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More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves. They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements. Boeing

More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves. They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements. Boeing showed the FAA their test results, said that with MCAS the aircraft meets requirements, doesn't require extra training, and the FAA took their word for it. Authorities in most other countries trust the FAA, so they took their word for it too. That's an oversimplification, but more or less what happened. As to whether Boeing was deliberately deceptive, we'll probably find out in due time as investigations have begun and subpoenas issued.

stcredzero 8y ago
More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves. They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements. To assert this, but also change such a critical emergency procedure, which is made more critical by a decision motivated primarily by economics -- this just sounds bad. Basically, we've set up a situation where short term thinking is eventually, over many thousands of iterations of such decisions which go into producing such a complex product, going to override long term safety thinking. Unfortunately, substituting regulations for good thinking has the potential to nonsensically stymie progress if done incorrectly.
- sundaeofshock 8y ago
  “Unfortunately, substituting regulations for good thinking has the potential to nonsensically stymie progress if done incorrectly.” Help me understand this statement. Are you suggesting that regulation in this instance would not help with safety?
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Are you suggesting that regulation in this instance would not help with safety? Not at all. Often regulations help with safety in the short and medium term. The problem is that they aren't written by oracles, so they can become outdated and fail to account for changes in technology. (How does "stymie progress" translate to not helping with safety?)
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    Regulation is why Boeing felt the need to construct and jump through such elaborate hoops to avoid losing the 737's original certification. The better approach would have been to treat the Max as an entirety new aircraft model, and not try to fool pilots into thinking it was just another boring old 737 variant. But the regs are written to encourage the latter approach.
    - cmurf 8y ago
      The regulation encouraged this how? Do you have an example? Model doesn't matter. It's possible to have two different models with the same type rating (Airbus A320 vs A340), and it's just as possible to have a derivative that requires a different type rating. It would have been better for whom to treat the MAX as something different, requiring its own type rating? It's pretty clear it was overwhelmingly the airlines who wanted a new 737 in the existing 737 type rating.
    - dralley 8y ago
      Nonsense. The primary reason Boeing wanted to retain the same type rating is because their buyers, the airlines, don't want to pay out to retrain all the pilots. Which as you say, is the correct thing to do - but regulations aren't preventing that, simple economic forces are.
    - sundaeofshock 8y ago
      That doesn’t follow. The FAA allowed Boeing to self-regulate, with somewhat disastrous results. I don’t understand how the regulations forced Boeing to take the approach the did. My read is that they took advantage of loose regulations to avoid recertification, all in the name of profit. Having said all that, I’m open to hearing how you think regulation was the real culprit here.
- 0xffff2 8y ago
  The purpose of MCAS was precisely that it didn't change procedure. There was already an existing procedure for runaway trim control. In the case of the Lion Air crash at least, applying that existing procedure would have allowed the pilots to fly the plane normally, albeit without the benefit of automatic trim. For reasons we will never fully know, the pilots did not apply that existing non-MAX specific procedure.
  - SiempreViernes 8y ago
    The very likely reason they didn't follow that procedure is that they didn't recognise the failure as runaway trim, which in turn is likely related to the apparent fact they didn't know MCAS existed. So couldn't know that the behaviour they experienced was what MCAS runaway trim felt like.
    - 0xffff2 8y ago
      I don't think it's wise to speculate, but the stabilizer is coupled to a very large trim wheel in the cockpit that both audibly clicks as it spins and is market with white stripes (on a black wheel) to make the movement apparent. It's possible the pilots didn't realize what was happening, but it's not as if MCAS was silently causing a runaway.
- azernik 8y ago
  I would say more that this is a case of gaming the metrics - regulation is looser for variations of the same plane (This Is A Good Thing) and so Boeing did shady shit to classify this new plane as a variant. The only way to prevent this is to sufficiently fund the regulators so that a human can do a sanity check and reject the gaming; but decades of defunding of regulatory agencies and the resulting regulatory capture made the FAA incapable of doing that.
CaptainZapp 8y ago
Authorities in most other countries trust the FAA, so they took their word for it too. I wonder i that remains the case. Up to now the FAA's certification was the gold standard upon which every other certification agent use to ruberstamp their own certifications. I wonder what happens after this overly cozy relationship came to light.

stcredzero 8y ago

More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves. They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements. To assert this, but also change such a critical emergency procedure, which is made more critical by a decision motivated primarily by economics -- this just sounds bad. Basically, we've set up a situation where short term thinking is eventually, over many thousands of iterations of such decisions which go into producing such a complex product, going to override long term safety thinking. Unfortunately, substituting regulations for good thinking has the potential to nonsensically stymie progress if done incorrectly.

sundaeofshock 8y ago
“Unfortunately, substituting regulations for good thinking has the potential to nonsensically stymie progress if done incorrectly.” Help me understand this statement. Are you suggesting that regulation in this instance would not help with safety?
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Are you suggesting that regulation in this instance would not help with safety? Not at all. Often regulations help with safety in the short and medium term. The problem is that they aren't written by oracles, so they can become outdated and fail to account for changes in technology. (How does "stymie progress" translate to not helping with safety?)
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  Regulation is why Boeing felt the need to construct and jump through such elaborate hoops to avoid losing the 737's original certification. The better approach would have been to treat the Max as an entirety new aircraft model, and not try to fool pilots into thinking it was just another boring old 737 variant. But the regs are written to encourage the latter approach.
  - cmurf 8y ago
    The regulation encouraged this how? Do you have an example? Model doesn't matter. It's possible to have two different models with the same type rating (Airbus A320 vs A340), and it's just as possible to have a derivative that requires a different type rating. It would have been better for whom to treat the MAX as something different, requiring its own type rating? It's pretty clear it was overwhelmingly the airlines who wanted a new 737 in the existing 737 type rating.
  - dralley 8y ago
    Nonsense. The primary reason Boeing wanted to retain the same type rating is because their buyers, the airlines, don't want to pay out to retrain all the pilots. Which as you say, is the correct thing to do - but regulations aren't preventing that, simple economic forces are.
  - sundaeofshock 8y ago
    That doesn’t follow. The FAA allowed Boeing to self-regulate, with somewhat disastrous results. I don’t understand how the regulations forced Boeing to take the approach the did. My read is that they took advantage of loose regulations to avoid recertification, all in the name of profit. Having said all that, I’m open to hearing how you think regulation was the real culprit here.
0xffff2 8y ago
The purpose of MCAS was precisely that it didn't change procedure. There was already an existing procedure for runaway trim control. In the case of the Lion Air crash at least, applying that existing procedure would have allowed the pilots to fly the plane normally, albeit without the benefit of automatic trim. For reasons we will never fully know, the pilots did not apply that existing non-MAX specific procedure.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  The very likely reason they didn't follow that procedure is that they didn't recognise the failure as runaway trim, which in turn is likely related to the apparent fact they didn't know MCAS existed. So couldn't know that the behaviour they experienced was what MCAS runaway trim felt like.
  - 0xffff2 8y ago
    I don't think it's wise to speculate, but the stabilizer is coupled to a very large trim wheel in the cockpit that both audibly clicks as it spins and is market with white stripes (on a black wheel) to make the movement apparent. It's possible the pilots didn't realize what was happening, but it's not as if MCAS was silently causing a runaway.
azernik 8y ago
I would say more that this is a case of gaming the metrics - regulation is looser for variations of the same plane (This Is A Good Thing) and so Boeing did shady shit to classify this new plane as a variant. The only way to prevent this is to sufficiently fund the regulators so that a human can do a sanity check and reject the gaming; but decades of defunding of regulatory agencies and the resulting regulatory capture made the FAA incapable of doing that.

CaptainZapp 8y ago

Authorities in most other countries trust the FAA, so they took their word for it too. I wonder i that remains the case. Up to now the FAA's certification was the gold standard upon which every other certification agent use to ruberstamp their own certifications. I wonder what happens after this overly cozy relationship came to light.