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.
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!
FAA does do inspections and writes standards. They will almost certainly update those standards based on what they learn from this.
It’s impossible to say something as complex as a modern aircraft is completely safe. You can only say we looked at the known problem areas and the predicted problem areas things look to be within reasonable safety margins.
I think doors falling off is a pretty obvious problem that should have been caught. I will continue to blame the FAA as well as Boeing.
It’s not a door falling off. It’s the plug in the hole where a door could have been depending on plane configuration.