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On the other hand, Boeing was also under pressure from other customers (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-southwest/u-s-lawmakers-question-boei

by rob74 7y ago

On the other hand, Boeing was also under pressure from other customers (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-southwest/u-s-lawmakers-question-boeings-1-mln-rebate-clause-for-southwest-737-max-orders-idUSKBN1X92D4 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-southwest...) who wanted to avoid simulator training for their pilots. Which doesn't excuse them of course, but I think it's important to see the whole picture...

mcv 7y ago
They could have taken the position that it's up to the airline to decide if they want simulator training. Recommended but not required. That puts the responsibility on the airline. Still not ideal, but better than actively discouraging the training.
- salawat 7y ago
  They couldn't actually afford to have that happen because they then would have had to implement an accurate MAX specific simulator. Doing so would have revealed some of the other design flubs, such as the Flight Computer as a single point of failure. That's why they were so concerned about Lion Air setting a precedent for other customers with regard to simulators.
  - mcv 7y ago
    And that is the true damning point: they wanted to hide a problem they were aware of, and maintain an illusion that all was fine despite knowing it wasn't. Had they taken a more neutral stance, they could argue they didn't know. Now it's just reckless stupid endangerment.
  - addicted 7y ago
    If there is one thing this entire saga has revealed, its that Boeing was criminally culpable at nearly every step of the way. Starting with the design goals of the 737 Max, continuing with penny pinching during the implementation, then bullying and lying during the certification process, then further bullying during the sales and training process, then massive amounts of blame shifting after the first crash, trying to pin it on the airlines and the pilots, then repeating the same thing after the second crash, then not providing documentation and data during the investigation, then further trying to get away with half baked fixes, then bullying the FAA to try and allow the Maxes to fly well before they were ready, etc. At every stage of the process Boeing has led with lies and bullying. There is absolutely no reason to give them the slightest of the benefit of the doubt. For every action, the best approach is probably to consider what would be the worst thing Boeing could have done as a response, because that’s likely what they did.
CaptainZapp 7y ago
Sorry, but: So what? If you're not able to keep promises you shouldn't make them in the first place. The buck stops with you, period. No pilot training was often used as an argument. But I think the problem was actually much more severe. If Boeing would have designed a completely new plane (which they should have) they would have lost a decade to Airbus' offerings in their most important market. That, in my opinion, was the real reason for that shoddy hack of a plane.
- mcv 7y ago
  And now they're still going to lose that as well as their reputation. But if they'd been honest about the fix, required pilot training, maybe this problem would have been discovered in a less catastrophic way so it could have been fixed earlier. It wouldn't have been as cheap as they'd like, but they'd still have a foot in the door in that market and they'd have their reputation. Now they squandered everything.
- Entalpi 7y ago
  So Boeing was slow to react to the market forces at play and lost out to a faster moving more adaptive competitor. When that happens in a market you typically lose money and try to stage a comeback by reinventing yourself or in some way try to work your way back. Boeing chose to rush and is now paying the price for being a slow and complacent behemoth of a company at a market where others are innovating and competing.
  - tmd83 7y ago
    What they are paying so far is peanuts compared to what others paid with their lives. And compared to the company the executives who effectively said, 'so what if people die' will pay essentially nothing.
  - wu_187 7y ago
    This has nothing to do with markets and everything to do with ethics. It is not ethical for a company to knowingly risk lives to rush out a new product. In the airline industry, it is unheard of for this to happen. Everything is triple redundant for a reason. Typically you would cut corners elsewhere that is not a risk for human lives. Boeing already tried that by outsourcing the construction of the 787 and it was riddled with failure. They should have learned their lesson there.
madaxe_again 7y ago
I ran an ecommerce platform for a decade, from inception to billions of pounds of customer throughout per annum. We always listened to our clients, and their wants and needs, but we also always put the robustness and the reliability of the platform over any feature request, no matter how adamant, vocal, or lucrative the client. A big part of being a provider is to be the expert, to be the voice that says “what you are asking for is dangerous, and we will not do it”, and being prepared to sacrifice short term client pleasing for long term stability and overall client happiness. The customer is not the expert. They are not qualified to make decisions that endanger themselves and other customers. This is why they are paying you. Yes, they’ll be thrilled when they get their shiny new blank, but hellfire will rain upon you when you have an outage due to a poorly planned improvement. In my case, our worst case was revenue loss for our customers. In Boeing’s, their worst case is a terrifying death for hundreds of people. The picture here is that Boeing have been deeply irresponsible, and have let their short term goals compromise their long term stability, the quality of their product, and have forgone their duty of care.
6nf 7y ago
Every business faces pressures from their clients to deliver the impossible every single day.
- seanhunter 7y ago
  Precisely this. Responding with integrity is vital and shows that you care about the long-term wellbeing of the client and relationship rather than simply maximising short-term gain.
  - na85 7y ago
    >Responding with integrity is vital and shows that you care about the long-term wellbeing of the client and relationship rather than simply maximising short-term gain. Vital to whom? Certainly not to venture capital nor to shareholders, because I see a real dearth of corporations acting with integrity, especially tech bigcos
    - seanhunter 7y ago
      Vital in the sense that this is one of the opportunities life gives you to either demonstrate greatness or be a bit of a weasel. If you aspire to be more than a weasel you can find a little bit of Cato inside yourself, take what seems in the short term to be the tough road and respond with integrity. As far as VCs and investors are concerned, I have seen all sides of that coin. There definitely are VCs and investors who are always and only out for a quick buck and others who think long-term, act with integrity and respond positively to it in others. In my experience the more you can surround yourselves with the second type the better your life will be, although as a public company, Boeing doesn't have that much opportunity to pick its investors.
empath75 7y ago
Sorry, that’s a ridiculous comparison. It’s like saying it’s okay for VW to cheat on emissions tests because people want cars with low emissions. If Boeing wanted to be responsive to those customers they could have produced a plane that didn’t need additional training.
- dotancohen 7y ago
  > If Boeing wanted to be responsive to those customers they > could have produced a plane that didn’t need additional training. The 737 platform could not accommodate the more efficient, larger engines in their original location. In order to add these engines, they had to be placed in a different location and thus the plane handles differently. Thus, the requirement for additional training. There was no way to create such an efficient aircraft on the 737 airframe without requiring pilot training, even if software could smooth over the differences 99% of the time.
mannykannot 7y ago
These are not equivalent issues - we have market forces pressuring Boeing to keep the cost down versus Boeing pressuring an airline to not train its pilots as it thought was warranted. It is a simple fact that training is part of the total cost of ownership of an airplane, and so it is to be expected that it will be an issue in negotiating the price an airline is willing to pay for them, or whether to go with a different airplane. In a responsible or well-regulated industry, responding to these sorts of issues (which are ubiquitous), through a reduction of safety standards, is supposed to be off the table. What Boeing was doing here was apparently part of a larger campaign to subvert this principle by hiding any hint of a safety concern.

by rob74 7y ago

mcv 7y ago

They could have taken the position that it's up to the airline to decide if they want simulator training. Recommended but not required. That puts the responsibility on the airline. Still not ideal, but better than actively discouraging the training.

salawat 7y ago
They couldn't actually afford to have that happen because they then would have had to implement an accurate MAX specific simulator. Doing so would have revealed some of the other design flubs, such as the Flight Computer as a single point of failure. That's why they were so concerned about Lion Air setting a precedent for other customers with regard to simulators.
- mcv 7y ago
  And that is the true damning point: they wanted to hide a problem they were aware of, and maintain an illusion that all was fine despite knowing it wasn't. Had they taken a more neutral stance, they could argue they didn't know. Now it's just reckless stupid endangerment.
- addicted 7y ago
  If there is one thing this entire saga has revealed, its that Boeing was criminally culpable at nearly every step of the way. Starting with the design goals of the 737 Max, continuing with penny pinching during the implementation, then bullying and lying during the certification process, then further bullying during the sales and training process, then massive amounts of blame shifting after the first crash, trying to pin it on the airlines and the pilots, then repeating the same thing after the second crash, then not providing documentation and data during the investigation, then further trying to get away with half baked fixes, then bullying the FAA to try and allow the Maxes to fly well before they were ready, etc. At every stage of the process Boeing has led with lies and bullying. There is absolutely no reason to give them the slightest of the benefit of the doubt. For every action, the best approach is probably to consider what would be the worst thing Boeing could have done as a response, because that’s likely what they did.

CaptainZapp 7y ago

Sorry, but: So what? If you're not able to keep promises you shouldn't make them in the first place. The buck stops with you, period. No pilot training was often used as an argument. But I think the problem was actually much more severe. If Boeing would have designed a completely new plane (which they should have) they would have lost a decade to Airbus' offerings in their most important market. That, in my opinion, was the real reason for that shoddy hack of a plane.

mcv 7y ago
And now they're still going to lose that as well as their reputation. But if they'd been honest about the fix, required pilot training, maybe this problem would have been discovered in a less catastrophic way so it could have been fixed earlier. It wouldn't have been as cheap as they'd like, but they'd still have a foot in the door in that market and they'd have their reputation. Now they squandered everything.
Entalpi 7y ago
So Boeing was slow to react to the market forces at play and lost out to a faster moving more adaptive competitor. When that happens in a market you typically lose money and try to stage a comeback by reinventing yourself or in some way try to work your way back. Boeing chose to rush and is now paying the price for being a slow and complacent behemoth of a company at a market where others are innovating and competing.
- tmd83 7y ago
  What they are paying so far is peanuts compared to what others paid with their lives. And compared to the company the executives who effectively said, 'so what if people die' will pay essentially nothing.
- wu_187 7y ago
  This has nothing to do with markets and everything to do with ethics. It is not ethical for a company to knowingly risk lives to rush out a new product. In the airline industry, it is unheard of for this to happen. Everything is triple redundant for a reason. Typically you would cut corners elsewhere that is not a risk for human lives. Boeing already tried that by outsourcing the construction of the 787 and it was riddled with failure. They should have learned their lesson there.

madaxe_again 7y ago

I ran an ecommerce platform for a decade, from inception to billions of pounds of customer throughout per annum. We always listened to our clients, and their wants and needs, but we also always put the robustness and the reliability of the platform over any feature request, no matter how adamant, vocal, or lucrative the client. A big part of being a provider is to be the expert, to be the voice that says “what you are asking for is dangerous, and we will not do it”, and being prepared to sacrifice short term client pleasing for long term stability and overall client happiness. The customer is not the expert. They are not qualified to make decisions that endanger themselves and other customers. This is why they are paying you. Yes, they’ll be thrilled when they get their shiny new blank, but hellfire will rain upon you when you have an outage due to a poorly planned improvement. In my case, our worst case was revenue loss for our customers. In Boeing’s, their worst case is a terrifying death for hundreds of people. The picture here is that Boeing have been deeply irresponsible, and have let their short term goals compromise their long term stability, the quality of their product, and have forgone their duty of care.

6nf 7y ago

Every business faces pressures from their clients to deliver the impossible every single day.

seanhunter 7y ago
Precisely this. Responding with integrity is vital and shows that you care about the long-term wellbeing of the client and relationship rather than simply maximising short-term gain.
- na85 7y ago
  >Responding with integrity is vital and shows that you care about the long-term wellbeing of the client and relationship rather than simply maximising short-term gain. Vital to whom? Certainly not to venture capital nor to shareholders, because I see a real dearth of corporations acting with integrity, especially tech bigcos
  - seanhunter 7y ago
    Vital in the sense that this is one of the opportunities life gives you to either demonstrate greatness or be a bit of a weasel. If you aspire to be more than a weasel you can find a little bit of Cato inside yourself, take what seems in the short term to be the tough road and respond with integrity. As far as VCs and investors are concerned, I have seen all sides of that coin. There definitely are VCs and investors who are always and only out for a quick buck and others who think long-term, act with integrity and respond positively to it in others. In my experience the more you can surround yourselves with the second type the better your life will be, although as a public company, Boeing doesn't have that much opportunity to pick its investors.

empath75 7y ago

Sorry, that’s a ridiculous comparison. It’s like saying it’s okay for VW to cheat on emissions tests because people want cars with low emissions. If Boeing wanted to be responsive to those customers they could have produced a plane that didn’t need additional training.

dotancohen 7y ago
> If Boeing wanted to be responsive to those customers they > could have produced a plane that didn’t need additional training. The 737 platform could not accommodate the more efficient, larger engines in their original location. In order to add these engines, they had to be placed in a different location and thus the plane handles differently. Thus, the requirement for additional training. There was no way to create such an efficient aircraft on the 737 airframe without requiring pilot training, even if software could smooth over the differences 99% of the time.

mannykannot 7y ago

These are not equivalent issues - we have market forces pressuring Boeing to keep the cost down versus Boeing pressuring an airline to not train its pilots as it thought was warranted. It is a simple fact that training is part of the total cost of ownership of an airplane, and so it is to be expected that it will be an issue in negotiating the price an airline is willing to pay for them, or whether to go with a different airplane. In a responsible or well-regulated industry, responding to these sorts of issues (which are ubiquitous), through a reduction of safety standards, is supposed to be off the table. What Boeing was doing here was apparently part of a larger campaign to subvert this principle by hiding any hint of a safety concern.