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The high level problem was the whole mess that Boeing and the FAA forced themselves into by lying to pilots about the plane being like the old plane. This motiv

by pas 5y ago

The high level problem was the whole mess that Boeing and the FAA forced themselves into by lying to pilots about the plane being like the old plane. This motivated Boeing to solve everything in a sort of clandestine way, which meant there was no proper error handling, and Boeing simply covered their asses by pointing to the runaway stabilizer checklist, which they claimed was sufficient to handle MCAS problems. This should never have been greenlighted, approved, manufactured, designed. This went against a culture of safety (least surprise, etc) at every level.

bumby 5y ago
It's the unfortunate case that they succumbed to schedule pressure. This is similar to the Space Shuttle Challenger decision that led to catastrophe. I think "lying" may be too strong of a word, but they were certainly incentivized to believe it was just a modification of an existing airframe. If I remember correctly, Boeing was essentially told by an airline that if they don't come up with a design quickly the airline would instead move their business to airbus. Certifying a modification to an existing design is much faster than certifying a brand new design, so every management decision was made with that lens. Add to it the political side where the competitor is a non-US company and it gets more complicated. Add to that the FAA is likely too understaffed to provide adequate oversight so they instead delegate it to the manufacturer. This will be another case study in misaligned incentives and the tradeoffs of engineering decisions under uncertainty of both business and design risk.
- pas 5y ago
  That's the entire problem. (At least this the view I ended up adopting, and thus my argument.) It goes eyes-shut-closed full-throttle balls-to-the-walls against safety. You don't rush nuclear power plants, why are we doing it with planes? (And yes we should use reuse already approved, known, standardized - modular, components. But they should be indistinguishably the same, not "we certified it the same by introducing so much complexity, so many new failure modes, that we have to hide those".) And if safety costs a lot, then we can work on improving our processes (design, safety evaluation), but the process itself should lead to better stuff, not probably-not-that-worse but marginally cheaper so we can keep our semi-vendor-locked-in clients. I'm aware of the Boeing-Airbus US-EU cockfight, and that as usual a coordination problem is at the root of this. But the way forward should be a healthier market, more competition, not a monoculture. (Or duo.) Or, if costs force us into such a pathological state of the airplane market, then we should treat it as such. (It should be viewed as one big problem. The total lack of healthy competition must be factored into the approval process. And a high-level Market Authority should step in to prevent regulatory capture and the usual - almost guaranteed to happen - shenanigans.)
  - bumby 5y ago
    I completely agree. My concern is that the problem is rooted in human psychology rather than process control, which makes it much harder to fix. My experience in aerospace is that the industry swings back and forth on this like a pendulum. A bad event happens and then there’s a focus on safety improvements. Then years or decades go by and no bad event happens. Rather than attribute this increased safety to the process changes, those very same changes are looked at as a burden? Why are we spending all this money and time on quality and safety checks, people say. It’s killing our schedule and budget, they conclude. So they work to erode those processes until another adverse event happens, albeit of a slightly different flavor. Rinse and repeat.

by pas 5y ago

bumby 5y ago

It's the unfortunate case that they succumbed to schedule pressure. This is similar to the Space Shuttle Challenger decision that led to catastrophe. I think "lying" may be too strong of a word, but they were certainly incentivized to believe it was just a modification of an existing airframe. If I remember correctly, Boeing was essentially told by an airline that if they don't come up with a design quickly the airline would instead move their business to airbus. Certifying a modification to an existing design is much faster than certifying a brand new design, so every management decision was made with that lens. Add to it the political side where the competitor is a non-US company and it gets more complicated. Add to that the FAA is likely too understaffed to provide adequate oversight so they instead delegate it to the manufacturer. This will be another case study in misaligned incentives and the tradeoffs of engineering decisions under uncertainty of both business and design risk.

pas 5y ago
That's the entire problem. (At least this the view I ended up adopting, and thus my argument.) It goes eyes-shut-closed full-throttle balls-to-the-walls against safety. You don't rush nuclear power plants, why are we doing it with planes? (And yes we should use reuse already approved, known, standardized - modular, components. But they should be indistinguishably the same, not "we certified it the same by introducing so much complexity, so many new failure modes, that we have to hide those".) And if safety costs a lot, then we can work on improving our processes (design, safety evaluation), but the process itself should lead to better stuff, not probably-not-that-worse but marginally cheaper so we can keep our semi-vendor-locked-in clients. I'm aware of the Boeing-Airbus US-EU cockfight, and that as usual a coordination problem is at the root of this. But the way forward should be a healthier market, more competition, not a monoculture. (Or duo.) Or, if costs force us into such a pathological state of the airplane market, then we should treat it as such. (It should be viewed as one big problem. The total lack of healthy competition must be factored into the approval process. And a high-level Market Authority should step in to prevent regulatory capture and the usual - almost guaranteed to happen - shenanigans.)
- bumby 5y ago
  I completely agree. My concern is that the problem is rooted in human psychology rather than process control, which makes it much harder to fix. My experience in aerospace is that the industry swings back and forth on this like a pendulum. A bad event happens and then there’s a focus on safety improvements. Then years or decades go by and no bad event happens. Rather than attribute this increased safety to the process changes, those very same changes are looked at as a burden? Why are we spending all this money and time on quality and safety checks, people say. It’s killing our schedule and budget, they conclude. So they work to erode those processes until another adverse event happens, albeit of a slightly different flavor. Rinse and repeat.