I know that the air accident rate is pretty much at its lowest since records began. I have heard a lot about grounding aircraft in recent years, though being a relatively young person, I am wondering is this new or was this always the procedure?
Grounding aircraft types when there is a significant airworthiness concern has been a phenomenon from the very beginning of commercial jet aviation during the 1950s. The pioneering DeHavilland Comet, the very first jet airliner, suffered ironically similar failures of the pressurized cabin, albiet more serious than the pictured incident. Just like the current article, airlines at the time voluntarily grounded their Comet fleets in 1954.
The only difference is an uptick in risk aversion. It took multiple serious incidents to trigger the grounding of the comet, but here we see grounding after one moderate incident. Then again, the greedy and selfish decision by Boeing executives to install only a single angle of attack sensor without redundancy as a cost cutting measure, which caused fatal crashes when paired with poorly designed software - on this very model, I believe - took multiple fatal crashes before a grounding occurred.
The 737 Max is looking to be an incredibly accident prone airplane.
Note that USA has extremely safe airplanes, probably the safest in the world. But when a singular design (737 Max) has so many issues, it means we need to look at our safety process and think how Boeing could let so many mistakes through.
I think competition increased the number of occupied seats, also margins are way lower now and news fly way faster. A single crash now may mean the end of an airline company.
