Discussion: Aviation Authorities Grounding Boeing Max 8 Planes After Ethiopian Crash

Boeing has the heaviest weighting of all Dow components. Boeing is down ten percent in pre market, that would equal a 200 point drop in the Dow. The Dow futures indicate only a 145 point drop. Without Boeing’s bad news, the Dow would be up 55 points.

The Major Crash Assurance System (MCAS) has obviously been effective.

Horrible design, wonder if they can engineer their way out of this, or just have to forget the lineup.

Either way, I expect a lot of people are checking the model of their plane for upcoming flights.

2 Likes

What is the FAA waiting for? Ground all these planes ommediately

1 Like

Seems like a good idea. Hopefully everybody will ground them till this is sorted out.

2 Likes

At the risk of sounding macabre, they’re grounding themselves.

“Safety is our number one priority…”

Whoever heard of a company whose number one priority was customer safety?

1 Like

Funny side story… Boeing has plans to cut 1,000 safety inspector positions as part of cost-cutting moves.

The black boxes have been found, processing them will happen quickly because this is the second similar crash. The ground radar trace is not the best way to determine what was going on, and this one shows a huge upward spike right before it cuts off. If that’s in the onboard telemetry, then for some reason the plane pulled way up suddenly, which then likely led to a stall and the crash. Could be the same cause, could be something else, we need to wait and see.

Boeing also needs to take this seriously…they figured it was not different enough to make a big deal on (which saved retraining money, as well as costs to Boeing to certify the plane with the FAA). That might be true, but software in planes is complicated and they may have missed something that only happens in certain circumstances. I write that kind of software (it doesn’t affect people), and the myriad ways you can make a system do what you don’t expect means lots of testing is required, and even then you miss stuff. Boeing had best put a tiger team in place and go over everything, otherwise they are going to be in a very bad position.

1 Like