The man who grounded the Dreamliner for 123 days says the FAA should stop Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 from flying
- Ray LaHood, the former US Secretary of Transportation from 2009 to 2013, says Boeing should ground its 737 MAX 8, pending a full investigation
- Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner has emerged from its grounding a better aircraft, after it fixed its battery problem
It’s a daily miracle that the general public accepts the existence of the aviation industry. Every day, around 100,000 flights take off and fly between towns and cities around the world, each carrying fuel with the stored energy of a cruise missile jammed up alongside scores of families, tourists, businesspeople and pets.
That we tolerate and even welcome this state of affairs is a tribute to the generations of engineers and administrators – and regulators – who’ve made travelling by air safer than driving the car to the mall.
It’s tempting to declare that the vast and complex infrastructure undergirding the safety of modern aviation is unnecessary, as President Donald Trump argued on Twitter Tuesday.
Ultimately, though, this infrastructure supports the rock-solid reputation of the aviation industry. In continuing to stand squarely behind the Boeing 737 MAX 8 while its peer regulators take a more precautionary approach, the US Federal Aviation Administration risks squandering that.
That’s not just the view of this columnist. It’s also the opinion of Ray LaHood, the former US Secretary of Transportation who grounded the 787 Dreamliner following fires in its lithium-ion battery packs in 2013.