Originally Posted by
lomapaseo
Boeing as a manufacturer has
No means to ground a fleet so as to damage the goods that others have purchased. Boeing's responsibility is to provide fixes for known problems with a suitable reccomendation for incorporation (ALL this under the rule of Continued Airworthiness).
As what they knew or didn't know at the time of their initial responses, that is
TBD in the onward investigations
The same goes for the FAA who are dependent on Boeing for analysis of the data coming in from a field event and in-house testing, all which take time.
There is an underlying mode of operation that you don't prematurely ground fleets unless you have a path for ungroundings by identifying an unsafe action/design to bring the certificate back into compliance.
Many posters have a sense that simply discussing fatalities equates to instant groundings of whole fleets rather than finding means for restrictions on how they are flown with what fixes..
Personally (without data so just an hunch) I would have restricted the fleet to only fly with crews that were ably to comply with the restrictions needs. Of course that would have taken time to requalify crews but at least that gives the user operator more control over his costs and operations.
from a Sr Fellow in Continued Airworthiness
You're focussing on facts, regulations and engineering. ManInTheBar is talking about
PR, confidence and customers. Sure they could get the fleet flying like you say, but you'd be flying empty planes around.
As regards Boeing grounding the fleet - legally perhaps they can't force a fleet to be grounded. But if they said "hey guys, we're not happy about the safety", then it would be a pretty ballsy operator who would go against that. And again they would be flying a lot of fresh air around in those cabins.