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

Southwest still uses 'em

[SuperKendall]

Southwest, and I think American have both said they don't think anything is fundamentally wrong with the plane. Possibly this is some kind of training issue.

Given there have been no issues here, I don't think it's unreasonable for other carriers to keep flying them even while they figure out what happened.

Re:Southwest still uses 'em

[ceoyoyo]

The Indonesian flight seems to have been due to a training issue: Boeing elected not to include the required procedures for disabling a failing anti-stall system into the variant difference training course because they didn't want to confuse the average pilot.

So hopefully all 737 max pilots have gotten the message now, and will respond quickly and appropriately when their aircraft exhibit a determined effort to dive into the ground.

Re: Southwest still uses 'em

[c6gunner]

System interactions are complex, there is a way to do it but it may not be obvious.

Pulling back on the stick is pretty fucking obvious. Adjusting your trim is slightly less obvious; you would first have to look at the trim indication and realize that it's out of whack. Still well within the abilities of any decent pilot though. Manual trim override is even less obvious, but is the default action once you determine that the trim system is faulty; something all pilots are trained in.

You don't know what happened and are guessing based on having zero information

Zero information other than reading up on how the Boeing MCAS functions, and having experience maintaining and operating multi-engine aircraft, yes.

Re:Southwest still uses 'em

[Joce640k]

The fleet should be grounded, but money talks

If it was Airbus the FAA would have grounded them after the first/i> incident.