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Chinese Carriers, Ethiopian Airlines Halt Use of Boeing 737 MAX 8 Aircraft After Crash (reuters.com)
China's aviation regulator today grounded nearly 100 Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 aircraft operated by its airlines, more than a quarter of the global fleet of the jets, after a deadly crash of one of the planes in Ethiopia. From a report: However, a U.S. official said it was unclear what information the Chinese regulator was acting on because the investigation of Sunday's crash, the second involving the latest version of the narrowbody jet, was in the early stages. Speaking on condition of anonymity as the topic is sensitive, the U.S. official said there were no plans to follow suit, as the jet had a stellar safety record in the United States and there was a lack of information on what caused the Ethiopian crash.
Without any accident investigation (and they are usually though) an analysys two crashes in six months are just a coincidence.
Your speculations are worthless.
when last I checked, a "lack of information" is a great reason to avoid something dangerous. Actually, it might be the one and only and best reason to avoid anything dangerous -- from bicycles to bungee jumping. Get informed first. And if you thought you were informed, and suddenly you discover that you aren't informed because you can't explain something that happened, well then, avoid again until you become informed again.
In other words, let someone else run the tests. That's exactly what test-pilots are for.
Except we do have information. One has gone through accident investigation that hasn't been published yet, but has been completed and was serious enough that 2 advisories have been issued. It would appear as though there actually is a problem in these aircraft. Both crashed during takeoff. Both had problems with vertical ascension. One had a specific advisory on instruments used during ascending.
You're right it'll remain somewhat speculative until both incidents have gone through a complete review, but there are already indications pointing to systemic issues rather than just pure coincidence.
The last ten years we had like 4 or 5 airplane crashes.
Now we have 2 in a row just during a 5 month period, same type of _new_ airplane. Most likely not a coincident but a systematic fault in the plane.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The Chinese response is the most appropriate, especially since they are not blinded by the fear of damaging profit margins for Boeing. The fact that at least 2 incidents with "unknown" cause involve the same aircraft means its continued use while the cause is unknown is a risk. China recognizes it as an avoidable risk, which it is in reality.
Not so fast there AC..
The speculation is that this is a human factors problem too, where some automated system is messing with the pitch controls in weird ways when presented with sensor failures. Where you can mitigate this problem with pilot training (Hey, when this happens, turn of the stall prevention system) there may also be a pilot manual omission issue too. If that's true, the pilots are properly trained per the documentation provided, so the base cause is really the pilot manual omits some important information, so they didn't have a chance to get trained.
So, I'd not be so fast to blame the pilots, or their training. It could be that it's not their fault.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-pilots.html
to summarise: we added a few lines of code that the pilots don't know about to make the plane do something the pilots have no idea the plane might decide to try and do: ie, depending on input from one little sensor, the computer might try and shove the nose into the ground.
And the "you couldn't make this bit up" bit in the article:: on previous planes without this new software, if you felt the nose was being shoved into the ground for some unknown reason, you could (wait for it, wait for it) "pull back on the stick", and that would do what pulling back on the stick has done in aeroplanes like forever, i.e. bring the nose up (in this case, by disabling any mad sensors/sensor readings).
(If I were the one conscious person on a plane, having to fly it, that is the single thing I would know to try to do.)
But not any more - with this new feature, *that method of escape has been removed*.
- We're going to crash!
- Pull back on the stick!
- Computer says no!
Right, you can be sure of that.
We should continue to blame China for everything wrong on this planet, that will for sure Make America Great Again.
Over 150 people just died, which is 3 Chernobyls. This means that aviation is a dead-end technology that cannot possibly be made safe at reasonable levels of cost. Germany takes the lead, mothballing all civilian aircraft now in use. From now on, Germans will use their rail network to carry domestic traffic. For international travel, Germany will build a new fleet of ships, wind powered and made of sustainable tree derived materials.
The US will take a more measured approach. No new planes will be ordered, but airlines will continue to operate with existing craft until they age out, whereupon they will be replaced by buses. The UK will do the same, but will order one more aircraft from China, specially designed with 12 engines and parachutes for each passenger, to cost GBP 10 billion and be delivered in 2025.
Creating an aircraft with a dangerous new unexpected behavior, different from all other aircraft pilots are familiar with, then blaming the pilot for not RTFM is asinine.
Yes being a pilot is complicated and requires lots of training. No that doesn't mean you can add more edge cases to their already complicated jobs and just stick it in the manual.
This was a complete fuck-up by Boeing.
Two early crashes in a new plane with somewhat similar circumstances is mighty suspicious and certainly warrants waiting for solid details from the investigation.