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And, Boeing's justification for increasing MCAS capabilities while reducing sensor redundancy needed was that these were changes in degree, not in kind. Nothin

by paulmd 7y ago

And, Boeing's justification for increasing MCAS capabilities while reducing sensor redundancy needed was that these were changes in degree, not in kind. Nothing about the FAA certification actually depended on the number of sensors required, or the amount of command the system had, the FAA allowed pretty much anything to fly as long as it was only designed to operate when outside of the standard flight envelope. This is the gotcha in the whole liability for executives thing. The FAA is extremely deferential to what manufacturers think is the best practice. Understandably it would be difficult to get every single little change to the flight systems approved - in broad strokes this kind of regulatory inertia is what makes physical changes so difficult in the first place, which indirectly caused this whole problem in the first place. This isn't just a Boeing problem - Boeing was callous and indifferent to public safety, but the FAA let them get away with it. The takeaway from this crisis is that the FAA regulatory system needs significant reform, because it's obvious that it's got some unintended consequences. The correct answer here is that it should have been viable to design the airplane in an inherently aerodynamically safe fashion while the band-aid patch should have received a huge degree of scrutiny, but that's essentially the opposite of the system that the FAA has created.

thatswrong0 7y ago
The FAA situation is a difficult one to resolve - having full understanding of these systems requires a great deal of expertise, and that kind of expertise is found most easily at, obviously, the companies under regulation. More funding / regulators would certainly help, but I'm not sure if that would be sufficient. > but the FAA let them get away with it Well, the FAA thought the MCAS had a command limit of 0.6 degrees when it actually became 2.5 degrees after the changes mentioned in this article. From the other Seattle Times article about this: > If the final safety analysis document was updated in parts, it certainly still contained the 0.6 limit in some places and the update was not widely communicated within the FAA technical evaluation team. > “None of the engineers were aware of a higher limit,” said a second current FAA engineer. To me it's less of a they "let them get away with it" and more of a "they had limited resources and things slipped through". Unfortunately this difference doesn't really matter when 300+ people are dead
- olliej 7y ago
  I feel that's also by design: Boeing went out of their way to minimize the opportunity that the FAA had to catch what they were doing. Providing the experts no doubt helped, but just omitting changes by lying and saying all the changes were minimal to a system that had already passed safety review was their main tools. Does the FAA have issues? yes. Will this event reduce the influence of the FAA in the future? Probably - we're already seeing the European equivalent adopting a stance of "the FAA is working for the corporations they're meant to regulate". Honestly the various politicians who gutted the FAA are fairly directly responsible for causing significant long term harm to American influence (for good or bad, depending of who/what/where you are). Is Boeing entirely responsible? Yes. The FAA is meant to be adversarial to prevent companies from choosing money over safety, but fundamentally it was Boeing executives that made the choice to favour hiding design flaws to preserve profit (and hence bonuses). The fact is that any repercussions are almost certainly going to be entirely financial, and only harm shareholders (dividend and stock price) and lower level employees (e.g non-managers: managers, and especially executives, don't get canned when cash is low).
supportlocal4h 7y ago
Wouldn't it be interesting if FFA signoff included approval by a regulatory team from the competing manufacturer. I wonder what abuses would crop up there.
- dboreham 7y ago
  Almost as if Google were to spent time and effort looking for security bugs in Microsoft products..
  - supportlocal4h 7y ago
    More like if Google had to approve every new release of MS products and shoulder some blame if things go wrong. Of course, if Google blocked some release of MS product, MS could retaliate by blocking a Google product. Or either could just stall until their own product could match features. So obviously, any block would have to clearly state the rationale. Then the regulator could choose to overrule the block, but it would be more clear then where the gamesmanship was.

by paulmd 7y ago

thatswrong0 7y ago

The FAA situation is a difficult one to resolve - having full understanding of these systems requires a great deal of expertise, and that kind of expertise is found most easily at, obviously, the companies under regulation. More funding / regulators would certainly help, but I'm not sure if that would be sufficient. > but the FAA let them get away with it Well, the FAA thought the MCAS had a command limit of 0.6 degrees when it actually became 2.5 degrees after the changes mentioned in this article. From the other Seattle Times article about this: > If the final safety analysis document was updated in parts, it certainly still contained the 0.6 limit in some places and the update was not widely communicated within the FAA technical evaluation team. > “None of the engineers were aware of a higher limit,” said a second current FAA engineer. To me it's less of a they "let them get away with it" and more of a "they had limited resources and things slipped through". Unfortunately this difference doesn't really matter when 300+ people are dead

olliej 7y ago
I feel that's also by design: Boeing went out of their way to minimize the opportunity that the FAA had to catch what they were doing. Providing the experts no doubt helped, but just omitting changes by lying and saying all the changes were minimal to a system that had already passed safety review was their main tools. Does the FAA have issues? yes. Will this event reduce the influence of the FAA in the future? Probably - we're already seeing the European equivalent adopting a stance of "the FAA is working for the corporations they're meant to regulate". Honestly the various politicians who gutted the FAA are fairly directly responsible for causing significant long term harm to American influence (for good or bad, depending of who/what/where you are). Is Boeing entirely responsible? Yes. The FAA is meant to be adversarial to prevent companies from choosing money over safety, but fundamentally it was Boeing executives that made the choice to favour hiding design flaws to preserve profit (and hence bonuses). The fact is that any repercussions are almost certainly going to be entirely financial, and only harm shareholders (dividend and stock price) and lower level employees (e.g non-managers: managers, and especially executives, don't get canned when cash is low).

supportlocal4h 7y ago

Wouldn't it be interesting if FFA signoff included approval by a regulatory team from the competing manufacturer. I wonder what abuses would crop up there.

dboreham 7y ago
Almost as if Google were to spent time and effort looking for security bugs in Microsoft products..
- supportlocal4h 7y ago
  More like if Google had to approve every new release of MS products and shoulder some blame if things go wrong. Of course, if Google blocked some release of MS product, MS could retaliate by blocking a Google product. Or either could just stall until their own product could match features. So obviously, any block would have to clearly state the rationale. Then the regulator could choose to overrule the block, but it would be more clear then where the gamesmanship was.