> Why hasn't the 737Max been grounded pending investigation?
Because jumping to conclusions is not helpful. Let the NTSB do their job and find out what went wrong.
Because jumping to conclusions is not helpful. Let the NTSB do their job and find out what went wrong.
We are used from previous cases that aircrafts will get grounded until we are sure the airplane is not at fault. So why in the past this happened before the investigation was complete but in this case the risk is considered t be minimal? I am not saying that it is right or wrong but I want to understand the algorithm that is used to decide what to do in this cases.
To be clear: you're suggesting that grounding an entire type of aircraft, either worldwide or even just within US airspace, is a common response to accidents?
I ask because the last general grounding of a type was in 2013 to remedy the 787 battery issues. Prior to that, the last such grounding was the DC-10 in 1979.
Anyway the question still stands, who and how decides if we should ground some airplanes?
For example, in 1991 a Boeing 737-200 crashed in Colorado with the loss of all lives on board. In 1994 there was another crash of a 737, in Pennsylvania, again killing everyone on board. In both accidents the investigation pointed to unexpected movement of the rudder.
Several other cases were identified where pilots claimed the rudder was moving unexpectedly, but they were able to land safely.
The follow-up took several years of investigative work, and eventually identified a situation where a servo could jam and deflect the rudder.
Despite two severe crashes and many other suspected non-fatal incidents, that generation of 737s was not grounded; the remedy, once the cause had been determined, was an order from the FAA to replace the servos, with a timeline by which the replacement had to be completed.
The accident is more than likely to be attributed to a system being added without sufficient guidance being added to the PoH, some degree of maintenance failing on behalf of the airline and finally a failure of the pilots to identify an issue and take appropriate action.
It's unlikely that those particular holes in the cheese will line up again in the near term given the emergency AD. No reason to ground the fleet.
It's still worthwhile to warn the pilots about uncommanded movement and reiterate what to do about it. At this point I doubt any 737 pilot doesn't know about this.
To add to your summation, I'd expect the mechanism's inability to detect a faulty angle-of-attack sensor needs addressing.
Grounding the plane is exactly the opposite of jumping to a conclusion. It's declaring "we can't conclude that this plane is safe".