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This makes me wonder how long it would take for a competent technical leader to course-correct the culture and product issues that have crept in at Boeing. It s

This makes me wonder how long it would take for a competent technical leader to course-correct the culture and product issues that have crept in at Boeing. It seems to me it would be on the order of years to get their house in order to get quality to where it should have been.

bradhe 7y ago
> competent technical leader to course-correct the culture and product issues that have crept in at Boeing. This issue looks to be a pretty run-of-the-mill bug in their software. It's likewise scoped down pretty far--there only exist a few runways (in US, Colombia, and Guayana) that make this relevant. ADs like this come out all the time.
- eggy 7y ago
  I get the gist of what you are saying about it being par for the course, but can you explain why a heading of 270 (West if 0 is North)would affect air worthiness? Is it something to due with true North vs. magnetic north deviations? Grasping here. I am truly curious about this one. Thanks!
  - bradhe 7y ago
    Air worthiness is determined by the FAA. In this case, the aircraft are only considered not airworthy when the flight plan calls for landing on one of those runways. Operating them in any other configuration is A-OK. As to why the bug exists, who knows :) Edit: Clarified slightly.
  - jonas21 7y ago
    It affects airworthiness because the displays went blank when certain ILS approaches with heading 270 were selected. This is unexpected and would require the flight crew to fall back on other instruments. The FAA routinely issues airworthiness directives for all sorts of safety issues. Here are a few others published in the past week or so: https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/f0ddb5e68a9223aa862584ff00566373/$FILE/2020-01-17.pdf https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf... https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/f44c3d2f513d5268862584f900515e04/$FILE/2020-01-14.pdf https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf... https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/4aea68db57652880862584f900515ce0/$FILE/2019-26-01.pdf https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf... https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/85e929ccd96d5695862584f900515b4c/$FILE/2019-25-20.pdf https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf...
  - dlgeek 7y ago
    Based on the AD, I suspect they're doing some sort of math on the longitude coordinates of the runway borders/endpoints. ("[O]nly seven runways worldwide, as identified in this AD, have latitude and longitude values that cause the blanking behavior.")
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Why does correctness matter, its not like anyone is ACTUALLY named "DROP TABLE users;"
  - ananonymoususer 7y ago
    Background for the post above: https://xkcd.com/327/ https://xkcd.com/327/
- ssivark 7y ago
  Not blaming this commenter specifically, but this pervasive callous attitude of over-focusing on narrow metrics of importance seems to be why our general experience with software is so... shitty. The problem with such “partial” functionality is that it breaks composition. When you start building systems with a dozen modules, each with a couple of edge cases like this, the probability of something failing becomes high, and makes the final result/experience very crappy. Imagine if you had a sweater you couldn’t wear on Tuesdays! For those who don’t get it, it’s not just about how often this “bug” affects the system (let alone the fact that it is quite severe). It indicates an utter lack of competence towards developing safety critical systems... like, how can one be writing navigation code and NOT know this? That this could be considered a run-of-the-mill software bug means that we have set our standards too low.
redis_mlc 7y ago
Isn't gonna happen. The amount of outsourcing, regulatory side-stepping and bean-counting is beyond the tipping point.
DrStalker 7y ago
At this point it would be easier to start a new company and import the positive things from Boeing. They've lost their "engineering first" mentality and that's not something that is easy to get back, and they may not be able to handle the financial losses involved in doing so after running as "money first" for so long.
ArchReaper 7y ago
>how long it would take for a competent technical leader to course-correct the culture Undefined. The problem was never a lack of technical proficiency, the problem is the culture.
RandallBrown 7y ago
From what I've heard, the recent CEO who was forced to step down was the competent technical leader that was working on fixing the problems at Boeing. He just didn't have time to do it.

bradhe 7y ago

> competent technical leader to course-correct the culture and product issues that have crept in at Boeing. This issue looks to be a pretty run-of-the-mill bug in their software. It's likewise scoped down pretty far--there only exist a few runways (in US, Colombia, and Guayana) that make this relevant. ADs like this come out all the time.

eggy 7y ago
I get the gist of what you are saying about it being par for the course, but can you explain why a heading of 270 (West if 0 is North)would affect air worthiness? Is it something to due with true North vs. magnetic north deviations? Grasping here. I am truly curious about this one. Thanks!
- bradhe 7y ago
  Air worthiness is determined by the FAA. In this case, the aircraft are only considered not airworthy when the flight plan calls for landing on one of those runways. Operating them in any other configuration is A-OK. As to why the bug exists, who knows :) Edit: Clarified slightly.
- jonas21 7y ago
  It affects airworthiness because the displays went blank when certain ILS approaches with heading 270 were selected. This is unexpected and would require the flight crew to fall back on other instruments. The FAA routinely issues airworthiness directives for all sorts of safety issues. Here are a few others published in the past week or so: https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/f0ddb5e68a9223aa862584ff00566373/$FILE/2020-01-17.pdf https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf... https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/f44c3d2f513d5268862584f900515e04/$FILE/2020-01-14.pdf https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf... https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/4aea68db57652880862584f900515ce0/$FILE/2019-26-01.pdf https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf... https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/85e929ccd96d5695862584f900515b4c/$FILE/2019-25-20.pdf https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf...
- dlgeek 7y ago
  Based on the AD, I suspect they're doing some sort of math on the longitude coordinates of the runway borders/endpoints. ("[O]nly seven runways worldwide, as identified in this AD, have latitude and longitude values that cause the blanking behavior.")
throwaway2048 7y ago
Why does correctness matter, its not like anyone is ACTUALLY named "DROP TABLE users;"
- ananonymoususer 7y ago
  Background for the post above: https://xkcd.com/327/ https://xkcd.com/327/
ssivark 7y ago
Not blaming this commenter specifically, but this pervasive callous attitude of over-focusing on narrow metrics of importance seems to be why our general experience with software is so... shitty. The problem with such “partial” functionality is that it breaks composition. When you start building systems with a dozen modules, each with a couple of edge cases like this, the probability of something failing becomes high, and makes the final result/experience very crappy. Imagine if you had a sweater you couldn’t wear on Tuesdays! For those who don’t get it, it’s not just about how often this “bug” affects the system (let alone the fact that it is quite severe). It indicates an utter lack of competence towards developing safety critical systems... like, how can one be writing navigation code and NOT know this? That this could be considered a run-of-the-mill software bug means that we have set our standards too low.

redis_mlc 7y ago

Isn't gonna happen. The amount of outsourcing, regulatory side-stepping and bean-counting is beyond the tipping point.

DrStalker 7y ago

At this point it would be easier to start a new company and import the positive things from Boeing. They've lost their "engineering first" mentality and that's not something that is easy to get back, and they may not be able to handle the financial losses involved in doing so after running as "money first" for so long.

ArchReaper 7y ago

>how long it would take for a competent technical leader to course-correct the culture Undefined. The problem was never a lack of technical proficiency, the problem is the culture.

RandallBrown 7y ago

From what I've heard, the recent CEO who was forced to step down was the competent technical leader that was working on fixing the problems at Boeing. He just didn't have time to do it.