Originally Posted by
rowingman
The AA pilots were sufficiently concerned after the first crash. It makes me question the commercial reassurances by AA prior to the grounding frankly that "our pilots are well trained and we are fully confident in the aircraft's safety." From the audio of the AA/Boeing meeting at DFW, it sounds like the pilots were anything but reassured.
I find this somewhat concerning. Are the pilots (as a group, presumably through their union) empowered to tell AA "we don't think this plane is safe and we aren't flying it"? If they are, what is the bar for doing that? And why didn't they? It sounds like they had legitimate concerns and felt strongly about them -- is that not enough of a reason?
I don't particularly care about the corporate spin from AA or Boeing (they are companies; they lie to the public through their PR departments -- that's just what they do) but I am concerned if pilots are flying planes that they have this level of concern about.