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I'm not an aviation expert, but their reasoning seems to be "it's a tiny chance and we reaaaaaallllly want to use these planes". We are talking about a known b

I'm not an aviation expert, but their reasoning seems to be "it's a tiny chance and we reaaaaaallllly want to use these planes". We are talking about a known bug that could lead to deaths. This isn't some critical military aircraft or a cargo plane that without which food and goods can't be transported. The only "harm" will be to shareholders. People are more important than profits.

jschwartzi 8y ago
They have a mitigation in the form of an automatic engine restart system. I suspect part of their risk analysis is going to call out reliability of that function. If the RR engine is failing prematurely then there's also an argument the be made for switching to the GE engine because the maintenance costs are going to be passed on to the passengers in the form of higher prices.
- NullPrefix 8y ago
  >They have a mitigation in the form of an automatic engine restart system. They switched to php now?
GiuseppaAcciaio 8y ago
Of course Boeing want to deliver the planes, otherwise they get hit by significant late delivery penalties. However, thanks to how the industry is regulated, Boeing don't take chances if there is a risk to passenger safety. In this case, the likelihood of a single engine shutdown due to this elusive bug + the failure of the automatic restart system + the failure of the manual restart procedures, _combined with the fact that all commercial aircraft needs to be able to operate with only one of the engines_, makes Boeing ask for the exemption. The FAA, on their part, is 100% right in demanding that Boeing show their work and is unlikely to grant such an exemption unless the risk is calculated to be negligible.
- ken 8y ago
  The problem sounds to me like it's triggered by environmental conditions, not random chance: "during a step climb to a higher altitude in ice crystal icing conditions". In that case, does having two identical engines really constitute redundancy?
  - eloff 8y ago
    Exactly, are we looking at correlated or uncorrelated risk here, because that makes a huge difference!
  - cmurf 8y ago
    As the probability of a condition triggering failure increases, there is a decreasing probability that redundancy helps. e.g. volcanic ash is also an environmental trigger. But it is likely to certain to cause engine failure. No amount of ash is acceptable, but there is a density at which engine failure will happen quickly, and it's going to affect all engines at pretty much the same time. So in this extreme case, certain probability of engine failure in the triggering conditions means you have no redundancy with additional engines. Whereas the problem sounds more variable and complex. Probably is low, therefore additional engines does provide redundancy just not as much redundancy as being in non-triggering conditions. Decent chance there's enough time to find another altitude to avoid additional failures.
- gizmo686 8y ago
  The bigger issue for the FAA is culture. Flight is so safe because all of those safty measures are taken seriously. Whenever exceptions are made, there is a risk of normalizing devience, and standards will slowly erode until a disaster shakes us back (and even a disaster is no guarantee to a return to anything near our current level of standards.) Building a safety culture as strong as aviation is hard, and the FAA doesn't like risking it.
- JackFr 8y ago
  > Of course Boeing want to deliver the planes, otherwise they get hit by significant late delivery penalties. How is it that they can't pass those on to GE? You'd have to figure that if you've got your own SLA, you'd want an SLA on upstream providers.
  - cma 8y ago
    Maybe GE has offered to pay them a huge amount if Boeing can avoid hitting GE with the SLA penalties. From Boeing's POV, the lost profit of not getting paid off by GE would be as bad as the loss from not having an SLA in place with GE.
    - anamexis 8y ago
      So GE would avoid paying SLA penalties by paying them an amount equal to the SLA penalties?
      - cma 8y ago
        I shouldn't have said "as bad". I'm sure they would take some hit. Maybe half on average, I'm not sure what negotiation theory would say.
- 394549 8y ago
  > In this case, the likelihood of a single engine shutdown due to this elusive bug ... _combined with the fact that all commercial aircraft needs to be able to operate with only one of the engines_, makes Boeing ask for the exemption. That's not very reassuring to me. The article is light on details, but this bug is apparently triggered "during a step climb to a higher altitude in ice crystal icing conditions." The fact that the plane can operate one one engine doesn't do much good if both engines fail due to the same bug because they're experiencing the same conditions at the same time.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-requests-waiver-to-avoid-787-10-certification-447937/ https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-requests-w... looks like the bug is know but they plan to deploy a fix to the airliner after it enters production, for reason unknown to me (likely having to restart some certifications?) "The root cause of this event is the fact that ICI [ice crystal icing] accommodation logic, as it’s currently certified, is suspended with the application of climb power"
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
GuB-42 8y ago
> People are more important than profits. That's not absolutely true. People lives have a value, around $10M for US transport. It means that if the cost of potentially saving one human life is more than $10M, it isn't worth it, as in, there are more important things to do with that money, including improving safety in other areas. Now profits are important too. Companies need money. That's how they pay their employees, do R&D, stuff like that. If they don't make money, employees will get fired, and they won't be able to develop new, better and potentially safer planes. For airlines, they may be forced to make tickets more expensive or lower their standards to compensate for the costs of planes that don't fly. Talking about shareholders, you may be a shareholder too if your savings include Boeing stocks. Less profits has an avalanche of undesirable effects. Some of them affect the 1% but the majority of it make things slightly worse for the 99%.
- drb91 8y ago
  It’s not at all clear flying an unsafe plane is necessary to make a profit.
  - vulnan 8y ago
    Safe and unsafe is not a binary. Any plane is unsafe for certain values of unsafe. Any plane is safe for certain values of safe. There is always a tradeoff, and there is always an acceptable risk, whether you are Boeing or a normal person deciding whether to drive, bike, or take the bus to work.
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      That's why we have regulators to determine acceptable risk. Companies left to their own devices would make the margin ridiculously small.
    - drb91 8y ago
      An acceptable risk for boeing is not an acceptable risk for society. This is the whole point of regulation.
    - 8y ago
DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
> People are more important than profits. I think people's take on that depends on (a) whose lives, (b) how much profit, and (c) to whom they may or may not be more important.
skookumchuck 8y ago
> People are more important than profits. Taken as an overriding principle, then we wouldn't have airplanes at all. Or cars. Or food. Or pretty much anything.
megablast 8y ago
Really? Do you drive? Over 50,000 people die every year due to driving. If you are part of this culture, like most people, you are choosing convenience over lives.

jschwartzi 8y ago

They have a mitigation in the form of an automatic engine restart system. I suspect part of their risk analysis is going to call out reliability of that function. If the RR engine is failing prematurely then there's also an argument the be made for switching to the GE engine because the maintenance costs are going to be passed on to the passengers in the form of higher prices.

NullPrefix 8y ago
>They have a mitigation in the form of an automatic engine restart system. They switched to php now?

GiuseppaAcciaio 8y ago

Of course Boeing want to deliver the planes, otherwise they get hit by significant late delivery penalties. However, thanks to how the industry is regulated, Boeing don't take chances if there is a risk to passenger safety. In this case, the likelihood of a single engine shutdown due to this elusive bug + the failure of the automatic restart system + the failure of the manual restart procedures, _combined with the fact that all commercial aircraft needs to be able to operate with only one of the engines_, makes Boeing ask for the exemption. The FAA, on their part, is 100% right in demanding that Boeing show their work and is unlikely to grant such an exemption unless the risk is calculated to be negligible.

ken 8y ago
The problem sounds to me like it's triggered by environmental conditions, not random chance: "during a step climb to a higher altitude in ice crystal icing conditions". In that case, does having two identical engines really constitute redundancy?
- eloff 8y ago
  Exactly, are we looking at correlated or uncorrelated risk here, because that makes a huge difference!
- cmurf 8y ago
  As the probability of a condition triggering failure increases, there is a decreasing probability that redundancy helps. e.g. volcanic ash is also an environmental trigger. But it is likely to certain to cause engine failure. No amount of ash is acceptable, but there is a density at which engine failure will happen quickly, and it's going to affect all engines at pretty much the same time. So in this extreme case, certain probability of engine failure in the triggering conditions means you have no redundancy with additional engines. Whereas the problem sounds more variable and complex. Probably is low, therefore additional engines does provide redundancy just not as much redundancy as being in non-triggering conditions. Decent chance there's enough time to find another altitude to avoid additional failures.
gizmo686 8y ago
The bigger issue for the FAA is culture. Flight is so safe because all of those safty measures are taken seriously. Whenever exceptions are made, there is a risk of normalizing devience, and standards will slowly erode until a disaster shakes us back (and even a disaster is no guarantee to a return to anything near our current level of standards.) Building a safety culture as strong as aviation is hard, and the FAA doesn't like risking it.
JackFr 8y ago
> Of course Boeing want to deliver the planes, otherwise they get hit by significant late delivery penalties. How is it that they can't pass those on to GE? You'd have to figure that if you've got your own SLA, you'd want an SLA on upstream providers.
- cma 8y ago
  Maybe GE has offered to pay them a huge amount if Boeing can avoid hitting GE with the SLA penalties. From Boeing's POV, the lost profit of not getting paid off by GE would be as bad as the loss from not having an SLA in place with GE.
  - anamexis 8y ago
    So GE would avoid paying SLA penalties by paying them an amount equal to the SLA penalties?
    - cma 8y ago
      I shouldn't have said "as bad". I'm sure they would take some hit. Maybe half on average, I'm not sure what negotiation theory would say.
394549 8y ago
> In this case, the likelihood of a single engine shutdown due to this elusive bug ... _combined with the fact that all commercial aircraft needs to be able to operate with only one of the engines_, makes Boeing ask for the exemption. That's not very reassuring to me. The article is light on details, but this bug is apparently triggered "during a step climb to a higher altitude in ice crystal icing conditions." The fact that the plane can operate one one engine doesn't do much good if both engines fail due to the same bug because they're experiencing the same conditions at the same time.
LoSboccacc 8y ago
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-requests-waiver-to-avoid-787-10-certification-447937/ https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-requests-w... looks like the bug is know but they plan to deploy a fix to the airliner after it enters production, for reason unknown to me (likely having to restart some certifications?) "The root cause of this event is the fact that ICI [ice crystal icing] accommodation logic, as it’s currently certified, is suspended with the application of climb power"

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

GuB-42 8y ago

> People are more important than profits. That's not absolutely true. People lives have a value, around $10M for US transport. It means that if the cost of potentially saving one human life is more than $10M, it isn't worth it, as in, there are more important things to do with that money, including improving safety in other areas. Now profits are important too. Companies need money. That's how they pay their employees, do R&D, stuff like that. If they don't make money, employees will get fired, and they won't be able to develop new, better and potentially safer planes. For airlines, they may be forced to make tickets more expensive or lower their standards to compensate for the costs of planes that don't fly. Talking about shareholders, you may be a shareholder too if your savings include Boeing stocks. Less profits has an avalanche of undesirable effects. Some of them affect the 1% but the majority of it make things slightly worse for the 99%.

drb91 8y ago
It’s not at all clear flying an unsafe plane is necessary to make a profit.
- vulnan 8y ago
  Safe and unsafe is not a binary. Any plane is unsafe for certain values of unsafe. Any plane is safe for certain values of safe. There is always a tradeoff, and there is always an acceptable risk, whether you are Boeing or a normal person deciding whether to drive, bike, or take the bus to work.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    That's why we have regulators to determine acceptable risk. Companies left to their own devices would make the margin ridiculously small.
  - drb91 8y ago
    An acceptable risk for boeing is not an acceptable risk for society. This is the whole point of regulation.
  - 8y ago

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago

> People are more important than profits. I think people's take on that depends on (a) whose lives, (b) how much profit, and (c) to whom they may or may not be more important.

skookumchuck 8y ago

> People are more important than profits. Taken as an overriding principle, then we wouldn't have airplanes at all. Or cars. Or food. Or pretty much anything.

megablast 8y ago

Really? Do you drive? Over 50,000 people die every year due to driving. If you are part of this culture, like most people, you are choosing convenience over lives.