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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

It looks like Norwegian is already asking its 737 Max flights to return to their departing airports, at least according to this recent screenshot I found on reddit [1]

[1] https://i.redd.it/6gtecemacpl21.png

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Wow. This is pretty ridiculous considering all three of these planes seem to have been closer to their destination than the origin, making it safer to just finish the planned flight.

Getting back is another story. Stranding a plane at an away-station can be costly.

Especially if there’s some repair required before next takeoff.

Both incidents have been in the first few minutes of flight and this is also a 'long term safety' thing. They're relatively safe to fly still.

On the other hand, if your plane gets stuck in a foreign country the bill just for parking the thing could be massive. Better to get it back while you still can.

Eventually the bill can get so high that it doesn't make financial sense to still attempt to claim to be the owner. As of January there was a McDonnell Douglas MD87 in Madrid thats abandoned. Three 747 were sold for scrap in 2017 after they were abandoned at Kuala Lumpur.

It can happen any time if it’s the MCAS issue again. Which we don’t know yet.

You have a lot more time and airspeed to work with when flying at altitude at full speed.

Do these groundings also apply to ferrying the plane?

Typically not. Ferrying without paying customers is probably allowed.

Yes. You’d have to seek an exemption from every country you’re overflying. Probably not worth it.

From the official reports mentioned elsewhere:

> From the effective date and time of this AD, do not operate the aeroplane, except that a single non-commercial ferry flight (up to three flight cycles) may be accomplished to return the aeroplane to a location where the expected corrective action(s) can be accomplished.

So they are allowed to be ferried in certain situations.

If the plane is going to get grounded, the operator absolutely wants that to happen at home base, not at an outstation.

edit: NVM missed that these were mostly Turkish Airlines not Norwegian.

2/3 of those planes are flying back to Istanbul vs their destinations. Does Norwegian have a maintenance hub there?

They got bitten by this recently: https://matadornetwork.com/read/norwegian-air-emergency-land...

(emergency landing in Iran, can't get parts there because of sanctions)

Yikes. How would ya like to be a passenger on one of those planes: "We're returning to our departure airport because this airplane has been grounded."

Although if you'd realised it was a 737 MAX, you might already be clutching a medicinal gin & tonic ...

> Although if you'd realised it was a 737 MAX, you might already be clutching a medicinal gin & tonic ...

I wouldn't, haven't all the problems so far have been during takeoff? So once you're cruising you're safe from them?

12 and 6 minutes after take-off.

The MCAS problem cannot occur when flaps are deployed, and it happens when flaps are initially retracted. So if it hasn't happened by now, it's not going to.

It could also happen while resetting after a late missed approach.

I was on a Norwegian plane once going from Oslo to London, 3/4 into the journey, just before descending into Gatwick, we got told the plane is turning around due to fault on the plane. So deflating when you are nearly home. The pilot did a good job calming everyone down and explaining it was a minor fault, two duplicate sensors were showing different values, but still, enough to recall the plane.

So basically another 1.5h flight back to Oslo, a few hours wait, then on a replacement plane (thank god) with another flight back to London. A long day.

I can, however, understand it. As with this 737 Max-8s they did not want the plane grounded in an airport where they don't have a full service centre with parts etc. Had it only been a few years later we could have continued as they made Gatwick one of their major hubs with probably full stock of parts.

Though I do have a rule of preferring flying out from an airport with a "local" airline, as they are quite likely to have parts and chances of spare or frequent incoming planes to shuffle around to.

Related, Norwegian plane was stuck in Iran: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2019/01/10/norw...

I had the same experience with an Easyjet flight, which departed from the Easyjet hub (also Gatwick) and returned there.

The pilot strongly implied that had I been on the British Airways flight, we'd have continued to the destination: BA would have flown their spare pilot + spare plane + repair crew out.

But Easyjet didn't have a spare crew.

This is Turkish Airlines, not Norwegian...

Edit: Two are Turkish, only one is Norwegian

I speculate we’ll see more airspace closures once countries give enough time to avoid stranding their nationals.

I wonder if, say, Germany, waited until its planes had to chance to land before closing their airspace, while other countries/companies, like Norwegian got caught by surprise.

Convenience over safety?

Total speculation on my part.

The closest thing to a German 737 MAX are 15 owned by TUI, which seem to all be based in the UK.

There hasn't been much fleet renewal in the German market in recent years, just lots of consolidation (it's actually a bit of a lottery to buy a ticket in advance due to all the bankruptcies)

I didn’t single-out Germany for its fleet, just that it was one of the countries with a delayed closure of its airspace.

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