Air Crashes in the Age of the Internet
After Boeing’s popular new Max 8 planes got grounded in many countries following the crash in Ethiopia, it looked (financially) dangerous for Boeing. After all, this was their best-selling jet ever. You’d think that countries would have waited for the black boxes to be analyzed etc before coming to a decision. But then again, this is the age of the Internet… Donald Trump had (as usual) muddied the waters by his rants on Twitter that the cause lay in the sheer complexity of new aircrafts. His rage-tweeting in turn had backed the US regulator, FAA, into a corner where not acting would make them look like Yes-men to Trump. And so when Canada’s transport minister said that “newly available satellite-tracking data suggested similarities between the crash in Ethiopia and another accident last October”, it was the straw that broke the FAA’s back (apparently) who finally grounded all those planes in the US. And now, without waiting for the black boxes to be analyzed, we have all k...