You knew, right? Somehow, you just knew Trump had something to do with this latest disaster.
Rachel Maddow did a riveting segment of her show last night on the reasons behind the Boeing 737 crash in Ethiopia -- and how the general corruption and incompetence of the Trump administration contributed to the disaster.
She disclosed how over the last six months, airplane pilots of domestic flights have been describing the same problem with the plane. You know, the planes you and your loved ones travel on, in American airspace.
This morning, we are the only country that hasn't grounded the plane. In fact, the FAA just doubled down on it this morning. Of course, we have a former Boeing executive as the acting head of the FAA acting secretary of defense.
"Well, the good news is, it turns out that Boeing has in the works a software fix that they believe will address that problem in these planes. Good. The Wall Street Journal had the scoop on this this afternoon and where it ends is not good. But here is where it starts, quote, 'Boeing is making an extensive change to the flight control system in these 737 MAX aircraft, going beyond what many industry officials familiar with the discussions anticipated. The change would mark a major shift how Boeing originally designed a stall prevention feature in the aircraft. The company spokesman confirmed the update would use multiple sensors and data feeds in the stall prevention system instead of the current reliance one one sensor and prompted investigation results indicated that erroneous data from a single sensor that measures the angle of the plane's nose caused the stall prevention system to misfire and a series of events put the aircraft into a dangerous dive.
" 'The anticipated software fix from Boeing will limit the extent of the flight control systems downward push on the plane's nose.' That seems like a good idea. How soon will it be ready? U.S. regulators are expected to mandate this change by the end of next month. Okay. So that's still a ways off but in the works and they believe they got a way to fix the accidental nosedive problem.
"You know, why didn't you say so? How soon could this have been ready? Should it have been ready before the Ethiopia plane crash that killed 157 people? Is the back story on the timing of when this will be rolled out and ready? The software fix to this particular flight control feature had been expected early in January. Discussions dragged on. Officials in various parts had differing views on how it should be fixed. The shutdown halted work on the fix entirely for five weeks.
"So did everybody enjoy their 35-day government shutdown? I mean, you might have thought we got nothing out of that as a country but turns out not just us but the whole world got something. We got a five-week delay in the implantation of the software that they think will solve the unexpected nosedive problem in the Boeing 737 MAX8 jets, and in the meantime, Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 has crashed killing many more than 150 people. The investigation is on the heels of the other 737 MAX8 crash that happened in Indonesia and countries around the world and airlines around the world are grounding these flights. Sometimes in the middle of flights turning those flights around and grounding them, grounding these planes prohibiting these planes from flying through their air space and throwing global aviation into chaos and maybe this gets fixed by the end of next month?
"In the meantime, here in the U.S., continue to enjoy your flights on Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft. Don't worry, the president talks to the Boeing CEO on the phone about it all the time. And the president himself knows aviation after all, he had the best pilot you can ever imagine who was amazing. He would have been perfect to run the FAA.
"I don't know why anybody didn't go along with it. "
You can watch the entire segment here:
UPDATE:
