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Boeing employee: I would not put my family on a Max plane

206 points by howard941 7y ago

iooi 7y ago
Soon to be ex-Boeing employee. Why not just quit at that point?
- kayfox 7y ago
  I suspect they want better working conditions and think the negative press reports may help.
- elif 7y ago
  rest & vest baby
- jdsully 7y ago
  If he’s union then his job will be pretty safe.
throwaway5752 7y ago
The 737 Max issues are complicated, real and should be the object of study for generations of engineers and business students. That said, this article is useless aside from anecdotal (and not surprising) morale issues in Boeing.
- salawat 7y ago
  Unfortunately, I believe that more value can be extracted from grinding the lessons into future management types, government representatives, and regulators. All the engineers in the world can't stop a bunch of executives capable of creating an environment so full of confusion, second guessing, and clouded communication capable of allowing these types of tragedies to occur. The mechanics of the problem laid bare were simple. The problem ended up being the levels of obfuscation and lack of coordination/miscommunication surrounding the certification process that allowed the aircraft to be certified and flown with a clearly uncategorized avionics system, and insufficient communications to pilot's that in the end could have negated the technical need for a more robust system, if they'd only known to look out for it..
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    Honestly, I think it's crappy engineering, too. You can't throw this on the feet of generic execs or regulators. The behavior with AoA sensor disagreement (and the treatment of malfunctioning sensors) seems wrong. MCAS should have had failsafes around the number of trim adjustments it could do. You can talk all you want about how regulators should have required recertification, how Boeing shouldn't have just strapped a couple of higher bypass ratio engines onto the bottom of a 737 in the first place, or how it information about MCAS should have been presented.... but in the end, it's possible there would not have been accidents (or maybe more of them because of unexpected stalls, we'll never know) if there had been sanity checking of response values from either of the AoA sensors and if MCAS capped how many times it could trim. edit: it sucks to work on critical systems. In case it comes off differently, I feel badly for those involved. Nobody gives them credit thousands (more?) times a year an automatic flight control system engages and saves hundreds of lives without any passengers knowing. They ended up making MCAS because of decisions made outside of the realm of their control.
    - salawat 7y ago
      >Honestly, I think it's crappy engineering, too. You can't throw this on the feet of generic execs or regulators. The behavior with AoA sensor disagreement (and the treatment of malfunctioning sensors) seems wrong. MCAS should have had failsafes around the number of trim adjustments it could do. Watch the Australian 60 Minutes Expose on the MAX. A whistleblower has come forward and stated that they had to pipe in only a single sensor's input to avoid costly simulator training, which management pushed as an absolute necessity to avoid. I love Engineering. I love doing things right. I can't deny though that when you've got business breathing down your back, everyone seems more interested in getting what they want instead of what actually solves the problem in a sound way, that things never degenerate to the point where the engineering teams throw up their hands and say "Eff it! Take your plane and choke on it!" This is a textbook case of toxic engineering culture yielding toxic engineered product. Richard Feynman said it best after the Challenger disaster, and his words ring as true now as they did back then. "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public [or customer] relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
- dan_quixote 7y ago
  Speaking as a Seattle resident, heavy skepticism should follow any mynorthwest.com article. It basically exists as a foil to Seattle predominantly progressive culture.
jpollock 7y ago
Google says Boeing had 153,027 employees as of Jan 2018. Why should we listen to Stuart? They don't list his job, so he could be just about anyone.
mbostleman 7y ago
Boeing has ~150k employees. Given that pool of people I'm pretty sure you can come up one that has any opinion you want. Just decide at first what you want your story to portray, then go find your employee.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  The other thing that annoys me about the Max coverage are those polls where "X people say they would never fly on one," as if even 1% of people actually factor in the plane model when buying their ticket.
  - post_break 7y ago
    I would never fly one if I had the option that wasn't prohibitively expensive.
  - dewey 7y ago
    Maybe not 99% of all customers but probably a higher percentage of frequent flyers and people that buy more expensive tickets as these tend to have their preferences for plane types / airlines / seats.
    - Fomite 7y ago
      I have those preferences, but they tend to be "Goddamnit it, one of the Virgin A320s. Hate the exit row on those..." not "Well, I'm going to take another flight."
      - antihero 7y ago
        What's specifically bad about the exit row on Virgin A320s? I like the legroom on the BA A320s
        Fomite 7y ago
        I find the mechanism for the door intrudes further into the cabin than a lot of others, which means the window-exit seat feels more crowded, rather than less.
ptero 7y ago
For an opposite view: I have no relationship with Boeing, but I fly about once a month and have no issues flying on 737 Max, alone or with a family. Current aircraft and flying is very safe. Even with the recent 737 fiascos, flying those is by far safer than driving to work. If I am OK with taking a road trip on vacation I am OK with flying Max. This is not to say that improvements, re-certification and additional pilot training are bad. But from a purely practical point of view (which I try to practice for routine decisions), if we want to improve safety, there are better areas to spend $$ and / or hours than on endless re-polishing of a system that is super safe already. Life is dangerous; estimate your micro-deaths and extract most utility and fun from each of our 1e6 microlifes. My 2c.
- trimbo 7y ago
  > Even with the recent 737 fiascos, flying those is by far safer than driving to work I can't find the numbers easily right now, but I'd really like to see "deaths / person-hours flown on a 737 Max" vs. "deaths / person-hours driven".
  - yitosda 7y ago
    Should be "deaths / person-miles" when comparing to driving.
    - quietbritishjim 7y ago
      I don't think it should, because if I didn't fly to the other side of the world for a holiday then I wouldn't replace that journey with a drive of the same number of miles. Besides, when people describe flying as "safer than driving", the implication is that you're more likely to end up dying one way than the other. So any measure of "deaths per x" (x is miles, hours, or whatever) needs to be followed with "typical x per lifetime".
  - cameldrv 7y ago
    Roughly: There have been about 400 737MAXes produced over two years, average time in service 1 year, so figure 400 plane-years. Figure about 8 flight hours per day, so 3658400=1.2 million flight hours, 600,000 flight hours per accident or 1.5 fatal accidents per million hours. The U.S. motor vehicle accident rate is about 1.2 fatalities per 100,000,000 vehicle miles travelled. Figure a car's average speed is 30mph so 1.2 fatalities per 3.3 million hours = 0.36 fatalities per million hours. Therefore on an hourly basis, the 737MAX is very roughly 5x more dangerous than driving. OTOH the 737MAX averages about 400mph, so per mile it's probably something like 2-3x safer.
thefounder 7y ago
>> Boeing employee: I would not put my family on a Max plane right now Who would? Surely some people like to risk but why would you take such a risk when there are so many safer options(i.e airbus)?
- dingaling 7y ago
  IAG ( parent of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Level and Vueling ) just ordered 200 Max at the Paris Air Show. So plenty of executives lack such qualms.
  - jackweirdy 7y ago
    Willie Walsh is a former pilot who has flown in a MAX 8 simulator with MCAS to understand it himself. It’s true he is an executive but he has a unique position here I thought was relevant to add (I think we later learned the simulators are buggy around MCAS, but his intentions were in the right place...)
  - thefounder 7y ago
    Airbus didn't even had the chance to bid on that order so chances are the order was cooked between UK-US governments. Walsh says "I believe the aircraft is safe" though all of them are grounded and Boeing is yet to fix it...
  - zanmat0 7y ago
    Might a massive discount have had something to do with that?
- alkonaut 7y ago
  Who could? They are all grounded. Once relevant authorities consider them safe I’d fly them again (and they won’t fly until then). So my answer is, I would as soon as I can. As for choosing: Almost every single time I fly there is zero choice of plane if you fix the departure and arrival city, date, and approximate time. In the cases where there are multiple airlines it’s not uncommon to see late plane changes. Especially between 737-800 and MAX8 because they are commonly operated by the same carriers and the swap is simple from a seating perspective.
mehrdadn 7y ago
> the 737 Max plane remains grounded as the company scrambles to develop a fix for software problems that are blamed for two deadly crashes within a year. Great, so they've managed to convince people this was a software problem...
- sdinsn 7y ago
  What kind of problem do you consider it to be?
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/boeing-737-max-major-design-flaws-not-a-software-failure-rVjJZBVzZkuZLkDJn3Jy8A/ https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/boeing-737-max-majo...
    - Someone1234 7y ago
      Great link. I strongly agree that calling it a "software problem" undercuts the major engineering defects the aircraft has. The 737 Max doesn't even have enough physical sensors to supply the software with enough data to conduct true voting logic (something typically found on "safety critical" systems). The spec also didn't even have the software use both sensors it did have to detect defective inputs. The aircraft design was faulty before even one line of code was written. This wasn't a software bug. It wasn't a software design defect. The actual specifications and the physical design of the aircraft itself were flawed, and software was poorly used to plug the gaps.
  - phire 7y ago
    It's not a software issue because the software was working excatly as specified. There is no bug. And its not really an aerodynamic issue either. Boeing have a massive procedural issue where they didn't do proper safety analysis of how the system works as a whole. The fact that they didn't identify this failure case as a major issue makes you wonder what other failure cases (on other planes too) that they missed. The original version of MCAS only moved the stablizer by 0.6 degrees, and only in situations with high angles of attack AND abnormally high g loading. That's the version they ran the safety analysis on, it relies on two types of sensors that shouldn't fail simultaneously. Later they modified MCAS to move the stablizer by much larger amounts (2.6 degrees, 4x larger) and they removed the high g loading restriction so it would operate in more situations. This also means it was now relying on a second sensor. And they never re-ran the safety analysis.
geggam 7y ago
The structure of the plane is solid and it will fly. The issue I have and obviously the FAA has a similar one is the fact buggy software is driving it. Its one thing when the system offers assistance but when it takes over to the degree you cannot fix it and lives are in danger it needs to be reworked
- snarf21 7y ago
  I don't even think it is a bug. It was intended to work this way. The real issue is that Boeing flat out LIED and claimed it flew exactly the same as any other 737 so they could avoid having to factor re-training pilots on this plane. It was all caused by greed and people should be going to jail.
  - geggam 7y ago
    The fact its all by wire and doesnt have an override stop button or something is a bug. A serious one.
- xtracto 7y ago
  Last I read, the structure of the thing actually is not meant to fly, and they had to add a software workaround to make it fly (hence the MCAS), given the way they placed the turbines and due to their size.
  - o-__-o 7y ago
    Look, I am an ultra lightweight pilot and fly experimental planes a lot. FAA requires, and doesn’t F around with, that all airframes must be aerodynamically stable. So let’s throw that out right now, the airframe is not the issue. The engines push the cog forward which causes more lift at high thrust. This is not an airframe issue but a loading issue. FAA requires load limits and practical methods to check and resolve loading issues. Let me pause here. We can simulate the 737MaX design by taking an older 737, filling with 1/4 passengers and load them all in the front of the plane. Tada we have a forward cog scenario. Could the plane fly? Sure but the plane will want to nose up more than usual. What does the flight manual say? Reseat passengers to fix cog over limits, or limit throttle inputs if not over limit. So would a properly designed MCAS system solve this problem? Yes. But Boeing didn’t properly design MCAS the second time around.
gregmac 7y ago
There isn't a pilot alive that isn't now fully aware of MCAS. Is there still a risk of MCAS causing another crash? I think the issue Boeing has now is credibility, and the idea that there may be other MCAS-type issues lurking. > we were told certain things such as ‘the companies that bought these planes, a lot of them, their countries didn’t require them to go through the test flight process that needed to happen.’ So we were told, ‘Hey, that’s not on us, that’s on them. We have this program, they’re suppose to take it, they don’t have to take it, that teaches them how to use this thing.’” To me (as a layperson), it seems pretty obvious that Boeing specifically didn't mention MCAS in the flight crew operations manual because it would have meant extra training/certifications to fly the MAX, and there is a pretty clear profit motive to avoid that. By attempting to weasel out of this by saying things like "a pilot should never see the operation of MCAS in normal flying conditions" and "not a separate system to be trained on" [1], as well as the above paraphrasing, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence that Boeing is really putting passenger safety above all else, which is what I as a non-stockholding potential passenger would prefer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Augmentation_System#Training https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Au...
- Havoc 7y ago
  The corporate culture seems to be a disaster across the board. They’re building planes transporting millions and you’ve got quotes saying workers no longer care and don’t know who their manager even is. That’s terrifying
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nix0n 7y ago
  > Is there still a risk of MCAS causing another crash? Yes, because it's difficult to recover when MCAS goes wrong, even when you know about it. The pilots of Ethiopian 302 turned MCAS off and still crashed[0]. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-emergency-procedure-for-737-max-may-have-failed-on-ethiopian-flight/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...
durdleturtle 7y ago
There's a great deep dive on the engineering of the plane in the IEEE magazine: https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-...
trilobyte 7y ago
"“The way management kind of works is we never really know who our managers are sometimes,” he said. “We get shuffled around so much that our job codes, our job titles, everything changes. Because they are trying to make progress. With the Max being down, they are bringing other people down, trying to correct the issues and trying to make it a better place.”" This is a huge management mistake. Teams need a direction, consistency, and time to execute. During that time managers often need to keep things on track and keep up team morale, but also need to know that they have to step back and be more passive while the team is executing. Constantly changing things means the teams are distracted, probably a little frightened, and not operating where they could be.
40acres 7y ago
I was in Hawaii last month and had an interesting chat with a former Boeing engineer. He was involved with ramping up the South Carolina plant which built the Dreamliner. I asked him if he would fly Boeing right now and he also said that he would not.
- jly 7y ago
  This is a bit sensational. Most Boeing jets that you can book a flight on today are some of the safest the world has ever seen. For example, the 777 has been in service 25 years with only a few serious accidents we can conclusively say are related to the aircraft design or operation. The 737-NG (precursor to the MAX and also in service ~25 years) experiences one hull loss incident for every 4 million or so departures. Even their other fairly new jet, the 787, has never experienced a hull loss or fatality in almost 8 years of commercial service.
  - silversconfused 7y ago
    That certainly makes the max less of a safety concern.
kartan 7y ago
I see people complaining about the fact that it is just employee opinion. I agree that just one employee opinion it's not important or so relevant by itself. But, for most people, a human face for a problem makes the problem easier to understand and to sympathize with the situation. So, it seems that the journalist decided to give voice to Stuart as an stylistic choice. HN readers may like or not this choice. But, it does not invalidate the content of the article. An example does not invalidate the rule. It would be interesting to discuss the content more than the style, even that it's also a valid discussion. My take out of the article is that lack of trust on upper management is part of the problem. > “I want to think that I work for one of the best companies in the world. I want to think that when I come home from a 10-12 hour shift that I’ve done something good. But I don’t know because I see the lies. They’re going back on everything that they’ve told us. So it’s really difficult for me to feel good about any of it.” Most people see themselves as good persons. Most people wants to do a good job. When your company leadership fails you there is a conflict between that believe and reality. That is why company leadership is so important and it should not only respond to share holders but to all stakeholders in the company including customers and employees.
- 8ytecoder 7y ago
  There are different values and styles in reporting and each serves a different purpose. When they are conflated they cause confusion. - Interviewing one person with the necessary data and analysis to backup a certain conclusion. This would be a consultation with the Subject Matter Expert. Opinions backed by data. E.g interview with climate scientist on the impact of global warming - Interviewing one or more people to put a face to a story. It has the effect of humanising an issue. To be viewed critically and with the realisation that it’s an emotional appeal. To be used to inform yourself only if it’s backed by data in another way/form These two are not the same when it comes to making informed opinions.
- faeww 7y ago
  The story builds up over time -- it points to major problems at Boeing. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os (The Boeing 787: Broken Dreams)
- 7y ago
not_a_moth 7y ago
The thing is, I feel like if both of those planes had crashed on US soil, each full of Americans, then it could have very well been the end of Boeing as a corporation. Since they happened halfway around the world, it seems like we judge it differently?
- julienfr112 7y ago
  There is few American victims, though.
  - o-__-o 7y ago
    A few is not a full plane of Americans on American soil.
- atian 7y ago
  Say it with me, Boeing is too large to fail.

206 points by howard941 7y ago

iooi 7y ago

Soon to be ex-Boeing employee. Why not just quit at that point?

kayfox 7y ago
I suspect they want better working conditions and think the negative press reports may help.
elif 7y ago
rest & vest baby
jdsully 7y ago
If he’s union then his job will be pretty safe.

throwaway5752 7y ago

The 737 Max issues are complicated, real and should be the object of study for generations of engineers and business students. That said, this article is useless aside from anecdotal (and not surprising) morale issues in Boeing.

salawat 7y ago
Unfortunately, I believe that more value can be extracted from grinding the lessons into future management types, government representatives, and regulators. All the engineers in the world can't stop a bunch of executives capable of creating an environment so full of confusion, second guessing, and clouded communication capable of allowing these types of tragedies to occur. The mechanics of the problem laid bare were simple. The problem ended up being the levels of obfuscation and lack of coordination/miscommunication surrounding the certification process that allowed the aircraft to be certified and flown with a clearly uncategorized avionics system, and insufficient communications to pilot's that in the end could have negated the technical need for a more robust system, if they'd only known to look out for it..
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Honestly, I think it's crappy engineering, too. You can't throw this on the feet of generic execs or regulators. The behavior with AoA sensor disagreement (and the treatment of malfunctioning sensors) seems wrong. MCAS should have had failsafes around the number of trim adjustments it could do. You can talk all you want about how regulators should have required recertification, how Boeing shouldn't have just strapped a couple of higher bypass ratio engines onto the bottom of a 737 in the first place, or how it information about MCAS should have been presented.... but in the end, it's possible there would not have been accidents (or maybe more of them because of unexpected stalls, we'll never know) if there had been sanity checking of response values from either of the AoA sensors and if MCAS capped how many times it could trim. edit: it sucks to work on critical systems. In case it comes off differently, I feel badly for those involved. Nobody gives them credit thousands (more?) times a year an automatic flight control system engages and saves hundreds of lives without any passengers knowing. They ended up making MCAS because of decisions made outside of the realm of their control.
  - salawat 7y ago
    >Honestly, I think it's crappy engineering, too. You can't throw this on the feet of generic execs or regulators. The behavior with AoA sensor disagreement (and the treatment of malfunctioning sensors) seems wrong. MCAS should have had failsafes around the number of trim adjustments it could do. Watch the Australian 60 Minutes Expose on the MAX. A whistleblower has come forward and stated that they had to pipe in only a single sensor's input to avoid costly simulator training, which management pushed as an absolute necessity to avoid. I love Engineering. I love doing things right. I can't deny though that when you've got business breathing down your back, everyone seems more interested in getting what they want instead of what actually solves the problem in a sound way, that things never degenerate to the point where the engineering teams throw up their hands and say "Eff it! Take your plane and choke on it!" This is a textbook case of toxic engineering culture yielding toxic engineered product. Richard Feynman said it best after the Challenger disaster, and his words ring as true now as they did back then. "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public [or customer] relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
dan_quixote 7y ago
Speaking as a Seattle resident, heavy skepticism should follow any mynorthwest.com article. It basically exists as a foil to Seattle predominantly progressive culture.

jpollock 7y ago

Google says Boeing had 153,027 employees as of Jan 2018. Why should we listen to Stuart? They don't list his job, so he could be just about anyone.

mbostleman 7y ago

Boeing has ~150k employees. Given that pool of people I'm pretty sure you can come up one that has any opinion you want. Just decide at first what you want your story to portray, then go find your employee.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
The other thing that annoys me about the Max coverage are those polls where "X people say they would never fly on one," as if even 1% of people actually factor in the plane model when buying their ticket.
- post_break 7y ago
  I would never fly one if I had the option that wasn't prohibitively expensive.
- dewey 7y ago
  Maybe not 99% of all customers but probably a higher percentage of frequent flyers and people that buy more expensive tickets as these tend to have their preferences for plane types / airlines / seats.
  - Fomite 7y ago
    I have those preferences, but they tend to be "Goddamnit it, one of the Virgin A320s. Hate the exit row on those..." not "Well, I'm going to take another flight."
    - antihero 7y ago
      What's specifically bad about the exit row on Virgin A320s? I like the legroom on the BA A320s
      - Fomite 7y ago
        I find the mechanism for the door intrudes further into the cabin than a lot of others, which means the window-exit seat feels more crowded, rather than less.

ptero 7y ago

For an opposite view: I have no relationship with Boeing, but I fly about once a month and have no issues flying on 737 Max, alone or with a family. Current aircraft and flying is very safe. Even with the recent 737 fiascos, flying those is by far safer than driving to work. If I am OK with taking a road trip on vacation I am OK with flying Max. This is not to say that improvements, re-certification and additional pilot training are bad. But from a purely practical point of view (which I try to practice for routine decisions), if we want to improve safety, there are better areas to spend $$ and / or hours than on endless re-polishing of a system that is super safe already. Life is dangerous; estimate your micro-deaths and extract most utility and fun from each of our 1e6 microlifes. My 2c.

trimbo 7y ago
> Even with the recent 737 fiascos, flying those is by far safer than driving to work I can't find the numbers easily right now, but I'd really like to see "deaths / person-hours flown on a 737 Max" vs. "deaths / person-hours driven".
- yitosda 7y ago
  Should be "deaths / person-miles" when comparing to driving.
  - quietbritishjim 7y ago
    I don't think it should, because if I didn't fly to the other side of the world for a holiday then I wouldn't replace that journey with a drive of the same number of miles. Besides, when people describe flying as "safer than driving", the implication is that you're more likely to end up dying one way than the other. So any measure of "deaths per x" (x is miles, hours, or whatever) needs to be followed with "typical x per lifetime".
- cameldrv 7y ago
  Roughly: There have been about 400 737MAXes produced over two years, average time in service 1 year, so figure 400 plane-years. Figure about 8 flight hours per day, so 3658400=1.2 million flight hours, 600,000 flight hours per accident or 1.5 fatal accidents per million hours. The U.S. motor vehicle accident rate is about 1.2 fatalities per 100,000,000 vehicle miles travelled. Figure a car's average speed is 30mph so 1.2 fatalities per 3.3 million hours = 0.36 fatalities per million hours. Therefore on an hourly basis, the 737MAX is very roughly 5x more dangerous than driving. OTOH the 737MAX averages about 400mph, so per mile it's probably something like 2-3x safer.

thefounder 7y ago

>> Boeing employee: I would not put my family on a Max plane right now Who would? Surely some people like to risk but why would you take such a risk when there are so many safer options(i.e airbus)?

dingaling 7y ago
IAG ( parent of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Level and Vueling ) just ordered 200 Max at the Paris Air Show. So plenty of executives lack such qualms.
- jackweirdy 7y ago
  Willie Walsh is a former pilot who has flown in a MAX 8 simulator with MCAS to understand it himself. It’s true he is an executive but he has a unique position here I thought was relevant to add (I think we later learned the simulators are buggy around MCAS, but his intentions were in the right place...)
- thefounder 7y ago
  Airbus didn't even had the chance to bid on that order so chances are the order was cooked between UK-US governments. Walsh says "I believe the aircraft is safe" though all of them are grounded and Boeing is yet to fix it...
- zanmat0 7y ago
  Might a massive discount have had something to do with that?
alkonaut 7y ago
Who could? They are all grounded. Once relevant authorities consider them safe I’d fly them again (and they won’t fly until then). So my answer is, I would as soon as I can. As for choosing: Almost every single time I fly there is zero choice of plane if you fix the departure and arrival city, date, and approximate time. In the cases where there are multiple airlines it’s not uncommon to see late plane changes. Especially between 737-800 and MAX8 because they are commonly operated by the same carriers and the swap is simple from a seating perspective.

mehrdadn 7y ago

> the 737 Max plane remains grounded as the company scrambles to develop a fix for software problems that are blamed for two deadly crashes within a year. Great, so they've managed to convince people this was a software problem...

sdinsn 7y ago
What kind of problem do you consider it to be?
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/boeing-737-max-major-design-flaws-not-a-software-failure-rVjJZBVzZkuZLkDJn3Jy8A/ https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/boeing-737-max-majo...
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    Great link. I strongly agree that calling it a "software problem" undercuts the major engineering defects the aircraft has. The 737 Max doesn't even have enough physical sensors to supply the software with enough data to conduct true voting logic (something typically found on "safety critical" systems). The spec also didn't even have the software use both sensors it did have to detect defective inputs. The aircraft design was faulty before even one line of code was written. This wasn't a software bug. It wasn't a software design defect. The actual specifications and the physical design of the aircraft itself were flawed, and software was poorly used to plug the gaps.
- phire 7y ago
  It's not a software issue because the software was working excatly as specified. There is no bug. And its not really an aerodynamic issue either. Boeing have a massive procedural issue where they didn't do proper safety analysis of how the system works as a whole. The fact that they didn't identify this failure case as a major issue makes you wonder what other failure cases (on other planes too) that they missed. The original version of MCAS only moved the stablizer by 0.6 degrees, and only in situations with high angles of attack AND abnormally high g loading. That's the version they ran the safety analysis on, it relies on two types of sensors that shouldn't fail simultaneously. Later they modified MCAS to move the stablizer by much larger amounts (2.6 degrees, 4x larger) and they removed the high g loading restriction so it would operate in more situations. This also means it was now relying on a second sensor. And they never re-ran the safety analysis.

geggam 7y ago

The structure of the plane is solid and it will fly. The issue I have and obviously the FAA has a similar one is the fact buggy software is driving it. Its one thing when the system offers assistance but when it takes over to the degree you cannot fix it and lives are in danger it needs to be reworked

snarf21 7y ago
I don't even think it is a bug. It was intended to work this way. The real issue is that Boeing flat out LIED and claimed it flew exactly the same as any other 737 so they could avoid having to factor re-training pilots on this plane. It was all caused by greed and people should be going to jail.
- geggam 7y ago
  The fact its all by wire and doesnt have an override stop button or something is a bug. A serious one.
xtracto 7y ago
Last I read, the structure of the thing actually is not meant to fly, and they had to add a software workaround to make it fly (hence the MCAS), given the way they placed the turbines and due to their size.
- o-__-o 7y ago
  Look, I am an ultra lightweight pilot and fly experimental planes a lot. FAA requires, and doesn’t F around with, that all airframes must be aerodynamically stable. So let’s throw that out right now, the airframe is not the issue. The engines push the cog forward which causes more lift at high thrust. This is not an airframe issue but a loading issue. FAA requires load limits and practical methods to check and resolve loading issues. Let me pause here. We can simulate the 737MaX design by taking an older 737, filling with 1/4 passengers and load them all in the front of the plane. Tada we have a forward cog scenario. Could the plane fly? Sure but the plane will want to nose up more than usual. What does the flight manual say? Reseat passengers to fix cog over limits, or limit throttle inputs if not over limit. So would a properly designed MCAS system solve this problem? Yes. But Boeing didn’t properly design MCAS the second time around.

gregmac 7y ago

There isn't a pilot alive that isn't now fully aware of MCAS. Is there still a risk of MCAS causing another crash? I think the issue Boeing has now is credibility, and the idea that there may be other MCAS-type issues lurking. > we were told certain things such as ‘the companies that bought these planes, a lot of them, their countries didn’t require them to go through the test flight process that needed to happen.’ So we were told, ‘Hey, that’s not on us, that’s on them. We have this program, they’re suppose to take it, they don’t have to take it, that teaches them how to use this thing.’” To me (as a layperson), it seems pretty obvious that Boeing specifically didn't mention MCAS in the flight crew operations manual because it would have meant extra training/certifications to fly the MAX, and there is a pretty clear profit motive to avoid that. By attempting to weasel out of this by saying things like "a pilot should never see the operation of MCAS in normal flying conditions" and "not a separate system to be trained on" [1], as well as the above paraphrasing, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence that Boeing is really putting passenger safety above all else, which is what I as a non-stockholding potential passenger would prefer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Augmentation_System#Training https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Au...

Havoc 7y ago
The corporate culture seems to be a disaster across the board. They’re building planes transporting millions and you’ve got quotes saying workers no longer care and don’t know who their manager even is. That’s terrifying
deleted 7y ago
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nix0n 7y ago
> Is there still a risk of MCAS causing another crash? Yes, because it's difficult to recover when MCAS goes wrong, even when you know about it. The pilots of Ethiopian 302 turned MCAS off and still crashed[0]. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-emergency-procedure-for-737-max-may-have-failed-on-ethiopian-flight/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...

durdleturtle 7y ago

There's a great deep dive on the engineering of the plane in the IEEE magazine: https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-...

trilobyte 7y ago

"“The way management kind of works is we never really know who our managers are sometimes,” he said. “We get shuffled around so much that our job codes, our job titles, everything changes. Because they are trying to make progress. With the Max being down, they are bringing other people down, trying to correct the issues and trying to make it a better place.”" This is a huge management mistake. Teams need a direction, consistency, and time to execute. During that time managers often need to keep things on track and keep up team morale, but also need to know that they have to step back and be more passive while the team is executing. Constantly changing things means the teams are distracted, probably a little frightened, and not operating where they could be.

40acres 7y ago

I was in Hawaii last month and had an interesting chat with a former Boeing engineer. He was involved with ramping up the South Carolina plant which built the Dreamliner. I asked him if he would fly Boeing right now and he also said that he would not.

jly 7y ago
This is a bit sensational. Most Boeing jets that you can book a flight on today are some of the safest the world has ever seen. For example, the 777 has been in service 25 years with only a few serious accidents we can conclusively say are related to the aircraft design or operation. The 737-NG (precursor to the MAX and also in service ~25 years) experiences one hull loss incident for every 4 million or so departures. Even their other fairly new jet, the 787, has never experienced a hull loss or fatality in almost 8 years of commercial service.
- silversconfused 7y ago
  That certainly makes the max less of a safety concern.

kartan 7y ago

I see people complaining about the fact that it is just employee opinion. I agree that just one employee opinion it's not important or so relevant by itself. But, for most people, a human face for a problem makes the problem easier to understand and to sympathize with the situation. So, it seems that the journalist decided to give voice to Stuart as an stylistic choice. HN readers may like or not this choice. But, it does not invalidate the content of the article. An example does not invalidate the rule. It would be interesting to discuss the content more than the style, even that it's also a valid discussion. My take out of the article is that lack of trust on upper management is part of the problem. > “I want to think that I work for one of the best companies in the world. I want to think that when I come home from a 10-12 hour shift that I’ve done something good. But I don’t know because I see the lies. They’re going back on everything that they’ve told us. So it’s really difficult for me to feel good about any of it.” Most people see themselves as good persons. Most people wants to do a good job. When your company leadership fails you there is a conflict between that believe and reality. That is why company leadership is so important and it should not only respond to share holders but to all stakeholders in the company including customers and employees.

8ytecoder 7y ago
There are different values and styles in reporting and each serves a different purpose. When they are conflated they cause confusion. - Interviewing one person with the necessary data and analysis to backup a certain conclusion. This would be a consultation with the Subject Matter Expert. Opinions backed by data. E.g interview with climate scientist on the impact of global warming - Interviewing one or more people to put a face to a story. It has the effect of humanising an issue. To be viewed critically and with the realisation that it’s an emotional appeal. To be used to inform yourself only if it’s backed by data in another way/form These two are not the same when it comes to making informed opinions.
faeww 7y ago
The story builds up over time -- it points to major problems at Boeing. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os (The Boeing 787: Broken Dreams)
7y ago

not_a_moth 7y ago

The thing is, I feel like if both of those planes had crashed on US soil, each full of Americans, then it could have very well been the end of Boeing as a corporation. Since they happened halfway around the world, it seems like we judge it differently?

julienfr112 7y ago
There is few American victims, though.
- o-__-o 7y ago
  A few is not a full plane of Americans on American soil.
atian 7y ago
Say it with me, Boeing is too large to fail.