2y ago

US transportation head says no grounded Boeing 737 Max 9 planes will return to air ‘until it is safe’

www.theguardian.com

The US transportation secretary announced on Wednesday afternoon that no grounded Boeing 737 Max 9 would return to service “until it is safe”, after Alaska Airlines announced the cancellation of all flights on its 737 Max 9 planes at the direction of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Pete Buttigieg said he was “not putting a timeline” on when the FAA will allow the planes to resume flights.

Every plane that the US aircraft manufacturer delivers “needs to be 100% safe”, Buttigieg added.

He said he has spoken to the head of Boeing and told him the company needs to do everything it can to establish 100% confidence in its planes.

49 comments

Two groundings in less than 5 years? Boeing is trading lives for share price. Hopefully the company dies as an example of corporate greed.
- Riiiiiiight. They’ll get bailed out at worst.
  
  Someone's seen this episode before.
  
  would have to cut into that sweet defense spending first …
- Every insider said this the last time they had issues with the Max 8. Now here we are again. It absolutely infuriates me. I work for a medical device company in procurement. I've had to deal with these asshats coming in and recommending outsourcing and screwing our local vendors to save a few bucks... Then, surprise! We get shit parts, and it costs us a ton of resources to fix the issue, but hey we're"saving money" right? Some companies shouldn't be publicly traded.
  
  But I was told any option but unhindered capitalism was pure communism.
  Jesus, politicians need to grow a pair and actually help people. What do you need to do to convince them?
  
  Same where I work. I feel like I am fighting a losing battle to keep us in control of our own products.
- It's like the first scene in fight club, where he's talking about the insurance equation. That shaped my world view then. It's accurate.
- Now if only cars had this kind of safety rating.
- I don't understand the ultra anti business vibe these days. If a company has to do lay offs (like Spotify) because they over predicted growth, it's up in arms for the worker getting screwed due corporate greed. Then we have this angle where everyone wants Boeing to die, which will result in a ton of workers losing their jobs. Why isn't the hope just the board doing their jobs, changing leadership to align with the old boeing, let workers keep their jobs, and let their stock benefits increase in value for contributing to a good company?
  
  Because that'll never happen. Boeing's board is never going to have a "change of heart". They'll keep playing with people's lives to make a quick buck until they're stopped.
  
  I don't understand the ultra anti business vibe these days. If a company has to do lay offs (like Spotify) because they over predicted growth, it's up in arms for the worker getting screwed due corporate greed
  Boeing gets bailed out with gov money because it's "too big to fail"
  Boeing used that money for stock buybacks
  Boeing's quality went down. This ain't the "that's weird", this is people's LIVES. People die if there's quality errors.
  Boeing lied about MCAS and 300 people paid the price.
  This is ANOTHER incident of shotty work
  This isn't anti business. Their management is fucking corrupt
  
  Because that isn't going to happen so the only remaining hope is that when they die us taxpayers don't have to bail them out too much.
Boeing is in a death spiral. Instead of a company run by engineers saying hey let’s build something new that pushes boundaries and the market will buy.
They now have a bunch of finance guys who say hey let’s squeeze another few billion in profits out of an existing product. Wait the new existing product doesn’t sell as well as our projections? Let’s cut costs so we can maintain profit growth for our shareholders and get those sweet bonuses.
- Worst decision Boeing could have made was buying Mcdonnel Douglass, who was doing poorly, and then letting the people in charge of Mcdonnel Douglass (who, did I mention was doing poorly) run Boeing
  
  Probably insider trading by the executives to get richer
- It's happened/happening to every major company ever.
  I'm not sure what the solution is, but publicly traded companies will always make inferior products, because the incentive for a good product is always after profit.
  
  IMO, make all companies employee owned instead of investor owned so the decisions are made by those with stake in keeping the company going, not those that want to milk it for infinitely increasing profit that outpaces inflation despite having reached their market cap.
Why were unsafe planes in the air before this incident Pete?
- To be fair the FAA didn't know they were unsafe. Now that they do know Boing wants to keep flying then until they figure out the fix and the FAA is saying no.
  
  The FAA should have known they were unsafe! Instead of using independent government inspectors, it's FAA policy to trust the company to inspect itself. It's a joke!
- It's not like the front of the plane fell off, which is obviously not safe.
The US transportation secretary announced on Wednesday afternoon that no grounded Boeing 737 Max 9 would return to service “until it is safe."
Ummmm was that not implied? It's upsetting that he felt the need to say it.
Like your waiter dropping off your burger, saying "don't worry, nobody spit in it."
- More like there's no needles in it... Used ones with HIV
Good Lord, of course they're grounded until it is safe This isn't like putting your kid in timeout.
This is what happens when you move your headquarters out of Seattle. Just saying...
So if Boeing is such a mess that they are grouding their planes, why are their other planes still okay? The problems seem to be about how Boeing operates and aren't limited to one or two planes so it seems reasonable to think that others are being handled the same way. Why should we assume that other Boeing planes are safe?
- It's because the 737 MAX went through significant changes and lobbies the FAA to avoid recertification.
  Essentially we have a record which planes have gone through a rigorous certification process in their current configuration and which haven't because looking back it's plain as day.
  The design of most planes has been checked properly because the FAA and Boeing have usually done their job properly. In the case of this change to the 737 they haven't.
  I'd still recommend requesting a flight on another companies airplane when possible and never accepting a ticket on a 737 max even if it's allowed back in the air.
  But there's no need to cause a mass grounding of safe aircraft that don't have any problems. That would be incredibly wasteful and more importantly bring older aircraft into service as an alternative. Older aircraft which would be less safe than the ones on the ground.
- Because a large majority of commercial jets in the US are made by Boeing. And grounding more than half of the planes in the US would be terrible for the economy.
  Also, different models have different designs, were designed at different times. Many of the planes are 'tried-and-true'.
Buttigieg scared the shit out of me at first, but now that the world has gotten so crazy, maybe the McKinsey Manchurian candidate needs a second look. He would definitely get things done.
- Yeah, because he's done such a bang-up job making sure there's oversight assuring that planes and trains are safe BEFORE accidents happen! Oh wait.. 🙄
- It's a shame one of the Castro brothers didn't do better last primary. I like both of them a lot better than the bread price fixer, but Buttigieg is most likely going to be the democratic front-runner after Biden goes.

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