9 ms·

FWIW the rudder hardover described in this very interesting link doesn't appear to be related to the Max 8 issues near MCAS.

fixermark 8y ago
Correct. Not to play psychic, but I'm assuming the original poster chose to share this as a friendly reminder that as a general rule, Boeing does not have a track record of placing human lives above their continued corporate profitability. "If Boeing knew about a problem with the MCAS, they'd have told the FAA and corrected it" is not a hypothesis in-line with their past behavior, should anyone be holding that hypothesis in their minds.
- cryptonector 8y ago
  I don't understand this. Each of these scandals is a mortal danger to Boeing. One of them might someday finally put it out of business. Whereas if they reacted to each case by being committed to finding the problem whatever it is, they could greatly reduce their liability by reducing the ultimate number of fatalities due to any one problem.
  - jethro_tell 8y ago
    People don't buy planes though, other corporations that are doing the same thing buy them. Southwest has probably pushed as much on making these things not as clear or as helpful as they could be to avoid having to retrain for a new type. And when this is said and done, they are going to buy more airplanes and people are going to continue to buy flights from them because they are cheap.
    - cat199 8y ago
      Why single out southwest specifically in this hypothetical scenario? If any airline seems 'people focused' I'd think it would be them..
      - wolfd 8y ago
        I assume because they exclusively fly 737s and have a good number of MAX 8s
        acranox 8y ago
        https://www.southwest.com/html/advisories/swa_travel_advisory_20192141552591016643.html https://www.southwest.com/html/advisories/swa_travel_advisor... > Southwest operates a fleet of more than 750 Boeing 737s, and the 34 737 MAX 8 aircraft account for less than five (5) percent of our daily flights.
      - wycy 8y ago
        Southwest is probably called out specifically here because they're somewhat unique in the airline world in that their entire fleet is 737s. This allows them to save on maintenance costs since there's so much commonality among their fleet, but puts them in more peril when something affects the entire class of craft.
        jethro_tell 8y ago
        Also, because boeing said, 'we should label these switches like this and put them here', and southwest said, 'no, that will change the type and we will have to retrain pilots, we'd rather have things be the same type with an asterisks and just let our pilots know than retrain' And because southwest is the largest consumer of the 8max, Boeing did it. From what I understand, that was a precondition of sale for the contract. And the result it seems is that the plane can act in a way that is confusing to people who are expecting one behavior and seeing another, this comes right down to labeling switches as one thing, when they are kinda another. My assumption, and this will probably be borne out in the investigation, is that, because southwest was part of the decision process here, they are at very little risk because of a little additional lite pilot training where they point out these switches are labeled wrong and this behavior will seem funny but this is what it's going to do. But not all airlines are going to train like that, it's the same type right?
        8y ago
    - mikeash 8y ago
      The entire airline industry relies on a sterling reputation for safety. The experience is scary for a lot of people, and the ability to say “the ride to the airport is the most dangerous part” or “it’s safer than putting on pants standing up” does a great deal to get the public to accept air travel. If they lose that reputation, air travel would drop significantly and everyone involved would lose tons of money.
  - marcinzm 8y ago
    Boeing is a US military supplier and a strategic US asset in the airspace industry, the US government will ensure that they do not go under no matter how much damage they do (see car industry). Furthermore even if that wasn't the case the people who cause these issues have almost zero chance of facing personal liability. As a result, it's in the personal interest of the people running Boeing to cut corners and extract maximum short term reward (ie: personal promotions, stock grants valuations, etc.).
    - aabeshou 8y ago
      This is an excess of capitalism: those with capital are given too much power, and their self interest ends up being entirely selfish at the expense of society at large. Capitalism needs regulation, and if the system ends up entrenching itself so that regulation becomes impossible (because of corruption, self-interest, short-term gains, etc), then it means the entire system of capitalism is faulty.
      - CamperBob2 8y ago
        Regulation is exactly why the problem that you're complaining about exists. Only in the presence of regulation does a company become "too big to fail." That's not an attribute of market economics. Note that I'm not making a value judgment about regulation in the general case, just pointing out that you've misidentified the problem in this particular case.
        aabeshou 8y ago
        I'm not saying market economics is the problem. I think that concept gets conflated with capitalism too often. I think markets are a good tool for economic organization. The problem is the system of capitalism, i.e. the centralization of power and capital in the hands of the few, and the rules of a system that incentivize and enable that. This bad system of rules, capitalism, is certainly a form of regulation (is that what you mean?). But when I use the word regulation, I mean a rule that checks the otherwise unlimited exploitative power of capital, rather than any rule at all. Maybe you think that any rule at all would cause this, and I think that's not true.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    Boeing had this scandal and is still here. In that sense, they're demonstrably not mortal dangers. It's normalization of risk writ large over corporate lifecycle timescales. "Should we report this? Well, the last time we got 200 people killed, nobody went to jail, so..."
  - duhi88 8y ago
    There's a good chance that if you aren't proactive about these issues, they won't get noticed until after you've left the company. Let the next CEO/board/director deal with the repercussions and costs if they ever come up.
  - pessimizer 8y ago
    > Each of these scandals is a mortal danger to Boeing. One of them might someday finally put it out of business. I don't think this is true, and I think that their cost/benefit analysis clearly agrees with me. Military and other large contractors go out of business when they run out of friends. For them to run out of friends, they would either have to have people fear for their jobs if they choose Boeing, or a competitor who offers more for friendship. There will never be enough pressure from the public to not pick Boeing that people would be risking their jobs by choosing them. In addition, the US government is willing to sweeten any friendships they need sweetened. Boeing is a company of the size that taxpayers actively shill for them overseas, and that business for them is included in treaties and foreign aid. I can't even imagine a situation bad enough that Boeing would even need to change its name.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  Are there any corporations that do have a demonstrable track record of placing human lives above profitability?
  - fixermark 8y ago
    Depending on how you turn your head and squint, Amazon is doing the right thing today [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19391696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19391696]. ... though I wouldn't say that this one-off rises to the claim of "demonstrable track record." They have some explaining to do about the working conditions of their warehouses.
gnud 8y ago
The articles says that since the valve was redisigned, there has been no more accidents. I think the point here was to show how Boeing has responded to issues in the past.
- sleepybrett 8y ago
  Of course they haven't, no different than car manufacturers doing the same types of deflections and cover-ups. See also tesla autopilot problems, or any of dozens of other such scenarios. A problem is found with a design after a fatality (or near fatality), manufacturer deflects, blames the operator, etc until someone proves that they are 100% at fault. Eventual recall.
  - karlkatzke 8y ago
    Takata airbags, Ford Explorer tires, GM Cobalt ignitions...
- mindslight 8y ago
  Of course the flip narrative is that even though things appear to be bad, they're actually getting better. For this PCU issue, it looks like Boeing was able to derail the issue for years, even throughout several crashes. This time, Boeing was basically able to subvert the FAA for two days - the pressure of disagreeing with other country's regulatory bodies simply became too great.
mzs 8y ago
"Boeing blamed the yaw damper…" What if this MAX thing isn't pitot tube or MCAS software…

fixermark 8y ago

Correct. Not to play psychic, but I'm assuming the original poster chose to share this as a friendly reminder that as a general rule, Boeing does not have a track record of placing human lives above their continued corporate profitability. "If Boeing knew about a problem with the MCAS, they'd have told the FAA and corrected it" is not a hypothesis in-line with their past behavior, should anyone be holding that hypothesis in their minds.

cryptonector 8y ago
I don't understand this. Each of these scandals is a mortal danger to Boeing. One of them might someday finally put it out of business. Whereas if they reacted to each case by being committed to finding the problem whatever it is, they could greatly reduce their liability by reducing the ultimate number of fatalities due to any one problem.
- jethro_tell 8y ago
  People don't buy planes though, other corporations that are doing the same thing buy them. Southwest has probably pushed as much on making these things not as clear or as helpful as they could be to avoid having to retrain for a new type. And when this is said and done, they are going to buy more airplanes and people are going to continue to buy flights from them because they are cheap.
  - cat199 8y ago
    Why single out southwest specifically in this hypothetical scenario? If any airline seems 'people focused' I'd think it would be them..
    - wolfd 8y ago
      I assume because they exclusively fly 737s and have a good number of MAX 8s
      - acranox 8y ago
        https://www.southwest.com/html/advisories/swa_travel_advisory_20192141552591016643.html https://www.southwest.com/html/advisories/swa_travel_advisor... > Southwest operates a fleet of more than 750 Boeing 737s, and the 34 737 MAX 8 aircraft account for less than five (5) percent of our daily flights.
    - wycy 8y ago
      Southwest is probably called out specifically here because they're somewhat unique in the airline world in that their entire fleet is 737s. This allows them to save on maintenance costs since there's so much commonality among their fleet, but puts them in more peril when something affects the entire class of craft.
      - jethro_tell 8y ago
        Also, because boeing said, 'we should label these switches like this and put them here', and southwest said, 'no, that will change the type and we will have to retrain pilots, we'd rather have things be the same type with an asterisks and just let our pilots know than retrain' And because southwest is the largest consumer of the 8max, Boeing did it. From what I understand, that was a precondition of sale for the contract. And the result it seems is that the plane can act in a way that is confusing to people who are expecting one behavior and seeing another, this comes right down to labeling switches as one thing, when they are kinda another. My assumption, and this will probably be borne out in the investigation, is that, because southwest was part of the decision process here, they are at very little risk because of a little additional lite pilot training where they point out these switches are labeled wrong and this behavior will seem funny but this is what it's going to do. But not all airlines are going to train like that, it's the same type right?
        8y ago
  - mikeash 8y ago
    The entire airline industry relies on a sterling reputation for safety. The experience is scary for a lot of people, and the ability to say “the ride to the airport is the most dangerous part” or “it’s safer than putting on pants standing up” does a great deal to get the public to accept air travel. If they lose that reputation, air travel would drop significantly and everyone involved would lose tons of money.
- marcinzm 8y ago
  Boeing is a US military supplier and a strategic US asset in the airspace industry, the US government will ensure that they do not go under no matter how much damage they do (see car industry). Furthermore even if that wasn't the case the people who cause these issues have almost zero chance of facing personal liability. As a result, it's in the personal interest of the people running Boeing to cut corners and extract maximum short term reward (ie: personal promotions, stock grants valuations, etc.).
  - aabeshou 8y ago
    This is an excess of capitalism: those with capital are given too much power, and their self interest ends up being entirely selfish at the expense of society at large. Capitalism needs regulation, and if the system ends up entrenching itself so that regulation becomes impossible (because of corruption, self-interest, short-term gains, etc), then it means the entire system of capitalism is faulty.
    - CamperBob2 8y ago
      Regulation is exactly why the problem that you're complaining about exists. Only in the presence of regulation does a company become "too big to fail." That's not an attribute of market economics. Note that I'm not making a value judgment about regulation in the general case, just pointing out that you've misidentified the problem in this particular case.
      - aabeshou 8y ago
        I'm not saying market economics is the problem. I think that concept gets conflated with capitalism too often. I think markets are a good tool for economic organization. The problem is the system of capitalism, i.e. the centralization of power and capital in the hands of the few, and the rules of a system that incentivize and enable that. This bad system of rules, capitalism, is certainly a form of regulation (is that what you mean?). But when I use the word regulation, I mean a rule that checks the otherwise unlimited exploitative power of capital, rather than any rule at all. Maybe you think that any rule at all would cause this, and I think that's not true.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Boeing had this scandal and is still here. In that sense, they're demonstrably not mortal dangers. It's normalization of risk writ large over corporate lifecycle timescales. "Should we report this? Well, the last time we got 200 people killed, nobody went to jail, so..."
- duhi88 8y ago
  There's a good chance that if you aren't proactive about these issues, they won't get noticed until after you've left the company. Let the next CEO/board/director deal with the repercussions and costs if they ever come up.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  > Each of these scandals is a mortal danger to Boeing. One of them might someday finally put it out of business. I don't think this is true, and I think that their cost/benefit analysis clearly agrees with me. Military and other large contractors go out of business when they run out of friends. For them to run out of friends, they would either have to have people fear for their jobs if they choose Boeing, or a competitor who offers more for friendship. There will never be enough pressure from the public to not pick Boeing that people would be risking their jobs by choosing them. In addition, the US government is willing to sweeten any friendships they need sweetened. Boeing is a company of the size that taxpayers actively shill for them overseas, and that business for them is included in treaties and foreign aid. I can't even imagine a situation bad enough that Boeing would even need to change its name.
rootusrootus 8y ago
Are there any corporations that do have a demonstrable track record of placing human lives above profitability?
- fixermark 8y ago
  Depending on how you turn your head and squint, Amazon is doing the right thing today [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19391696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19391696]. ... though I wouldn't say that this one-off rises to the claim of "demonstrable track record." They have some explaining to do about the working conditions of their warehouses.

gnud 8y ago

The articles says that since the valve was redisigned, there has been no more accidents. I think the point here was to show how Boeing has responded to issues in the past.

sleepybrett 8y ago
Of course they haven't, no different than car manufacturers doing the same types of deflections and cover-ups. See also tesla autopilot problems, or any of dozens of other such scenarios. A problem is found with a design after a fatality (or near fatality), manufacturer deflects, blames the operator, etc until someone proves that they are 100% at fault. Eventual recall.
- karlkatzke 8y ago
  Takata airbags, Ford Explorer tires, GM Cobalt ignitions...
mindslight 8y ago
Of course the flip narrative is that even though things appear to be bad, they're actually getting better. For this PCU issue, it looks like Boeing was able to derail the issue for years, even throughout several crashes. This time, Boeing was basically able to subvert the FAA for two days - the pressure of disagreeing with other country's regulatory bodies simply became too great.

mzs 8y ago

"Boeing blamed the yaw damper…" What if this MAX thing isn't pitot tube or MCAS software…