It's not fair to blame the plane at all unless you're sure the crash was the plane's fault, but that isn't stopping most of the people in this thread from doing it.
Airplanes don't have the right to a trial of their peers with presumption of innocence.
Two crashes within six months is very abnormal. Abnormalities are evidence of problems. Airline regulators are tasked with keeping people from dying, not with protecting manufacturers' feelings.
Those three crashes had one thing in common: terrorism.
These two crashes have one thing in common: brand new planes.
Unless you know of an islamist terror organization that has a grudge against Ethiopian desert wilderness, I don't think terrorism is a more likely common cause than the brand new airframe.
Yes but my point is that people don’t avoid the 767. Look upthread please, this whole sub thread is about whether these incidents will cause consumers to avoid 737 Max planes in the future.
My (apparently very controversial) opinion is that we don’t know enough to predict that now, because we don’t know what caused the Ethiopian Air crash yet.
People never avoided the 767 because it was clear all along that the crashes had noting to do with the plane.
People are avoiding the 737 MAX because given the current information it definitely could be a problem with the plane, in fact the information we already have from the first crash makes it look like it's very likely to be a problem with the plane.
> It's not fair to blame the plane at all unless you're sure the crash was the plane's fault
I'd say "unless you have some indication that it was the plane's fault". Otherwise, agreed: 2 crashes per se tell you nothing about the safety of the plane; it could've been a terrorist attack or a suicidal pilot or a missile.
It's two crashes under similar circumstances, with no indication of such an external event, that justify suspecting the plane.
> It's not fair to blame the plane at all unless you're sure the crash was the plane's fault
Since we aren't talking about assigning criminal penalties to the plane (for one, because its fairly well destroyed, and for another because it wasn't the kind of thing subject to such penalties in the first place), the criminal standard of proof ("beyond a reasonable doubt" -- which still falls short of actually being sure) is inapplicable. In fact, given the minimal consequences of blaming the plane in the discussion in this thread, its probably fair to do so if there is any reasonable basis for belief that that the crash was the plane's fault. Its certainly to do so if the preponderance of the evidence as yet reviewed by the person doing the blaming suggests that, even if it is a fairly weak conclusion that a very small amount of additional evidence could reverse.
I don't object to this line of reasoning, I object to the idea that this line of reasoning by itself, as known today, is sufficient to predict that the reputation of the 737 Max is permanently damaged in the eyes of consumers. That's the context of this subthread, starting here: