Did the govt. shutdown contribute to the recent Boeing 737 MAX 8 crash?

I've been holding off on posting about this rapidly developing story but this latest twist is too interesting to not discuss:

https://arstechnica.com/information-...report-claims/

Quote:

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But government inaction may have been at least partially to blame for the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX on March 10—the US government shutdown reportedly pushed back a fix to the aircraft's software for more than a month.

On March 11, Boeing announced that the company "has been developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX, designed to make an already safe aircraft even safer." The shutdown of non-essential operations at the FAA caused work on the fix to be suspended for five weeks, according to unnamed US officials cited by the Wall Street Journal. The fix is expected to be mandated for installation by the FAA by the end of April.

The update seeks to correct what may have been the root cause of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia last October—the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System's (MCAS') reliance on a single sensor to determine whether the aircraft is entering a stall. But according to a WSJ report, that fix was delayed because the FAA shutdown interrupted the approval process.

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The shutdown cannot be blamed for the issue existing in the first place, nor could lawmakers have foreseen the recent crash (although it's reasonable to expect a higher risk of disaster & death in the event of a protracted shutdown), but, if the shutdown substantially delayed the rollout of this fix, and if it's reasonable to believe the fix may potentially have addressed the issue currently believed to have caused the crash, I think it's fair to say that the shutdown was partly responsible for the crash.

It's good that the planes have been grounded, and it's interesting to note the reluctance with which the US came to this decision. I'm a little worried about Norwegian b/c of their large fleet of 737 MAX 8s. They use the older 737s for their domestic flights in Sweden so hopefully our upcoming flights will be all right.

I don't really agree. If the FAA considered the risk of flying without the improvement too big they should have grounded all planes until it was approved. They did not, so they considered planes safe enough without it, so postponing approval due to the shutdown is not really problematic. If anything, it's due to the decision not to ground planes after the issue was found out.

If it's even caused by the same issue, that's not confirmed yet right?

We only have an "acting" (ie temporary) head of the FAA. There is a leadership vaccuum.


edit: the Sec. of Transportation could have grounded the planes, based on just the pilot/attendant union leader safety concerns. The US used to be a global leader in the aero industry that way. Now we're just following the lead of Canada and others.

Some critical safety features were reportedly sold as "optional" add-ons to buyers outside the US. And pilots in the US were only given short laptop tutorials for Boeing's patches/updates.

Since Boeing has all the experts, and wouldn't risk their market share with planes that crash, they get a rubber stamp from the FAA? That's basically an industry regulating itself. And a disturbing pattern. :sour: