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Comment by jhugo | Hacker News Reader

There is no evidence for an objective concern though. Ghana is not in a better position to know anything about the safety of this airframe than the FAA or Delta themselves, and Ghana has a long history of politically-motivated actions in aviation.

Before you start talking about ETOPS approval, maintenance practices and crashes, it would make sense to have some shred of evidence for a safety concern on this particular airframe rather than just a couple of air returns due to minor issues — the kinds of returns that happen daily all over the world, to new and old frames. Two air returns in a week on the same frame is rare but not unheard-of, and it's notable that one of the air returns was following maintenance action in Ghana that apparently didn't solve the issue.

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> There is no evidence for an objective concern though [...] and Ghana has a long history of politically-motivated actions in aviation.

Doesn't even have to be about safety, but respect. Transatlantic flights that turn back is a huge inconvenience, and adds probably a day of lost time for passengers in total. Perhaps the Ghanians(?) suspect they get a problematic aircraft because of racism or that they are not considered as important as a typical business shuttle to Zurich or London? It may seem weird to westerners, but smaller countries don't always have more "sophisticated" political tools like diplomatic backdoor channels.

Delta would probably argue that they schedule their older frames on this route because of lower yield [0]. And you're right — political toy-spitting is one way to try to influence the decision away from the pure economics of the route. It worked with BA, it might work with Delta too.

[0] Older frames aren't necessarily less reliable — these issues could have happened to a brand new frame — and if maintained properly they are certainly not less safe. But they can be more economical in some ways (they're probably paid off), and higher-yielding destinations will reject the older frames since competitors run new aircraft on the same routes. There's not much competition on JFK-ACC.

> Ghanians?

Good that you called for possible correction here. It's "Ghanaians", not "Ghanians". Being Ghanaian myself, the spelling is one way I can tell if an article about Ghana has done its homework and is more likely to be accurate.

I feel it needs to be pointed out that almost all, if not all, countries have a long history of using access to their aviation industries/airspace/airports/etc as a political tool - so Ghana is far from being alone in that sense and I don’t think it adds much to either argument

> There is no evidence for an objective concern though.

You mean other than this particular Boeing objectively failing to reach its destination due to multiple consecutive failures?

As I said, multiple turn-backs for the same frame inside a week are rare but not unheard of. Given the reason for the turn-backs, I don't agree that this is evidence of an objective safety concern. Components are expected to fail in service, and do fail on all airlines and all aircraft types. The overall system design preserves safety despite these component failures. A fuel imbalance isn't an imminent danger to the aircraft or its occupants.

It doesn’t have to be about a safety concern, just about their citizens being inconvenienced over and over.

I agree. But the comment I was replying to suggested it was a safety concern.

Arguably, after what we've learned about the FAA after the 737-Max crashes, FAA approval should be considered a red flag instead of sufficient proof of safety, especially when it come to Boeing airframes.

Europe has banned airlines, especially African airlines, and individual aircraft pretty regularly for safety concerns [1]. America tends to ban entire countries. It is only fair for African countries to follow the similar guidelines, especially when there are problem aircraft.

[1] https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/eu-air-safet...

So just to understand this correctly, you're saying that a type that the FAA certified in 1982, and a specific aircraft of that type that has flown safely for about the last 25 years, should be viewed with a red flag because of the 737 MAX debacle?

This airframe has been banned to make a point about Delta scheduling their older frames on JFK-ACC. Delta probably does it because it's a low-yielding route, and making a big public stink (with safety overtones designed to scare uninformed readers) is one of the few ways Ghana can try to convince Delta to ignore the economics. Making a stink like this worked with BA, so maybe it will work with Delta too.

> Europe has banned airlines, especially African airlines, and individual aircraft pretty regularly for safety concerns [1]. America tends to ban entire countries. It is only fair for African countries to follow the similar guidelines, especially when there are problem aircraft.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with safety. If EASA or FAA banned an airline or a country because of a fuel imbalance there would be no airlines left.

From what I’ve read, the Ghanaian regulators have demanded that that specific aircraft not be flown within their jurisdiction because they don’t like the recurring issue with the fuel imbalance (…and advised that Delta flies newer planes because Ghanaians don’t like the old ones)

The FAA/EASA not being concerned by it (from what we know), doesn’t mean that there isn’t a possible safety issue to investigate.

It’s also easy to have politics and safety i.e. regulation mix in ways that aren’t so black and white. Consider the time it took for the 737 Max to be recertified in the rest of the world vs the US. Do you think that was all safety? Or some combination of safety and politics?

So no, I don’t think it’s possible to categorically state that it has nothing to do with safety.

A fuel imbalance happening twice is not a "recurring issue". It's a problem that wasn't fixed correctly. It may or may not concern you, depending on your level of knowledge about aviation, to know that when it comes to relatively minor issues like this, this kind of thing actually happens all the time — the maintenance engineer will carry out a documented series of steps to test the system, find that everything tests OK, and release the aircraft back to service. Meanwhile some intermittent fault is still present, that didn't show up during the test, and it happens again on the next flight or a few flights later. Eventually the tech log entries give enough clues to identify the problem or it happens during a test, and the issue is solved. No sane regulator would ban an aircraft for this kind of situation — a version of it happens daily worldwide, including on whatever your own favourite airline is.

Yeah, we’re gonna have to agree to disagree.

Do I personally think that the 2x fuel imbalance is a problem? Nope, I’d happily get on that plane

Could this situation become a safety issue? Yes it could.

Is it possible that there’s more to this situation than safety? Yeah, probably. Maybe they want shiny new planes on the route. But also, the passengers are paying customers with consumer rights - these are being enforced

Are the Ghanaian authorities not a sane regulator? I’ve got no reason to believe they aren’t being proper regulators. There is a possible safety issue that’s well within their mandate.

What happens when you’re dealing with regulators is if you’ve got a good relationship with them, then all the optional stuff (and some of the mandatory stuff) is optional. If not, then you’re gonna have to check every single box and then some. See Boeing in the US vs Europe.

Call it politics, call it whatever but it is what it is

Given how important fuel balance is to trimming the aircraft, I would not board an aircraft that has a history of problems with this.

> See Boeing in the US vs Europe. Call it politics, call it whatever but it is what it is

What you call "good relationship", I call corruption and murder. If Ghanan authorities are fighting against that, more power to them.

  I would not board an aircraft that has a history of problems with this.

Which aircraft would that be? The article describes one (yes, just one) instance of a fuel imbalance leading the crew to return to the departure airport. The reasons for the other diversions are not articulated.

FWIW your EU list shows restricted airlines not individual frames. At the end there are two airlines (Iran Air and Air Koryo) where subsets of their fleets are restricted (whole types not individual frames). With Iran Air it's likely that the restricted types are ones where sanctions make maintenance or safety compliance impossible. With Air Koryo the EU banned a bunch of unpopular Russian and Soviet types that are either way too noisy, incapable of meeting current safety standards, or are unsupported by the Russians.

Agree. Politically a government is responsible for giving its citizens a sense of security… maybe more so than actual security. Ghana and the US were both doing that in this scenario. Whether the fear is 100% reasonable or not is ultimately irrelevant. “We fixed it, no worries, go back to being productive.”

Then of course there’s the reality of them abusing fear of security to steer the herd, but I don’t want to wander down that rabbit hole.

Would you be happy to board this plane knowing that it had these issues?

  Would you be happy to board this plane knowing that it had these issues?

… had what issues?

Well, I wouldn't be too happy to board it when they had a pilot shortage, since I wouldn't be going anywhere.

With the fuel imbalance though? Sure. It would be quite inconvenient to spend two hours in flight only to end up back where I started, but if you're suggesting there was some imminent danger to the passengers, you're mistaken. Aircraft are tested and certified to fly with significant fuel imbalance; the turn-back is out of caution since it could get worse over the course of a long flight.

This incident would be nothing more than a boring tech log entry if there wasn't an influencer and some upset politicians involved.

So the actual pilots (presumably western aircrew) decide, twice, enroute, that it's unsafe to continue a transatlantic flight with this airframe, and you want to argue that this airframe is safe for said type of flights, warranting "nothing more than a boring tech log entry". I'm curious about why you would take such a contrarian, nay, even callous, stance?

> I'm curious about why you would take such a contrarian, nay, even callous, stance?

It might be because of actual experience in the aviation industry, rather than just experience reading articles about aviation incidents that amp up safety issues because that's what the public loves to read.

If you want to ground all aircraft which have returned to their departure point twice, you will be grounding every single aircraft older than a few years. So what exactly are you trying to say?

Do you actually have aviation industry experience?

A commercial airframe with trip-aborting issues on multiple flights within a short timeframe implies severe maintenance process issues or design issues, or both. Gains in commercial flight safety are written in blood. JT610 is one case in point.

Like I said, callous.

>Ghana is not in a better position to know anything about the safety of this airframe than the FAA

After the 737-MAX fiasco - which proved FAA ignores flaws for political reasons - they might be.

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