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It’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 inten
by briandear 7y ago
It’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