Octopus Overlords

This is the second crash of the 737 MAX, the latest version of Boeing's workhorse narrowbody jet that first entered service in 2017.

In October, a 737 MAX flown by Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air flying from Jakarta on a domestic flight crashed 13 minutes after take-off, killing all 189 passengers and crew on board.

The cause of that crash is still being investigated. A preliminary report issued in November, before the cockpit voice recorder was recovered, focused on airline maintenance and training and the response of a Boeing anti-stall system to a recently replaced sensor but did not give a reason for the crash.

Caijing, a state-run news outlet that covers finance and economics, said many flights scheduled to use 737 Max planes would instead use the 737-800 models.

Britain banned the Boeing 737 Max from its airspace on Tuesday, becoming the first European nation to place restrictions on the aircraft after an Ethio­pian Airlines crash killed all 157 people aboard.

The country’s civil aviation authority said the move was a “precautionary measure” because it did not have sufficient information about the crash. Just five Max planes operate in Britain, but those operated by other carriers will no longer be allowed into its airspace.

After China ordered a dozen carriers to ground their 96 planes on Monday — roughly a quarter of all 737 Max in operation globally — authorities in Ethi­o­pia, Singapore, Indonesia, Morocco and Mongolia quickly followed suit, as did carriers in Latin America and South Korea.

Australia, Malaysia and Oman became the latest countries to ground the model a day later, with authorities saying the aircraft would not be allowed to fly to or from their countries pending the investigation.

By becoming the first country to ground the planes, China sent an unmistakable signal: the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is no longer the only authority in civil aviation worldwide.

The move by Chinese regulators, which was unprecedented for a government that once took cues from the FAA, was motivated by what Chinese officials and pilots said was months of equivocation from U.S. officials and Boeing in response to safety inquiries from China after the crash of a 737 Max 8 in Indonesia last October.
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Aviation experts say there is a chance that issues with the 737 Max’s new piloting software, the Manuevering Characteristics Augmentation System (M.C.A.S.), and angle-of-attack sensors may have played a role in both accidents, which occurred less than five months apart. Boeing issued notices to pilots worldwide about the M.C.A.S. after the Lion Air crash but has been criticized for not doing so earlier — or more thoroughly.

"Thus far, our review shows no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft. Nor have other civil aviation authorities provided data to us that would warrant action," Elwell said in a release from the FAA.

"In the course of our urgent review of data on the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash, if any issues affecting the continued airworthiness of the aircraft are identified, the FAA will take immediate and appropriate action."

While Elwell and his boss are waiting to see data to convince them the 737 Max planes should not fly, more than thirty airlines, several countries and the European Union have decided to ground the planes.

The decisions have created a perception for some that regulators in Washington, D.C. and three U.S. airlines that fly the Max are being stubborn by continuing to fly the Max. Southwest and American Airlines, who fly the 737 Max 8, and United Airlines, which flies the 737 Max 9, have all said they have no plans to take the plane out of service.

pr0ner wrote:I'm supposed to fly on a Max 9 to Iceland in a couple months. I wonder if Icelandair will change the plane over to a 767 or if Boeing planes will no longer be grounded then.

pr0ner wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 1:14 am I'm supposed to fly on a Max 9 to Iceland in a couple months. I wonder if Icelandair will change the plane over to a 767 or if Boeing planes will no longer be grounded then.

Montag wrote:

pr0ner wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 1:14 am I'm supposed to fly on a Max 9 to Iceland in a couple months. I wonder if Icelandair will change the plane over to a 767 or if Boeing planes will no longer be grounded then.

Vacation or business. I would like to to go there someday.

Montag wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:32 am

pr0ner wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 1:14 am I'm supposed to fly on a Max 9 to Iceland in a couple months. I wonder if Icelandair will change the plane over to a 767 or if Boeing planes will no longer be grounded then.

Vacation or business. I would like to to go there someday.

In November, two incidents were reported to the NASA-run Aviation Safety Reporting Database that involved problems in controlling the 737 MAX at low altitude just after take-off with autopilot engaged, according to documents first published by the Dallas Morning News and verified by Reuters.

“We discussed the departure at length and I reviewed in my mind our automation setup and flight profile but can’t think of any reason the aircraft would pitch nose down so aggressively,” one pilot said.

Chrisoc13 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:30 am

pr0ner wrote:I'm supposed to fly on a Max 9 to Iceland in a couple months. I wonder if Icelandair will change the plane over to a 767 or if Boeing planes will no longer be grounded then.

Iceland hasn't grounded them. They aren't part of the eu. They are flying them on us flights but not European flights. I'm going in August, the only reason I'm keeping track.

The Meal wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:47 pm Boeing 737-900 flight scheduled for 7:50 am 3/14/2019. Fingers crossed.

The Meal wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:47 pm Boeing 737-900 flight scheduled for 7:50 am 3/14/2019. Fingers crossed.

pr0ner wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 3:12 pm

The Meal wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:47 pm Boeing 737-900 flight scheduled for 7:50 am 3/14/2019. Fingers crossed.

At least that's not one of the 737 MAX planes.

Though I think your weather will be more of an issue!

gilraen wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 3:07 pm Uhhm...yeah, you might need some serious luck with that. Between the blizzard today canceling thousands of flights across the region, and all those planes that have just been taken out of service, I'm guessing the ripple effect is going to be nightmarish for the next few days.

The grounding will likely hurt Boeing, whose shares are down after the Ethiopian Airlines crash and whose sales might take a hit. It will likely hurt airlines, which now have fewer seats with which to shuttle customers around the country and the world. And it will likely hurt passengers, who might have to adjust their schedule and, in some cases, their spending. But most notable is the scale of it all: Depending on the duration of the grounding, it could cost all involved parties billions of dollars.

Start with Boeing. The price of the company’s stock fell more than 10 percent, which represented nearly $30 billion of the company’s market value, in the days after the crash. One of investors’ worries is that the reputation of the 737 Max—which was also involved in a crash last fall in Indonesia—is now tarnished to the point that it will hurt demand for the plane. This is no small concern: The 737 Max, a jet that costs more than $100 million, is Boeing’s all-time best-selling aircraft, and the company is lined up to sell several thousand more. If airlines cancel their orders, Boeing would stand to lose billions of dollars.
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Volodymyr Bilotkach, an economist at Newcastle University and the author of The Economics of Airlines, says that if cancellations do materialize, Boeing likely doesn’t have a great Plan B, but neither does anyone else. The airplane-building industry, he says, is an “effective duopoly,” meaning it’s dominated by two suppliers: “There is no way Airbus”—the other half of the duopoly—“will be able to come to the rescue, as that manufacturer’s order book is also not empty.” Indeed, one analyst who follows Boeing closely told Bloomberg earlier this week that his firm didn’t see “meaningful long-term risk” for the company. (Bilotkach says it’s possible that instead of taking their business elsewhere, some airlines might opt for older Boeing-made models with safer records.)

Airlines—Boeing’s customers—are not in a great position either. The primary challenge in the industry, says Clifford Winston, an economist at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, is how far in advance airlines have to decide how large their fleet should be at any given time. “A plane takes a long time to make,” he says—sometimes a year or longer, and even buying used planes can take a while. Airlines’ task, in essence, is to guess how many people want to go from, say, Nashville to Denver on this day next year, and then buy a bunch of elaborate, $100 million metal contraptions accordingly.

McNutt wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:06 am My flight Saturday is canceled. Pretty sure it was due to the grounding. Ugh.

malchior wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:52 pm

McNutt wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:06 am My flight Saturday is canceled. Pretty sure it was due to the grounding. Ugh.

Probably - especially if it was Southwest. They are targeting less profitable routes by switching the Max 8s into them and then cancelling them due to the grounding.

In a hearing on NASA’s exploration plans today (March 13), Bridenstine said his agency would consider using privately designed rockets to avoid delays to an exploration mission, called EM-1, that will launch a new spacecraft called Orion on an uncrewed mission around the moon. So far, NASA has spent $14 billion on the yet-to-fly rocket, called the Space Launch System.

This is the first time NASA has conceded that it can accomplish its exploration goals without SLS, intended to be the largest rocket ever built.

“We as an agency need to stick to our commitments,” Bridenstine said. “I think we should launch around the moon in June of 2020… Here’s the glory of the United States of America. We have an amazing capability that we can use right now, off the shelf, in order to accomplish this objective.”

The decision to look at other rockets is a warning for Boeing and the NASA managers of the program that the SLS, long insulated from accountability by political patronage, needs to get back on track. It also means NASA could choose SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, or new rockets being developed by Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin and the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance, for the mission. ULA also operates a large rocket, Delta IV, but it is being phased out of production.

A set of stairs may have never caused so much trouble in an aircraft.

First introduced in West Germany as a short-hop commuter jet in the early Cold War, the Boeing 737-100 had folding metal stairs attached to the fuselage that passengers climbed to board before airports had jetways. Ground crews hand-lifted heavy luggage into the cargo holds in those days, long before motorized belt loaders were widely available.

That low-to-the-ground design was a plus in 1968, but it has proved to be a constraint that engineers modernizing the 737 have had to work around ever since. The compromises required to push forward a more fuel-efficient version of the plane — with larger engines and altered aerodynamics — led to the complex flight control software system that is now under investigation in two fatal crashes over the last five months.

The Meal wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2019 6:58 am

The Meal wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:47 pm Boeing 737-900 flight scheduled for 7:50 am 3/14/2019. Fingers crossed.

gilraen wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 3:07 pm Uhhm...yeah, you might need some serious luck with that. Between the blizzard today canceling thousands of flights across the region, and all those planes that have just been taken out of service, I'm guessing the ripple effect is going to be nightmarish for the next few days.

As of right now we're only on a 4-hour flight delay (now scheduled to depart at noon). But my experience is that the first delay begets the second delay...

I'm up early to finish the job of clearing our driveway for our departure. Put in two hours last night (with MHS and daughter's help) and expect another hour or so this morning. Actually at the moment I'm procrastinating from beginning that exact job...

Text messages between Boeing employees in 2016 indicate that the company was aware of major problems with an automated feature on the 737 Max jet that made the aircraft difficult to control, the messages show.
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One text message with a misspelling said the feature was engaging “itself like craxy.” Another termed the problem “egregious.”

Another indicated that the Boeing employees misled the Federal Aviation Administration. “So I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly),” read one message.

“It wasnt a lie, no one told us that was the case,” came the response.

Boeing did not turn the messages over to the FAA until Thursday, federal officials said Friday.
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FAA administrator Steve Dickson said in a letter to Boeing Friday: “I expect your explanation immediately.”

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg was ousted on Monday after a tumultuous period in which the company faced a series of setbacks, including two fatal crashes, delays and numerous issues with its 737 Max airplane. Boeing continues to struggle to get its most important product back in the air.

Chairman David Calhoun will take over as CEO, effective January 13, 2020.

Boeing (BA) said in a press release that its board of directors decided to part ways with Muilenberg in part because its customers and regulators no longer trusted the company's decision-making.

The Justice Department filed criminal charges against Boeing as part of a deferred prosecution agreement that accuses the planemaker of concealing information from regulators investigating the 737 Max crashes, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.