10 ms·

Boeing 737 Max Was Plagued with Production Problems, Whistle-Blower Says

111 points by kaboro 7y ago

JadeNB 7y ago
The title should be "whistle-blower says", per the headline—did it get automatically truncated?
- dang 7y ago
  No. Maybe it was just a select-paste glitch. Fixed now!
_Codemonkeyism 7y ago
"He worries that once the Max is flying again, Boeing — scrambling to make up for the costly delays — will not have changed."
xiphias2 7y ago
Why would I believe anything Boing's PR says if nobody went to prison for endangering so many people's lives? It makes sense that sensors on an expensive plane shouldn't malfunction so early.
- me_me_me 7y ago
  endangering ?? Two planes crashed and the higher-ups knew about the problems and were actively showing it under rug hoping somehow they can fix it without backlash.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Yea. I doubt we'll see it, but there should be criminal negligence changes in there somewhere. There are so many people involved it's easy to distribute blame or blame the entire process. But if the right email can be tracked down, there's going to be someone(s) in that loop that fits the charges for 200+ counts of manslaughter.
- paulmd 7y ago
  physical sensors malfunction all the time, and you have a fleet of several hundred aircraft. You would be shocked to learn how many faults an aircraft can have at a given time and still be allowed to take off. That's what redundancy is for, if everything had to be all-systems-go every time then you couldn't run an aircraft for a week straight. It doesn't matter as long as you have a spare, and it'll get fixed the next time you're in for maintenance. the issue with the 737 MAX is that there are only two sensors, and so far I don't see that being addressed. One sensor failing should not kill the aircraft, and it should not disable a control regime that is necessary for the aircraft to receive type certification.
  - avthrow9 7y ago
    > You would be shocked to learn how many faults an aircraft can have at a given time and still be allowed to take off. Yep. Next time you fly, look through the cockpit door as you board for maintenance tag-outs -- usually red flags with 'INOP' labeling, most likely on the circuit breaker panels above the pilots. The Gimli Glider incident occurred partially because of a circuit breaker tag-out in the 767 fuel quantity indicator system. Aircraft manufacturers and regulators produce a Minimum Equipment List which stipulates what is required for flight. If you get your hands on one for the plane you're on, you might be surprised to discover what _isn't_ on it and what is permitted to fail. It's heavy, but here's an older American MEL for the 737 family: http://fsims.faa.gov/wdocs/mmel/b-737%20r54a.pdf http://fsims.faa.gov/wdocs/mmel/b-737%20r54a.pdf Pages 35-1 and 35-2 offer some interesting reading about the passenger oxygen system, for example.
    - jdsully 7y ago
      In the Gimli glider case the aircraft wasn't legally allowed to take off. The pilots also deferred the decision on whether to take off to the maintenance crew who are not the ones authorized to make that decision. The pilots were initially demoted because of that but were restored due to public pressure. There was mitigating circumstances though, the procedures were frequently being revised (the 767 was brand new) and previously it had been permissible to take off without a fuel indicator. None of this takes away from the huge achievement of their landing. Simulator runs show the landing was near impossible. Had Captain Pearson not been an experienced glider pilot its likely they would have ditched in the river, and the historical survivability of water landings are not good.
allovernow 7y ago
>Employees at the Renton, Wash., factory where the Max is produced were overworked, exhausted and making mistakes, Mr. Pierson said in an interview. A cascade of damaged parts, missing tools and incomplete instructions was preventing planes from being built on time. Executives were pressuring workers to complete planes despite staff shortages and a chaotic factory floor. I wonder how much of this is directly the result of penny pinching by MBA types. I'm gradually coming to believe that non-technical management of technical endeavors is the root of most failure in the engineering domain.
- pron 7y ago
  Technical management of technical endeavors can be just as bad, although you could be right when you say it's "the root of most failure in the engineering domain," because when technical people manage, the product is often either not delivered, or is delivered but doesn't have any critical failures because people don't want to use it. It's very good when managers have technical expertise in addition, but managerial expertise is much more important in management. Just something I learned in my two-plus decades in the software industry.
  - fredley 7y ago
    You need both technical and non-technical management skills, and if you can't get both in the same person (likely!), you need the people from each side in a relationship that's based on trust and recognition of each other's expertise. Too often these relationships break down and become adversarial, to the detriment of everyone involved, and of course the project.
  - mihaaly 7y ago
    Well, it is difficult to find an industry with worse track record of product quality and reliability than the software industry, I wouldn't use software development management as reference. (also two decades is software development... and software usage!!) In my experience managers lacking domain knowledge make more harm than good but are excellent putting emphasis on adjacent and auxiliary parts they are good at. Anyone put in charge of something they are not competent in would do the same.
romaaeterna 7y ago
Did any of these production problems relate to the MCAS malfunction though? Also, this is buried further down in the article than it should be. > Mr. Pierson and his lawyers declined to answer whether he was seeking whistle-blower protection or filing a federal whistle-blower case. He has hired a prominent whistle-blower lawyer, Eric Havian, and could stand to gain monetarily if he pursued such a case.
- joezydeco 7y ago
  If the AoA vanes were installed incorrectly, perhaps so? "Mr. Pierson believes that the production problems may have played a role in the crashes. In both accidents, MCAS was triggered when a vane installed on the plane’s fuselage malfunctioned." "Workers were completing jobs out of sequence, leading to additional mistakes."
  - yread 7y ago
    AoA vanes are usually very reliable and rarely fail in other types
    - joezydeco 7y ago
      Are they reliable only when installed properly, or even when they're installed incorrectly?
- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  Compensation for filing legitimate claims is an important carrot to encourage people with inside information to speak out. Whistleblowers are routinely subjected to intense retaliation and professional difficulties when they come forward, and the process of claiming and securing an award takes years. Everything this whistleblower is saying seems consistent with dozens of other stories which have emerged of Boeing's corroded engineering practices.
  - romaaeterna 7y ago
    > Compensation for filing legitimate claims is an important carrot to encourage people with inside information to speak out I've found over the course of my life that money encourages all sorts of people to say all sorts of things.
dblohm7 7y ago
> “Mr. Pierson did the right thing by elevating his concerns.” I doubt that Boeing would have been so gracious to Pierson if they had not already been waist-deep in shit.
AndrewBissell 7y ago
The thing that strikes me about the Boeing MAX story is that executives made decisions which they were told over and over again would put lives in danger, and so far the likely monetary damages are so small the stock is completely unfazed, and criminal prosecution is a distant, all-but-impossible notion.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  I don't think the majority of people understand how deep this problem went. Back when they were first grounded, we saw stuff on HN nearly every week. I don't think it got much place elsewhere. Many of my friends are really unaware of how serious the Boeing situation is. Same thing for back when Uber had a new scandal (grey ball, harassment memo, hell map, hiring Eric Holder to run damage control, the other harassment memo). I'd tell friends I refused to use Uber and they were mostly unaware of half of that stuff.
mzs 7y ago
What's worse is that the upcoming MCAS fix is not a fix. If one sensor is misbehaving (seemingly more common than desirable) then pitch-up will not be automatically corrected: "Boeing specifically highlighted in presentation documents the new MCAS compares inputs from two angle of attack (AOA) sensors as opposed to a single sensor in the original, flawed, design. MCAS will only activate if data from both sensors agree the AOA is too high. MCAS will activate only once per high AOA event. Pilots will be able to override it and the system will not activate automatically a second time. In the original design, the system reactivated over and over. The presentation reiterates the crew can deactivate MCAS by turning off the automatic trim system and manually turning the trim wheel." https://imgur.com/a/H5milYP https://imgur.com/a/H5milYP
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Hmm I wonder if that will be accepted. The whole point of MCAS was to avoid getting assigned a new type which would require airlines to pay to have pilots certified on the new type, with MCAS only working and only fixing the maneuvering differences when both AOA sensors agree (and Boeing not making AOA a critical system with redundancy) it will be interesting to see if this still gets the benefit of sharing type rating with the existing 737s. I imagine the FAA is going to be reluctant to just wave them through this time and I wonder if one activation is enough to actually correct the pitch up.
- donmcronald 7y ago
  Yeah. I don’t get it. If MCAS changes the way the plane flies, and MCAS can be switched off, don’t the pilots need to know how to fly the plane without MCAS? Then why even have MCAS?
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/tKX4Y http://archive.is/tKX4Y
heisenbit 7y ago
The best remedy to runaway quality problems is management by wandering around (MBWA) but that is of course impossible if HQ is in Chicago.

111 points by kaboro 7y ago

JadeNB 7y ago

The title should be "whistle-blower says", per the headline—did it get automatically truncated?

dang 7y ago
No. Maybe it was just a select-paste glitch. Fixed now!

_Codemonkeyism 7y ago

"He worries that once the Max is flying again, Boeing — scrambling to make up for the costly delays — will not have changed."

xiphias2 7y ago

Why would I believe anything Boing's PR says if nobody went to prison for endangering so many people's lives? It makes sense that sensors on an expensive plane shouldn't malfunction so early.

me_me_me 7y ago
endangering ?? Two planes crashed and the higher-ups knew about the problems and were actively showing it under rug hoping somehow they can fix it without backlash.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Yea. I doubt we'll see it, but there should be criminal negligence changes in there somewhere. There are so many people involved it's easy to distribute blame or blame the entire process. But if the right email can be tracked down, there's going to be someone(s) in that loop that fits the charges for 200+ counts of manslaughter.
paulmd 7y ago
physical sensors malfunction all the time, and you have a fleet of several hundred aircraft. You would be shocked to learn how many faults an aircraft can have at a given time and still be allowed to take off. That's what redundancy is for, if everything had to be all-systems-go every time then you couldn't run an aircraft for a week straight. It doesn't matter as long as you have a spare, and it'll get fixed the next time you're in for maintenance. the issue with the 737 MAX is that there are only two sensors, and so far I don't see that being addressed. One sensor failing should not kill the aircraft, and it should not disable a control regime that is necessary for the aircraft to receive type certification.
- avthrow9 7y ago
  > You would be shocked to learn how many faults an aircraft can have at a given time and still be allowed to take off. Yep. Next time you fly, look through the cockpit door as you board for maintenance tag-outs -- usually red flags with 'INOP' labeling, most likely on the circuit breaker panels above the pilots. The Gimli Glider incident occurred partially because of a circuit breaker tag-out in the 767 fuel quantity indicator system. Aircraft manufacturers and regulators produce a Minimum Equipment List which stipulates what is required for flight. If you get your hands on one for the plane you're on, you might be surprised to discover what _isn't_ on it and what is permitted to fail. It's heavy, but here's an older American MEL for the 737 family: http://fsims.faa.gov/wdocs/mmel/b-737%20r54a.pdf http://fsims.faa.gov/wdocs/mmel/b-737%20r54a.pdf Pages 35-1 and 35-2 offer some interesting reading about the passenger oxygen system, for example.
  - jdsully 7y ago
    In the Gimli glider case the aircraft wasn't legally allowed to take off. The pilots also deferred the decision on whether to take off to the maintenance crew who are not the ones authorized to make that decision. The pilots were initially demoted because of that but were restored due to public pressure. There was mitigating circumstances though, the procedures were frequently being revised (the 767 was brand new) and previously it had been permissible to take off without a fuel indicator. None of this takes away from the huge achievement of their landing. Simulator runs show the landing was near impossible. Had Captain Pearson not been an experienced glider pilot its likely they would have ditched in the river, and the historical survivability of water landings are not good.

allovernow 7y ago

>Employees at the Renton, Wash., factory where the Max is produced were overworked, exhausted and making mistakes, Mr. Pierson said in an interview. A cascade of damaged parts, missing tools and incomplete instructions was preventing planes from being built on time. Executives were pressuring workers to complete planes despite staff shortages and a chaotic factory floor. I wonder how much of this is directly the result of penny pinching by MBA types. I'm gradually coming to believe that non-technical management of technical endeavors is the root of most failure in the engineering domain.

pron 7y ago
Technical management of technical endeavors can be just as bad, although you could be right when you say it's "the root of most failure in the engineering domain," because when technical people manage, the product is often either not delivered, or is delivered but doesn't have any critical failures because people don't want to use it. It's very good when managers have technical expertise in addition, but managerial expertise is much more important in management. Just something I learned in my two-plus decades in the software industry.
- fredley 7y ago
  You need both technical and non-technical management skills, and if you can't get both in the same person (likely!), you need the people from each side in a relationship that's based on trust and recognition of each other's expertise. Too often these relationships break down and become adversarial, to the detriment of everyone involved, and of course the project.
- mihaaly 7y ago
  Well, it is difficult to find an industry with worse track record of product quality and reliability than the software industry, I wouldn't use software development management as reference. (also two decades is software development... and software usage!!) In my experience managers lacking domain knowledge make more harm than good but are excellent putting emphasis on adjacent and auxiliary parts they are good at. Anyone put in charge of something they are not competent in would do the same.

romaaeterna 7y ago

Did any of these production problems relate to the MCAS malfunction though? Also, this is buried further down in the article than it should be. > Mr. Pierson and his lawyers declined to answer whether he was seeking whistle-blower protection or filing a federal whistle-blower case. He has hired a prominent whistle-blower lawyer, Eric Havian, and could stand to gain monetarily if he pursued such a case.

joezydeco 7y ago
If the AoA vanes were installed incorrectly, perhaps so? "Mr. Pierson believes that the production problems may have played a role in the crashes. In both accidents, MCAS was triggered when a vane installed on the plane’s fuselage malfunctioned." "Workers were completing jobs out of sequence, leading to additional mistakes."
- yread 7y ago
  AoA vanes are usually very reliable and rarely fail in other types
  - joezydeco 7y ago
    Are they reliable only when installed properly, or even when they're installed incorrectly?
AndrewBissell 7y ago
Compensation for filing legitimate claims is an important carrot to encourage people with inside information to speak out. Whistleblowers are routinely subjected to intense retaliation and professional difficulties when they come forward, and the process of claiming and securing an award takes years. Everything this whistleblower is saying seems consistent with dozens of other stories which have emerged of Boeing's corroded engineering practices.
- romaaeterna 7y ago
  > Compensation for filing legitimate claims is an important carrot to encourage people with inside information to speak out I've found over the course of my life that money encourages all sorts of people to say all sorts of things.

dblohm7 7y ago

> “Mr. Pierson did the right thing by elevating his concerns.” I doubt that Boeing would have been so gracious to Pierson if they had not already been waist-deep in shit.

AndrewBissell 7y ago

The thing that strikes me about the Boeing MAX story is that executives made decisions which they were told over and over again would put lives in danger, and so far the likely monetary damages are so small the stock is completely unfazed, and criminal prosecution is a distant, all-but-impossible notion.

djsumdog 7y ago
I don't think the majority of people understand how deep this problem went. Back when they were first grounded, we saw stuff on HN nearly every week. I don't think it got much place elsewhere. Many of my friends are really unaware of how serious the Boeing situation is. Same thing for back when Uber had a new scandal (grey ball, harassment memo, hell map, hiring Eric Holder to run damage control, the other harassment memo). I'd tell friends I refused to use Uber and they were mostly unaware of half of that stuff.

mzs 7y ago

What's worse is that the upcoming MCAS fix is not a fix. If one sensor is misbehaving (seemingly more common than desirable) then pitch-up will not be automatically corrected: "Boeing specifically highlighted in presentation documents the new MCAS compares inputs from two angle of attack (AOA) sensors as opposed to a single sensor in the original, flawed, design. MCAS will only activate if data from both sensors agree the AOA is too high. MCAS will activate only once per high AOA event. Pilots will be able to override it and the system will not activate automatically a second time. In the original design, the system reactivated over and over. The presentation reiterates the crew can deactivate MCAS by turning off the automatic trim system and manually turning the trim wheel." https://imgur.com/a/H5milYP https://imgur.com/a/H5milYP

rtkwe 7y ago
Hmm I wonder if that will be accepted. The whole point of MCAS was to avoid getting assigned a new type which would require airlines to pay to have pilots certified on the new type, with MCAS only working and only fixing the maneuvering differences when both AOA sensors agree (and Boeing not making AOA a critical system with redundancy) it will be interesting to see if this still gets the benefit of sharing type rating with the existing 737s. I imagine the FAA is going to be reluctant to just wave them through this time and I wonder if one activation is enough to actually correct the pitch up.
donmcronald 7y ago
Yeah. I don’t get it. If MCAS changes the way the plane flies, and MCAS can be switched off, don’t the pilots need to know how to fly the plane without MCAS? Then why even have MCAS?

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/tKX4Y http://archive.is/tKX4Y

heisenbit 7y ago

The best remedy to runaway quality problems is management by wandering around (MBWA) but that is of course impossible if HQ is in Chicago.