The 787 was grounded after battery fires and there were no fatalities. While I think the rest of the world grounding or denying airspace to the 737 MAX series is partially anti-Trump, I also think it is partially because for whatever reason two of these brand new jets have crashed within 5 months of each other. What was startling was the FAA refusing to ground the jets in the face of the following factors:
- The new jets had even more software complexity with possibly inadequate documentation and training for the pilots
- Multiple reports of the aircraft having sudden nose down instances requiring intervention by the pilots
- Pilots filing multiple complaints of inadequate documentation and training about the new aircraft’s systems and automation
More has yet to come out but I do agree with Trump telling his FAA administrator to ground the jets after some serious allegations and the proximity of two aircraft of the same type crashing within 6 months of each other. Only after Trump ordered the FAA to ground the jets has Boeing and the airlines now said they are grounding the jets. The entire US aviation industry was doubling down saying the jets were safe. I am not confident in the quality of the software in modern anything…and with civilian jets more and more depending on software I think something like this was bound to happen either in aviation or in automobiles. Unfortunately, it usually takes a number of fatalities to take place before folks listen to the folks who have been talking about the horrid state of software in everything. Maybe now, in high life hazard industries some code quality regulations will be put into place to prevent something like this from happening again. If this is not done, the number of crashes will continue to stack up. It will also be interesting to see if the “findings” are truthful or if yet another coverup of deadly code will occur)The Prius software bug comes to mind here. It was finally outed and Toyota was forced to fix it via a software update instead of blaming the operators of the vehicles.)
Juan Brown gives his take on both Lionair and the Ethiopia crashes: