
China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft - Ultramanoid
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airlines-china/china-orders-its-airlines-to-suspend-use-of-boeing-737-max-aircraft-media-idUSKBN1QS01Z
======
dschuler
People seem to think this is a political move by the China, which may be true,
but this is actually what they're supposed to do. According to the article, 96
737 MAX jets are operated by Chinese airlines, and the aircraft appears to be
racking up a questionable safety record.

I wouldn't put faith in the FAA to be beyond political influence and crack
down on an American manufacturer quickly.

Lauda Air flight 004 [0] crashed in 1991 after inadvertent thrust reverser
deployment mid-flight, which were not secured with positive locks since Boeing
deemed this to be impossible. The FAA accepted Boeing's tests at face value.
Regardless, Boeing insisted this would be a survivable event - it wasn't until
Niki Lauda (airline's founder) insisted Boeing issue a statement to the
contrary or to perform a test flight with him and two pilots attempting a
deliberate reverse thrust deployment mid-flight. Boeing relented and
acknowledged the defect.

The more groups looking at aviation safety, the better.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauda_Air_Flight_004](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauda_Air_Flight_004)

~~~
quanticle
>I wouldn't put faith in the FAA to be beyond political influence and crack
down on an American manufacturer quickly.

I would. The FAA grounded the Boeing 787 after some widely publicized battery
fires:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_problems#Groundings).
I would assume that they would do the same thing here, if this also turned out
to be a widespread issue not related to aircraft maintenance or pilot
training.

~~~
dis-sys
> I would assume that they would do the same thing here, if this also turned
> out to be a widespread issue not related to aircraft maintenance or pilot
> training.

Two brand new 737 Max from two different types of airlines crashed in 6
months, what else you need to establish the fact that 737 Max worth to be
grounded for a full investigation? How "widespread" it need to be? Maybe a few
more crashes are required for FAA to make a move?

FAA's refusal to immediately ground all 737 Max is a pure political move to
defend a faulty design that have already killed hundreds of people.

~~~
Johnny555
The cause of this crash hasn't been determined, some witnesses described
seeing flames before the plane hit the ground, so it's entirely possible that
a cargo hold fire took the plane down.

the black box should be relatively easy to find (assuming it survived), so
investigators should have a better idea about the cause soon.

~~~
dis-sys
> The cause of this crash hasn't been determined

that is the exact reason why all 737 Max should be immediately grounded for a
full investigation.

or are you suggesting to further risk lives just to protect the interests of a
company which had two of its brand new jets crashed in 6 months? Will you
defend a Russian/Chinese manufacturer posing similar obvious fatal risks to
the public when FAA orders all of them to be grounded in the US?

~~~
Rooster61
> Will you defend a Russian/Chinese manufacturer posing similar obvious fatal
> risks to the public when FAA orders all of them to be grounded in the US?

The person you are replying to made no reference to the countries/governments
involved. Please do not assume someone's argument is politically charged if
they have said nothing to imply that it is. It assumes the worst of people
with no impetus.

------
hohohmm
It befuddles me to see people relating this to external motivations, not a
genuine concern for safety. Would you fly 737 max8 tomorrow? Anybody who knows
anything about Chinese aviation industry knows that it is severely government-
regulated industry and the top 1 priority is safety. It has better records
than the American counterpart. While BOEING(being one of the pillars of
American industry) might twist arms in corporate America, it simply doesn't
have enough influence to warrant such risks with the Chinese government.
Simple as that. I would very much appreciate FAA doing the same.

And it saddens me to see my comment being downvoted so rapidly. Has it become
too hard in this corporate America to not buy into this bs? Has it not been
obvious from history lessons that companies can only be held up to the moral
standards that the law could effectively demand? A thorough investigation
means potentially losing hundreds of billions of dollars. I would not expect
Boeing to jump into this without some iron-fisted slaps. In the current trade
circumstances, doubly not so. It is FAA's job to be doubtful and strict, not
Boeing's. And it disappoints when FAA is testing reasonable doubts with human
lives, not Boeing's profits.

If you are so inclined to downvote this, fly 737 max8 whenever you can
probably help your corporate daddies more. Put your life on it where you mean
it.

~~~
throwaway66666
Before reading the article and before seeing your comment, I was chatting with
my partner about the 737 Max, advising her to be wary. And lo and behold...
You are definitely not alone in this.

However, and to play a bit devil's advocate, China has a reputation as being a
place that does not care about the value of human life, and the current
climate is charged with USA advising people to ban Huawei's hardware, so this
_could_ have ulterior motives. If it was France banning them, nobody would bat
an eye.

Political or not, in my eyes it is definitely the right move.

~~~
sct202
China doesn't value the average person's life. But as you can see in the
Huawei case, they seem to value some lives very highly. I suspect that the
people flying are multiple times more valued by the Chinese government than
normal citizens.

~~~
aaalucard
Funny that more countries are joining Chian while USA or Canada haven't
announced anything yet. Do American politicians care a person's life or their
relationships with companies like Boeing

------
cameldrv
Maybe it's politically motivated, but IMO so is the FAA's certification and
nonaction so far. Boeing promised a software fix by January, and the FAA's
decision not to ground the fleet was probably informally based on that
promise. Unfortunately the software fix is proving more difficult than
anticipated. Regulated, safety-critical software, whose failure leads to a
smoking crater full of bodies can be like that. Especially in this case where
it's not going to be just a bugfix, but probably a major redesign of the
concept of the MCAS.

Ultimately though there are over 5000 orders for the 737MAX. The list price is
$121 million. That makes the total value of the order book $600 Billion at
list prices. That's roughly the market cap of Google or Apple, and the 737MAX
is extremely important to the U.S. balance of trade. There is obviously going
to be a political component to any big regulatory action on it.

The FAA needs to make a major course correction here, because what's even more
important long-term than a single, very popular airplane to the U.S. economy
is FAA's credibility as a regulator. In most countries, FAA certification
means rubber-stamp certification from the local authority. As long as it is,
it's a huge advantage to the U.S. aviation industry, because the FAA can write
regs that are favorable to U.S. interests. This is only true though as long as
the FAA is seen to have integrity.

In this case, when it comes to that, by my reading (and I'm not a lawyer or an
expert), the MCAS is in violation of FAR part 25.672, and the 737MAX is not
airworthy.

~~~
whbk
Wow, I didn't realize the software fix hadn't been rolled out prior to
yesterday's crash. Yikes. Also count me among those who went through the rest
of this year's (already booked) flights this morning to ensure I'm not on one
of these things.

~~~
rob74
As far as I know, most airlines are seeing the 737-MAX 8 and its predecessor,
the 737-800, as interchangeable (or they did until yesterday), so I doubt they
will be able to say with certainty which aircraft type will operate a given
flight...

~~~
whbk
Yeah, in my case it was a pretty straightforward situation with 1 airline not
having the 8max at all (despite an article saying otherwise?) and my other
flights being on 737-700's. I read a fair bit about this whole mess today and
saw some posts saying there was a way to use SeatGuru to reliably distinguish
between Max 8 / legacy 737-800, but I didn't need to dig that much myself and
as you noted especially for flights far out, they can't guarantee equipment
won't be swapped.

~~~
sheeshkebab
The death will be quick - why worry so much?

~~~
krageon
I'm going to go out on a limb and say they don't want to die.

------
jpatokal
From the New York Times at
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/business/boeing-737-max-8...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/business/boeing-737-max-8-aircraft-
crash-china.html):

> _On a commercial level, China’s aviation sector could actually benefit from
> the tragedies in Indonesia and Ethiopia. A government-owned company in
> Shanghai has begun doing flight tests of a Chinese-made alternative to the
> Boeing 737, called the Comac C919. The C919 is the cornerstone of China’s
> effort to build a commercial aviation competitor to Boeing and Airbus._

It's worth noting that a) the C919 program has been severely troubled, and b)
this hasn't stopped the Chinese government from arm-twisting Chinese airlines
into over 1000 (!) orders. The original plan was for entry into service by
2014; as of now, they're still refining prototypes for test flights and the
current goal of 2021 looks optimistic.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919#2018](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919#2018)

Comac's other airliner, the ARJ21 regional jet, is (barely) in service but is
not faring much better: _" Initial operational feedback of aircraft was rather
poor. The biggest issue was inability of the aircraft to land on wet
runways."_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_ARJ21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_ARJ21)

...and per FlightRadar24, sole customer Chengdu Airlines is no longer flying
its ARJ21s:

[https://www.flightradar24.com/data/airlines/eu-
uea/fleet](https://www.flightradar24.com/data/airlines/eu-uea/fleet)

------
TimTheTinker
My family (wife and kids) and I have a scheduled flight on a Southwest 737 MAX
this week. I'm worried about whether there's an unacceptable risk involved in
flying on a 737 MAX because of this morning's crash (and last year's Lion Air
crash).

After a bit of googling, I found this article from November 2018:
[https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-
airlines...](https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines-is-
adding-new-angle-of-attack-indicators-to-its-737-max-fleet/) Apparently,
Southwest has been updating glass cockpits in its 737 MAX fleet to include
extra indicators to mitigate factors that led to the 2018 Lion Air crash, like
an on-screen AOA indicator and a warning light to indicate when AOA sensors
don't agree. (I do wish they had gone far enough to disable the MCAS system
when one AOA sensor indicates high AOA and the two sensors disagree by more
than 2x their individual tolerance.)

That mitigates our risk in the chance that the crash was caused by the same
factors that led to the 2018 Lion Air crash, but I'm still nervous as the
cause of this morning's crash is unknown.

~~~
cjbprime
I am generally the person who says things like "the plane will be many times
safer than the car ride to get to the airport", and I would cancel that
flight. (And I would further be shocked if the FAA doesn't issue a ground
suspension of the MAX tomorrow.)

And hey, Southwest gives full credit for cancellations, right?

The Lion Air crash was world news. If any 737 pilot heard about it, presumably
went through extra training in its aftermath, and yet was unable to avoid the
exact same takeoff->unreliable airspeed->stall pattern, then it's simply not
possible to rely on piloting to avoid stalling the plane. As far as I know
this Ethiopia crash was in visual conditions: the pilots could see the ground,
which means they weren't confused about what their AoA was. I'm not an expert,
but I think control failure of the airliner under these conditions is
basically unprecedented.

There's a planned MCAS software update that's been delayed for months: after
that actually ships seems like the right time for people to start flying the
plane again.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-and-regulators-delay-
jet...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-and-regulators-delay-jetliner-
fixes-prompted-by-lion-air-crash-11549821489)

~~~
chopin
Visual flight conditions give you your angle relative to the horizon but not
necessarily AoA especially in non-normal flight conditions (like steep ascent
or descent).

------
speedplane
Forget China, think about yourself. If you have an option to fly on a 737 Max
or another aircraft right now, which would you choose? I suspect market forces
will ground these planes anyway.

~~~
toephu2
Why? Because 2 737s went down in the past few years? Do you know how many
successful flights have been completed in the past few years? Would you rather
drive? do you know how many people die in car accidents everyday? Over 3000.
But it doesn't make the news because by definition it isn't new, it happens
every day.

~~~
richardknop
> Why? Because 2 737s went down in the past few years?

In last 6 months, to be more factual.

2 brand new aircraft of the latest model went down shortly after take off in
less than 6 months. That is not normal and a proper investigation needs to
take place. Until the investigation is done and it is proven that both of
these crashes where just freak incidents and not caused by design flaw of the
plane the planes should be grounded.

------
PaulHoule
What people are forgetting here is that the 737 Max is an airplane that is
designed to make flying more miserable even if you survive the flight. The
common seat layout of the Max 8 squeezes in more rows for a worse experience.

Compare the 737 to the Embrarer 175 - the Embrarer is a much smaller plane but
it has an elliptical fuselage so that you can stand up comfortably in it and
also not get a crick in your neck from being inside a too-small circle.

Many words have been written on the flying experience getting worse, but not
enough have been written on the 737. Not too long ago you could find a decent
plane like a 757 on a major route in the U.S. (say JFK to LAX) but now you
have to squeeze yourself into a 737 sardine can, breathe toxic fumes, etc.
It's just awful. But you only hear about it when they are hell-bent on re-
engining a plane which isn't tall enough to fit a high-bypass engine and then
they have to do all kinds of crazy things to make it fit.

Boeing had a chance to do a clean-sheet design of the 737 but they didn't and
now Embrarer is going to eat their lunch.

~~~
gruez
> breathe toxic fumes

Elaborate?

~~~
PaulHoule
The 737 uses an air bleed system instead of a modern electric system.

~~~
gruez
What airliners use bleedless system other than the 787? My speculation is that
737 max is a "refresh" of the 737, rather than a complete redesign like the
787, hence why the 787 has new features even though it came out later.

------
tuna-piano
I’m most curious what 737 Max pilots think. Are they comfortable flying this
plane tomorrow? I assume we’ll be hearing from them and their unions in the
coming days, and would put a good amount of trust in what they say (they are
the ones who know the airplanes and are at personal risk of death if things go
wrong).

~~~
sfilargi
[https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/safety/120514-ethiopian-7...](https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/safety/120514-ethiopian-737-crash-2.html)

~~~
jaclaz
Thanks, the two articles linked to on that forum were very interesting and
clear eough even for a non-expert like myself:

[https://leehamnews.com/2018/11/07/boeing-
issues-737-operatio...](https://leehamnews.com/2018/11/07/boeing-
issues-737-operations-manual-bulletin-after-lion-air-accident/)

[https://leehamnews.com/2018/11/14/boeings-automatic-trim-
for...](https://leehamnews.com/2018/11/14/boeings-automatic-trim-for-
the-737-max-was-not-disclosed-to-the-pilots/)

------
beefield
Has someone already gotten flight data of all 737max flights from adsbexchange
and put that into torrent so that all budding data scientists and
investigative journalists can take a shot to find out how many flights
actually have had this kind of erratic behaviour in the flight path but that
have managed to land safely?

------
em3rgent0rdr
"zero tolerance for safety hazards."

Well everything has some risk. There should be some small tolerance, or else
we wouldn't do anything.

------
tyingq
I took Boeing's order list[1], and made a list of 737 MAX Operators with
numbers of orders and already delivered:

[https://gist.github.com/tyingq/5c45907c22ec62c00e02079e1fecf...](https://gist.github.com/tyingq/5c45907c22ec62c00e02079e1fecf274)

[1][http://active.boeing.com/commercial/orders/displaystandardre...](http://active.boeing.com/commercial/orders/displaystandardreport.cfm?cboCurrentModel=737&optReportType=AllModels&cboAllModel=737&ViewReportF=View+Report)

~~~
dawson
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_and_deliveries)

------
PhantomGremlin
I'm disappointed that the FAA hasn't done this. The FAA seems to be adopting
Gollum's "I'm not listening" stance. There is historical precedent for the FAA
suspending a type certificate. This happened after a DC-10 crash in 1979.[1]

The facts are that the Indonesia crash just 5 months ago killed 189 people;
this latest Ethiopia crash just killed 157 people. That's way too many dead
people for a plane that has only been shipping since 2017, with less than 350
aircraft in service.

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe the Ethiopian carrier has a bad rep for
pushing pilots beyond prudent flying limits. But maybe there's something wrong
with the plane!

The first crash was IMO almost 100% on Boeing. They significantly changed the
operating behavior of the aircraft and didn't prominently publicize that.

I hope there won't be a third crash anytime soon. Right now if I were Boeing
I'd be 100% in emergency design review mode. How would you like to be an
engineer at Boeing right now? 346 people are dead. Is it something you did or
failed to do? Did you fuck up what was a relatively minor re-design of a plane
that started flying 52 years ago?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191)

~~~
drstewart
Do you think the Airbus 330 should be grounded?

It has 11 hull losses with 1447 built. That's a rate of 2.67 per 350 built by
the way -- higher than the MAX

~~~
cjbprime
Oh, come on, this is a terrible argument.

Those A330 hull losses are over more than 25 years. The Max went into
production _in 2017_. The correct metric to use here is hull losses per hour
of flight. I can see some total number of flights data, but not total hours.
The Max has probably made fewer than 100k flights total, the A330 has made at
least 7 million flights.

Therefore, multiply the two Max hull losses by 70 to get your first ballpark
guess at a comparable number. It is as if the Max was an A330 with 140 hull
losses instead of 11.

~~~
rsynnott
It may be even worse than that, because the A330 is a long-range plane. I’ve
been on an 11 hour A330 flight. Many 737 flights are only a couple of hours.

Of course, given the small numbers of 737 MAXes, this may be s statistical
fluke. But grounding it til the investigation is complete doesn’t seem crazy
to me.

~~~
khuey
Takeoff and landings are the most dangerous part of the flight though, so
comparing based on number of flights may in fact be the salient metric.

------
fabianhjr
The FAA has issued a similar suspension before: with the DC-10.

Mustard — The DC-10 Story:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-085TjhUPo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-085TjhUPo)

Aviation Regulation Agencies will ideally put safety first, and it is a shame
that the 737 MAX is either unlucky to be involved in 2 deadly incidents or it
does have a design flaw that should be revised.

------
leemailll
Besides China, Ethiopian and cayman airlines both grounded their 737max

~~~
occamrazor
Indonesia too.

------
FunnyLookinHat
Black box has been located - so I guess we'll see if we get to hear what they
find: [https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/11/africa/black-box-found-
boeing...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/11/africa/black-box-found-boeing-
ethiopian-air-crash-intl/index.html)

If you're interested in wading into the arguments of whether or not this plane
is safer or more dangerous than others this is a useful resource:
[http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm](http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm)

------
jfoster
A suspension can always be lifted. If something appears like it may be beyond
a coincidence, it doesn't seem like a bad move to suspend until more is known.

------
duado
Our family was scheduled to fly Southwest this month. Checked the flights and
sometimes they’re 737 Max 8’s. Cancelled the flights last night.

------
xcv10
Rumors are that the model (a stretched version) is aerodynamically unstable
without FBW.

Stretched versions of the MD11 cargo also mad many stability problems.

------
sch78
this article came a month back:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-
plane...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-
pilots.html)

~~~
AnssiH
The most interesting tidbit for me was:

> Boeing decided to feed M.C.A.S. with data from only one of the two angle of
> attack sensors at a time, depending on which of two, redundant flight
> control computers — one on the captain’s side, one on the first officer’s
> side — happened to be active on that flight.

~~~
leemailll
that’s unbelievable, it clearly disobey the redundancy in the design of plane.

~~~
michaelt
The _theory_ is if one computer fails due to bad data from a faulty sensor,
you've got another computer ready that hasn't seen said data [1]. It'd be
pretty bad if bad data from a single sensor broke both computers at the same
time.

Obviously, the Lion Air flight _did_ crash, so this no longer seems like such
a wise design.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19077351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19077351)

------
appleflaxen
Not only is this an appropriate (and probably correct - time will tell)
reaction by China, but it represents the Chinese government taking consumer
safety and health _more_ seriously than the US.

Does anyone know if this is the first such example?

They've come a long way from the scandal of having melamine in the milk.

~~~
cat199
> it represents the Chinese government taking consumer safety and health more
> seriously than the US.

current trade discussions w/r/t fentanyl regulation in PRC would suggest
otherwise

------
SubiculumCode
I need to book a flight. Does anybody know whether Google Flight
differentiates Boeing 737s from the 737 Max in its listings (where it lists
the type of plane for a flight). I haven't seen any that say max..

~~~
ww520
Go to Seat Guru to enter your airline and flight date. It will show the seat
layout of the flight, along with the plane model.

e.g.
[https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/American_Airlines/American...](https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/American_Airlines/American_Airlines_Boeing_737_Max_8.php)

~~~
rbanffy
Airlines are known to change airplanes if usage is too low or too high (beyond
overbooking limits)

------
sky_nox
Two plane crashes under six months, something is seriously wrong with this
model. New planes never crash this much.

Rest in peace to the 157 deceased.

------
bitxbitxbitcoin
The article implies that this is the Chinese government's way of signalling
itself as a separate world aviation safety authority besides the FAA. Morbid
as it is to think about, they're now postured in a position to benefit if
another 737 Max goes down anywhere in the world.

~~~
asdfadsfgfdda
The Chinese government is also a competitor to Boeing (Comac and AVIC). Seems
difficult to believe China can provide truly independent oversight over
certifying airplane or engine products designed by their own government.

~~~
ei8htyfi5e
Sure but let's flip this. If the US started using China's first exported
passenger plane and it went down twice in six months in similar circumstances,
we would absolutely be doing the same thing.

~~~
JauntyHatAngle
I think we should change that scenario a bit.

If China was our major supplier for Aircraft with a good record for
reliability, but their latest model went down twice in six months in similar
circumstances, would we ground that model?

Perhaps. I don't know, but I don't think your comparison is the correct one.

------
pfdietz
I'm flying on business this week. I checked if I'm booked on any 737 MAXs (I
am not).

------
toephu2
Because one plane went down now everyone is scared and going to cancel any 737
flights. Irrational humans that pay attention to the news. Your chances of
dying in a car accident are much higher than dying from flying on a Boeing
737. Are you still going to drive to work tomorrow though?

Edit: Yes it is good that 737s are being suspended and investigated but still,
statistically speaking, flying is safer than driving. The media just likes
fear-mongering headlines (not this article, but others in general).

~~~
shawabawa3
2 planes have gone down in 6 months, basically unprecedented in commercial
aviation

~~~
ReptileMan
777 with Malaysia Airlines. But in one case it was highjacking by the pilot
and in other anti aircraft missile. But it was not problems with the airplanes
per se.

The new Max is having issues. Whether it need combo of inexperienced pilots
and specific chain of sensor errors to be presented simultaneously is to be
seen.

