Originally Posted by
beardy
I agree that it is an unbalanced article, that does not nullify the meaning of absolute figures, it just shows poor journalism.
Absolute figures - in isolation - are meaningless. If you have 10 engine shutdowns in a week, or ten aircraft AOG, it could be really bad and indicative of a serious problem, or it could be normal - it depends on the size of the fleet. It's the rates that matter - either events per flight hour or events per flight.
There are roughly 1,000 737 MAX aircraft currently in service - a certain number of shutdowns and grounded aircraft would be expected for a fleet that size.