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This is an important point. Boeing is being reckless with their whole business and showing bad leadership. Regardless if they are sure that there is no real ri

by chvid 8y ago

This is an important point. Boeing is being reckless with their whole business and showing bad leadership. Regardless if they are sure that there is no real risk with their planes; their reputation surely is at risk.

cyberferret 8y ago
Well, they were rattled enough to postpone the global launch of their new 777X which was slated for this week.
- chvid 8y ago
  That is even worse; they are sorta implying whatever is wrong with the max is also wrong with the 777x. They need to ground the max so they control for how long for and what is needed to clear them.
  - realityking 8y ago
    I disagree. They’re simply showing enough compassion to know that it’s not appropriate to throw a part while 150 families are mourning.
    - stevehawk 8y ago
      believe he'd like a s/part/party/ in there. That said, it's more realistic they're delaying it because they don't want the bad press of the 737MAX to bring down the announcement of the new plane.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Considering we don't yet have much information on the cause of the most recent crash this is a hell of an assertion to make. If they ground things at the drop of a hat that is also reckless. They'll know in a couple of days what happened since they already have the recorders. With one crash every ~6mo (someone can crunch the numbers and get the naive probability of a crash per flight) and every pilot of a MAX8 now on the lookout for possible problems the public is not seriously put in danger by another week or so of these aircraft flying. Imagine if Boeing grounded these and it turned out the second crash was pilot error. That would be a footnote that would get 10sec in the news months from now. Do you want to be forever known as the guy who tanked Boeing's reputation over a false positive? That has costs to society too. And before you say yes remember that it's much easier to say you'll give your lottery winnings to charity before winning the jackpot.
- joekrill 8y ago
  The drop of a hat?? 2 plane crashes killing 346 people under eerily similar circumstances within 5 months is the drop of a hat?
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Would you be happier if I called it a knee jerk reaction? The fact of the matter is that 2 is a pretty bad sample size to draw conclusions from and we don't yet have ANY idea what caused this most recent crash. It's easy to say "just ground them" when it's not going to affect you. Throwing medium sized wrenches into the global transportation network has very real costs and shouldn't be done lightly. People's lives are disrupted, sometimes catastrophically. The lives lost already are a sunk cost. It comes down to a calculation of risk vs the cost (in human terms, in case that wasn't obvious) of the disruption. Unfortunately it's impossible to have an adult discussion about that kind of thing on the internet.
    - joekrill 8y ago
      I disagree that it's a knee-jerk reaction, drop of the hat, or whatever you want to name it. We are talking about hundreds of human lives. We are talking about an industry that consistently chooses safety above all else, regardless of profits and minor inconveniences. And for some reason that just doesn't seem to be the case here. > Unfortunately it's impossible to have an adult discussion about that kind of thing on the internet. So unless everyone agrees with you it isn't an adult conversation? Entire countries are grounding these planes. The evidence is pretty clear that folks are worried and aren't interesting in risking the loss of a few hundred more lives because a bit of money may be on the line, or there may be a minor travel disruption. Edit: I see the original poster has since removed the bit about not being able to have an adult conversation on the internet. I quoted and responded to that before it was removed.
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        The idea that at some point the additional cost of trying to save lives is more than the value of the life being saved is incompatible with the beliefs of many people. Yet that reality and trade-offs like that are all around us. For example, OSHA could decide that overhead lifting now requires a safety factor of 15 on everything (IIRC it's 5 but it's been awhile). That would probably save a couple lives because by starting off at 15 you could still have a safety factor >1 with totally clapped out equipment. Would that be worth it? This is the kind of dilemma that gets discussed in the "engineering ethics" course that most of the college graduates here had to take and I'm not going to expand on it because there's plenty of other people who have but the takeaway should be that there exists a point where the return on investment of trying to prevent life lost is negative depending on which externalities you count and how you count them. Personally I agree with the airlines grounding the aircraft because the air-frame failure rate is too high IMO so clearly something is up with them. I fully disagree with the "every life is precious" + "OMG we have no idea what's going on" sentiment being used to justify that. That's now how you're supposed to make these kind of decisions, especially when the recorders from the second crash are in hand and we will soon have a good idea of the cause. Based on what we know at present, the first crash would likely have been prevented had the pilots been made aware of the new possible failure mode of MCAS, recognized it and disabled the system, the steps for which are the same they've always been. Any 737 pilot not living under a rock is very aware of that new possible failure mode now. While crashing aircraft and publicity like this might not be as good as retraining it has likely accomplished a similar end so if the cause of these accidents is what we currently think it is then the press it's receiving will go a long way toward solving that albeit at unfortunately high cost. FWIW I removed that sentence from my comment because I didn't want a self fulfilling prophesy but I've added it back to my comment because it mostly came true. No "I disagree because X" (where X is not an appeal to emotion). Just people mashing the "bury this" button and appeals to emotion. Basically Reddit sans the sarcasm. You know as well as I that any discussion about trade-offs involving human life (or any other emotional topic) eventually just get drowned out by name calling and general bullshit and an adult discussion isn't really possible.
js2 8y ago
I hope they are putting the safety of their passengers ahead of their reputation. Maybe grounding the plane is the right PR decision but the wrong safety-first decision.

by chvid 8y ago

cyberferret 8y ago

Well, they were rattled enough to postpone the global launch of their new 777X which was slated for this week.

chvid 8y ago
That is even worse; they are sorta implying whatever is wrong with the max is also wrong with the 777x. They need to ground the max so they control for how long for and what is needed to clear them.
- realityking 8y ago
  I disagree. They’re simply showing enough compassion to know that it’s not appropriate to throw a part while 150 families are mourning.
  - stevehawk 8y ago
    believe he'd like a s/part/party/ in there. That said, it's more realistic they're delaying it because they don't want the bad press of the 737MAX to bring down the announcement of the new plane.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

Considering we don't yet have much information on the cause of the most recent crash this is a hell of an assertion to make. If they ground things at the drop of a hat that is also reckless. They'll know in a couple of days what happened since they already have the recorders. With one crash every ~6mo (someone can crunch the numbers and get the naive probability of a crash per flight) and every pilot of a MAX8 now on the lookout for possible problems the public is not seriously put in danger by another week or so of these aircraft flying. Imagine if Boeing grounded these and it turned out the second crash was pilot error. That would be a footnote that would get 10sec in the news months from now. Do you want to be forever known as the guy who tanked Boeing's reputation over a false positive? That has costs to society too. And before you say yes remember that it's much easier to say you'll give your lottery winnings to charity before winning the jackpot.

joekrill 8y ago
The drop of a hat?? 2 plane crashes killing 346 people under eerily similar circumstances within 5 months is the drop of a hat?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Would you be happier if I called it a knee jerk reaction? The fact of the matter is that 2 is a pretty bad sample size to draw conclusions from and we don't yet have ANY idea what caused this most recent crash. It's easy to say "just ground them" when it's not going to affect you. Throwing medium sized wrenches into the global transportation network has very real costs and shouldn't be done lightly. People's lives are disrupted, sometimes catastrophically. The lives lost already are a sunk cost. It comes down to a calculation of risk vs the cost (in human terms, in case that wasn't obvious) of the disruption. Unfortunately it's impossible to have an adult discussion about that kind of thing on the internet.
  - joekrill 8y ago
    I disagree that it's a knee-jerk reaction, drop of the hat, or whatever you want to name it. We are talking about hundreds of human lives. We are talking about an industry that consistently chooses safety above all else, regardless of profits and minor inconveniences. And for some reason that just doesn't seem to be the case here. > Unfortunately it's impossible to have an adult discussion about that kind of thing on the internet. So unless everyone agrees with you it isn't an adult conversation? Entire countries are grounding these planes. The evidence is pretty clear that folks are worried and aren't interesting in risking the loss of a few hundred more lives because a bit of money may be on the line, or there may be a minor travel disruption. Edit: I see the original poster has since removed the bit about not being able to have an adult conversation on the internet. I quoted and responded to that before it was removed.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      The idea that at some point the additional cost of trying to save lives is more than the value of the life being saved is incompatible with the beliefs of many people. Yet that reality and trade-offs like that are all around us. For example, OSHA could decide that overhead lifting now requires a safety factor of 15 on everything (IIRC it's 5 but it's been awhile). That would probably save a couple lives because by starting off at 15 you could still have a safety factor >1 with totally clapped out equipment. Would that be worth it? This is the kind of dilemma that gets discussed in the "engineering ethics" course that most of the college graduates here had to take and I'm not going to expand on it because there's plenty of other people who have but the takeaway should be that there exists a point where the return on investment of trying to prevent life lost is negative depending on which externalities you count and how you count them. Personally I agree with the airlines grounding the aircraft because the air-frame failure rate is too high IMO so clearly something is up with them. I fully disagree with the "every life is precious" + "OMG we have no idea what's going on" sentiment being used to justify that. That's now how you're supposed to make these kind of decisions, especially when the recorders from the second crash are in hand and we will soon have a good idea of the cause. Based on what we know at present, the first crash would likely have been prevented had the pilots been made aware of the new possible failure mode of MCAS, recognized it and disabled the system, the steps for which are the same they've always been. Any 737 pilot not living under a rock is very aware of that new possible failure mode now. While crashing aircraft and publicity like this might not be as good as retraining it has likely accomplished a similar end so if the cause of these accidents is what we currently think it is then the press it's receiving will go a long way toward solving that albeit at unfortunately high cost. FWIW I removed that sentence from my comment because I didn't want a self fulfilling prophesy but I've added it back to my comment because it mostly came true. No "I disagree because X" (where X is not an appeal to emotion). Just people mashing the "bury this" button and appeals to emotion. Basically Reddit sans the sarcasm. You know as well as I that any discussion about trade-offs involving human life (or any other emotional topic) eventually just get drowned out by name calling and general bullshit and an adult discussion isn't really possible.

js2 8y ago

I hope they are putting the safety of their passengers ahead of their reputation. Maybe grounding the plane is the right PR decision but the wrong safety-first decision.