You can bet that the FAA was in constant contact with Boeing. This wasn't one man making a decision with no shared information from various sources.

Above we read that Boeing asked the FAA to ground them. But earlier it was claimed that DT did the grounding. Which was it?

Ditto. The level of hysteria associated with aircraft incidents in unprecedented.

Daniel Elwell, acting head of the FAA, said enhanced satellite images and new evidence gathered on the ground led his agency to order the jets out of the air.

The data, he said, linked the behavior and flight path of the Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 to data from the crash of a Lion Air jet that plunged into the Java Sea and killed 187 people in October.

"Evidence we found on the ground made it even more likely that the flight path was very close to Lion Air's," Elwell told reporters on a conference call Wednesday.

Satellite data right after the crash wasn't refined enough to give the FAA what it needed to make the decision to ground planes, Elwell said. But on Wednesday, global air traffic surveillance company Aireon and Boeing were able to enhance the initial data to make it more precise "to create a description of the flight that made it similar enough to Lion Air," Elwell said.

From this article:

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2019-03-12/us-joins-ethiopian-led-investigation-at-plane-crash-site

They can bad-mouth the 737 all they want, but at least it ain't a V-22! ;)

That can't be true... or do you mean MAX 8 is about 2%???? Or...???

Yep max 8

https://amp-usatoday-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3143113002?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE% 3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=Fr om%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday. com%2Fstory%2Ftravel%2Fflights%2F2019%2F03%2F12%2F boeing-737-max-how-many-fly-southwest-america-united-and-where%2F3143113002%2F



Flights per day


SW 160 of a total of 4000
AA 90 of 6700
United 40 of 4800

This is pretty much standard procedure when something like this happens. Especially when there are many lives lost. The DC-10 fleet was grounded when one of them had a number 2 engine failure that sent bits of the engine into and severed hydraulic lines and they lost all hydraulic power. The 787 was grounded after the battery explosions. The only surprise for me was that they weren't grounded by the FAA sooner. Many dollars will be lost from all of this and that is always the driving factor. What bothers me is they will likely find an electronic/software problem. When the first automated/glass cockpit airplanes were put into service, a common question in the cockpit was, "OK, now what's it doing"? Trying to make the airplanes safer by eliminating the human factor created a whole new set of problems to deal with. When UPS first got the 757, the pilots were told to use the automation as much as possible. When pilots went in for recurrent training, it was quite clear that their flying skills had deteriorated somewhat. In some cases a lot. They were then instructed that the time spent using automation was up to the discretion of the captain.

Osprey is nowadays a very very safe aircraft/rotocraft/ugly thing. But it took a while...

You are a much braver man than I am.

FAA Relents, Says It Grounded 737 Max Jets Based on New Data
FAA relents, grounds Boeing 737 Max jets after getting new satellite images and evidence from the ground.
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2019-03-12/us-joins-ethiopian-led-investigation-at-plane-crash-site

Try this: https://flightaware.com/

I use it to track my kids flights into DC. They detail the aircraft being used as well.

Well, given that "these planes" are all grounded, I'd wager your chances of being on one of them is zero.

No way this will be resolved in 10 days.

This makes no sense.

Take a bus.

I would expect SW will substitute another plane in their inventory, if your flights were booked on the Max 8 or 9. A quick call to SW would probably clear it up.

Sounds like they are still figuring it out. Added to the weather you've had, things might be fouled up for days.

I checked their website and they are showing the flight status for upcoming flights. Have you checked those?

You can find the plane info on flightaware but I’m not sure how far in advance.

Southwest flights from Denver since yesterday are a mess through the weekend. My trip to San Pedro got
Cancelled because I can’t get to HOU from Denver or Albuquerque.

I have a SW flight from EWR to MSP on 4/5 to go to the Final 4 in Minneapolis and on their website yesterday it showed the plane as a max 8 (737-800) for the connection from MDW to MSP, so that's a problem.

The trip info after its booked doesn't give the model plane, but if you go to book that same flight, it says it there and today they updated the plane to a 737-700, so I am good.

This is where you can see it:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1552580729.jpg

As an added bonus, I see the 2nd leg (which is the one where the plane was just switched out) has an on time arrival percentage of zero! Yay me!

12 hull loses and 42 deaths. Yeah, that took awhile. :confused:

From Southwest Airlines

Funny story about that. I had a lawyer buddy who defended MacDac in the DC-10 litigation. He traveled all over the country doing depositions, and he carried the faulty parts from the A/C on board with him. We always joked about what would happen if a Boeing airplane went down and they discovered all these DC-10 parts in the wreckage. Litigation humor.

In other unfortunate Boeing news, there's this:https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14/politics/air-force-boeing-refueling-plane/index.html

Jef, you retired, and the whole place went to hell in a handbasket.

Wow that last article really shows apathy to the product. They need to do some serious sole searching at all levels of the company...

Internally they are keeping us in the dark, and the flight software is my gig.

Hahahahaha - tru dat!

The old "treat `em like mushrooms" tactic, eh? :D
I am not surprised.

Well good luck, frankly I could not live with that responsibility

Well thankfully my area is navigation only. It doesn't make things better of course.

I wish I could say I am surprised.

While they may have done well in getting rid of me, they unfortunately lost an awful lot of really good people. The "Golden Handshake" fairly decimated the ranks, as it was intended to do. Across the board - from engineering to mechanics on the floor, a lot of experience was lost.

They followed that up with a pretty intense hiring binge. Especially within the mechanics' ranks. The problems noted in the linked article are, unfortunately, the inevitable result. Not enough "adult supervision" and the attendant discipline that instills. The company is going through teething pains. They are trying to get this new generation house broken and up to speed. It will take awhile.

For those of you unfamiliar with airline industry practices, "FOD" is a big, big deal. A really big deal. An enormously big deal. By way of example, I was hanging out in a 767 MLG wheel well one day in Tel Aviv when a mechanic above me on a scissors lift dropped a nut. I heard it clatter down off of the lift and land on the concrete floor somewhere near me. It was obviously on the floor somewhere.

In other industries, the fact that we both heard it hit the floor probably would have been good enough. It was obviously no longer anywhere on the airplane. Not so in the aviation world - it was imperative that we find that nut. To make a long story short, we eventually had the entire crew of about 30 mechanics, several engineers, several inspectors, and even the shift supervisor looking for that nut. It shut down the entire job. It was simply not an option to proceed without finding that nut. We did, several hours later, but that's how important FOD is in our world.

So, sandwiches and tools on a delivered aircraft? Someone got in very, very big trouble. Might have even lost their job. Probably reduced to being a burger flipper, or an architect, or some other equally unrewarding job.

So just to clarify, your livelihood at present ultimately depends on science and a reliable understanding of physics.

Interesting.

Now back to the thread.

I have a gadget that looks like a push-broom with wheels that has a strong magnet in it. I use it frequently when I drop fasteners in my shop--picks up anything ferrous. Sounds like you guys could have used one. Unless the nut was titanium or something.

Spent a couple years prowling the factory floor during the 777 AP #1 era. Our factories were pretty damn clean, but the Heavies' even were cleaner. I visited them all as one of Mulally's entourage in 93 or 94.

The Dreamliner fiasco was a disaster that simply would not have happened under the "old guard" whose tender ministrations gently guided me for two years with exhortations of "I'm gonna put my foot up your ass sideways!" Missing an on-dock date by even a day was unimaginable, much less a couple of years!

It was the most inefficient, wasteful management system I ever saw, but we made our on-dock dates. Proving the time-honored rule that companies that can afford wasteful inefficiency tend to indulge in it. I had twice as many on my staff as I needed, all lifers way older than me, with too little meaningful work to keep them all busy, yet my bosses wanted to continue to grow their fiefdoms. I had two senior managers between me and my director.Morale was ****, and we lost every decent person we had. My Boeing on-site manager in Gifu was an idiot, went completely native, and could not get anything done. That guy could not have pulled a greasy string out of a sick cat's ass. He became an enemy, bombing us every night with faxes. After rollout, I got bored and left for my next Boeing gig before the layoffs and buyouts started. Everyone I knew either retired or bailed.

Gorgeous airplane, though. And all the parts made it on dock on schedule.

I retired from a Lockheed facility that built C130's and F35 center wings . The push for speed and efficiency during the builds if not monitored can lead to things like FOD or sloppy work . Your internal processes have to be redundant to " catch " all mistakes . Sounds easy to the layman but look at the size of a C130 . How many mechanical fasteners in that bird ? How many miles of wires ? You get the idea . You have to have rock solid processes , great mechanics , great inspectors etc. and EVERYONE has to be on the same page to deliver a quality product to the customer . Just one breakdown in this chain can lead to serious consequences !

It will be interesting to see what the final results are from the investigations into these two crashes . What happens if both are determined to be pilot error ? Is it just simply more training ? How do you prove your training is " good enough " to release the fleet from being grounded ? I am not familiar with the training side of the aircraft industry so am curious how it works .

From the article.

From what I have seen in Jeff's post he does not come from a culture of discipline.

I suspect this lack of discipline comes as a result of prosperity.

Boeing's civilian market has only one real competitor, and the military sector has been even more lucrative.

This is bound to breed a certain culture and carry a certain amount of fat and laziness or at least "non-productives" lacking a sense of responsibility and discipline.

We once saw it in the domestic automobile industry decades ago, all that has changed now.