance was called, no treatment was performed on me, and I wasn't even transported by the ambulance. This was in Switzerland despite having health insurance. There's no general European health insurance system.
    - missjellyfish 7y ago
      Switzerland is not part of the EU, so different rules apply. As far as I know, a EU health insurance would have covered you (retroactively; as in: pay $800 and send the invoice + proof of payment to your insurance and you'd get reimbursed), but when traveling outside the EU it is always a good Idea to carry a travel health insurance with you that covers these.
      - vinay427 7y ago
        I think you may have misunderstood. I'm talking about having Swiss health insurance in Switzerland. The standards for health insurance and cost for treatment in "Europe" are not always lower than in the US as the parent commenter implied.
    - 7y ago
- addicted 7y ago
  Sure the FAA realizes that, but does the FAA, which has been hemorrhaging expertise as they started relying on Afompany experts, instead of their own, have the capability to find all issues?
- jussij 7y ago
  The FAA lost a big chunk of it's credibility in the way they handled the fist MAX 737 crash. The fact Ethiopa insisted on sending the flight records for their MAX 737 crash to Europe and not to the US shows some serious loss of trust in the FAA had occurred. And that was not helped when the USA was the last country to ground the aircraft.
  - nolok 7y ago
    Well when they made that decision every country in the top 10 by air traffic volume had banned the plane except for the USA and Japan (who basically does what the FAA says on such issues), and the FAA and Boeing were still saying it was pilot error and basically blaming the dead people. I don’t see how any self respecting country could have trusted them with the black box in those conditions
    - vinay427 7y ago
      > basically blaming the dead people This is strange wording to me. There's nothing inherently wrong with blaming "dead people" for something, because many accidents caused by user error result in death of the user. However, in this situation, it certainly seems rather hasty and inappropriate.
      - ddalex 7y ago
        blaming dead people may be a misnomer for a common cover-up technique in communist-countries investigations: the dead people are at fault, because then you don't have to punish anybody living, and the dead people are already dead, what you gonna do to them ?
      - tialaramex 7y ago
        Well first of all blaming people is the wrong thing for an accident investigation to be doing anyway. The purpose of accident investigation is not to fuel Americans' apparently insatiable appetite for revenge, you already have plenty of means for that, the purpose is the Prevention of Future Harm. Why Future Harm? Because we don't have time travel. You clearly won't prevent any future harm by blaming anybody, whether alive or dead. To prevent future harm you will need to change what is done or how. Almost invariably‡ the Right Thing™ will be some mix of procedural changes and engineering changes. For example ensuring that the right staff are empowered to stop something that's a bad idea being done even if senior management are short-sighted enough to demand it. So the result is never "Bob is to blame because Bob did X" but rather e.g. "Bob did X. The Foozle should be modified to prevent doing X" or "Bob did X. Company policy did not say that doing X was forbidden. Change policy to forbid X". ‡ I've written about this before on HN. The one investigation report I've seen that did _not_ have any actionable recommendations was into an accident where two people died when their fishing boat sank. The cause? They'd taken so much heroin they couldn't operate the boat safely. Why no recommendation? Using heroin is already illegal. Using any intoxicating substance while in charge of a boat is already illegal. This was already obviously a terrible idea.

broahmed 7y ago

Good. The FAA should have realized their insistence that the 737 Max was safe to fly despite evidence otherwise was likely to shake both confidence and respect for them as a regulatory body. It shouldn't have taken the intervention of the President for them to do their job. Time for them to reap what they've sown.

jacquesm 7y ago
> It shouldn't have taken the intervention of the President for them to do their job. That's your takeaway of what happened? My takeaway is that the president 'intervened' only after it was clear that the combined Boeing/FAA/US position became untenable after other regions local air authorities and airlines declared the plane unfit to fly. Trump threw the FAA under the bus to make himself look good, but the weeks before he was pressuring them to keep the planes flying on behalf of Boeing. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/surprise-trump-kept-737-max-jets-flying-after-personal-call-from-boeing-ceo https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/surprise-trump-kept-...
- nolok 7y ago
  Agreed, they didn’t do it when the risk became clear, they didn’t do it after several big European countries banned it, they only changed their position once the ban was moved at the entire EU level. By that point they were getting their thunder stolen by the EASA and it felt protecting themselves was a much bigger motivation than protecting the passengers for who they actually work for.
  - notimetorelax 7y ago
    I wonder how much pressure airline companies put on FAA to ground the plane as I remember people getting very concerned about flying on that plane.
- magduf 7y ago
  Yep, this is exactly the way it looked to me too. He was good buddies with the Boeing CEO and supporting them up until he reversed course and threw them under the bus. I guess that's one good thing about having a narcissistic President who only cares about his own ego: he'll happily change course if it suits him and makes him look good, instead of digging his heels in.

generatorguy 7y ago

The EASA says there is “still no appropriate response to Angle of Attack integrity issues.” I can’t believe they haven’t got a plan yet!

dvdbloc 7y ago
I wish we had a graph of their attrition rate since the incidents occurred
- appleflaxen 7y ago
  Whose attrition rate? The EASA? Boeing?
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    Boeing I guess, maybe FAA. Why would ESA loose people from this?
    - Retric 7y ago
      EASA rubber stamping the FAA’s rubber stamping of Boeing is still EASA making a mistake just as much as it’s the FAA’s mistake. This has become a major public issue, bet the problems started when the aircraft entered service.
      - throwaway5752 7y ago
        It's nowhere near as big of a mistake on the EASA's part. You don't understand how international regulatory and standards bodies interact with each other. There are explicit agreements between the EASA and FAA in order to reduce duplicated work (https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=88965 https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=88965) This is extremely bad. It it will be bad for any US regulated product used in EU markets like food, medical devices and equipment, pharmaceuticals, among others.
        7y ago

olliej 7y ago

This is the long term cost of the defunding of the FAA and delegation of certifying a company's aircraft to that company. As we move forward fewer and fewer other countries will feel that deferring to US agencies is the wrong call and will move to (in this case) EASA. I wouldn't be surprised if more and more other countries start looking into approvals from US agencies, and investigating how independent those agencies actually are :-/

jacquesm 7y ago
It is more that this was the cost of failing to operate the FAA as an independent entity, but to get it to rubberstamp Boeing's airworthyness on behalf of Trump after it was clear that there were issues.
jbverschoor 7y ago
Good

xxpor 7y ago

Frankly, this is good IMO. It should also go in reverse. The FAA should have to independently certify Airbus/Embraer too.

CaptainZapp 7y ago
I would argue this should be dependent on the level of self certification, which EASA allows Airbus. As this pustule of a scandal more and more pops out it turns out that Boeing essentially rubber stamped its own certificates. I'm not sure about the level Airbus is allowed to do that.
- jerven 7y ago
  EASA tended to certify on the same day as the FAA. FAA tended to certify a month or two after FAA. Now EASA no longer trusts FAA like FAA didn't quite trust EASA.
rurounijones 7y ago
You got downvoted heavily, I suspect, because you left out the reasoning behind your statement. Do you think it should be the other way around in tit-for-tat political reasons? Or because "Many eyes makes all bugs shallow" or some other reason?
- xxpor 7y ago
  Good point. Completely for many eyes reasons. Nearly everything in a plane has a backup. Why not do 2 independent analyses of the systems? The timeline for a new plane is already measured in years. Another 6 months can't be that bad, right?
rswail 7y ago
It should operate how the judicial systems operate in Anglo-related countries. The US SCOTUS has used legal rulings from the UK and vice versa as "guidance" to their own legal rulings, but not as authoritative. The FAA/EASA/ATSB/* should refer to each other. To quote Ronald Reagan, "Trust but Verify".

paggle 7y ago

Why wouldn't they? The FAA has lost its credibility and can now be considered a subsidiary of Boeing.

PedroBatista 7y ago
This is unfortunately accurate. And has been for more or less 20 years.
- paggle 7y ago
  Yes, the upside of the terrible MAX crashes is that it was a good alert that the FAA is not trustworthy. Without them, we might have been relying on a smoke detector with a dead battery.

nolok 7y ago

It’s important to understand that the main threat to both agency from this issue is very different. The threat to the FAA is external, they risk losing their worldwide stamp “if we validate it then the rest of the world do”. That means the long term damage they risk is much bigger, but the short term and political one is non existent, they just need to convince everyone that nothing happened and they’re back at their game. For the FAA either nothing change or they lose some standing and power, there is no path where they come out better than before. The EASA complaints are internal, each country and the remnants of their own agency blaming them for accepting the plane validation from the FAA when it’s clear they shouldn’t have. Short term they look stupid, but either they go back to the old position like nothing happened, or they make themselves more powerful and independent compared to the FAA on such issue, possibly getting other countries outside EU/USA to listen to them as much if not more than to the FAA. Up until now the word of the FAA may as well have been the word of god in that field, they risk losing it, and the EASA is in a good place to get a good piece of it. So the FAA needs to downplay it as much as possible, and the EASA needs to instead make it into as much of a big deal as possible. Of course the EASA is very much helped by the fact that it was indeed a totally avoidable yet complete failure and disaster that, from a regulatory perspective, can be entirely pinned down on the FAA. All they need to do is point at the fact unaltered, and say “the only way we can stop that from happening again is if you agree to give us authority to check all the plane ourselves without automatically accepting the FAA approval”. I just hope it will give us better oversight, Boeing, Airbus, newcomers from China etc ... We can’t afford so many death for such stupid reasons. The max fiasco is really an insult to the entire industry, and I’m sure many “older” people in Boeing feel ashamed of how far their company has fallen.

Nokinside 7y ago
Trump attempted to nominate his personal pilot to run FAA. When it did not go trough, FAA was run by acting director until this July. Trump government seems to sell influence in government organizations to companies they are supposed to oversee, so I don't know if Stephen Dickson is step for better or worse.
- nolok 7y ago

jwr 7y ago

This is excellent news. The FAA has lots its credibility by rubber-stamping whatever Boeing said in recent years. This will both mean an independent review (and re-certification of what is a effectively different airplane) and additional pressure on the FAA to actually do its job.

AmVess 7y ago
Not recent years. Decades. FAA has been under regulatory capture by Boeing for decades. The world ignoring anything the FAA has to say about anything is a stance that's long overdue.
- icebraining 7y ago
  So the safest mode of travel is the one without real regulation for decades?
  - jquery 7y ago
    I really think HNers in this thread are overselling the so-called "lack of regulation" that airlines and jet makers operate under. My father worked in the industry for decades, it is highly regulated to the extent few industries are more regulated (medicine, perhaps?)
- vinay427 7y ago
  > FAA has been under regulatory capture by Boeing for decades. > The world ignoring anything the FAA has to say about anything is a stance that's long overdue. I don't see how the second part follows from the first. Can you elaborate on how regulatory capture by Boeing affects FAA regulations on everything they do?
  - michaelt 7y ago
    If, due to regulatory capture, the FAA has been wrongly approving Boeing designs, the rest of the world is wise not to blindly accept FAA approval. Of course, outside of the specific domain of approving Boeing designs, if the FAA says something isn't safe, or produces a report on a crash or suchlike, the world may want to pay heed.

cadence- 7y ago

Americans have been dismantling and weakening their regulatory bodies for quite a while now. The idea is that this will unshackle big corporations and allow them to innovate faster. This sounds like a great idea, until you realize that this “innovation” is most often about increasing profits. And the quality of the product is often sacrificed to increase profits. Just look at what is happening to telecommunication services, with big corporations growing their profits while Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries. Lack of proper regulation (or enforcement) might lead to short-term gains in some economic indicators, but in the long term will lead to worse quality, relative decline of America comparing to other countries, and sometimes -like in this case- avoidable deaths of hundreds of innocent people.

tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
This is a common misunderstanding I see repeated a lot. The idea isn't unshackling big corporations, it's about unshackling small to medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs. Big corps actually love regulations for the barriers to entry they create, and most of them already have a whole host of regulatory compliance teams armed and ready to dissect the next big regulation that comes. > Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries. Internet speeds in most suburban, and urban locations in the US have dramatically increased as of late due to increased threat of competition (namely Google Fiber, which prompted AT&T to start heavily developing Fiber, which prompted the Spectrums of the world to increase speeds) and could be further accelerated by deregulation. Regulations are actually the primary reason that keeps cable companies in their monopolistic/oligarlistic positions. As far as I am aware, the only western countries that have surpassed the US in internet speeds and stability for the majority of its populace are actually east, in countries like S.Korea and Japan. Interestingly enough, Japan is mostly voluntarily self regulated.
- minikites 7y ago
  >Big corps actually love regulations for the barriers to entry they create, and most of them already have a whole host of regulatory compliance teams armed and ready to dissect the next big regulation that comes. So then why do big corporations spend so much time and money lobbying against regulation?

lefty2 7y ago

People may not realise that Boeing was depending on a October return to service for the 737. If that doesn't happen it has to shut down it's production line and that's going to be expensive. They had put a lot of pressure on the FAA to quickly approve their latest changes.

Angostura 7y ago

As a matter of interest, does the FAA accept EASA's certification of Airbus planes? I foresee a possible tit for tat.

notimetorelax 7y ago
I think this should not matter. The primary objective is safety.
- Angostura 7y ago
  It should. I could see an embarrassed FAA opting to drop reciprocity to try and avoid looking (so) bad.
  - dahart 7y ago
    That would make the FAA look bitter and petty in addition to incompetent, it would trumpet their embarrassment and make them look worse than they already do, not avoid it or hide it. But in the long term, agency politics aside, it would be better for all of us if these agencies did independent reviews.
- alexis_fr 7y ago
  If safety matters, perhaps we should not trust the regulatory body of a country on approving the aircraft built by that country. The conflict of interest is highly possible.
landryraccoon 7y ago
This is a matter of public trust. As an American I might trust the EASA’s certification more than the FAA, and that’s a really bad spot for the FAA to be in. International drama about who accepts who is just a side effect of lack of trust in the FAA.

Havoc 7y ago

Makes sense given FAA recent history

everybodyknows 7y ago

EASA budget for 2018 was only 161 million Euros: https://www.easa.europa.eu/the-agency/the-agency https://www.easa.europa.eu/the-agency/the-agency OP offers no hint just how such great additional effort is to be paid for.

arcturus17 7y ago
What’s your implication here? That they won’t be able to do it? Or are you solely concerned with the good budgetary health of EU institutions?
oaiey 7y ago
They will let Boing pay for it in form of regular fees. Boing is essentially asking for approval.
theYipster 7y ago
The FAA and EASA have very different operating models, so budgets are not comparable. FAA certification efforts are tax-payer funded, whereas EASA’s efforts are funded by industry in a pay-for-service model.
- rswail 7y ago
  Regulators paid by the industry they regulate is the most obvious of perverted incentives that I can think of. Air transport safety supervision and regulation should be paid for by those using it, ie by taxes on the end user.

mannykannot 7y ago

Having to satisfy EASA as well as the FAA is big enough a threat that it might actually be the stick to get Boeing to back off on its regulation-busting behavior. On the other hand, can we expect US trade sanctions against the EU in response to this move?

yourapostasy 7y ago

I wonder how much Boeing's strategy to reduce regulatory oversight as much as possible is going to cost Boeing shareholders going forward. Share price may have benefited for a few decades, but Boeing's image will be tarred with this for quite a few decades with far higher certification costs worldwide in numerous jurisdictions. There are many potential jurisdictions [1] looking out for their own interests, and may choose to defensively force a certification on Boeing instead of trusting the FAA. That will cost Boeing a lot of money. If the 737 line is continued at all, every single 737 variant that comes out after this will have a really steep hill of sales objections to climb, and they'll be handing out steeper discounts and lower profits to counter those objections. It may turn out that accepting an adversarial relationship with the FAA instead of lobbying to co-opt it was the optimal profit strategy in the long-term. If it pans out this way, then the optimal profit strategy is to encourage the most stringent regulatory regime in the corporation's home country that all others hold up as the gold standard and follow without question. This avoids the multiple costs individual certification efforts rack up because no one can trust each others' certification results because they all recognize they're too weakened by industrial lobbying efforts. A strong, quasi-centralized regulatory body then acts as the company's buffer to buy the benefit of the doubt, an insurance policy against a prolonged period when the company's culture is called into question. [1] http://www.dgca.nic.in/Global_Links.pdf http://www.dgca.nic.in/Global_Links.pdf

Haga 7y ago

Proper regulations will just be declared acts of trade war and parts of the world will have a american plane blacklist for airports. Then the empire will bully those one by one to accept the airducttapeworm back into service. And America will continue to shout that their tech is the greatest while it's actually falling further behind.