I wouldn't fly on one until the preliminary results of the investigation are in at least. I've seen some speculation suggesting that the problem might have been similar in both cases - the plane's software trying to override what the pilot was trying to do, resulting in loss of control. That US regulators have now called for Boeing to upgrade the anti-stall software and the company has said it has/will release an upgrade to "make an already safe product even safer," (or similar words) makes it hard for me to swallow the idea that they're sure nothing's wrong with this new plane.
There could be other factors as well - or something completely different - but I'm not for putting profits before safety. A couple of US senators (one Democrat, one Republican) have also called for the planes to be grounded temporarily.
In any case, you won't be flying one to the UK.
They won't let them in their airspace for now.
btw, the Canadian air pilots union also put out a statement urging Transport Canada "to take proactive action to ensure the safety of the Canadian travelling public."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ethiop ... -1.5051663 It sounds like they might want the planes temporarily grounded, too. In Argentina, the pilots from Aerolineas Argentinas are the ones refusing to fly these planes, according to the Al Jazeera article.
Interestingly, an Inspector General for a former administration said this:
"It just makes sense to have a stand-down, time to see what the black boxes reveal about the cause of this most recent crash," Mary Schiavo, pilot and former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, told CBC's As It Happens host Carol Off.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/boeing-737-max- ... -1.5051857
And according to the article above, if the FAA pulls the certification for the 737s in the US, that effectively grounds them everywhere, resulting in big economic losses for Boeing. Which, I assume, is why the FAA issued a global notice of "continued airworthiness" instead in the wake of the second crash.
Edit:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... rump-tweet
Fate of 737 Max Could Turn On a Single Trump Tweet
Whether to ground the Boeing aircraft after Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash is as much a political as a technical decision.
There’s no technical trigger for a grounding order. Instead, it’s a judgment call by the department in question, complicated by the fact that the FAA currently doesn’t have a permanent administrator. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, who’s responsible for the agency and whose views would probably be decisive, seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach. Boeing’s Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg, meanwhile, has worked hard to be close to President Donald Trump, who could decide the issue one way or another with a single tweet.
The author of this editorial argues that the planes are probably safe:
One point worth bearing in mind is that the agency has been reviewing the performance of the 737 Max 8 for almost five months since the Lion Air crash, including the behavior of the angle-of-attack sensors and Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System that appear to have malfunctioned in that incident. That should lend weight to its confidence in the plane’s continued airworthiness: It’s hard to believe the agency would now be backing up the 737 Max’s performance if any scintilla of doubt remained.
Even so, the FAA has in the past been accused of being too lenient. Whistle-blowers in 2008 alleged the regulator looked the other way when Southwest Airlines Co. neglected to inspect and maintain its planes properly.
Yet isn't it curious that Boeing has a software upgrade ready to go in the wake of this disaster, supposedly to be installed over the next few weeks? I doubt very much that software for a complex aircraft gets written and tested that quickly.
So far, the only Trump tweet suggested that he'd rather rely on pilot's judgement than software, and that planes were getting too complicated if pilots can't quickly take control at need. It was surprisingly well written (no strange capitalization, etc.) and absent of his usual nonsense.
Edit: here it is: "Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don't know about you, but I don't want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!"
And Trump is not completely out in left field with his (or an aide's?) tweet:
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as ... -1.5051464
An aviation security expert says it's time to ground the Boeing 737 Max 8 until we know more about what caused Sunday's Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 people on board...
Among other things, he says that Boeing has not (yet?) changed the software since the first crash and that the aviation industry is at a crossroads on automation:
But there are some commands in this plane that can override the pilot's directives — so what's that all about?
That's one of the biggest questions that we have, and I think aviation is at a crossroads.
Because to have a plane out there that says the pilot is secondary, this is really crossing over into the area of drones. We expect our pilots to be able to make intelligent human decisions and say, "I'm going to fly this plane out of this mess."
......now in this plane, the plane will put the nose down, and even if the pilot pulls the nose back up, the answer is to turn off that system. So yes, it will override the pilot, but Boeing says the pilot can override the system.