Grounding the Boeing 737 MAX

Yesterday, the FAA joined other countries in grounding the Boeing 737 MAX.

I was contacted yesterday morning by a news radio show that wanted me to discuss the 737 MAX situation on-air. I declined, telling the them, "I appreciate you reaching out to me, but I don’t feel it is appropriate to discuss the 737 MAX or the crashes without knowing what the causes were. I wouldn’t feel comfortable speculating on the matter, especially since I am not intimately familiar with the 737 or 737 MAX."

But the mainstream news media wanted to speculate nonetheless, and mounting pressure forced the FAA to cave in and ground the fleet.

In response to the grounding, Flight Safety Foundation president and CEO Dr. Hassan Shahidi said:

“This globally haphazard approach to an important airworthiness issue was most unfortunate, but we understand the need to reassure the traveling public.

“We continue to believe, however, that global aviation safety is best served by timely, harmonized decisions based on facts and evidence, not conjecture, politics, or media pressure.

“Moving forward, we must allow aviation safety professionals — investigators, regulators, engineers, and pilots — to calmly and objectively analyze the data, collaborate, and implement permanent, corrective fixes to ensure a tragedy like this can never happen again.”

I couldn't have said it better myself!

This grounding ties in to the unfortunate mentality nowadays of assuming guilt until innocence is proven. There are plenty of examples of public outrage caused by viral videos before the actual truth came out.

Such is the case with this grounding. While the traveling public probably feels safer, we still don't know the actual cause of the two crashes.

Were they related? Only time will tell. 

Thanks for reading!

Joe Escobar

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