4 ms·
Paywall. >Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft were grounded in 2019 after two fatal crashes caused partly by a software flaw. Hm, I thought it was more related to Boein
by fnord123 6y ago
Paywall.
>Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft were grounded in 2019 after two fatal crashes caused partly by a software flaw.
Hm, I thought it was more related to Boeing's management misrepresented MCAS to avoid scrutiny.
From wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings :
> On the Boeing 737 MAX, MCAS was intended to mimic pitching behavior similar to aircraft in the previous generation of the series, the Boeing 737 NG. MCAS activated by input from only one of the airplane's two angle of attack sensors, making the system susceptible to a single point of failure. It could not be instinctively disabled by pulling on the control yoke. During aircraft certification, Boeing removed a description of MCAS in the MAX flight manuals, leaving pilots unaware of the system when the airplane entered service.[73]
Software can't invent sensor input. And hiding information from pilots being trained is not a software error.
But really this is just a good excuse to re-post Paul Ross's excellent talk on Blame and the Fallacy of Root Cause Analysis: https://pyvideo.org/pycon-uk-2017/blame-and-the-fallacy-of-root-cause-analysis.html https://pyvideo.org/pycon-uk-2017/blame-and-the-fallacy-of-r...
- carlmr 6y agoHaving worked in safety critical systems software, I'd say it was a multipoint failure. While the initial problem was the decision to use MCAS to get through without retraining, any person working on the software should also have realized that relying on a single input is not ok. It was management failure + requirements engineering failure + software engineering failure. It was caused by management's greed and short-sightedness, but it could have been caught at more points in the process.
- fnord123 6y agoEngineering and software can only push back if the environment allows it. If management has developed an environment of blame and where push back on requirements results in retaliation then the idea of free will are an illusion. But I don't know anything about Boeing's company culture.
- brazzy 6y ago> https://pyvideo.org/pycon-uk-2017/blame-and-the-fallacy-of-root-cause-analysis.html https://pyvideo.org/pycon-uk-2017/blame-and-the-fallacy-of-r... That... seems like a really bad misrepresentation of root cause analysis. Or maybe a description of root cause analysis done very, very badly. In every description of it that I've seen it's stressed that assigning blame is an antipattern.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- spectrum1234 6y agoYes paywall but please support The Economist. They are one of the few great news sources left.