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The "greedy bunch of assholes" are the Boeing execs who optimized for profit over the lives of those pilots and their passengers. (I thought that was pretty cle

by geofft 8y ago

The "greedy bunch of assholes" are the Boeing execs who optimized for profit over the lives of those pilots and their passengers. (I thought that was pretty clear from the comment, fwiw.) I think it's been pretty thoroughly established at this point that an underlying design constraint in the MCAS was that it was easier for Boeing to get a 737-with-modifications approved than a new airplane, despite the engines being configured rather differently from existing 737s, and the MCAS was a computerized hack to avoid instability caused by the design of the newer engines (specifically, the newer engines would risk pitching up and stalling if you flew a 737 MAX like a normal 737, so they added the MCAS to counteract that, and the problem in both crashes was the MCAS unnecessarily activated and pitched the plane down when the plane was actually flying fine). Certainly lots of other things went wrong too, but had they instead just built a new plane design, the problem wouldn't have arisen in the first place. (I can find links about this if you're curious but it seems to be the consensus interpretation of what happened.)

cjbprime 8y ago
Agree on the consensus. There's a piece of additional flavor, which is that as I understand it Boeing proposed building a new type of plane as an a320neo competitor, and the airlines announced that they'd only buy it if it's a 737 subtype to avoid having to retrain their pilots. It's not just "Boeing doesn't want to pay for certifications", but also -- and perhaps primarily -- "Airlines don't want to pay for training". So while Boeing's ultimately responsible for building unsafe aircraft, I could imagine people being angrier at the airlines than Boeing.
- VBprogrammer 8y ago
  Just to add an extra element to what you've already said. It's quite likely that the pilots themselves would have been reluctant to accept another entry level narrow body jet. In the current climate it's often the pilots themselves who are paying for the type rating, at least the first one they acquire.
  - geofft 8y ago
    That's fair, but also, salaries for pilots are not great, and Boeing's former CEO got a salary of $865K/year + $1.3M/year bonus + stock and now that he's retired gets a pension of $730K/year. I'm sort of curious what exactly it would have cost Boeing to say, "This is not a 737, but we will pay to retrain any 737-trained pilot who's interested." (Which still would have given them a negotiating advantage over Airbus!)
    - refurb 8y ago
      Reading the r/aviation subreddit apparently airline pilot salaries have really improved over the last 5 years.
      - tyingq 8y ago
        It's very cyclical. For reasons unknown to me, pilot unions have always negotiated a seniority-based pay scale. Where seniority is only how many years you been at the airline. How much total experience you have doesn't matter just how many years you've been with the airline. So if you stay with the airline for a long time you move up from first officer to Captain and then as years of seniority add up you start making a lot more. The trouble is the pilots can't threaten to change jobs because if you move from one airline to another your seniority goes back to zero. Also if an airline declares bankruptcy, all the union contracts are null and void. The airline then has a ton of leverage because the pilots are all out of work. The pay scale that comes out of bankruptcy is typically very low. Similar if one airline acquires another airline. The pilots at the acquired airline typically get screwed in the pay scale and seniority calculation. Also jobs like flying cargo planes or piloting for a commuter airline pay very low wages. It's mostly just the big airlines that pay well.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      "salaries for pilots are not great" Varies with seniority and employer, but: "The average Southwest pilot made $230,626 in 2015, according to the most recent data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Airline Data Project" https://www.dallasnews.com/business/southwest-airlines/2016/11/07/southwest-airlines-pilots-overwhelmingly-approve-new-contract https://www.dallasnews.com/business/southwest-airlines/2016/...
- darkpuma 8y ago
  That's still greedy assholes at work. rdiddly didn't specify that the greedy assholes involved are all Boeing executives; that airline executives have clean hands. And to VBprogrammer's point, airliners making pilots pay for their own training again comes back to airline executives being greedy assholes.
- tmd83 8y ago
  That doesn't really excuse Boeing though. The airline might what whatever but it's Boeing's responsibility to tell them something's not possible. Airbus didn't do this hack (as far as we know) so if Boeing didn't they would have just gotten into a tougher competition. The challenge that Boeing faced is the same as Airbus or any other manufacturer. The airlines at the end would have to buy planes to continue their service with whatever plane available. Boeing from all evidence made for them available an unsafe plane. It's unlikely to happen but a fair amount of people should be put in jail for this for a long long time but I doubt that will happen though. And FAA is another sad excuse these days it seems. One doesn't let trivial things self certify and they let an airlines company self certify critical parts of a plane. What a joke.
Phrodo_00 8y ago
It's not just Boeing, though (not that this exculpate them in any way), but cheap airlines insist in flying 737, but also have demand for more efficiency. This plane was trying to satisfy that impossible "I want the exact same plane but better" demand, so that the other greedy bunch of assholes that are airline execs wouldn't have to spend in training mechanics and pilots because the plane they're flying has another name now.
- acqq 8y ago
  No. The redirection of demand would just give some more clients to Airbus and reduce the speed of the growth of the total number of planes flying. Nobody should accept this attempt to excuse Boeing of its responsibility and even less the possible variant of it "we are all guilty we will buy the cheapest flight."
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    It seems a bit unlikely to me that an airline like South West, that only flies 737s, would sooner buy Airbus planes than non-737 Boeing planes. I mean, stranger things have certainly happened, but it doesn't seem like the kind of existential threat that would force the hand of Boeing executives in such a way that takes blame away from them.
    - thatoneuser 8y ago
      Even if there was an existential threat to Boeing the people making the decisions should have decided "we can't do this safely". They were never forced. Maybe they wouldn't get their million $ bonus - well tough titties. Plenty of people didn't get a 7 digit bonus this year.

by geofft 8y ago

cjbprime 8y ago

Agree on the consensus. There's a piece of additional flavor, which is that as I understand it Boeing proposed building a new type of plane as an a320neo competitor, and the airlines announced that they'd only buy it if it's a 737 subtype to avoid having to retrain their pilots. It's not just "Boeing doesn't want to pay for certifications", but also -- and perhaps primarily -- "Airlines don't want to pay for training". So while Boeing's ultimately responsible for building unsafe aircraft, I could imagine people being angrier at the airlines than Boeing.

VBprogrammer 8y ago
Just to add an extra element to what you've already said. It's quite likely that the pilots themselves would have been reluctant to accept another entry level narrow body jet. In the current climate it's often the pilots themselves who are paying for the type rating, at least the first one they acquire.
- geofft 8y ago
  That's fair, but also, salaries for pilots are not great, and Boeing's former CEO got a salary of $865K/year + $1.3M/year bonus + stock and now that he's retired gets a pension of $730K/year. I'm sort of curious what exactly it would have cost Boeing to say, "This is not a 737, but we will pay to retrain any 737-trained pilot who's interested." (Which still would have given them a negotiating advantage over Airbus!)
  - refurb 8y ago
    Reading the r/aviation subreddit apparently airline pilot salaries have really improved over the last 5 years.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      It's very cyclical. For reasons unknown to me, pilot unions have always negotiated a seniority-based pay scale. Where seniority is only how many years you been at the airline. How much total experience you have doesn't matter just how many years you've been with the airline. So if you stay with the airline for a long time you move up from first officer to Captain and then as years of seniority add up you start making a lot more. The trouble is the pilots can't threaten to change jobs because if you move from one airline to another your seniority goes back to zero. Also if an airline declares bankruptcy, all the union contracts are null and void. The airline then has a ton of leverage because the pilots are all out of work. The pay scale that comes out of bankruptcy is typically very low. Similar if one airline acquires another airline. The pilots at the acquired airline typically get screwed in the pay scale and seniority calculation. Also jobs like flying cargo planes or piloting for a commuter airline pay very low wages. It's mostly just the big airlines that pay well.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    "salaries for pilots are not great" Varies with seniority and employer, but: "The average Southwest pilot made $230,626 in 2015, according to the most recent data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Airline Data Project" https://www.dallasnews.com/business/southwest-airlines/2016/11/07/southwest-airlines-pilots-overwhelmingly-approve-new-contract https://www.dallasnews.com/business/southwest-airlines/2016/...
darkpuma 8y ago
That's still greedy assholes at work. rdiddly didn't specify that the greedy assholes involved are all Boeing executives; that airline executives have clean hands. And to VBprogrammer's point, airliners making pilots pay for their own training again comes back to airline executives being greedy assholes.
tmd83 8y ago
That doesn't really excuse Boeing though. The airline might what whatever but it's Boeing's responsibility to tell them something's not possible. Airbus didn't do this hack (as far as we know) so if Boeing didn't they would have just gotten into a tougher competition. The challenge that Boeing faced is the same as Airbus or any other manufacturer. The airlines at the end would have to buy planes to continue their service with whatever plane available. Boeing from all evidence made for them available an unsafe plane. It's unlikely to happen but a fair amount of people should be put in jail for this for a long long time but I doubt that will happen though. And FAA is another sad excuse these days it seems. One doesn't let trivial things self certify and they let an airlines company self certify critical parts of a plane. What a joke.

Phrodo_00 8y ago

It's not just Boeing, though (not that this exculpate them in any way), but cheap airlines insist in flying 737, but also have demand for more efficiency. This plane was trying to satisfy that impossible "I want the exact same plane but better" demand, so that the other greedy bunch of assholes that are airline execs wouldn't have to spend in training mechanics and pilots because the plane they're flying has another name now.

acqq 8y ago
No. The redirection of demand would just give some more clients to Airbus and reduce the speed of the growth of the total number of planes flying. Nobody should accept this attempt to excuse Boeing of its responsibility and even less the possible variant of it "we are all guilty we will buy the cheapest flight."
- darkpuma 8y ago
  It seems a bit unlikely to me that an airline like South West, that only flies 737s, would sooner buy Airbus planes than non-737 Boeing planes. I mean, stranger things have certainly happened, but it doesn't seem like the kind of existential threat that would force the hand of Boeing executives in such a way that takes blame away from them.
  - thatoneuser 8y ago
    Even if there was an existential threat to Boeing the people making the decisions should have decided "we can't do this safely". They were never forced. Maybe they wouldn't get their million $ bonus - well tough titties. Plenty of people didn't get a 7 digit bonus this year.