5 ms·

> Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot He's one who really needs to go to jail. Why didn't they name him?

ChuckNorris89 7y ago
Because Boeing is a company of national importance and also a monopoly on home turf, vital to the US security and economy so they're untouchable in the US. Just like how no VW employee went to jail in Germany for emissions cheating.
- dawnerd 7y ago
  Also a good way to turn an employee willing to do terrible things into a whistle blower.
- cedivad 7y ago
  VW wasn't nearly as bad. People need to go to jail over those deaths and their legacy used as a reminder for those that come next. Here is another damning Boeing message, follow the source for more: https://twitter.com/cedivad/status/1215558552229683200 https://twitter.com/cedivad/status/1215558552229683200
  - FooHentai 7y ago
    As bad by what metric? VWs emissions overshoot has been projected to cause 1200 deaths: http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deaths-europe-0303 http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deat...
    - cedivad 7y ago
      Company values. On one end of the spectrum you have a relatively small group of people cheating and no idea where the bucket stopped. For Boeing you have multiple lines (not only the 737 MAX but the 777 too) going as far as handing over bribes to the FAA, with upper management investing the budget savings on some yacht time.
    - close04 7y ago
      For most people actual deaths are more immediately apparent than estimated deaths. By driving a car, riding a bus, or taking a plane any regular person also contributes to some of those estimated deaths. But this is very different from causing direct deaths by knowingly disabling a safety feature on a car, plane, or bus for example.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      How do we know that something caused 1200 deaths, instead of, say for example, 1% of a death of each of 120,000 individuals?
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    Define bad. As a cyclist in Europe I breathe in fumes from VWs diesel engines on a daily basis. I'm wondering how shorter the lifespan for me and others like me will be in the long run. I'd say that's pretty bad but as the deaths are not instantaneous, the long term damage is difficult to quantify.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - xiphias2 7y ago
      My suggestion is to just stop doing it, especially if you start sleeping worse (the first symptom if you're affected). My life was ruined by not caring about living near a highway even though I easily had the money to get into a better apartment. Now for the past 5 years (I'm 38 now) my life is about trying to find places with clean enough air, which is much harder and more expensive in winter time. I'm always looking at experiments that reverse methylation damage, and hoping that those experiments succeed before I get cancer, but there's only 1 successful experiment so far, and I have no idea if it would help me.
      - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
        Thanks for the tips. Where do you live now?
        xiphias2 7y ago
        Right now I'm in a boutique hotel in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic on the beach. Last year I was in small cities in Colombia, like Pereira or Armenia in small hotels/AirBnb-s far from the city center. I can't live in big cities anymore, and I'm really missing it. I'd like to go to Australia as well, but I'm afraid of the air pollution due to forest fires.
      - s1artibartfast 7y ago
        Do you have any information you can share regarding the highway? I live next to one
  - WBrad 7y ago
    When the defeat device was turned off during normal engine use its emissions went up by 40x the legal limit. VW's scandal was unprecedented in my opinion. The NOx emitted by those filthy cars are awful for anyone with respiratory issues.
  - P_I_Staker 7y ago
    While still substantially less than the 737 Max, plenty of people died because of that. We're not even really talking orders of magnitude, but around 10-20% @~59 premature deaths estimated (vs ~300 w/the max). That's not accounting for other health issues, and stress on the environment source: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/114005/meta;jsessionid=CBB0DEF280F6107CE4771D4142C8BA0D.c5.iopscience.cld.iop.org https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/1...
- Entalpi 7y ago
  Lets not forget that some actually got to go to prison[0]. [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-executive-sentenced-to-7-years-in-prison-for-diesel-role https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-execut...
  - close04 7y ago
    That happened in a US court but VW's CEO and a few other top execs were also criminally indicted in Germany. I think it's still ongoing so no outcome yet.
- sveme 7y ago
  Not true. Several actually went to jail, including the former boss of Audi, Rupert Stadler. However, their trials are yet to come, so no final decision on jail time yet.
adwww 7y ago
The further down the PDF I go, the more I agree with you. Here's another one of his quotes: > There is absolutely no reason to require your pilots to require a Max simulator to begin flying the Max. Once the engines are started, there is only one difference between NG and Max procedurally, and that is that there is no OFF position of the gear handle. Boeing does not understand what is to be gained by a 3h simulator session, when the procedures are essentially the same.
- phire 7y ago
  This makes me angry. Not that 3 hours of simulator training would have helped in either crash. The problem wasn't that the ipad course was inadequate training for the new procedures (as he said there were no major procedural differences), but that any mention of MCAS had been removed from the manual to avoid needing new or modified procedures. Even worse, MCAS was designed to be near-impossible to override, using data from only one sensor, to avoid the need for procedural changes.
  - jeffnappi 7y ago
    Not to defend Boeing or the folks in these messages in any way, but as I understand it MCAS initially was making use of multiple sensors. It was changed at one point to only use 1[1]. It would be important to know the timing of these messages relative to the development. Another _unverified_ thing I heard was that initially MCAS would only be able to issue a single nose down command, and was later modified to be able to issue multiple. 1. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the-inside-story-of-mcas-how-boeings-737-max-system-gained-power-and-lost-safeguards/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the...
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      From what I understand, the decision to change it from using 2 sensors to 1 sensor was specifically because if the system used 2 sensors it was considered a safety system requiring simulator training for the failure scenarios. IMO Boeing should be required to separate the military and civilian parts of the company and allow the military side to build civilian aircraft based on existing civilian models. I honestly think it's the only way to save the company, because right now airlines, regulators, pilots and passengers do not trust the current incarnation of Boeing. With their shady culture, we don't know what else is hiding in the airplane. Culture issues aren't solved overnight. I fly a lot of miles and am the type of person who keeps the airlines in business, and I will not fly on a 737 MAX for the foreseeable future. My coworkers are in the same boat. I don't see the American carriers being able to return these planes to service before 2022. This is absolutely an existential threat to the US aviation industry, and I think the only solution is to split Boeing up.

Because Boeing is a company of national importance and also a monopoly on home turf, vital to the US security and economy so they're untouchable in the US. Just like how no VW employee went to jail in Germany for emissions cheating.

dawnerd 7y ago
Also a good way to turn an employee willing to do terrible things into a whistle blower.
cedivad 7y ago
VW wasn't nearly as bad. People need to go to jail over those deaths and their legacy used as a reminder for those that come next. Here is another damning Boeing message, follow the source for more: https://twitter.com/cedivad/status/1215558552229683200 https://twitter.com/cedivad/status/1215558552229683200
- FooHentai 7y ago
  As bad by what metric? VWs emissions overshoot has been projected to cause 1200 deaths: http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deaths-europe-0303 http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deat...
  - cedivad 7y ago
    Company values. On one end of the spectrum you have a relatively small group of people cheating and no idea where the bucket stopped. For Boeing you have multiple lines (not only the 737 MAX but the 777 too) going as far as handing over bribes to the FAA, with upper management investing the budget savings on some yacht time.
  - close04 7y ago
    For most people actual deaths are more immediately apparent than estimated deaths. By driving a car, riding a bus, or taking a plane any regular person also contributes to some of those estimated deaths. But this is very different from causing direct deaths by knowingly disabling a safety feature on a car, plane, or bus for example.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    How do we know that something caused 1200 deaths, instead of, say for example, 1% of a death of each of 120,000 individuals?
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  Define bad. As a cyclist in Europe I breathe in fumes from VWs diesel engines on a daily basis. I'm wondering how shorter the lifespan for me and others like me will be in the long run. I'd say that's pretty bad but as the deaths are not instantaneous, the long term damage is difficult to quantify.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - xiphias2 7y ago
    My suggestion is to just stop doing it, especially if you start sleeping worse (the first symptom if you're affected). My life was ruined by not caring about living near a highway even though I easily had the money to get into a better apartment. Now for the past 5 years (I'm 38 now) my life is about trying to find places with clean enough air, which is much harder and more expensive in winter time. I'm always looking at experiments that reverse methylation damage, and hoping that those experiments succeed before I get cancer, but there's only 1 successful experiment so far, and I have no idea if it would help me.
    - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
      Thanks for the tips. Where do you live now?
      - xiphias2 7y ago
        Right now I'm in a boutique hotel in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic on the beach. Last year I was in small cities in Colombia, like Pereira or Armenia in small hotels/AirBnb-s far from the city center. I can't live in big cities anymore, and I'm really missing it. I'd like to go to Australia as well, but I'm afraid of the air pollution due to forest fires.
    - s1artibartfast 7y ago
      Do you have any information you can share regarding the highway? I live next to one
- WBrad 7y ago
  When the defeat device was turned off during normal engine use its emissions went up by 40x the legal limit. VW's scandal was unprecedented in my opinion. The NOx emitted by those filthy cars are awful for anyone with respiratory issues.
- P_I_Staker 7y ago
  While still substantially less than the 737 Max, plenty of people died because of that. We're not even really talking orders of magnitude, but around 10-20% @~59 premature deaths estimated (vs ~300 w/the max). That's not accounting for other health issues, and stress on the environment source: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/114005/meta;jsessionid=CBB0DEF280F6107CE4771D4142C8BA0D.c5.iopscience.cld.iop.org https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/1...
Entalpi 7y ago
Lets not forget that some actually got to go to prison[0]. [0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-executive-sentenced-to-7-years-in-prison-for-diesel-role https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-execut...
- close04 7y ago
  That happened in a US court but VW's CEO and a few other top execs were also criminally indicted in Germany. I think it's still ongoing so no outcome yet.
sveme 7y ago
Not true. Several actually went to jail, including the former boss of Audi, Rupert Stadler. However, their trials are yet to come, so no final decision on jail time yet.

adwww 7y ago

The further down the PDF I go, the more I agree with you. Here's another one of his quotes: > There is absolutely no reason to require your pilots to require a Max simulator to begin flying the Max. Once the engines are started, there is only one difference between NG and Max procedurally, and that is that there is no OFF position of the gear handle. Boeing does not understand what is to be gained by a 3h simulator session, when the procedures are essentially the same.

phire 7y ago
This makes me angry. Not that 3 hours of simulator training would have helped in either crash. The problem wasn't that the ipad course was inadequate training for the new procedures (as he said there were no major procedural differences), but that any mention of MCAS had been removed from the manual to avoid needing new or modified procedures. Even worse, MCAS was designed to be near-impossible to override, using data from only one sensor, to avoid the need for procedural changes.
- jeffnappi 7y ago
  Not to defend Boeing or the folks in these messages in any way, but as I understand it MCAS initially was making use of multiple sensors. It was changed at one point to only use 1[1]. It would be important to know the timing of these messages relative to the development. Another _unverified_ thing I heard was that initially MCAS would only be able to issue a single nose down command, and was later modified to be able to issue multiple. 1. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the-inside-story-of-mcas-how-boeings-737-max-system-gained-power-and-lost-safeguards/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the...
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    From what I understand, the decision to change it from using 2 sensors to 1 sensor was specifically because if the system used 2 sensors it was considered a safety system requiring simulator training for the failure scenarios. IMO Boeing should be required to separate the military and civilian parts of the company and allow the military side to build civilian aircraft based on existing civilian models. I honestly think it's the only way to save the company, because right now airlines, regulators, pilots and passengers do not trust the current incarnation of Boeing. With their shady culture, we don't know what else is hiding in the airplane. Culture issues aren't solved overnight. I fly a lot of miles and am the type of person who keeps the airlines in business, and I will not fly on a 737 MAX for the foreseeable future. My coworkers are in the same boat. I don't see the American carriers being able to return these planes to service before 2022. This is absolutely an existential threat to the US aviation industry, and I think the only solution is to split Boeing up.