Crashing Boeing 737 Airliners: A Small Price to Pay for Making America Great Again
UPDATE: (11:36am) The Associated Press is reporting the U.S. is finally issuing an "emergency order" grounding all 737 Max 8 airliners.
It wasn’t like authorities didn’t know there were problems with the Boeing 737 Max 8 planes prior to Sunday's Ethiopian Air crash that killed 157 people. The government knew. The company knew. They even had a fix in the works for the problem likely responsible for the crash.
Welcome to the Trumpian era, featuring deregulation, cronyism, and destruction of the administrative state. The order grounding planes came from the President, kinda like they do in authoritarian countries.
Although the planes have been grounded in China, Australia, India, and the European Union, the Federal Aviation Administration is allowing Southwest, WestJet, and American Airlines to continue service using the planes on domestic routes.
https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/1105879830598422528
How can this be? Perhaps it’s the fact that the FAA has operated under an ‘acting administrator’ for the past year.
Despite reports saying President Trump wanted his longtime personal pilot to lead the agency, there is, at present, nobody awaiting Senate confirmation.
As Steve Benen at MSNBC observed:
The president has boasted at times about leaving many federal offices and agencies without a Senate-confirmed head, and as it turns out, if you scroll through the long list of positions, you’ll notice next to the listing for “Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration,” there are two words: “No nominee.”
Or perhaps the 737 Max 8 aircraft were still flying domestically for a while was because Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg and Trump are buddies.
The connections with administration include:
Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan worked for 31 years at Boeing
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is on Boeing’s board of directors
Trump pressures allies to buy products from Boeing
Boeing been spared from retaliatory Chinese tariffs
Trump has used Boeing products and sites as a backdrop over the course of his presidency
After the latest crash, Trump spoke to Boeing CEO after the Ethiopian crash, who told him the planes are safe
https://twitter.com/Rschooley/status/1105868792008065024
An October crash in Indonesia killing 189 people brought to light a faulty safety mechanism designed to keep the aircraft from stalling on takeoff activating at other points in the flight.
Although it’s too soon to officially state the two recent crashes were connected, flying in recent years has become the safest mode of transportation. If you flew every day of your life, probability indicates it would take nineteen thousand years before having a fatal accident.
So, let’s look at some other concerning matters...
A Dallas Morning News investigation published today reveals that pilots repeatedly voiced safety concerns to federal authorities, with one captain calling the flight manual "inadequate and almost criminally insufficient." several months before Sunday's Ethiopian Air crash that killed 157 people.
"The United States should be leading the world in aviation safety," said John Samuelsen, president of a union representing transport workers that called Tuesday for the planes to be grounded. "And yet, because of the lust for profit in the American aviation, we're still flying planes that dozens of other countries and airlines have now said need to be grounded."
The complaint from the captain who called into question the 737 Max 8's flight manual ended: "The fact that this airplane requires such jury rigging to fly is a red flag. Now we know the systems employed are error-prone — even if the pilots aren't sure what those systems are, what redundancies are in place and failure modes. I am left to wonder: what else don't I know?"
The Wall Street Journal reports the recent government shutdown played a part in delaying the rollout of a software update.
The FAA was one of the agencies affected by the government shutdown, which began on December 22 and spanned 35 days. The agency had to recall thousands of its aviation inspectors from furlough over safety concerns.
The FAA determined that the delay in the update was acceptable because its experts and Boeing deemed there was no imminent safety threat, an unnamed source briefed on the discussions told the Journal.
Boeing now says the fix will be on 737 Max planes no later than April, as it works with the FAA "on development, planning and certification of the software enhancement." The software fix will reportedly include updates to pilot displays, operation manuals and crew training.
***
Hey folks! Be sure to like/follow Words & Deeds on Facebook. If you’d like to have each post mailed to you check out the simple subscription form on the right side of the front page.
Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com
Lead photo: Wikimedia Commons