Just moments ago, U.S. President Donald Trump stated he was grounding all Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in the United States by Executive Order. Now the Federal Aviation Administration has issued its own explanation.
Via Twitter, the FAA stated:
The FAA is ordering the temporary grounding of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft operated by U.S. airlines or in U.S. territory. The agency made this decision as a result of the data gathering process and new evidence collected at the site and analyzed today. This evidence, together with newly refined satellite data available to FAA this morning, led to this decision.
The grounding will remain in effect pending further investigation, including examination of information from the aircraft’s flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders. An FAA team is in Ethiopia assisting the NTSB as parties to the investigation of the Flight 302 accident. The agency will continue to investigate.
This follows an earlier statement by Trump:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1105904905888415744
Trump shared that he consulted with Boeing, the FAA, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao:
They are all in agreement with the action. Any plane currently in the air will go to its destination and thereafter be grounded until further notice…The safety of the American people, of all people, is our paramount concern.
Note that the FAA attributes its sudden change in position to 1.) new data gathered today at the crash site and 2.) newly refined satellite data.
United Airlines: We Will Comply
United quickly issued a statement stating it would comply with the FAA order:
We will comply with the FAA’s order and will ground our 14 737 MAX aircraft. We will remain in close touch with authorities as their investigation continues.
Since Sunday, we have been working diligently on contingency plans to prepare our fleet to minimize the impact to customers. Our MAX aircraft account for roughly 40 flights a day and through a combination of spare aircraft and rebooking customers, we do not anticipate a significant operational impact as a result of this order. We will continue to work with our customers to help minimize any disruption to their travel.
Southwest and American have not issued public statements yet. Apparently, United has been preparing for this since Sunday.
CONCLUSION
I have to wonder whether this was Trump’s decree or indeed in consultation with Boeing and the FAA. In any case, the USA becomes the last nation to ground the Boeing 737 MAX.
What are your thoughts on this development?
I’m guessing Boeing’s cheque bounced
Bingo!
President Trump: well done!
FAA statement: horse spit!
BLOTUS took the $1 million and then double-crossed Boeing. Nothing new. Out of precaution it should have been done already.
This should not have been determined by the White House. The FAA should have done this days ago, but now they look like political flunkies rather than the professionals they’ve been in the past. In short, they Bonvoyed themselves.
Very disappointed
I agree with Christian. I’m no aviation expert but from the information given to the public, what made the most sense is to ground these planes until we have more information that it’s ok to have them up in the air. Boeing kept promising a software upgrade by end of April — and that’s from last fall’s crash!
I’m not surprised Trump ordered this. It reminded me of his DPRK policy from summer 2017 after the American Otto Warmbier came back to the US in a comatose state. Afterwards he banned Americans from visiting DPRK to prevent another death (though personally I always thought it was safe for Americans to go as I have visited that country twice.)
To quote Churchill, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.”
The FAA’s statement is essentially cover for Trump’s (correct, for once) in the moment decision to ground the MAX in the face of their resistance to ground it. I highly doubt that Trump was influenced by anything but his own arbitrary and capricious “gut” to do this and thus his cronies at the FAA gave him the cover. Given that we are still only in the very early stages of learning what happened with the ET flight (let alone the fact that we still don’t have conclusive evidence about the Lion Air incident) I find it hard to believe there was new evidence that radically changed the FAA’s stance on this in the last 24 hours.
While he stumbled on to the correct decision here, this is not how our government is supposed to operate…
I sincerely hoped that an airbus pilot would go length to explain and argue that potus and faa were in the wrong.
This Airbus Pilot thinks that if the FAA has serious evidence of an issue worthy of a grounding they should have released it. Because he’s not buying that this so called evidence actually changes the picture at all. He thinks its been offered up as political cover.
He’s noticing 737 pilots on social media also stating that the grounding was unjustified and the plane safe to fly.
He remembers when the 787 was grounded that it happened when there was actual evidence that the battery system posed a threat to flight safety. This created a path back to flight once they battery problem was fixed. What’s the path back now? MCAS can be improved (two sensors vs 1 springs to mind) but its can’t be disabled. Another ops bulletin reminding crews to do their job properly?
Are you really a pilot? Sounds more like a politician. Talk much but didn’t have any essence or answering a question….
Yeah, we heard…they were grounded “because airplanes are become too complex to fly”. It boggles the mind how someone can be president AND such a total idiot at the same time.
Please recall that after the Lion Air 737 Max 8 crash the Airline Pilots Association in November called for Boeing to address concerns of the aircraft’s MCAS. So this is not new, folks. With a second crash, unanswered questions regarding the MCAS software/program, it is more than prudent to ground these aircraft in and until a solution is found. I highly recommend folks read up about the MCAS issue, why it was installed. It’s a good idea to understand that even though the 737 looks like a 737, the MAX versions are highly digital, the new bigger LEAP engines create a different aerodynamic. I certainly would avoid flying the MAX aircraft for now.
Some interesting info:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/13/us/pilot-complaints-boeing-737-max/index.html