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The question is: Conspiracy or incompetence? I normally favour the latter all things being equal. However in this case, I sense that the battle with Airbus wa

The question is: Conspiracy or incompetence? I normally favour the latter all things being equal. However in this case, I sense that the battle with Airbus was ( and the key role of the 737 Max in that ) considered strategic and failure possibly an existential threat for Boeing and hence the US aviation industry.

colechristensen 7y ago
Thinking along those lines isn’t helpful. Big complex systems fail, sometimes there is a good target to point fingers, sometimes there isn’t. Fear of punishment is a really bad way to reduce future failures, and being satisfied having found somebody to punish makes you stop looking for systematic issues which caused and will continue to cause failures. The FAA/Boeing oversight process failed or more correctly happened much too late (this report being a part of that, post mortem)
- jplayer01 7y ago
  > Thinking along those lines isn’t helpful. It is though. It isn't enough to have strict regulations. You need to have regulators that are willing to enforce them and companies that follow them. We have neither, thus it's time to punish the people who are responsible for not only what lead to the accidents, but the people who are responsible for the state of these agencies and companies.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    You do though, air travel is very regulated and incredibly safe, and definitely is not by default. Focus on punishing people and one, you teach people to be better at avoiding punishment and two, you keep punishing new people for doing the same thing over and over.
    - 737maxtw 7y ago
      Well in that case... IF a company shortchanges safety to beat someone to market... I think a good look at corporate personhood is in order. If a company causes deaths due to their rush to get a product to market, charge the company, and if guilty, the board at the time of the crime must serve the sentence. Do that, and you'd see a lot less shitty behavior from corporations.
      - colechristensen 7y ago
        It is very easy to do a post hoc accusation, “look it’s obvious, they experienced a failure in their new product therefore it was rushed to market” and then make everybody feel good about putting the bad guys away. But that doesn’t get you safety or improvements. You can’t test anything infinitely, you can’t predict the future, all you can do is have standards and processes and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Putting the “bad guys” away doesn’t help anybody decide when ready is ready. Turning collections of mistakes into crimes doesn’t prevent future mistakes. Fear doesn’t prevent mistakes it encourages them. Looking at everything that goes wrong as a crime makes more go wrong not less.
        magduf 7y ago
        >But that doesn’t get you safety or improvements. Yes, it does, because it makes people accountable for their actions and makes them fear punishment, so they'll avoid criminal actions in the first place. >You can’t test anything infinitely, you can’t predict the future, all you can do is have standards and processes and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Sounds great, so why didn't Boeing and the FAA do that? That's the thing that makes them criminally liable. "Bad guys" are supposed to get put away when they intentionally do things that get people hurt or killed. This is called "criminal negligence", which is what Boeing is guilty of. People don't go to jail for mere accidents; they have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have acted negligent to a criminal degree (i.e., usually intentionally). Boeing intentionally made design decisions that were contrary to safety, and then intentionally tried to hide what had happened and keep the planes in the air even though they were deadly. >Turning collections of mistakes into crimes doesn’t prevent future mistakes. Yes, it does, when those "mistakes" were criminal negligence. That's why we have laws that makes these mistakes criminal.
    - jplayer01 7y ago
      Air travel is very safe and regulated because of behavior that persisted until recently. It's clear that systemic deviation has happened since the 90s that is leading to a system that can't be trusted in the same way that it could be historically. It's just that these are changes in a complex system that take years to surface as real problems that affect people. As long as financial incentives are so high that they override regulatory concerns as they do now, punishment is certainly in order. It's not the kind of thing where you make a change and planes fall out of the sky. No, you make small, gradual changes in processes and in safety margins until at some point in the distant future, planes fail catastrophically as a direct result of decisions made as an organization 1-3 decades ago. It's the same set of behaviors that led to the Challenger disaster.
      - rootusrootus 7y ago
        > Air travel is very safe and regulated because of behavior that persisted until recently Air travel is very safe because the entire world of aviation has focused on analysis and improvement rather than infighting and blaming. If anything, I worry more about how the aviation community worldwide seems to be fragmenting right now, and the effect that may have on safety going forward. But then I do read stories about the FAA and EASA still cooperating very tightly and respectfully, realize most of the infighting is by armchair quarterbacks on the Internet and the pros are still doing the Right Thing, and I sleep a little better.
        jplayer01 7y ago
        > Air travel is very safe because the entire world of aviation has focused on analysis and improvement rather than infighting and blaming Except you have one institution, the FAA, and one company, Boeing, who clearly no longer have a focus on maintaining regulatory processes to keep safety the main priority. While Boeing is cutting corners everywhere in order to save a buck, the FAA is looking the other way and letting Boeing do what they want. This is something that has already had serious consequences, and will continue to unless there are serious changes on a systemic level and there are punishments for those who are responsible for allowing these systemic changes to have occurred. Also, I don't appreciate your underhanded insult. This isn't the place for it.
- DrScientist 7y ago
  Totally get the point about blame free improvement - and pointing fingers makes people hide stuff - but isn't that the problem here - people hid stuff???? So the question is how do you stop people hiding stuff? What if it's not a process thing, but a behaviour issue? You can have rules and systems - but if people willfully don't follow them - hard to see how you deal with that without sanctions. ie what happens if it wasn't an honest mistake, rather a dishonest choice.
throwaway_law 7y ago
>The question is: Conspiracy or incompetence? Or both. As is often the case with industry leaders and regulators, the tail wags the dog. Meaning usually the regulator is totally incompetent and defers to the very people they are supposed to be regulating. Its not a conspiracy per say, its how the system works, but people don't generally know that or like to hear that, so they say that kind of talk is a conspiracy. Just as an example if you point to Goldman Sachs top executives bouncing back and for from Federal Government positions back to Goldman Sachs...the record speaks for itself, but people will say thats how its supposed to work and suggestions there is a problem with that is a conspiracy.

colechristensen 7y ago

Thinking along those lines isn’t helpful. Big complex systems fail, sometimes there is a good target to point fingers, sometimes there isn’t. Fear of punishment is a really bad way to reduce future failures, and being satisfied having found somebody to punish makes you stop looking for systematic issues which caused and will continue to cause failures. The FAA/Boeing oversight process failed or more correctly happened much too late (this report being a part of that, post mortem)

jplayer01 7y ago
> Thinking along those lines isn’t helpful. It is though. It isn't enough to have strict regulations. You need to have regulators that are willing to enforce them and companies that follow them. We have neither, thus it's time to punish the people who are responsible for not only what lead to the accidents, but the people who are responsible for the state of these agencies and companies.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  You do though, air travel is very regulated and incredibly safe, and definitely is not by default. Focus on punishing people and one, you teach people to be better at avoiding punishment and two, you keep punishing new people for doing the same thing over and over.
  - 737maxtw 7y ago
    Well in that case... IF a company shortchanges safety to beat someone to market... I think a good look at corporate personhood is in order. If a company causes deaths due to their rush to get a product to market, charge the company, and if guilty, the board at the time of the crime must serve the sentence. Do that, and you'd see a lot less shitty behavior from corporations.
    - colechristensen 7y ago
      It is very easy to do a post hoc accusation, “look it’s obvious, they experienced a failure in their new product therefore it was rushed to market” and then make everybody feel good about putting the bad guys away. But that doesn’t get you safety or improvements. You can’t test anything infinitely, you can’t predict the future, all you can do is have standards and processes and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Putting the “bad guys” away doesn’t help anybody decide when ready is ready. Turning collections of mistakes into crimes doesn’t prevent future mistakes. Fear doesn’t prevent mistakes it encourages them. Looking at everything that goes wrong as a crime makes more go wrong not less.
      - magduf 7y ago
        >But that doesn’t get you safety or improvements. Yes, it does, because it makes people accountable for their actions and makes them fear punishment, so they'll avoid criminal actions in the first place. >You can’t test anything infinitely, you can’t predict the future, all you can do is have standards and processes and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Sounds great, so why didn't Boeing and the FAA do that? That's the thing that makes them criminally liable. "Bad guys" are supposed to get put away when they intentionally do things that get people hurt or killed. This is called "criminal negligence", which is what Boeing is guilty of. People don't go to jail for mere accidents; they have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have acted negligent to a criminal degree (i.e., usually intentionally). Boeing intentionally made design decisions that were contrary to safety, and then intentionally tried to hide what had happened and keep the planes in the air even though they were deadly. >Turning collections of mistakes into crimes doesn’t prevent future mistakes. Yes, it does, when those "mistakes" were criminal negligence. That's why we have laws that makes these mistakes criminal.
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    Air travel is very safe and regulated because of behavior that persisted until recently. It's clear that systemic deviation has happened since the 90s that is leading to a system that can't be trusted in the same way that it could be historically. It's just that these are changes in a complex system that take years to surface as real problems that affect people. As long as financial incentives are so high that they override regulatory concerns as they do now, punishment is certainly in order. It's not the kind of thing where you make a change and planes fall out of the sky. No, you make small, gradual changes in processes and in safety margins until at some point in the distant future, planes fail catastrophically as a direct result of decisions made as an organization 1-3 decades ago. It's the same set of behaviors that led to the Challenger disaster.
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
      > Air travel is very safe and regulated because of behavior that persisted until recently Air travel is very safe because the entire world of aviation has focused on analysis and improvement rather than infighting and blaming. If anything, I worry more about how the aviation community worldwide seems to be fragmenting right now, and the effect that may have on safety going forward. But then I do read stories about the FAA and EASA still cooperating very tightly and respectfully, realize most of the infighting is by armchair quarterbacks on the Internet and the pros are still doing the Right Thing, and I sleep a little better.
      - jplayer01 7y ago
        > Air travel is very safe because the entire world of aviation has focused on analysis and improvement rather than infighting and blaming Except you have one institution, the FAA, and one company, Boeing, who clearly no longer have a focus on maintaining regulatory processes to keep safety the main priority. While Boeing is cutting corners everywhere in order to save a buck, the FAA is looking the other way and letting Boeing do what they want. This is something that has already had serious consequences, and will continue to unless there are serious changes on a systemic level and there are punishments for those who are responsible for allowing these systemic changes to have occurred. Also, I don't appreciate your underhanded insult. This isn't the place for it.
DrScientist 7y ago
Totally get the point about blame free improvement - and pointing fingers makes people hide stuff - but isn't that the problem here - people hid stuff???? So the question is how do you stop people hiding stuff? What if it's not a process thing, but a behaviour issue? You can have rules and systems - but if people willfully don't follow them - hard to see how you deal with that without sanctions. ie what happens if it wasn't an honest mistake, rather a dishonest choice.

throwaway_law 7y ago

>The question is: Conspiracy or incompetence? Or both. As is often the case with industry leaders and regulators, the tail wags the dog. Meaning usually the regulator is totally incompetent and defers to the very people they are supposed to be regulating. Its not a conspiracy per say, its how the system works, but people don't generally know that or like to hear that, so they say that kind of talk is a conspiracy. Just as an example if you point to Goldman Sachs top executives bouncing back and for from Federal Government positions back to Goldman Sachs...the record speaks for itself, but people will say thats how its supposed to work and suggestions there is a problem with that is a conspiracy.