6 ms·

FAA says Boeing withheld ‘concerning’ messages about the 737 Max

106 points by kyleblarson 7y ago

Havoc 7y ago
Boeing just can't catch a break it seems
- yummypaint 7y ago
  Maybe they should stop killing people with criminal negligence
  - ryanlol 7y ago
    Can you refer to any sources discussing Boeing killing people with criminal negligence?
    - centizen 7y ago
      https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/boeing-shares-slide-on-report-faa-is-concerned-it-was-misled-about-737-max.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/boeing-shares-slide-on-repor...
      - ryanlol 7y ago
        This really isn’t enough. >“So I basically lied to regulators (unknowingly)” Does not get you anywhere near “killing people with criminal negligence”. Maybe there exists more, but whatever may exist isn’t public yet. But perhaps yummypaint was just confused and thought he’s on reddit? The UX is fairly similar so it’s an understandable mistake.
    - mattmar96 7y ago
      Charging extra for additional safety-critical AoA sensors?
      - ryanlol 7y ago
        Maybe negligent, probably shitty, certainly easy to criticize. But how do you go straight from there to "killing people with criminal negligence"?
    - yummypaint 7y ago
      https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/boeing-sensor-737-max-faa/index.html https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/boeing-sensor-737-... "Single sources of data are considered acceptable in such cases by our industry," the Boeing spokesperson said. This has never been true, and this article was from a time when Boeing was still successfully covering up now public information (they did indeed simulate the sensor failure mode, which is what this new scandal is about). The decision to have the new MCAS use a single physical sensor itself flies in the face of over a half century of aviation engineering practices. That design decision alone is already negligence. Planes typically have 3 fully independent hydraulic control systems for redundancy. Flight computers are redundant and run on different architectures (there is lots of interesting reading about this if you google). Boeing has known how to do fault tolerance correctly on planes for a long time. In this case management faced a conflict between forseen catastrophic failures and the bottom line, and buried warnings from engineers and pilots. After the first crash Boeing should have told airlines to ground their planes. They had all the information. Instead they attempted to shift blame to pilots while continuing to lie about the safety of the plane. It doesnt get much clearer than this.
    - callalex 7y ago
      Can you refer to any sources proving you are not being contrarian in bad faith?
      - ryanlol 7y ago
        I simply do not believe anyone will end up facing criminal charges over this, which “criminal negligence” very strongly implies. And even if someone somehow ended up facing criminal charges I seriously doubt it'd be over killing people as suggested by yummypaint. Careers have ended over lesser personal attacks, I’d watch out if I were you.
        salawat 7y ago
        >Careers have ended over lesser personal attacks, I’d watch out if I were you. Heard that one before. That company also got investigated by DoJ coincidentally. Pro tip: Threats get you nowhere. Especially on the Internet. The fact of the matter is, you asking for "proof" now is an empty, vacuous gesture, as the only people's judgement that matters is the belief of the eventual Grand Jury, and Trial Jury if the DoJ decides to move. You will be challenged to find any executive signing or sending an order that directly screams out "I'm telling you to do an evil thing." Corporate communication revolves around getting people to do what you want without outright saying "I want X" in any format which could hit the media or legal system and blow back on anyone but the company. If it were easy, or direct, it would have happened or been caught long before now. Each and every judicial action is a balancing act where the interests of the public are set against the liberties of an individual. The CEO and executive suite have left sufficient paper trail in regards to organizational changes to clearly communicate intent. The prosecution will likely focus on proving the company itself knowingly skimped on commitments to do as they were required by law. Every questionable decision will be weighed upon by a jury as to whether or mot that decision was ultimately reasonable or criminal. I'm waiting to see some of the details hidden in the paperwork, but I'm fairly certain the case for going after specific high level executives may end up being successful; if only because I believe in this case a large portion of the public from which the potential jury pool can be selected have very marked interests in not having the confluence of responsibility abrogations that led to these disasters ever repeating again. It's only after the jury has come back that the evidence can be said to have ascended to "proof beyond a reasonable doubt".
- droopyEyelids 7y ago
  It was actually a continuous series of catching the biggest breaks possible from regulators that allowed them to get into this situation.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  It's their breaks catching up with them.
- catalogia 7y ago
  Well it seems they may have caught some of the breaks, and then suppressed knowledge of them...
jacquesm 7y ago
It's a small miracle Boeing's CEO hasn't stepped down yet.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Certainly agree with your fundamental point, but also kind of thinking that a whole lot more people than just the CEO need to go here. I hesitate to say this about any organization that I don't have personal experience in, but at some point even unfamiliar outsiders can be forgiven for wondering if this is just a systemic problem at Boeing?
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    This is a full coverup from the bottom to the top. There’s something seriously wrong with Boeing’s culture
    - spaceandshit 7y ago
      If you have sources please, provide them.
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        There's a couple of 100 bodies as proof. Paper is so much weaker than blood.
        AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Two crashes are confirmation of two crashes. They are not confirmation of "a full coverup from the bottom to the top".
        jacquesm 7y ago
        The two crashes are the final outcome of a structural failing of Boeing at all levels, from engineering to manufacturing to management. The fact that they did not speak out until it was much too late is evidence of that coverup, if they had been up front about any of this the second crash could have surely been avoided and if they had simply done the right thing and name the 737 differently and obtained proper type certification without MCAS it would have avoided the first one as well.
WhyKill 7y ago
why regulation capture is bad in a nutshell
mzs 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21292860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21292860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21293550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21293550
NikolaNovak 7y ago
It is presented as a smoking gun, but as an outsider to the industry, I don't have the context. How many messages do pilots exchange? How formal are they? How guarded are they? In other words, was this a major report that was hushed; or one of 100,000 informal messages over company IM, some of which were statistically bound to be negative (or somewhere in between) I would imagine that in development of ANY complex technology, no matter how ultimately successful, somebody somewhere over some channel will at some point say "Well, THIS sucks". From personal experience, even for systems in the end I'm most proud of, at some point during development, I would've vented frustration... (this is not to say that 737Max Fiasco / MCAS design / any of this is justifiable; I just don't know how much that specific, seemingly casual message between two pilots, contributes value to conversation...)

106 points by kyleblarson 7y ago

Havoc 7y ago

Boeing just can't catch a break it seems

yummypaint 7y ago
Maybe they should stop killing people with criminal negligence
- ryanlol 7y ago
  Can you refer to any sources discussing Boeing killing people with criminal negligence?
  - centizen 7y ago
    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/boeing-shares-slide-on-report-faa-is-concerned-it-was-misled-about-737-max.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/boeing-shares-slide-on-repor...
    - ryanlol 7y ago
      This really isn’t enough. >“So I basically lied to regulators (unknowingly)” Does not get you anywhere near “killing people with criminal negligence”. Maybe there exists more, but whatever may exist isn’t public yet. But perhaps yummypaint was just confused and thought he’s on reddit? The UX is fairly similar so it’s an understandable mistake.
  - mattmar96 7y ago
    Charging extra for additional safety-critical AoA sensors?
    - ryanlol 7y ago
      Maybe negligent, probably shitty, certainly easy to criticize. But how do you go straight from there to "killing people with criminal negligence"?
  - yummypaint 7y ago
    https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/boeing-sensor-737-max-faa/index.html https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/boeing-sensor-737-... "Single sources of data are considered acceptable in such cases by our industry," the Boeing spokesperson said. This has never been true, and this article was from a time when Boeing was still successfully covering up now public information (they did indeed simulate the sensor failure mode, which is what this new scandal is about). The decision to have the new MCAS use a single physical sensor itself flies in the face of over a half century of aviation engineering practices. That design decision alone is already negligence. Planes typically have 3 fully independent hydraulic control systems for redundancy. Flight computers are redundant and run on different architectures (there is lots of interesting reading about this if you google). Boeing has known how to do fault tolerance correctly on planes for a long time. In this case management faced a conflict between forseen catastrophic failures and the bottom line, and buried warnings from engineers and pilots. After the first crash Boeing should have told airlines to ground their planes. They had all the information. Instead they attempted to shift blame to pilots while continuing to lie about the safety of the plane. It doesnt get much clearer than this.
  - callalex 7y ago
    Can you refer to any sources proving you are not being contrarian in bad faith?
    - ryanlol 7y ago
      I simply do not believe anyone will end up facing criminal charges over this, which “criminal negligence” very strongly implies. And even if someone somehow ended up facing criminal charges I seriously doubt it'd be over killing people as suggested by yummypaint. Careers have ended over lesser personal attacks, I’d watch out if I were you.
      - salawat 7y ago
        >Careers have ended over lesser personal attacks, I’d watch out if I were you. Heard that one before. That company also got investigated by DoJ coincidentally. Pro tip: Threats get you nowhere. Especially on the Internet. The fact of the matter is, you asking for "proof" now is an empty, vacuous gesture, as the only people's judgement that matters is the belief of the eventual Grand Jury, and Trial Jury if the DoJ decides to move. You will be challenged to find any executive signing or sending an order that directly screams out "I'm telling you to do an evil thing." Corporate communication revolves around getting people to do what you want without outright saying "I want X" in any format which could hit the media or legal system and blow back on anyone but the company. If it were easy, or direct, it would have happened or been caught long before now. Each and every judicial action is a balancing act where the interests of the public are set against the liberties of an individual. The CEO and executive suite have left sufficient paper trail in regards to organizational changes to clearly communicate intent. The prosecution will likely focus on proving the company itself knowingly skimped on commitments to do as they were required by law. Every questionable decision will be weighed upon by a jury as to whether or mot that decision was ultimately reasonable or criminal. I'm waiting to see some of the details hidden in the paperwork, but I'm fairly certain the case for going after specific high level executives may end up being successful; if only because I believe in this case a large portion of the public from which the potential jury pool can be selected have very marked interests in not having the confluence of responsibility abrogations that led to these disasters ever repeating again. It's only after the jury has come back that the evidence can be said to have ascended to "proof beyond a reasonable doubt".
droopyEyelids 7y ago
It was actually a continuous series of catching the biggest breaks possible from regulators that allowed them to get into this situation.
jacquesm 7y ago
It's their breaks catching up with them.
catalogia 7y ago
Well it seems they may have caught some of the breaks, and then suppressed knowledge of them...

jacquesm 7y ago

It's a small miracle Boeing's CEO hasn't stepped down yet.

bilbo0s 7y ago
Certainly agree with your fundamental point, but also kind of thinking that a whole lot more people than just the CEO need to go here. I hesitate to say this about any organization that I don't have personal experience in, but at some point even unfamiliar outsiders can be forgiven for wondering if this is just a systemic problem at Boeing?
- Aperocky 7y ago
  This is a full coverup from the bottom to the top. There’s something seriously wrong with Boeing’s culture
  - spaceandshit 7y ago
    If you have sources please, provide them.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      There's a couple of 100 bodies as proof. Paper is so much weaker than blood.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Two crashes are confirmation of two crashes. They are not confirmation of "a full coverup from the bottom to the top".
        jacquesm 7y ago
        The two crashes are the final outcome of a structural failing of Boeing at all levels, from engineering to manufacturing to management. The fact that they did not speak out until it was much too late is evidence of that coverup, if they had been up front about any of this the second crash could have surely been avoided and if they had simply done the right thing and name the 737 differently and obtained proper type certification without MCAS it would have avoided the first one as well.

WhyKill 7y ago

why regulation capture is bad in a nutshell

mzs 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21292860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21292860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21293550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21293550

NikolaNovak 7y ago

It is presented as a smoking gun, but as an outsider to the industry, I don't have the context. How many messages do pilots exchange? How formal are they? How guarded are they? In other words, was this a major report that was hushed; or one of 100,000 informal messages over company IM, some of which were statistically bound to be negative (or somewhere in between) I would imagine that in development of ANY complex technology, no matter how ultimately successful, somebody somewhere over some channel will at some point say "Well, THIS sucks". From personal experience, even for systems in the end I'm most proud of, at some point during development, I would've vented frustration... (this is not to say that 737Max Fiasco / MCAS design / any of this is justifiable; I just don't know how much that specific, seemingly casual message between two pilots, contributes value to conversation...)