FAA Says Boeing 737 MAX Planes Are Still Airworthy (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The Boeing 737 MAX, the type of plane involved in a deadly crash in Ethiopia over the weekend, is still airworthy and the Federal Aviation Administration plans to issue a notice to the international aviation community later Monday, a person familiar with the matter said. "The FAA continuously assesses and oversees the safety performance of U.S. commercial aircraft," the FAA said in a statement. "If we identify an issue that affects safety, the FAA will take immediate and appropriate action."

Aviation officials in China and Indonesia ordered domestic airlines to ground their fleets of the popular Boeing single-aisle planes after the deadly crash of one operated by Ethiopian Airlines on Sunday. The 149 passengers and eight crew members on board were killed when the plane crashed shortly after takeoff. The incident was the second deadly crash of the new Boeing planes in less than five months. A Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 plunged into the Java Sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta in October, killing all 189 people on board.

Comments

Re: Southwest still uses 'em

[c6gunner]

If pilots who have had all of the currently required training per Boeing are flying these jets into the ground, well it doesn't fucking matter if additional training might solve the fucking problem now does it?

Right, because fully trained pilots never ever crash any other plane.

What are you, 12?

The FAA is known to avoid change

[jd]

They do nothing without clear and compelling evidence. And even then have been known to delay.

There were cases in an earlier Boeing aircraft of metallic particles in hydraulic fluid causing crashes, but the FAA and NTSB held off on action because they couldn't prove that was the cause of the accidents in the lab.

Turned out their lab tests were faulty.

Once upon a time, they were too proactive, demanding changes without proper testing or evaluation. That also caused crashes, which is why they prefer to do nothing over doing too much.

The second aircraft was in flames prior to the flight terminating abruptly on the ground. It has been suggested that overworked controls fighting with an overly aggressive antistall device may have caused that.

Moreover, we must remember the 777. It suffered multiple near-disasters with battery packs in flames in the first few flights. This would suggest poor testing procedures.

Conditions for both crashes are very, very different from those in America, so if it's an environmental factor that triggered the fault, the FAA are likely correct.

If it's a design flaw triggered, as with the 777, by unusual system loads, then it could happen at any time.

If the accident reports are indeterminate and crashes remain in one part of the world, it's environmental.

Remember, unsafe designs don't explode on first use. The DC9 and original 737 were incredibly bad designs. But they only failed occasionally. Even the Comet completed more flights than not.

Re:The FAA is known to avoid change

[hcs_$reboot]

The question you might ask is: what would do the FAA if the "problem" was affecting the Airbus fleet?

Dollars to Donuts it's Control Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Since these accidents are happening right after takeoff, I would bet it is one of the following government-mandated "safety" systems malfunctioning:

Speed limiter below 10,000MSL - global aviation rules limit airspeed to 250KIAS below 10,000ft. The control computer will dial back throttle on the climbout if the speed approaches 250KIAS. But, if the pilot has already activated the automated flight plan, which includes a vertical speed hold, the autopilot will try to maintain that vertical speed by pitching up while at the same time the completely independent and disconnected safety system is throttling back to avoid flying dangerously fast in crowded airspace.

Each system has no idea what the other is doing, but they are fighting each other. The pilot may not notice the throttling back because an engine at 50% N2 sounds nearly identical to an engine at 90% N2. The pilot may also not notice the high attitude or falling airspeed if he/she is feverishly trying to complete the 100 pages of checklists imposed by both the airline and the aviation authorities.

Once the airplane stalls, the safety autopilot will seize control of the aircraft from the pilots and attempt to pitch down, but chances are cargo has shifted from the high pitch, and with the cargo now shoved to the rear of the airplane, causing an aft center of gravity, the airplane cannot pitch itself down and becomes extremely difficult to control because of low speed, high AoA, and probably engine compressor stall as well, meaning the pilots can't get the plane to speed back up.

Flying airplanes used to be fun, but now it's a constant battle between government busybodies, penny-pinching airlines that want to automate literally everything so they can hire $8/hr Indian pilots, overworked/underpaid pilots who haven't had a good night's sleep in 3 days, and incompetent H1B software developers who have no idea how planes work.