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It's obvious to me neither the FAA nor Boeing attempted to accurately replicate the first crash scenario, because this could have wholly averted the second cras

It's obvious to me neither the FAA nor Boeing attempted to accurately replicate the first crash scenario, because this could have wholly averted the second crash. As soon as the planes were grounded, we were getting all sorts of reports about the stablizer being too hard to move and basically an unrecover situation. Jail time is the only outcome I will accept.

FabHK 7y ago
How is it obvious to you that they didn't investigate the first crash sufficiently? I'd say some time after the first accident it was reasonably well understood what had happened, and the FAA (and many others!) concluded that it was still safe to fly the plane, as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain by doing the right thing quick (as the pilots on the Lion Air flight preceding the accident flight had done). Why that assessment was wrong is a complicated story that has to be examined carefully. From what I gather, in aviation safety circles "jail time" is very rarely considered a wise answer. As soon as you threaten jail, people will cover their ass and obstruct investigations. Instead, the goal is and should be to examine the entire system to ensure accidents don't repeat, and by and large, the system works exceedingly well.
- LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
  So, asses are currently uncovered?
- afterburner 7y ago
  Jailtime for those in management who are responsible for cover-ups and cut corners. Not jailtime for those who actually design and handle the equipment.
- jellicle 7y ago
  I've never quite understood that argument that only little people benefit from jail time and important people do not. Surely if we can put someone in jail for a year for having a forbidden plant in their pocket then we could put someone in jail for - how about a week? Three days? An hour? - for choosing to cut corners on safety and smashing two planes full of people into jelly? The root cause here is "Boeing management wanted to get a plane out quick so they didn't lose market share". The way to examine the system and make sure this doesn't repeat (for now...) is to put someone in jail for it. Then the next time that some plane company wants to cut corners and get an unsafe plane out quick, some manager who doesn't want to go to jail will put a stop to it. Show me the flaw in my logic.
  - avar 7y ago
    This idea that there's one guy or set of people to be found whose fault it is that you have a systemic problem is so uniquely American. In this case you're proposing to punish the smallest cog in the machine, some middle-manager or executive at Boeing. It would be just as logical to throw every single American in prison for around 45 minutes (~1 person dead in 737 MAX crashes for every million Americans, 80 years (let's call that life in prison) / 1 million =~ 45 minutes). After all those are the people responsible for electing the people whose job it was to oversee Boeing. Shouldn't we blame them for their disinterest in the activities of the FAA? Maybe give people who complained about the FAA's rubber-stamp regulatory policy before the 737 MAX parole? All you'd accomplish by throwing people in jail is to incentivize these companies to restructure decision making to be more diffuse, and make all subsequent air crash investigations much more difficult due to everyone involved being afraid of having made some prison-worthy mistake.
    - homonculus1 7y ago
      Actually, that idea is pretty interesting--throwing a whole group of people in jail for some trivial amount of time. A symbolic slap on the wrist, but maybe at scale it would actually cause some group shame without resorting to draconian collective punishment.
    - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
      The simple answer is to make the entire C-suite criminally liable - collectively and individually. Because the usual argument is that the C-suite and especially the CEO are personally responsible for the successes of a company. So it's not unreasonable to hold them personally responsible for the failures too - especially when those failures amount to suspected criminal negligence. This is not the same as assuming guilt. Due process should still apply. But the risk of personal liability should absolutely be present as a deterrent. And if some executives don't want to operate in that environment - that's absolutely fine. The system should encourage responsible actors, and allow the removal and punishment of those who prefer to act irresponsibly.
      - 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- semerda 7y ago
  "as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain" -- No they couldn't! To survive a runaway trim, pilots had to know the rollercoaster maneuver and have enough altitude to aerodynamically relieve airloads off the jackscrew so they could manually trim the plane back. If FAA and many others knew this then they should have instantly communicated it to all boeing max pilots. Instead none of that happened.
  - heyiforgotmypwd 7y ago
    This jives with what I've seen from blancolirio, MentourPilot and others sources. The pilots should've had memory items to disable automation control of trim for the duration of the flight rather than all electric control of trim (including yoke-mounted switches), because aerodynamic forces were too large and altitude was too low to manually spin the trim wheels. I do hope Ralph Nader sues the pants off Boeing for murdering his goddaughter through negligent homicide. The FAA is also culpable for failing to oversee self-certification properly and getting too cozy (regulatory capture) with Boeing. As a consequent, equipment models including the whole line of 737 NG (-600 to -900; 2010 Ducommun structural parts scandal), 787 Dreamliner failures and 737 Max 8 and 9 are models I would not step foot on without a gun to my head.
    - linuxftw 7y ago
      I have read some of the earlier reports that they changed how the electric trim works. On earlier 737's, there were two switches: one to kill automated input, one to kill all electrical input. On the MAX's, the switches only kill all electrical input. So those procedures literally didn't apply.
privateSFacct 7y ago
Wow. We have an drug problem that kills 40,000+/year from overdoses. Over a million people die driving in the world PER YEAR. A small bit of perspective. Plane flying used to be much MORE dangerous before the "corrupt" FAA got involved with the airplane companies to regulate things more closely. The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots. The record of safety in aviation in the last few years within the US has been extremely strong. Just interesting that big pharma walks free, but Hilary Clinton and the FAA are getting the "lock them up" chants.
- salawat 7y ago
  So... You're not keeping up with the news are you? If there's anything that's causing the pharma controversy to stall, it's that the cross section of companies involved have significant non pharmaceutical revenue bases to pull from in funding their defense. Also, to be quite frank, pharma is getting legislative, not just judicial attention as well. There is a reckoning in the works for quite a few industrial verticals. However, where things are different with aviation is that every last person on each plane had absolutely no ability to influence what ended up happening. The documentation around the process is also far better and more auditable than the collective sales activity of every actor in the pharmaceutical industry. Give it time. These things require proof, and proof takes time to collect and sift through.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  > The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots As a non-US citizen, I find that comment really disturbing. > Just interesting that big pharma walks free "Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson must pay $572m (£468m) for its part in fuelling Oklahoma's opioid addiction crisis, a judge in the US state has ruled." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49452373 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49452373 I understand other states are lining up too.
  - uniformlyrandom 7y ago
    As a human being (that happens to be a US citizen), I find OP's comment really disturbing. The whole comment is whataboutism, so maybe this was just an intentional red herring.
nraynaud 7y ago
I would not be so hard on the investigation of the first crash, they take time, and the second crash happened before the end of the first one.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  Nope. They should have grounded the literally brand-new, undocumented-feature aircraft immediately. But the FAA and Boeing are worse than useless.

FabHK 7y ago

How is it obvious to you that they didn't investigate the first crash sufficiently? I'd say some time after the first accident it was reasonably well understood what had happened, and the FAA (and many others!) concluded that it was still safe to fly the plane, as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain by doing the right thing quick (as the pilots on the Lion Air flight preceding the accident flight had done). Why that assessment was wrong is a complicated story that has to be examined carefully. From what I gather, in aviation safety circles "jail time" is very rarely considered a wise answer. As soon as you threaten jail, people will cover their ass and obstruct investigations. Instead, the goal is and should be to examine the entire system to ensure accidents don't repeat, and by and large, the system works exceedingly well.

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
So, asses are currently uncovered?
afterburner 7y ago
Jailtime for those in management who are responsible for cover-ups and cut corners. Not jailtime for those who actually design and handle the equipment.
jellicle 7y ago
I've never quite understood that argument that only little people benefit from jail time and important people do not. Surely if we can put someone in jail for a year for having a forbidden plant in their pocket then we could put someone in jail for - how about a week? Three days? An hour? - for choosing to cut corners on safety and smashing two planes full of people into jelly? The root cause here is "Boeing management wanted to get a plane out quick so they didn't lose market share". The way to examine the system and make sure this doesn't repeat (for now...) is to put someone in jail for it. Then the next time that some plane company wants to cut corners and get an unsafe plane out quick, some manager who doesn't want to go to jail will put a stop to it. Show me the flaw in my logic.
- avar 7y ago
  This idea that there's one guy or set of people to be found whose fault it is that you have a systemic problem is so uniquely American. In this case you're proposing to punish the smallest cog in the machine, some middle-manager or executive at Boeing. It would be just as logical to throw every single American in prison for around 45 minutes (~1 person dead in 737 MAX crashes for every million Americans, 80 years (let's call that life in prison) / 1 million =~ 45 minutes). After all those are the people responsible for electing the people whose job it was to oversee Boeing. Shouldn't we blame them for their disinterest in the activities of the FAA? Maybe give people who complained about the FAA's rubber-stamp regulatory policy before the 737 MAX parole? All you'd accomplish by throwing people in jail is to incentivize these companies to restructure decision making to be more diffuse, and make all subsequent air crash investigations much more difficult due to everyone involved being afraid of having made some prison-worthy mistake.
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    Actually, that idea is pretty interesting--throwing a whole group of people in jail for some trivial amount of time. A symbolic slap on the wrist, but maybe at scale it would actually cause some group shame without resorting to draconian collective punishment.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    The simple answer is to make the entire C-suite criminally liable - collectively and individually. Because the usual argument is that the C-suite and especially the CEO are personally responsible for the successes of a company. So it's not unreasonable to hold them personally responsible for the failures too - especially when those failures amount to suspected criminal negligence. This is not the same as assuming guilt. Due process should still apply. But the risk of personal liability should absolutely be present as a deterrent. And if some executives don't want to operate in that environment - that's absolutely fine. The system should encourage responsible actors, and allow the removal and punishment of those who prefer to act irresponsibly.
    - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
semerda 7y ago
"as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain" -- No they couldn't! To survive a runaway trim, pilots had to know the rollercoaster maneuver and have enough altitude to aerodynamically relieve airloads off the jackscrew so they could manually trim the plane back. If FAA and many others knew this then they should have instantly communicated it to all boeing max pilots. Instead none of that happened.
- heyiforgotmypwd 7y ago
  This jives with what I've seen from blancolirio, MentourPilot and others sources. The pilots should've had memory items to disable automation control of trim for the duration of the flight rather than all electric control of trim (including yoke-mounted switches), because aerodynamic forces were too large and altitude was too low to manually spin the trim wheels. I do hope Ralph Nader sues the pants off Boeing for murdering his goddaughter through negligent homicide. The FAA is also culpable for failing to oversee self-certification properly and getting too cozy (regulatory capture) with Boeing. As a consequent, equipment models including the whole line of 737 NG (-600 to -900; 2010 Ducommun structural parts scandal), 787 Dreamliner failures and 737 Max 8 and 9 are models I would not step foot on without a gun to my head.
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    I have read some of the earlier reports that they changed how the electric trim works. On earlier 737's, there were two switches: one to kill automated input, one to kill all electrical input. On the MAX's, the switches only kill all electrical input. So those procedures literally didn't apply.

privateSFacct 7y ago

Wow. We have an drug problem that kills 40,000+/year from overdoses. Over a million people die driving in the world PER YEAR. A small bit of perspective. Plane flying used to be much MORE dangerous before the "corrupt" FAA got involved with the airplane companies to regulate things more closely. The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots. The record of safety in aviation in the last few years within the US has been extremely strong. Just interesting that big pharma walks free, but Hilary Clinton and the FAA are getting the "lock them up" chants.

salawat 7y ago
So... You're not keeping up with the news are you? If there's anything that's causing the pharma controversy to stall, it's that the cross section of companies involved have significant non pharmaceutical revenue bases to pull from in funding their defense. Also, to be quite frank, pharma is getting legislative, not just judicial attention as well. There is a reckoning in the works for quite a few industrial verticals. However, where things are different with aviation is that every last person on each plane had absolutely no ability to influence what ended up happening. The documentation around the process is also far better and more auditable than the collective sales activity of every actor in the pharmaceutical industry. Give it time. These things require proof, and proof takes time to collect and sift through.
tempguy9999 7y ago
> The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots As a non-US citizen, I find that comment really disturbing. > Just interesting that big pharma walks free "Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson must pay $572m (£468m) for its part in fuelling Oklahoma's opioid addiction crisis, a judge in the US state has ruled." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49452373 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49452373 I understand other states are lining up too.
- uniformlyrandom 7y ago
  As a human being (that happens to be a US citizen), I find OP's comment really disturbing. The whole comment is whataboutism, so maybe this was just an intentional red herring.

nraynaud 7y ago

I would not be so hard on the investigation of the first crash, they take time, and the second crash happened before the end of the first one.

linuxftw 7y ago
Nope. They should have grounded the literally brand-new, undocumented-feature aircraft immediately. But the FAA and Boeing are worse than useless.