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Here's the thing. I don't doubt that since the controversies with the MAX earlier this year, a great deal many people at Boeing are taking a hard look at everyt

Here's the thing. I don't doubt that since the controversies with the MAX earlier this year, a great deal many people at Boeing are taking a hard look at everything around them and figuring out how to do better. I'm also sure that this article could be embellishing the facts. It's entirely possible that the very smart people who think about aviation engineering all day are supremely convinced that some of the digital tests can absolutely replace physical tests that were in place for decades. I'm not even remotely qualified enough to offer an opinion on that, so I won't. So here is my question. Boeing is a very large company beholden to shareholders, and kept in check by a declining number of other checks and balances. Should we, the public, trust that Boeing will pay close enough attention to maintaining safety as an utmost priority? Or should we be demanding that more oversight and regulation are put in place?

tempguy9999 7y ago
You've pretty well answered your question, why ask it?
- samcday 7y ago
  I don't think I've answered my own question at all. I certainly am biased one way - I think Boeing should be regulated more. I thought my bias would be stated well enough by how I worded my original comment, so I didn't explicitly state it. Sorry if that made it seem like I want to just troll people and have bad faith arguments. I don't. I genuinely want to know how other people view this.
  - tempguy9999 7y ago
    My point was that you clearly think they need more oversight, have skewed the question a little towards invoking that answer, and I can't see many people at all suggest, after 2 planefuls of people are killed, that boeing should be allowed any self-cert rights.
    - samcday 7y ago
      I was trying to just state the facts, and pointed out ways to interpret this current piece as over-hyped. I also tried to not paint a graphic picture of what the "MAX controversies" even were, in order to avoid appeals to emotion. Let me try and reframe my original comment for you. I do currently think that Boeing should be regulated more, but I'm not convinced enough of my own reasons. So I'm wondering whether my perspective would change if I heard compelling alternate ones?
      - tempguy9999 7y ago
        Ah, I now understand. Looking for opposing views to test yours against is very commendable and wise. And quite uncommon. I can't really help you as I agree too strongly - see my other comment elsewhere re. stress testing. I can't see any possible reason. The only people reliably who might answer that things are ok as-is are boeing themselves.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> It's entirely possible that the very smart people who think about aviation engineering all day are supremely convinced that some of the digital tests can absolutely replace physical tests that were in place for decades. I'm not even remotely qualified enough to offer an opinion on that, so I won't. This is really the foundation of the problem. Members of Congress are not aeronautical engineers, so they're in the same boat as you. Aeronautical engineers work for aircraft makers, so they have a conflict of interest. Then, because they don't really know what they're doing, they tend to require things that reduce safety, either by requiring measures that aren't cost effective and thereby blow your entire budget including the money that could have been spent on other safety measures with better cost/benefit, or are overly rigid in requiring the specific solution to a problem which was the state of the art three decades ago when the rule was enacted even though safer alternatives are known today. So why doesn't the government higher some regulators with some relevant industry experience? Well, they tried that, and then we got all of this revolving door nonsense where, to use an example closer to home here, former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai is now running the FCC as a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon Communications. Then we get proposals to prevent regulators from going back to industry when they finish, to try to prevent that. But the government already has trouble attracting talent when they're paying substantially less than private industry does, and the jobs tend to only last for one administration until the next one comes in and replaces them with their own people, so how are they ever going to get anyone good to do a job that will a) pay less than they're making already and b) by law end their private career even though their tenure in government is likely to be less than a decade? It's possible that we're better off not specifying how to make airplanes safe but instead imposing significant liability on companies and individual engineers who make ones that aren't. (This works in industries where the smallest company has a multi-billion dollar market cap. It's obviously less of a deterrent when the manufacturer has no exposure to the jurisdiction of your courts or is small enough to file bankruptcy every time there is a problem, but then we're no longer talking about Boeing and Airbus.)
- DougN7 7y ago
  > individual engineers who make ones that aren't Please don’t forget those engineers’ management chain. In my experience, it’s usually business people trying to change things for profit’s sake, not the engineers.

tempguy9999 7y ago

You've pretty well answered your question, why ask it?

samcday 7y ago
I don't think I've answered my own question at all. I certainly am biased one way - I think Boeing should be regulated more. I thought my bias would be stated well enough by how I worded my original comment, so I didn't explicitly state it. Sorry if that made it seem like I want to just troll people and have bad faith arguments. I don't. I genuinely want to know how other people view this.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  My point was that you clearly think they need more oversight, have skewed the question a little towards invoking that answer, and I can't see many people at all suggest, after 2 planefuls of people are killed, that boeing should be allowed any self-cert rights.
  - samcday 7y ago
    I was trying to just state the facts, and pointed out ways to interpret this current piece as over-hyped. I also tried to not paint a graphic picture of what the "MAX controversies" even were, in order to avoid appeals to emotion. Let me try and reframe my original comment for you. I do currently think that Boeing should be regulated more, but I'm not convinced enough of my own reasons. So I'm wondering whether my perspective would change if I heard compelling alternate ones?
    - tempguy9999 7y ago
      Ah, I now understand. Looking for opposing views to test yours against is very commendable and wise. And quite uncommon. I can't really help you as I agree too strongly - see my other comment elsewhere re. stress testing. I can't see any possible reason. The only people reliably who might answer that things are ok as-is are boeing themselves.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> It's entirely possible that the very smart people who think about aviation engineering all day are supremely convinced that some of the digital tests can absolutely replace physical tests that were in place for decades. I'm not even remotely qualified enough to offer an opinion on that, so I won't. This is really the foundation of the problem. Members of Congress are not aeronautical engineers, so they're in the same boat as you. Aeronautical engineers work for aircraft makers, so they have a conflict of interest. Then, because they don't really know what they're doing, they tend to require things that reduce safety, either by requiring measures that aren't cost effective and thereby blow your entire budget including the money that could have been spent on other safety measures with better cost/benefit, or are overly rigid in requiring the specific solution to a problem which was the state of the art three decades ago when the rule was enacted even though safer alternatives are known today. So why doesn't the government higher some regulators with some relevant industry experience? Well, they tried that, and then we got all of this revolving door nonsense where, to use an example closer to home here, former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai is now running the FCC as a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon Communications. Then we get proposals to prevent regulators from going back to industry when they finish, to try to prevent that. But the government already has trouble attracting talent when they're paying substantially less than private industry does, and the jobs tend to only last for one administration until the next one comes in and replaces them with their own people, so how are they ever going to get anyone good to do a job that will a) pay less than they're making already and b) by law end their private career even though their tenure in government is likely to be less than a decade? It's possible that we're better off not specifying how to make airplanes safe but instead imposing significant liability on companies and individual engineers who make ones that aren't. (This works in industries where the smallest company has a multi-billion dollar market cap. It's obviously less of a deterrent when the manufacturer has no exposure to the jurisdiction of your courts or is small enough to file bankruptcy every time there is a problem, but then we're no longer talking about Boeing and Airbus.)

DougN7 7y ago
> individual engineers who make ones that aren't Please don’t forget those engineers’ management chain. In my experience, it’s usually business people trying to change things for profit’s sake, not the engineers.