Commercial airports usually have limited room for storing aircraft. Lots of airlines use the aircraft graveyard at Victorville, CA. It's a desert with very low humidity which helps preserve the airframe while it's unused, plus storage fees are much cheaper than those levied by a commercial airport.
The brief article does not list what type of 737 Max this was. I know type 8 and 9 were grounded. I'm assuming this is a different type, but am unsure.
edit the playback linked by a different user shows that it was a Max 8. Why wasn't this grounded?
- this was (per FAA) a regular engine problem and seems unrelated to the MAX control issues. As such it could have happened to any flight.
- Since people have asked repeatedly: 737MAX can still fly, just not regular passenger traffic. Airlines now shuffle them around to where they want them (where there is room to store them, where they can get necessary fixes quickly once they are available etc. Typically a hub airport for the airline in question).
Why do they still allow this though? Its not like the plane can't crash if there are no passengers in it. There is still a risk of the plane crashing in a residential area for example.
The failure mode is pretty well known, there's already was a known workaround (but pilots need to be properly briefed on it to know to actually apply it in these cases).
There's not official certification on said workaround, and a longer term and more proper fix is currently in testing, so it doesn't make sense to create a procedure to use the current operating configuration in a passenger context.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 60.8 ms ] threadedit the playback linked by a different user shows that it was a Max 8. Why wasn't this grounded?
It was, and is. It's just stuck where it was not supposed to be.
You can apply for a ferry permit from the FAA to get special permission to move a non-airworthy aircraft provided specific conditions are met.
The Ethiopian Airways flight crashed outside of Addis Ababa - in a whole other country.
- this was (per FAA) a regular engine problem and seems unrelated to the MAX control issues. As such it could have happened to any flight.
- Since people have asked repeatedly: 737MAX can still fly, just not regular passenger traffic. Airlines now shuffle them around to where they want them (where there is room to store them, where they can get necessary fixes quickly once they are available etc. Typically a hub airport for the airline in question).
All in all this was a pretty uninteresting event.
There's not official certification on said workaround, and a longer term and more proper fix is currently in testing, so it doesn't make sense to create a procedure to use the current operating configuration in a passenger context.
Brilliant reporting by Fox News as always