Note that despite what media headlines will make of this, it wasn't a Boeing issue in this case. One of their suppliers incorrectly installed a bearing on a component that could lead to moisture getting in and freezing. That component is used on the 737NG and 737Max.<p>These things are relatively common in aviation. An incident happened, everything went OK, but during the investigation a problem was found. The NTSB then writes a set of recommendations and it's likely that the FAA will issue an Airworthiness Directive (AD) that tells all operators to fix this problem.<p>Depending on the severity and the FAA's estimate of the risk that AD will either be a "fix now" which is very disruptive or a "fix at the next [some type] inspection" which is more common.<p>Specifically with this component the NTSB seems to think it can be removed until a replacement is available:<p>> Additionally, the NTSB recommended that the FAA determine if actuators with incorrectly assembled bearings should be removed from airplanes, and if so, to direct U.S. operators to do so until replacements are available.<p>In that case the plane won't be able to do a cat III autoland anymore, but from the text is looks like it would operate normally apart from that restriction.
I am not a pilot, but is it possible we are inching towards a scrapping of the Max? The reliability of the plane seems to be in ever increasingly doubt
As usual, anyone without prior familiarity should take all “Boeing News” with a huge grain of salt, because outrage merchants / people trying to look smart get a kick out of spreading very BAU things as if they weren’t.