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> Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas? Because the airplane manufacturing industry is consolidating, and Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human live
by platz 7y ago
> Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas? Because the airplane manufacturing industry is consolidating, and Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives.
Was it really necessary to add the second part to explain why the merger occured? 'industry is consolidating' seems reason enough. The mixing of explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. Put the moralism and ethics in it's own paragraph so we can understand the explanation first. If it's all mixed up, then I have to evaluate every claim in the article as if it might be ethical statements by the author instead of focusing on understanding first, and then considering the ethical outcome after having attained the understanding.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- briandear 7y agoIt’s a hyperbolic statement. Boeing employees and engineers also fly on those planes with their families. It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety.
- hannasanarion 7y agoBoeing executive decision makers don't. They never fly commercial, they have private jets.
- tyingq 7y agoIncluding BBJs, which are 737s. Note there's a BBJ MAX.
- yourapostasy 7y agoGeneral aviation (private jets included) has a higher fatality rate than commercial aviation [1]. Even after backing out amateur general aviation, it is still more dangerous [2], though not egregiously so like personal planes, and helicopters make a sizeable chunk of fatality rate that is lumped into the same category as private jets. But it is still poor optics to rarely dog food your own products. [1] https://qz.com/work/1169517/executives-are-dying-in-private-planes-while-commercial-flights-have-never-been-safer/ https://qz.com/work/1169517/executives-are-dying-in-private-... [2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/corporate-jets-commercial-aircraft-christophe-de-margerie/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/corporate-jets-commerci...
- beatgammit 7y agoI think there are a few other factors to take into account, such as private jets flying faster on average, no layovers, etc. Looking only at flight hours doesn't really show the risk for an individual (e.g. an exec choosing between commercial flights and private flights). My guess is that the average exec is about as likely to die from one vs the other since the exec would spend more time flying in the commercial jet. So it's really not a fair comparison and I wouldn't be surprised if they're functionally equivalent after taking into account all major variables.
- desdiv 7y agoInteresting side note, Boeing does make private jets - the Boeing Business Jet family[0]. But Boeing executives doesn't fly on these, since they're too large for even CEOs. Boeing executives fly on one of the three Boeing owned Bombardier Challenger 650s [1][2][3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Business_Jet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Business_Jet [1] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N541BA/908966 https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N541BA/908... [2] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N543BA/908968 https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N543BA/908... [3] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N544BA/884121 https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N544BA/884...
- therockspush 7y agoFormer CEO James McNerney used to fly in the BBJ all the time. Sometimes he was the only passenger.
- nyolfen 7y agoi have quite the video for you (timestamped, but the whole thing is worth watching): https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?t=2499 https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?t=2499
- TylerE 7y agoSeems like a totally unbiased source. /s I mean, do you really not understand how that sort of thing is done? They ask 100 people and then edit it down to the 5 most extreme responses.
- pushswap 7y agoWhile that's a reasonable suspicion to have, the reporting in this case is accurate. I'm from Charleston, where the plant is located, & I have several friends that work at Boeing in assembly and quality inspection. What you see in the video is exactly the same sentiment I've heard for years.
- Enginerrrd 7y agoWhile I always remain skeptical, they said that they asked 15 and 10/15 wouldn't fly on it.
- starpilot 7y agoThat documentary is very naive. This is a good review: https://www.forbes.com/sites/airchive/2014/09/10/review-al-jazeeras-787-report-misses-the-mark/#7f1a2bd44c7a https://www.forbes.com/sites/airchive/2014/09/10/review-al-j...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nyolfen 7y agothis is weak industry pr. the fact is that boeing did not have safety issues before finance took over, and that opening a non-union shop for the purpose of labor fungibility is going to result in less experienced workers with a lower stake on average. it doesn't even bother mentioning what i linked, which is that 2/3 of the informally surveyed employees lack confidence in the final product to the point that they wouldn't want their families to fly on the planes.
- rjsw 7y agoBoeing employees don't go anywhere right now.
- spaceandshit 7y agoI love seeing these false statements on HN, where most users have no idea what the aerospace industry is like.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rjsw 7y agoThe Boeing people that I work with are not allowed to travel.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoNot allowed to? How does that work? Boeing thinks they control what people do on their vacation time?
- rjsw 7y agoThey are American, they don't get significant vacation time. I was really writing about work travel though.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoAh, I see. Yes, that Boeing can legitimately control.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- spaceandshit 7y agoSome still do. I suspect you only know a very small percentage of the total number of employees.
- nabdab 7y ago> It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety. That really is actually exactly what they did and are doing. When you don’t do tests because you are confident something will pass, that doesn’t change that you aren’t testing, and you are compromising quality on the basis of productivity. Here Boeing decided to go against the safe practice because that would have classified the plane as a different plane and incurred huge costs, but it would have increased safety and likely avoided the accidents. They did compromise safety, they did so thinking that it wouldn’t matter because the overall safety would be good enough for no one to notice, but that gamble failed and others paid their lives to cover the bet.
- kingkongjaffa 7y agoThere's a level of engineering judgement involved here though. If product A has passed testing and I made minor changes and made a product B if I can avoid running the whole battery of tests as if product B is brand new and not derivative then I totally will and Aerospace and Automotive operate like this all the time in every country in the world it's not poor practice.
- WalterBright 7y agoOn the other hand, making X behave like Y, where Y is something pilots are very used to, is safer.
- salawat 7y agoMD-11 and now MAX raise questions on the execution of that. Pilots have to understand the how and why the different thing can fly like the old thing so that when something goes wrong and that invariant is inevitably violated, they aren't caught off guard.
- WalterBright 7y agoSince the advent of powered flight controls, they've been shaped to give desired handling characteristics. For example, in the 70's control forces were lightened considerably to accommodate female pilots, though many were concerned this would lead to overcontrolling the airplane by the male pilots. Human factors design is nowhere near easy or settled science, not in iphone design nor in flight controls design.
- briandear 7y agoMy comment is being misread — I said they don’t make decisions with the intent to compromise safety. I am not defending the decisions, but they aren’t actively trying to make unsafe planes in order to save money. It isn’t like they are doing what some car makers did where they judged the expense of a recall as cheaper than the litigation from deaths.
- bumby 7y agoI read your comment and interpreted it as a misalignment of incentives in the context of informed decisions about risk. The second part is key to me. Inadequate system safety analysis seemed to give them the green light in decisions to save money (or make more money with safety critical 'options'). It's not like they knew MCAS would have an out-sized chance of downing a plane. My guess is they didn't know what they didn't know and it led them to have overconfidence in their ability to properly gauge business/safety trade-offs
- brojonat 7y ago> Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives To play devil's advocate, this isn't a moral statement. The author is saying this is true based on actual events.
- platz 7y agoIt's retroactively true with knowledge current events, but does not answer the question 'Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas?' at that point in history with respect to "at the expense of human lives"
- throwaway2048 7y agoLets do a thought experiment, what would Boeing do about this situation if their feet weren't being held to the fire, what did they do with their initial knowledge of it?
- slededit 7y agoI'm almost certain "expense of human lives" didn't come up as a factor on any of the merger pitch decks. Frankly its a huge leap to see that a merger of two successful and relatively safe aircraft manufacturers would be intentionally at the expense of human lives.
- bashallah 7y agoNice of you to think facts only exist at the corporate level
- buddylw 7y agoIf they aren't considering human lives in the process, that may be the real problem.
- lovich 7y agoWhy would it have to be intentional? They are pursuing profit. Human lives were ended as a result of their actions in the pursuit of profit. Is that not pursuing profit at the expense of human lives?
- KoenDG 7y agoThough perhaps not the case, it sounds to me like you're saying "let's not consider the morality of the situation". Moving it to a later part of the text is a great way to get people to ignore it.
- na85 7y ago>The mixing of explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. At the fundamental level, Engineering is a social/ethical process, not a technical one. Yes, engineers tend to have technical skills but when you use those skills to design a bridge you must always keep society (the users of your product) at the forefront of your mind. What separates engineers from "skilled people" is professional ethics. An engineer (structural, software, aerospace, chemical or whatever) who does not consider the ethics of their work cannot credibly claim to be an engineer at all. To "put the moralism and ethics in its own paragraph" is to sequester the ethical considerations somewhere where they can be conveniently ignored in service of the cult of CEO worship. edit: Instead of anonymous downvotes, would anyone care to let me know why they find this comment so inappropriate for HN?
- salawat 7y agoI absolutely concur with your viewpoint. Then again, I've always bought into the Iron Ring mentality anyway. Right now I feel like there is a lot of hostility aimed at the "ethically active engineer". I've seen time and time again people pushed to back down because they're "rocking the boat." On the other hand, I look at stuff going on in the Free Software movement where cancel culture seems to be being weaponized (by whom, and to whose ultimate benefit I can't really tell)as well. There is a balance, but I really do agree that if you aren't actively engaged with the ethics of the process you're facilitating, you can't really call yourself an Engineer. I have lists of projects I won't do, and I have fewer qualms with letting an employer know they're crossing them as I get older. Unfortunately for me the point is a little moot, as there is no PE for Software fellas anyway, and I'm a few years away from being able to work my way educationwise into a field that has a program for it. Just wanted to let you know you aren't alone in your sentiment.
- logjammin 7y agoI know zero about engineering (or even ethics, heh) but this comment seems plausible and well-reasoned enough to not be anonymously greyed out, which seems a bit tattle-tale-y , to be honest.
- D_Alex 7y ago>why they find this comment so inappropriate It is just wrong. >Engineering is a social/ethical process, not a technical one This is just bizarre. >Yes, engineers tend to have technical skills ...tend to have??? >What separates engineers from "skilled people" is professional ethics I'd argue that it is specialized education > when you use those skills to design a bridge >An engineer... who does not consider the ethics of their work cannot credibly claim to be an engineer at all. A bridge is usually designed by a team of engineers, who will get a specification (usually from another team of engineers and other professionals). One engineer may be a geotechnical expert, another might design piling, a third will specify the cement and aggregates in the concrete etc etc. Each contribution must meet the applicable technical standards and specifications. Apart from making sure your work is correct, how do you bring ethics into calculating the amount of rebar in your concrete slab??
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 7y agoI don't disagree, it is grating, but I read it more as an observation than as an intent. When you are in senior management, you make decisions based on their overall effect on the company's financial health or future growth. That is your job, just like it is the engineer's job to make decisions based on overall safety and reliability or future capability. The debate, or perhaps the proof, is what happens next. Every decision, engineering or management, needs to be evaluated post implementation to evaluate its effectiveness. Are we better off financially? Are we more capable? Is this system more reliable? Is this system easier to change while continuing to validate it is meeting its design goals? Both management and engineering resist having their decisions "colored" by their negative impact from the "other" group. Engineers don't like it when their clearly correct decision is overridden by management's feeling it doesn't make "business" sense (which is usually code for it reduces margins unacceptably). And management doesn't like it when their decision is negated by engineering telling them it will cause their products to become unacceptably unreliable or unsafe. In a properly functioning company it is the role of executive management to combine both the needs of engineering and the needs of the business into an effective outcome that everyone can live with and keeps the company alive. Articles on the acquisition suggest that Boeing acquired MD both because the industry was consolidating and because MD was making more money per plane than Boeing was. They wanted both the customer base of MD and the "DNA" or managerial understanding of how to build planes that were more profitable. Here in hindsight the implication is that the additional profit margin came from skimping on safety and reliability engineering. At some point, there was no doubt a review on the 737-MAX, where the engineering teams raised concerns about MCAS and the impact on safety and reliability. And the costs associated with addressing those concerns were also discussed, both cost to implement and time to market costs. The result of that review was to pursue certification on their plan of record and to not incur the additional certification and time to market costs that engineering advocated were needed. That decision was explicitly the pursuit of profit margin at the expense of product safety and reliability. As human lives are transitively related to safety and reliability of the aircraft, it is a reasonable statement to make about pursuing profit at the expense of human lives. That is what the equations reduce to.
- na85 7y ago>When you are in senior management, you make decisions based on their overall effect on the company's financial health or future growth. That is your job, just like it is the engineer's job to make decisions based on overall safety and reliability or future capability. I find this statement very troubling. You seem to be absolving the corporate/C-level class of any moral or ethical culpability when it comes to the consequences of their decisions, so long as "it makes business sense".
- journalctl 7y agoScrewing over workers for profit is nothing new [1]. You’d think after more than a hundred years we could start calling a spade a spade. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_...
- nabla9 7y agoIt lacks explanatory power. It should be possible to screw workers without endangering lives or the bottom line. Boeing did that long time. So did Airbus, GE Aviation, Rolls-Royce, Bombardier.
- BurningFrog 7y agoYeah, even the greediest executive knows that killing your passengers leads to the opposite of profit, as Boeing is surely proof of right now.
- loufe 7y agoAn excellent point, I start to lose interest when reading conflation of fact and opinion as well. You know, it's comments like this that make me appreciate this community that much more.
- curyous 7y agoIt's a true statement, though. They decided to move away from the safety conscious approach they had taken in the past.
- ulfw 7y agoThe "industry" wasn't consolidating though. What industry? There were three larg(er) players (Airbus, Boeing, McDD) and a handful of small ones (deHavilland/Bombardier, Embraer, etc). What consolidation was happening in 'the industry' around that time? Boeing started said consolidation itself by having McDD buy it Boeing with Boeing's money.
- ozmaverick72 7y agoThe consolidation the author is talking about is consolidation of defence aerospace contractors - Grumman, Northrup, McDonald Douglas and Boeing. McDonald Douglas was in some financial difficulties and the defence department encouraged the merger to keep them alive.