We need to use caution thinking about the Ethiopian Airlines crash. We do not really know yet the extent to which there are commonalities between this incident and the Lion Air crash in October.
Lion Air has had safety and maintenance questions surrounding it in the past. And much of the initial information we get after a crash turns out to be incomplete or wrong. And in this case, unlike the Lion Air incident, we don’t know of any unaddressed mechanical issues prior to the crash. Of course we’ll know more soon as the flight data and cockpit voice recorders have been recovered.
We saw China move to quickly ground the 737 MAX. Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines, Shandong Airlines, and XiamenAir all operate Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft.
Now Indonesia, where the October Lion Air crash occurred, has ordered the grounding of 737 MAXs.
I’d caution though that just as China’s move to ground the MAX conveniently serves political interests (in escalating trade tensions with the U.S.), Indonesia has an interest in blaming the aircraft itself versus their country’s largest privately-run airline for its tragic incident.
So while grounding the plane may or may not wind up being a good idea based on information that we’ll learn in the future, it’s not the case that China and Indonesia are prescient as safety regulators.
Your post reads a little like ‘blaming the victims’ , apparently on the basis that their own track record in safety is not stellar. Any reasonable person would conclude that grounding the planes is wise ( certainly many US aviation experts are of that view).
@Paolo – I am not weighing in on whether or not to ground the plane, I don’t have enough information at this point to form a judgment on that. Neither does China or Indonesia. They do have reasons to react more quickly than the US (and Europe). They may wind up proven correct, but the fact that they’re out in front of this does correspond to non-safety related incentives.
But how on earth is that blaming the victims, the passengers and crew of the Ethiopian flight?
@Gary
My reference was more about Indonesia than Ethiopian, and you do seem to suggest that this is convenient for them , even in tragic circumstances. There might be grounds for scepticism given prior history, eg Silkair, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the planes should be grounded until their airworthiness is guaranteed.
Boeing is such a sacred cow that any such decision is very difficult ( and especially so when it’s mostly black, brown or yellow people getting killed). If this were Airbus, the planes would be on the ground.
@paolo – a little dramatic to say I’m blaming the victims of the Lion Air crash for Indonesia’s response to the Ethiopian crash, no?
I don’t know whether grounding is appropriate yet. However the government of Indonesia has been pushing the narrative that Boeing is to blame and defending Lion Air, despite well-documented issues with maintenance of the occurrence aircraft.
It remains disputed precisely the probably cause there, and my suggestion is simply that the speed with which they made this move in response to Ethiopian is consistent with their pre-existing narratives.
I don’t think Gary can be accused of blaming the victims (Paolo) for putting forward the suggestion that there are other factors at play in the immediate grounding of an American Plane with American Engines. It’s not like he goes around wearing a MAGA hat and lauding the American carriers.
The whole subject matter is riddled with both Conscious and Unconscious Bias. My first reaction was that, if this was a new Airbus Plane with Rolls Royce engines, experiencing 2 take-off phase fatal accidents within 6 months, the FAA would have grounded it. But I have no experience of the FAA to tell me that is the case, instead that view is formed from coalface experience of different US regulators offering preferential treatment to US firms – that is to say – my own unconscious bias.
Lion Air has every reasons for Concious Bias – if a critical fault is found with the 737s they will suffer less both financially and commercially after the tragic loss of 610. I believe they grounded their fleet ahead of the civil authority grounding.
As for the Chinese – I struggle to see Gary’s argument, and suspect there is a unconscious bias towards Chinese regulators at play. Grounding 90 planes in China, at the operators’ cost, does little to benefit the State’s immediate commercial position. It’s not like tomorrow the Chinese carriers will go and order 90 Airbus A321s, or indeed a domestic equivalent. CAAC does have a track record of reacting relatively aggressively to news and incidents, to the economic detriment of their domestic carriers (incl. Air China) – I don’t see this as any different.
@tom – my argument isn’t that chinese airlines will order chinese planes, as some have suggested (they wouldn’t have ordered boeing planes if the government hand’t been ok with it), rather boeing is one of the us’s primary exporters and the us and china are in the midst of tense trade negotiations, very live this week, so it’s convenient timing for them to take this stance. yes, it is costly to do so — virtually all trade restrictions are more costly to the home market than to competitors.
Gary – I accept your point that Indonesian and Chinese regulators consider non-safety/political issues when deciding whether or not to ground the 737 Max.
Please do make a similar point in your post that the decision by the FAA not to ground the 737 Max (at this time) is also reliant upon both safety and political/commercial issues.
Paolo said: “Boeing is such a sacred cow that any such decision is very difficult ( and especially so when it’s mostly black, brown or yellow people getting killed).” Introducing race into this topic is disgusting.
–Two relatively new planes crash, it might be a coincidence. I would not want to fly on the 737 MAX 8. Better safe than sorry. I think USA/Airlines should ground the plane until an analysis is complete.
–Always thought Boeing go lucky in its 787 roll-out. (1) The batteries were unsafe. (2) They used a wholly new computer system to create the initial plane design. (3) It was made out of composites instead of metal. Maybe the luck in the 787, made them arrogant and sloppy about certain details.
–Luckily, I do not own any Boeing stock. Kind of wish Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas still existed as competition for Boeing.
–Many commentators are questioning whether the automatic flight-control system is to blame. Maybe self-flying planes and self-driving cars are not about to replace humans in the near future. Personally, I would rather have a human driving/flying me.
Perhaps erring on the side of caution, that’s all!
@Neville Fernandez. Agreed. Most likely, the crashes are not Boeing’s fault. Better safe than sorry.
@Gary – I think I understand your position, though I’m not convinced by the convenient timing argument. The comparative weakness of the Chinese aviation industry, and limited number of import avenues, makes it a terrible choice of battleground.
As you say the US are net exporters to China in Aviation – I doubt anyone sees the Chinese selling lots of aviation equipment to the US anytime soon, nor can China satisfy its own internal demand. The economic interest of the Chinese is to appear open to buying US aircraft, in order to avoid tariffs on goods where it is a net exporter to the US. Appearing to act in a protectionist way on products where they have little to no export-opportunity, and only 1 other clear trading partner (the EU) is nonsensical. Grounding planes only weakens their negotiating stance, as if perceived to be related, would render any discussion on related tariffs irrelevant. “We will levy 0% import duty on all American Planes we buy, we just wont allow them to fly”.
So I am with you as far as “Don’t Read Too Much Into [the grounding]” – though I doubt the CAAC had trade talks on their mind when grounding the fleet. It could well be unconscious bias against American made planes, or unconscious retaliation to the American sanctions against firms like Huawei. Or it could just be CAAC reacting aggressively to aviation news (not for the first time).
I just don’t see it as an overly strategic move.
As long as we’re pointing out non-safety incentives by Indonesia and China, we should note that the United States has non-safety incentives as Boeing is one of its most important global companies.
Gary you are inaccurate in stating “unaddressed mechanical faults”. The AoA sensor was replaced as per Boeing’s manual 3 times. Yet MCAS still malfunctioned. It’s a design and software problem. In Fault Tolerant Computing class the example was always given to take inputs from 3 sensors and do voting yet MCAS depends on only one AoA sensor. Thats just bad coding. Nothing Lion Air could have done could have fixed bad manufacturing. In Industrial Economics class we learnt that 90% of the quality issues show up in the first 10% of life and 90% of maintenance issues show up in last 10% of life . So if a 6 month old design is having crashes its more likely to be manufacturing than maintenance issues. Lion is flying older 737s with no issues and Ethiopian has better safety record than many US airlines.
My personal opinion is that the Ethiopian crash is not MCAS as eyewitnesses have reported the engines being on fire. However it could be that the pilots switched MCAS off due to the Lion Air crash and without MCAS they stalled during a low speed turn back to airport.
Fact of the matter is the 737 Max engines are too big for the airframe and cause stalls. its a dangerous design.
Gary says that he has no data if the planes should be grounded or not, but suggests that China and Indonesia have interest in grounding… I would have 2 comments. Why China let the companies order 737MAX if is their interest to weaken Boeing? By ordering and not using them the chineese companies are economically impacted… second point is that sometimes you need to take decisions without being able to wait 2 years for the investigation to be done… So with the information they had, they decided to ground the plane…. maybe they also received reports of their planes being unstable…. I think Gary’s comment regarding their decision was subjective….
@Adi – my argument isn’t at all that China had an interest in weakening Boeing at the time those planes were grounded.
Why China let the companies order 737MAX if is their interest to weaken Boeing?
Because when the Chinese airlines ordered the plane, President Orange Blossom wasn’t in office and waging trade war against the Chinese. Now he is.
@Gary: “, Indonesia has an interest in blaming the aircraft itself ..”
They do? What evidence do you have?
I would be very surprised if these are maintenance issues. The planes are too new.
Have to disagree with you on this one. I’ve read a couple of articles on this plane discussing the plane, after the first, Lion Air crash. From what I understand, the engines on this plane are larger and have been re-positioned on the wings, changing the balance on the plane. This causes the plane to dive and requires the pilot to compensate for the balance issue. They were sold as being more fuel efficient than previous versions of the plane and were marketed as not requiring re-training of pilots as the plane is basically the same plane. However, apparently the flight management system is different enough that perhaps that retraining is necessary. I’m certainly no expert on aviation and not an engineer, but the fact that 2 brand new 737-MAX planes have crashed in a relatively short period of time, and in the same manner convinces me that until the issue is resolved, I won’t be boarding one.
your article is invalid. it is very human to react this way, better safe than sorry.
would you board the Max 8 airplane if you have a flight tomorrow? would you?
@argeswara – yes
@am
:))…. sounds logical…. the red haired changed the way the politics is made… we can give him credit for this…
I agree that we should not read anything into the reactions of certain countries to the 7M8 crash. What must be given due respect is simply the fact that this new plane crashed, and given the reported radical increases and decreases in vertical speed of the aircraft, the circumstances appear to be similar to the Lion Air crash. Until more is known, grounding the aircraft is the prudent, although terribly inconvenient, thing to do.
If another 7M8 crashes somebody ought to go upside the head of the FAA chief and airline execs who lacked the guts to make the tough call the same way Mrs. Kintner slapped the blank out of Chief Brody in Jaws after her boy was killed. She knew Brody had failed to close the beaches after he had reason to believe the waters were unsafe . Boeing needs to prove the 7M8 is safe. Until it does, it seems that grounding the fleet is the responsible thing to do. When it comes to 150 to 200 lives, probably safe is not good enough.
This reminds me of the difference between a Ford Fairmont and a Ford Mustang. Although they were based on the same drivetrain, etc, one was very expensive to insure and the other was not.
After the actuarians finish their analysis on the 737 Max (7M8), then we will know if this model is as safe as other forms of air travel.
Not too long ago, the specialty insurer of choice was Lloyds of London. Now, well, who knows. But whoever they are, I would bet they are working triple time to figure out how to rate this new bird in light of recent events, knowing that, collectively, no insurer really wants to take this risk unless they can assign the liability to Boeing, the engine manufacturer, or back to the airline and limit their payout to mostly legal fees and not huge verdicts covered exclusively by their policy.
Oh, if they are pooling their exposure (most likely), then they will naturally (and legally) collude to increase premiums, maybe enough to offset the fuel cost savings.
My only question is, how many 7M8’s were built and, as a percentage, how many have been lost? Also add the recent non-scheduled landing in Iran of the Norwegian Air plane.
This factor and customer acceptance, will be the ultimate test of whether this airplane survives 2019 or they get recalled and retrofitted back into regular 737’s with big cash rebates.
Ok…. and what is Singapore’s reason for not allowing this plane in their airspace? Its a relatively new line of jets and they already had two similar incidents, so let’s not pretend this is all politics. Its not normal for a new line of jets to have crashes like this close together when the planes are new.
Oh not to mention Argentina’s Association of Airline Pilots too has ordered its members not to fly the Max series. Cayman Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Mongolian Airlines and African carrier Comair all have grounded their 737M planes.
This sort of post is a good example of the American arrogance that has allowed the 737 Max problem has been allowed to fester. From the start the blame was always on the foreign carriers and pilots who weren’t capable or properly trained, and the problem couldn’t possibly be the new systems Boeing foisted upon them with little notice or analysis of how humans would interact with it. Even after two planes hit the ground in the same way in the course of a few months with only a few hundred frames flying (statistically massive suggestion of a problem in the aviation world), every regulatory body that feels otherwise is demeaned as insincere and self-serving, rather than properly concerned. These sorts of views have allowed Boeing to bury its head in the sand, while a second aircraft filled with passengers has been lost. Time to confront this with facts rather than empty smears.
@Mak – I do not excuse Boeing if they failed to educate the customers on the product they were buying, but we certainly know in the Lion Air crash that the occurrence aircraft had unaddressed issues prior to the flight and the airline itself has had safety challenges.
@Gary: Time to retract your claims of national interest as the reason for the groundings. The evidence is now overwhelming. You were far too deferential to Boeing PR whose spin doctors have attempted to deflect blame on to anyone but Boeing.
Countries currently grounding the 737 MAX:
UK
EU (27 countries)
Mexico
Australia
on top of Ethiopia, China, Indonesia (all previously cited).
Plus the list gets longer daily….
@L3 – I disagree — that other agencies have made their decisions does not at all dispute the claim that the first movers had parallel reasons to do so.
@Gary: Evidence? Or just telling anecdote?
OMG you just won’t stop pushing this conspiracy theory that the initial countries were making political decisions. Even as the EU has grounded these planes. Sorry but I have a hell of a lot more faith in air regulatory agencies than I do in some travel blogger who isn’t even a pilot when it comes to safety issues of a model of aircraft. Many experts agree these jets should be grounded until whatever the issue is is clearly resolved. Even the AA flight union is now calling for these planes to be grounded.
what about now? Canada has banned it too. Do you still think this is China’s move for its “national interest”???
I am so disappointed at you. gary
This…. post….. just sucks…
It’s Sept 2020. Has this bozo retracted this post yet?!?!?!