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The integrity of engineering excellence should never be sacrificed for profit and/or conveniency in places where it involves human lives. Realistically and prag
by Stryder 8y ago
The integrity of engineering excellence should never be sacrificed for profit and/or conveniency in places where it involves human lives. Realistically and pragmatically speaking, you only ever get to have just one single shot at establishing and maintaining that kind of life/death level of trust. Fuck it up, and you're gone- quite literally, mind you.
This is some Challenger O-ring type of shitshow. Accidents are one thing; incompetency or, worse yet, callous indifference is absolutely unacceptable.
- drstewart 8y ago>The integrity of engineering excellence should never be sacrificed for profit and/or conveniency in places where it involves human lives. That's just unrealistic. Unless you want plane and car rides to cost as much as a trip to space, after all, since everything would need to be engineered to that level of quality.
- Stryder 8y agoFinish reading first, and then spend some time thinking before responding. I said: "Accidents are one thing; incompetency or, worse yet, callous indifference is absolutely unacceptable."
- rmrfrmrf 8y agoI continue to be fascinated with consumers who assume the role of shareholder in times of crisis, even against their own interests.
- traek 8y agoAffordable air travel is in most people's interests.
- objektif 8y agoSafe travel surprasses affordable for ALL customers not most.
- lovemenot 8y agoNeither safe nor affordable are booleans. They are on a scale, and a dependency exists between them. Anybody may have a different judgement with respect to exactly where on the scale is appropriate, but we cannot just pretend that there's no trade-off to be made. Or that absolute safety is even a possibility.
- CamperBob2 8y agoIt's pretty freaking safe, isn't it? We've literally had zero-fatality years in the US. That doesn't happen through good luck alone. Clearly the manufacturers, regulators, and operators are doing almost everything right.
- tomp 8y agoThen why do people still drive (i.e. use cars)?
- objektif 8y agoBecause they think it is safe.
- ionised 8y ago'most people' don't fly at all
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Cyph0n 8y agoTalk about a strawman, mate.
- ddalex 8y agoOr you could fly Airbus.
- drstewart 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Airbus_A320_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...
- angstrom 8y agoBlack box high five for the win, amirite?! Roll it back up to the top of the hill and lets see if it records something different... It's sad, but most faults seem to be like this. First one is treated as an anomaly, second one is treated as the start of a trend. It happens so many times I'm glad I'm not working with human lives.
- windexh8er 8y ago> Realistically and pragmatically speaking, you only ever get to have just one single shot at establishing and maintaining that kind of life/death level of trust. Fuck it up, and you're gone- quite literally, mind you. I wish this statement was held with as much as accountability as this comment implies. But have any of the major outlets been discussing potential prison sentences for Boeing or FAA employees / executives or potentially even board members? If you want accountability in today's age it seems the pressure needs to be applied at the point where financial decisions are held with more precedent than safety of life. Boeing stock was up today on the glimmer of hope that the "software fix was working". Investors are assuming the stock is on sale and this only impacts Boeing for, what, a few weeks? I said something similar in another comment but I think Volkswagen is going to do more jail time and have more brand detriment than Boeing or the FAA will. Egregious doesn't begin to describe the misdirection of conversation. Why is the focus not yet on who will be sentenced for death over profits?
- nawtacawp 8y ago> Investors are assuming the stock is on sale and this only impacts Boring for, what, a few weeks? Reminds me of the Equifax breach. Stock tumbles then recovers. Overall, it validates that breaches are not a liability; therefore, additional resources to address future problems could be seen as a moot point. Same with Boeing. If there is no impact to the company, then why change the business model?
- mehrdadn 8y agoEquifax is not comparable to this. The difference with Equifax is that there has been little actual damage compare to how much data got compromised. With Boeing we've had hundreds who got killed.
- tmd83 8y agoIf the world was fair they should all (decision makers at Boeing and FAA both) be packed by the lot and send to stand trial in Ethiopia and Indonesia for 300+ murder, which is what I consider this to be. If you don't have food in your belly and you steal you get jailed. You are not satisfied with your million dollar salary and your billion dollar company profit and don't care if people get killed, you get to have PR firm write how sorry and sincere you are. Justice seems truly blind so many times just not in the way the phrase was coined.
- CaptainZapp 8y agoThis is some Challenger O-ring type of shitshow. I think it's worse. The first crash can be compared to the Challenger shitshow. It was a (massive) engineering mistake, which lead to the Lion Air plane crashing. Looking at the history of the 737 in general and the 737-MAX specifically it was rekless, but I'm pretty certain not intentional or foreseen by Boeing. That massively changed by the fact that they didn't immediately pull the plane after this crash and went into deep analysis mode to really evaluate the cause. Instead they smeared everybody but themselves, developed a completely useless checklist without really knowing or (apparently) caring if it's useful at all and let that deathtrap fly. The second crash, in my opinion is corporate mass murder for profit. Maybe not legally, but morally most certainly.
- jayalpha 8y ago"The integrity of engineering excellence should never be sacrificed for profit and/or conveniency in places where it involves human lives." There is always a trade off, your statement is too bold for a world of limited resources. We can use engineering to make the roads safer. Spent a trillion USD on road safety will save lives for sure. But maybe it is spend better on cancer R&D efforts? The safest plane would be the most expensive and most uncompetitive since it needs unlimited resources and unlimited time for being designed.
- ptidhomme 8y agoI must say I disagree with this stance. It's not so much a matter of ressources than of specifically engineering excellence. There's plentiful examples of a much better product that was created with less ressources than the shitty existing competition (this must be commonplace for HN members). I'm convinced the safest plane is not the most expensive, it's the one designed through sound and clear-sighted engineering.
- jayalpha 8y agoSince there won't be an ultimately and best product for ever, there is always a way to improve things. Then time and financial restrains come into place again. Are you an engineer? Your argument sounds naive. Or to give a counter example: In the Soviet Union there were likely more accidents (normalized) compared to the west. Yet, they did not focus on maximizing profits.
- tomp 8y agoIn my mind, the difference between science and engineering is that science is concerned about what's provably true, whereas engineering (and I include applied math and even medicine here) is about getting to a result. Therefore, our medicine is not perfectly safe, our cars are not perfectly safe, our building are not perfectly safe, we don't / can't provide 100% health coverage to everyone, and so on... but in aggregate, they make the world a better place, so it's worth it.