7 ms·

Boeing safety system not at fault, says chief executive

50 points by sjcsjc 7y ago

jonplackett 7y ago
Since the main battle to getting this plane flying again is going to be public trust, I think they’re going about this all wrong. First admit full responsibility. Then at least you have a shot at people trusting you to fix it.
- ralph84 7y ago
  Perhaps, but it's understandable why Boeing is parsing their words carefully here. For some critics full responsibility would mean nothing short of Boeing admitting the 737 design had reached end of life and they should have never tried to shoehorn larger engines onto the 737 airframe. That would mean ceding the trillion dollar narrowbody market to Airbus for the foreseeable future.
  - jonplackett 7y ago
    I just think they need to accept responsibility for all those dead people. Personally I don't see anything wrong with the idea of the redesign. It's the execution that was the problem. If he came out and said, look we screwed up. There should have been a backup sensor/proper training/proper manuals/software that took a bloody hint and maybe there should be more gov oversight in general because this kind of cock up should not be possible. At least then you'd believe they're actually tackling the problem. Reading all that back, it is actually quite a lot to ask for isn't it.
    - vkou 7y ago
      > Personally I don't see anything wrong with the idea of the redesign. You don't think that there's anything fundamentally wrong with designing an aerodynamically unstable airframe, that needs software overrides to keep the plane flying? A 737 shouldn't fly like a fighter jet.
      - theclaw 7y ago
        It’s not like the plane was uncontrollable without MCAS, it’s more that it did not fly like a 737-NG, and so would have required extra pilot training to compensate, which would have made the plane less attractive to airlines.
      - jonplackett 7y ago
        Probably should have said _a_ redesign rather than _the_ redesign. But even so, if they’d been up front about what they were doing and why and put proper safety systems in place I don’t think it’s that different to other planes is it? They just did it badly and secretly.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  At this point the planes either need to be retrofitted with their original engines or scrapped. They will remain flying deathtraps no matter how much software is piled on to patch the issue.
  - travbrack 7y ago
    Why? What I've heard is that if the pilots know how to disable the pitch correction, the plane won't fight them in the event of a sensor failure and they can land safely.
    - ghayes 7y ago
      From what I've heard, trimming a large jet engine plane by hand is physically difficult, even if you manage to disable the MCAS system. Additionally, I believe the core issue is that pilots were meant to fly these plans without additional retraining, which is why MCAS was added in the first place.
    - underwater 7y ago
      Isn't that exactly what happened with Ethiopian Airlines? The pilots knew about the MCAS, knew what was happening, disabled the system, but were unable to physically adjust the trim to prevent the crash?
      - theclaw 7y ago
        I’ve not read anything that suggested they knew about MCAS. They knew about automatic stabiliser trim, which is a different system also present on the older 737 NG. The way MCAS monitors angle of attack, and the way it is temporarily disabled by pilot trim inputs was not known to them.
        kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        They followed the recovery checklist. Step 1: Use the trim cut-out switches to stop MCAS. After the first crash, any MAX pilot would have to be a moron to not be informed about the issue and Boeing's (useless) guidance to resolve it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
LeoPanthera 7y ago
This headline is highly misleading. The article says "Dennis Muilenburg maintained the system was only one factor in a chain of events that led to the disasters." I watched the actual event and this is generally accurate. He maintained that all accidents are a result of a series of events, all of which would have to occur for there to be a crash. He did not say that MCAS was not at fault - the opposite, in fact, since he said they were testing a new version of MCAS to prevent future crashes.
- noja 7y ago
  Would the chain of events have been stopped by a functioning MCAS?
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    If it wasn't for MCAS being present, the chain of events would have never started! It's only there because they cut corners in the first place.
    - theclaw 7y ago
      If there’s any corner cutting here it’s around AoA sensor redundancy and flight worthiness testing. The reason MCAS is there is that the 737 was too low to the ground to fit newer, bigger, more fuel-efficient engines under the wing, which is what Boeing’s customers wanted, so they had to move the engines forward and compensate for the resulting handling effects in software. Without some form of MCAS there would be no 737-MAX at all, and it’s not fair to say that the whole plane was a corner cutting exercise either, it was an attempt to improve an older, proven design driven by customer demand.
      - CaptainZapp 7y ago
        Without some form of MCAS there would be no 737-MAX at all, and it’s not fair to say that the whole plane was a corner cutting exercise either, it was an attempt to improve an older, proven design driven by customer demand. I would argue that they applied a software kludge on a design, which is basically no more fit to fly in such a configuration. They did that because Airbus' 320 NEO put them into full throttle panic mode. Espeically since American, a lifelong Boeing customer, considered a pretty big order with Airbus. So, instead of a completely new clean-sheet design (which they considered) they rushed a plane to market, which needed to be fixed with software because it's inherently not fit to fly without such fixes and slapped a 737 sticker onto the plane because of competitive advantage. The obviously dodgy shenanigans applied in the certification process also don't really help.
xbas10 7y ago
The Dutch excel at making up narratives and stubbornly maintaining them.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  Humans are good at making up narratives. Iowans like this guy are no exception, although I don't think that's a fair characterization of his somewhat nuanced statement.
jfk13 7y ago
"I am not a crook. I will deny, deny, deny."
theclaw 7y ago
Video of Muilenburg press conference: https://youtu.be/xOQmQpKHVWA https://youtu.be/xOQmQpKHVWA He says MCAS is a “system that’s designed to provide handling qualities to the pilot that meet pilot preferences.” That’s somewhat economical with the truth. It’s designed more to meet the airline’s preference not to have to retrain their pilots, and Boeing’s preference to recover lost market share from Airbus.
jumelles 7y ago
Boeing just keeps digging in and it's both a bad look and a poor strategy. This is not how you should react when people are scared to fly on planes you manufactured.
goldcd 7y ago
The scary thing I take away from this, is that I'm now interested to know what plane I'm going to get on. For my entire life I'd thought (rightly) that "aircraft are the safest mode of travel" - this issue has for the first time ever made me realize that aircraft safety is not an absolute. People making planes put up with all the same crap I do at work.
- jumelles 7y ago
  It's still the safest mode of travel.
  - travbrack 7y ago
    I'd be curious to know how many planes could crash every year and still produce a lower death toll than auto crashes.
ajnin 7y ago
> It said that once the 737 Max 8 returns to the skies, it will "have an activated and operable disagree alert and an optional angle of attack indicator". Really, after all that they're still going to hide part of that arguably critical system behind a (presumably paid-for) option ?
- theclaw 7y ago
  The disagree alert/indicator was previously an optional extra[0]. Boeing are saying it will now be fitted as standard on all 737-MAX, including those already out there. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-crash-boeing-aoa-idUSKCN1NZ0QL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-crash-boeing-ao...
  - azr79 7y ago
    Well that's too late, isn't it? Personally I'm not getting into any of those flying death traps ever
pcurve 7y ago
He added: "As in most accidents, there are a chain of events that occur. It is not correct to attribute that to any single item." He is selling this point hard. The problem is the chain is short and every chain has Boeing's fingerprint on it.
linuxftw 7y ago
> Mr Muilenburg said that both accidents occurred because of faulty data from a sensor which triggered the plane's Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). As if Boeing wasn't responsible for the faulty data and the poor programming that caused the plane to nose into the ground? I suppose we should just go ahead and blame the earth for being in the flight path as the leading factor in the crash.
ncmncm 7y ago
The only thing that could get Boeing out of the hole this guy keeps digging deeper and deeper would be for him and his chief engineer to resign. The longer he takes about it, the worse it will get.

50 points by sjcsjc 7y ago

Since the main battle to getting this plane flying again is going to be public trust, I think they’re going about this all wrong. First admit full responsibility. Then at least you have a shot at people trusting you to fix it.

ralph84 7y ago
Perhaps, but it's understandable why Boeing is parsing their words carefully here. For some critics full responsibility would mean nothing short of Boeing admitting the 737 design had reached end of life and they should have never tried to shoehorn larger engines onto the 737 airframe. That would mean ceding the trillion dollar narrowbody market to Airbus for the foreseeable future.
- jonplackett 7y ago
  I just think they need to accept responsibility for all those dead people. Personally I don't see anything wrong with the idea of the redesign. It's the execution that was the problem. If he came out and said, look we screwed up. There should have been a backup sensor/proper training/proper manuals/software that took a bloody hint and maybe there should be more gov oversight in general because this kind of cock up should not be possible. At least then you'd believe they're actually tackling the problem. Reading all that back, it is actually quite a lot to ask for isn't it.
  - vkou 7y ago
    > Personally I don't see anything wrong with the idea of the redesign. You don't think that there's anything fundamentally wrong with designing an aerodynamically unstable airframe, that needs software overrides to keep the plane flying? A 737 shouldn't fly like a fighter jet.
    - theclaw 7y ago
      It’s not like the plane was uncontrollable without MCAS, it’s more that it did not fly like a 737-NG, and so would have required extra pilot training to compensate, which would have made the plane less attractive to airlines.
    - jonplackett 7y ago
      Probably should have said _a_ redesign rather than _the_ redesign. But even so, if they’d been up front about what they were doing and why and put proper safety systems in place I don’t think it’s that different to other planes is it? They just did it badly and secretly.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
At this point the planes either need to be retrofitted with their original engines or scrapped. They will remain flying deathtraps no matter how much software is piled on to patch the issue.
- travbrack 7y ago
  Why? What I've heard is that if the pilots know how to disable the pitch correction, the plane won't fight them in the event of a sensor failure and they can land safely.
  - ghayes 7y ago
    From what I've heard, trimming a large jet engine plane by hand is physically difficult, even if you manage to disable the MCAS system. Additionally, I believe the core issue is that pilots were meant to fly these plans without additional retraining, which is why MCAS was added in the first place.
  - underwater 7y ago
    Isn't that exactly what happened with Ethiopian Airlines? The pilots knew about the MCAS, knew what was happening, disabled the system, but were unable to physically adjust the trim to prevent the crash?
    - theclaw 7y ago
      I’ve not read anything that suggested they knew about MCAS. They knew about automatic stabiliser trim, which is a different system also present on the older 737 NG. The way MCAS monitors angle of attack, and the way it is temporarily disabled by pilot trim inputs was not known to them.
      - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        They followed the recovery checklist. Step 1: Use the trim cut-out switches to stop MCAS. After the first crash, any MAX pilot would have to be a moron to not be informed about the issue and Boeing's (useless) guidance to resolve it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

LeoPanthera 7y ago

This headline is highly misleading. The article says "Dennis Muilenburg maintained the system was only one factor in a chain of events that led to the disasters." I watched the actual event and this is generally accurate. He maintained that all accidents are a result of a series of events, all of which would have to occur for there to be a crash. He did not say that MCAS was not at fault - the opposite, in fact, since he said they were testing a new version of MCAS to prevent future crashes.

noja 7y ago
Would the chain of events have been stopped by a functioning MCAS?
- linuxftw 7y ago
  If it wasn't for MCAS being present, the chain of events would have never started! It's only there because they cut corners in the first place.
  - theclaw 7y ago
    If there’s any corner cutting here it’s around AoA sensor redundancy and flight worthiness testing. The reason MCAS is there is that the 737 was too low to the ground to fit newer, bigger, more fuel-efficient engines under the wing, which is what Boeing’s customers wanted, so they had to move the engines forward and compensate for the resulting handling effects in software. Without some form of MCAS there would be no 737-MAX at all, and it’s not fair to say that the whole plane was a corner cutting exercise either, it was an attempt to improve an older, proven design driven by customer demand.
    - CaptainZapp 7y ago
      Without some form of MCAS there would be no 737-MAX at all, and it’s not fair to say that the whole plane was a corner cutting exercise either, it was an attempt to improve an older, proven design driven by customer demand. I would argue that they applied a software kludge on a design, which is basically no more fit to fly in such a configuration. They did that because Airbus' 320 NEO put them into full throttle panic mode. Espeically since American, a lifelong Boeing customer, considered a pretty big order with Airbus. So, instead of a completely new clean-sheet design (which they considered) they rushed a plane to market, which needed to be fixed with software because it's inherently not fit to fly without such fixes and slapped a 737 sticker onto the plane because of competitive advantage. The obviously dodgy shenanigans applied in the certification process also don't really help.

xbas10 7y ago

The Dutch excel at making up narratives and stubbornly maintaining them.

Rebelgecko 7y ago
Humans are good at making up narratives. Iowans like this guy are no exception, although I don't think that's a fair characterization of his somewhat nuanced statement.

jfk13 7y ago

"I am not a crook. I will deny, deny, deny."

theclaw 7y ago

Video of Muilenburg press conference: https://youtu.be/xOQmQpKHVWA https://youtu.be/xOQmQpKHVWA He says MCAS is a “system that’s designed to provide handling qualities to the pilot that meet pilot preferences.” That’s somewhat economical with the truth. It’s designed more to meet the airline’s preference not to have to retrain their pilots, and Boeing’s preference to recover lost market share from Airbus.

jumelles 7y ago

Boeing just keeps digging in and it's both a bad look and a poor strategy. This is not how you should react when people are scared to fly on planes you manufactured.

goldcd 7y ago

The scary thing I take away from this, is that I'm now interested to know what plane I'm going to get on. For my entire life I'd thought (rightly) that "aircraft are the safest mode of travel" - this issue has for the first time ever made me realize that aircraft safety is not an absolute. People making planes put up with all the same crap I do at work.

jumelles 7y ago
It's still the safest mode of travel.
- travbrack 7y ago
  I'd be curious to know how many planes could crash every year and still produce a lower death toll than auto crashes.

ajnin 7y ago

> It said that once the 737 Max 8 returns to the skies, it will "have an activated and operable disagree alert and an optional angle of attack indicator". Really, after all that they're still going to hide part of that arguably critical system behind a (presumably paid-for) option ?

theclaw 7y ago
The disagree alert/indicator was previously an optional extra[0]. Boeing are saying it will now be fitted as standard on all 737-MAX, including those already out there. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-crash-boeing-aoa-idUSKCN1NZ0QL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-crash-boeing-ao...
- azr79 7y ago
  Well that's too late, isn't it? Personally I'm not getting into any of those flying death traps ever

pcurve 7y ago

He added: "As in most accidents, there are a chain of events that occur. It is not correct to attribute that to any single item." He is selling this point hard. The problem is the chain is short and every chain has Boeing's fingerprint on it.

linuxftw 7y ago

> Mr Muilenburg said that both accidents occurred because of faulty data from a sensor which triggered the plane's Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). As if Boeing wasn't responsible for the faulty data and the poor programming that caused the plane to nose into the ground? I suppose we should just go ahead and blame the earth for being in the flight path as the leading factor in the crash.

ncmncm 7y ago

The only thing that could get Boeing out of the hole this guy keeps digging deeper and deeper would be for him and his chief engineer to resign. The longer he takes about it, the worse it will get.