rickair7777

Or DoJ if it's bad enough...

RI830

DoT or DoJ....sounds fair, equitable and unbiased!

pilotgolfer

FWIW, I had dinner with a friend who flew for Ethiopian. He had trained the Captain and flown extensively with him on the 767 when he was a new FO coming up through the ranks. My friend said the Captain was extremely competent and had very good skills. Best guess is that the Captain had an armful of yoke pulling back withall his strength. The 200 hour FO likely froze up and was zero assistance.

Jeff Lebowski

Capt. ‘Sully’ Sullenberger: Where Boeing and the FAA Went Wrong in This ‘Ugly Saga’

(From Barron's)


For most of the history of powered flight, the United States has been a world leader in aviation.

This nation’s aviation regulatory body, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has long been the gold standard of safety regulation in global aviation, often a template for other nations to follow in technical and safety matters.

Boeing has long been the world’s preeminent airplane maker.

But now, our credibility as leaders in aviation is being damaged. Boeing and the FAA have been found wanting in this ugly saga that began years ago but has come home to roost with two terrible fatal crashes, with no survivors, in less than five months, on a new airplane type, the Boeing 737 Max 8, something that is unprecedented in modern aviation history.

For too many years, the FAA has not been provided budgets sufficient to ensure appropriate oversight of a rapidly growing global aviation industry. Staffing has not been adequate for FAA employees to oversee much of the critically important work of validating and approving aircraft certification. Instead, much of the work has been outsourced by designating aircraft manufacturer employees to do the work on behalf of the FAA. This, of course, has created inherent conflicts of interest, when employees working for the company whose products must be certified to meet safety standards are the ones doing much of the work of certifying them. There simply are not nearly enough FAA employees to do this important work in-house.

To make matters worse, there is too cozy a relationship between the industry and the regulators. And in too many cases, FAA employees who rightly called for stricter compliance with safety standards and more rigorous design choices have been overruled by FAA management, often under corporate or political pressure.

Let me be clear, without effective leadership and support from political leaders in the administration, the FAA does not have sufficient independence to be able to do its job, which is to keep air travelers and crews safe. Oversight must mean accountability, or it means nothing.

Boeing, in developing the 737 Max 8, obviously felt intense competitive pressure to get the new aircraft to market as quickly as possible. When flight testing revealed an issue with meeting the certification standards, the company developed a fix, Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), but did not tell airline pilots about it. In mitigating one risk, Boeing seems to have created another, greater risk.

After the crash of Lion Air 610 last October, it was apparent that this new risk needed to be effectively addressed. It has been reported that Boeing pushed back in discussions with the FAA about the extent of changes that would be required, and after the second crash, of Ethiopian 302, the Boeing CEO reached out to the U.S. President to try to keep the 737 Max 8 from being grounded in the U.S. The new fix still has not been fielded, nearly five months after Lion Air. It almost certainly could have been done sooner, and should have been.

Boeing has focused on trying to protect its product and defend its stance, but the best way, indeed the only way, to really protect one’s brand or product is to protect the people who use it. We must not forget that the basis of business, what makes business possible, is trust.

Estimates are that Boeing likely will face additional costs of several billion dollars because of these recent crashes and the decisions made several years ago that led up to them. This case is a validation of something that I have long understood, that there is a strong business case for quality and safety, that it is always better and cheaper to do it right instead of doing it wrong and trying to repair the damage after the fact, and when lives are lost, there is no way to repair the damage.

And in this ultra-cost-competitive global aviation industry, when it comes to costs, nothing is more costly than an accident. Nothing.

Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger is a safety expert, author and speaker on leadership and culture. He is also a retired airline pilot who, on Jan. 15, 2009, safely landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in New York when both engines lost power when they were struck by a flock of birds. All 155 people on board survived.

rickair7777

Both apparently...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...=.9beb060b155e

costalpilot

OK., I'll bite. Please post exactly how "Trump overstepped his executive priviledge'"

What did he do, EXACTLY?

And, please post a link that verify's your version of what he did.

What did he do and how did that action overstept "executive priviledge."

costalpilot

From whats known...this seems right to me.......

the "optional" nature of the 3rd AOA is scary if it indicates they anticipated the problem and devised a solution which was offered as an option.

Think about that.

slightly mind blowing.

RI830

My post was light sarcasm in regards to other posts that Trump was a blundering baboon and overstepped his authority when the FAA said “no need to ground the Max”.
Now we get to see how the wolves were guarding the hen house and the FAA is caught short and red handed.

Jess1

So to paraphrase Sully:
"Airport management, the FAA and the airlines. They're all cheats and liars. All right, lets get outta here."

Mesabah

When they rerun the performance data for the new numbers, I bet the aircraft takes a hit on useful load. Boeing owes a lot of money to the airlines for this one.