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I have mixed feelings about this. 1) It's nice that FAA reads newspapers and reacts in a sensible way 2) It's weird that they needed an article, rather than sta

I have mixed feelings about this. 1) It's nice that FAA reads newspapers and reacts in a sensible way 2) It's weird that they needed an article, rather than starting investigations after actual incidents.

baggy_trough 5y ago
It's a sign of being in a low-competence regime. What matters is what makes the news, not what's actually happening.
- H8crilA 5y ago
  I have some experience with the aviation authorities, and they are generally competent. And I would say maybe even slightly too nitpicky, just like the general public is very nitpicky about every aircraft accident or incident. It is possible that they just didn't know about the issue it. Did you know, for example, that every bird collision, no matter how small the bird was, has to be registered as a flight incident and investigated? Or that every TCAS warning is a flight incident too, even if everyone knew exactly what was going on and there was no real danger? And I do not think it's wrong, you hit a bird every blue moon and you get extra hour or a few hours of paperwork, it's okay with me. The point is they're very detailed.
  - scardycat 5y ago
    They (aviation authorities) did not seem too nitpicky in clearing Boeing 737 Max and are culpable in the deaths of hundreds of people.
    - selectodude 5y ago
      They (the FAA) oversaw zero deaths caused by the 737 MAX.
      - simonh 5y ago
        That’s rather silly. The FAA allowed those planes to fly in the US, with the flaws that lead to those deaths. They also manipulated test results in order to facilitate recertification of the planes after the crashes.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - wonder_er 5y ago
        Doesn't count in their favor: "FAA safety engineer goes public to slam the agency’s oversight of Boeing’s 737 MAX" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549
      - trimbo 5y ago
        Indonesia has a bilateral agreement for airworthiness with the FAA[1]. [1] - https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/international/bilateral_agreements/baa_basa_listing/ https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/international/bilatera...
      - detaro 5y ago
        It oversaw and did their type certification, which per treaties is the basis on which they operate in many parts of the world.
      - skynetv2 5y ago
        Have you even read one article about how 737 got its air worthiness certification?
    - zz865 5y ago
      I dont remember a 737 Max crash in the USA.
      - Jabbles 5y ago
        The FAA's reputation in other countries is an example of soft power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power
      - detaro 5y ago
        And because of that the FAA was entirely right to type-certify the 737 MAX (which through international agreements is widely recognized) and it's just totally random that they after the crashes grounded them and required lengthy rework?
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      That's not how FAA certification works. Boeing is 100% responsible for providing the correct documents to the FAA, and for their delegated quality reps (Boeing contractors) to verify the aircraft, not the FAA. Neither were done. Now that the FAA has detected problems, it is their responsibility to improve their oversight. However, the FAA does not staff airline engineers to inspect mfgs. in general. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.
  - wonder_er 5y ago
    The FAA is not generally competent: "FAA safety engineer goes public to slam the agency’s oversight of Boeing’s 737 MAX" Discussed on hacker news a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549
sp332 5y ago
VG points out that FAA representatives were in the control room during the flight. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/spaceship-carrying-richard-branson-flew-off-course-faa-is-investigating/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/spaceship-carrying-r...
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > FAA representatives were in the control room Control room doesn't see everything the cockpit sees. Particularly not in a pilot-centered vehicle design like Virgin Galactic's. Having a representative in the room, moreover, doesn't mean it's someone qualified to look for problems. Even if they are, it's a big room with lots going on.
javajosh 5y ago
Regarding 2, it makes sense to me. The FAA's purview is vast. They handle matters pertaining to all airspace in the USA. That includes commercial and private flights, drones, local government, and (of course) space flight. (And maybe even military flights, too, IDK). Is there such a thing as an "FAA detective" that preemptively goes on-sight to verify the reports they receive? Like most agencies, they function primarily on a self-reporting basis, relying heavily on the fear of retributive sanctions to ensure that they aren't being lied to in those reports. Can you imagine the cost of investigating everyone and everything the FAA is supposed to regulate?! My sense is that, unusually among government regulators, the FAA is generally competent and cares about the real consequences of their in/action - both because the subject is life-and-death table stakes, but also because when there's a disaster the FAA itself is, by default, one of the "usual suspects". And rightly so. Personally I see this as a very optimistic story about a regulator that actually does its job.
- refulgentis 5y ago
  Yes, in the article it mentions specifically that FAA agents were in the control room and had access to the pilots warnings. So then it seems more like responding to an article than the facts they saw on the ground Edit: I'm being downvoted to -3 for reading the article and making an anodyne comment answering a question about it. Cool.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Yeah, it definitely smells more like ass-covering for optics than anything they were concerned about at the time of launch.
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    Good they were in the room at the time. I would absolutely want a public accounting for the gap between what the regulators in the room saw vs. why the grounding after the article. Abundance of caution over a nothing-burger? Ok, just say so. A bad call made by the regulators in the room? Ok, human error exists. An intentional effort to keep the regulators need-to-know or an intentional looking the other way? Big problem.
snowwrestler 5y ago
Well it says “after” the article, not “because of,” so it’s possible the FAA was planning to do this anyway. It’s even possible that the causality goes the other way: that the FAA’s movement toward a grounding was the spur for sources to reach out to a reporter.
- sp332 5y ago
  It says "over". Well it does now anyway.
wonder_er 5y ago
According to at least one insider who is well qualified to speak on the issue, the FAA is not competent, should not be trusted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549 "FAA safety engineer goes public to slam the agency’s oversight of Boeing’s 737 MAX"
fotta 5y ago
From the original New Yorker article [0]: > An F.A.A. spokesperson confirmed that Virgin Galactic “deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance” and that an “investigation is ongoing." So this isn't a new investigation. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-red-warning-light-on-richard-bransons-space-flight https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-red-warning-lig...
ascar 5y ago
Quoting the article from yesterday: > An F.A.A. spokesperson confirmed that Virgin Galactic “deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance” and that an “investigation is ongoing.” So I don't know where that whole narrative of the article causing the action is coming from. The investigation was already ongoing and it seems highly unlikely that bureaucrats rush something within 24 hours just because of an article in the newyorker.
- rrss 5y ago
  I think the originally submitted HN title was something like “flights grounded after New Yorker article” instead of the article’s title.
- beerandt 5y ago
  I also doubt that the FAA investigation would have much to do with the major narrative of the article. From their perspective, the flight went off course for 2 mins, and they're looking for the proximate cause. They're looking for a specific safety issue, not any underlying generalized sense of a rotten safety culture at the company. The acute problem might lead directly to a bigger general issue, if there's some direct evidence of fudged risk analysis or some specific, similar, overtly wrong behavior. But more likely, it'll just be: we misjudged how it would handle that specific wind and were blown off course. Or something similar. ETA: Has it even been established that the warning light/entry angle was the cause of or directly related to the airspace violation? Other than the new yorker author's assumption?
  - nieve 5y ago
    Either they deviated by a large margin or the area they were cleared for was too small because you don't just get mildly blown off course enough to exit a decent clearance area.
    - beerandt 5y ago
      Maybe. There are lots of explanations for not having a larger test area, or for miscalculating a manually piloted crafts mach 3+ trajectory. But you're missing the bigger point. It may have been completely unrelated to weather. By "something similar" I mean an innocent, isolated, non-cultural and non-conspiratorial explanation, that won't involve the FAA digging (or having to dig) any deeper than the superficial proximate cause. It was a test flight of a manually piloted craft. To some extent, things will not go as expected. Boeing and Russias last manned flights weren't manually controlled, and both had significant problems- early rocket shutdown and an unintentional, initially unstoppable thruster firing. Yeah it needs investigating, but it's hardly unexpected or uncommon, especially for a test flight.
hinkley 5y ago
I was just talking to an amateur pilot the other day and somehow this general topic came up. The FAA works on an honor system. If they chased people around looking for violations and fining people (which apparently they used to do) then people would try to circumvent detection, or avoid declaring an emergency and end up creating a bigger one. They need transparency for things to improve, so they expect you to self report and they bring the hammer down if you don’t by hitting you where it hurts: right in the flight certifications. From what I’m seeing it looks like Virgin didn’t self report before the news folks got wind and the FAA heard it through the grapevine, so they’ll get a big fat wake up call, and if that doesn’t get their attention then things will get much worse for them. Or, this is just SOP and an angle that sells ads and so it’s being hyped while nothing particularly egregious is happening from the FAA’s point of view.
- edrxty 5y ago
  Can second this. A couple decades ago the FAA was pretty tyrannical in their approach to compliance. Among other things they'd commonly stick inspectors at random airports and run through everyone's paperwork as they came in, handing out incredibly harsh punishments to anyone out of compliance. This garnered a lot of distrust from the community and lead to people devising ways of avoiding them as well as a general sentiment of hiding errors so they wouldn't get aggressively sanctioned. Unusually for federal agencies, the FAA actually reversed course on this behavior and generally just tries to come down on egregious cases. People are encouraged to report on safety slips and near-misses using NASA as an unbiased intermediary. They've been known to be lenient towards minor negligence (ie. unintentional mistakes, airspace/runway incursions, etc) if the pilot recognized it and reported on it for the sake of providing stats for policy decisions. All that said, more recently where the FAA has stopped, insurance has picked up. Insurance companies have been quick to jump on the availability of more sophisticated flight recording/tracking and the prevalence of social media to enforce their own views on aviation safety. Rates have been skyrocketing and it's becoming much harder to insure anything that isn't a simple fixed tricycle gear utility category certified 2-4 seater.
  - NetOpWibby 5y ago
didntknowya 5y ago
only really have to look at the Boeing fiasco to realize the FAA has lost it's tooth. Many companies will take the risk for profit or glory while the FAA take a reactive rather than preventative approach.
lmilcin 5y ago
I am convinced that at the moment fierce competition in this area causes competitors to try to use any excuse possible to do anything they can to stall opponents. Getting any small problem to have as much publicity as possible? Yeah, sounds about right. Pretty sure an anomaly like this would not be happening if space didn't get commercial attention.

baggy_trough 5y ago

It's a sign of being in a low-competence regime. What matters is what makes the news, not what's actually happening.

H8crilA 5y ago
I have some experience with the aviation authorities, and they are generally competent. And I would say maybe even slightly too nitpicky, just like the general public is very nitpicky about every aircraft accident or incident. It is possible that they just didn't know about the issue it. Did you know, for example, that every bird collision, no matter how small the bird was, has to be registered as a flight incident and investigated? Or that every TCAS warning is a flight incident too, even if everyone knew exactly what was going on and there was no real danger? And I do not think it's wrong, you hit a bird every blue moon and you get extra hour or a few hours of paperwork, it's okay with me. The point is they're very detailed.
- scardycat 5y ago
  They (aviation authorities) did not seem too nitpicky in clearing Boeing 737 Max and are culpable in the deaths of hundreds of people.
  - selectodude 5y ago
    They (the FAA) oversaw zero deaths caused by the 737 MAX.
    - simonh 5y ago
      That’s rather silly. The FAA allowed those planes to fly in the US, with the flaws that lead to those deaths. They also manipulated test results in order to facilitate recertification of the planes after the crashes.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - wonder_er 5y ago
      Doesn't count in their favor: "FAA safety engineer goes public to slam the agency’s oversight of Boeing’s 737 MAX" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549
    - trimbo 5y ago
      Indonesia has a bilateral agreement for airworthiness with the FAA[1]. [1] - https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/international/bilateral_agreements/baa_basa_listing/ https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/international/bilatera...
    - detaro 5y ago
      It oversaw and did their type certification, which per treaties is the basis on which they operate in many parts of the world.
    - skynetv2 5y ago
      Have you even read one article about how 737 got its air worthiness certification?
  - zz865 5y ago
    I dont remember a 737 Max crash in the USA.
    - Jabbles 5y ago
      The FAA's reputation in other countries is an example of soft power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power
    - detaro 5y ago
      And because of that the FAA was entirely right to type-certify the 737 MAX (which through international agreements is widely recognized) and it's just totally random that they after the crashes grounded them and required lengthy rework?
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    That's not how FAA certification works. Boeing is 100% responsible for providing the correct documents to the FAA, and for their delegated quality reps (Boeing contractors) to verify the aircraft, not the FAA. Neither were done. Now that the FAA has detected problems, it is their responsibility to improve their oversight. However, the FAA does not staff airline engineers to inspect mfgs. in general. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.
- wonder_er 5y ago
  The FAA is not generally competent: "FAA safety engineer goes public to slam the agency’s oversight of Boeing’s 737 MAX" Discussed on hacker news a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549

sp332 5y ago

VG points out that FAA representatives were in the control room during the flight. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/spaceship-carrying-richard-branson-flew-off-course-faa-is-investigating/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/spaceship-carrying-r...

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> FAA representatives were in the control room Control room doesn't see everything the cockpit sees. Particularly not in a pilot-centered vehicle design like Virgin Galactic's. Having a representative in the room, moreover, doesn't mean it's someone qualified to look for problems. Even if they are, it's a big room with lots going on.

javajosh 5y ago

Regarding 2, it makes sense to me. The FAA's purview is vast. They handle matters pertaining to all airspace in the USA. That includes commercial and private flights, drones, local government, and (of course) space flight. (And maybe even military flights, too, IDK). Is there such a thing as an "FAA detective" that preemptively goes on-sight to verify the reports they receive? Like most agencies, they function primarily on a self-reporting basis, relying heavily on the fear of retributive sanctions to ensure that they aren't being lied to in those reports. Can you imagine the cost of investigating everyone and everything the FAA is supposed to regulate?! My sense is that, unusually among government regulators, the FAA is generally competent and cares about the real consequences of their in/action - both because the subject is life-and-death table stakes, but also because when there's a disaster the FAA itself is, by default, one of the "usual suspects". And rightly so. Personally I see this as a very optimistic story about a regulator that actually does its job.

refulgentis 5y ago
Yes, in the article it mentions specifically that FAA agents were in the control room and had access to the pilots warnings. So then it seems more like responding to an article than the facts they saw on the ground Edit: I'm being downvoted to -3 for reading the article and making an anodyne comment answering a question about it. Cool.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Yeah, it definitely smells more like ass-covering for optics than anything they were concerned about at the time of launch.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  Good they were in the room at the time. I would absolutely want a public accounting for the gap between what the regulators in the room saw vs. why the grounding after the article. Abundance of caution over a nothing-burger? Ok, just say so. A bad call made by the regulators in the room? Ok, human error exists. An intentional effort to keep the regulators need-to-know or an intentional looking the other way? Big problem.

snowwrestler 5y ago

Well it says “after” the article, not “because of,” so it’s possible the FAA was planning to do this anyway. It’s even possible that the causality goes the other way: that the FAA’s movement toward a grounding was the spur for sources to reach out to a reporter.

sp332 5y ago
It says "over". Well it does now anyway.

wonder_er 5y ago

According to at least one insider who is well qualified to speak on the issue, the FAA is not competent, should not be trusted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549 "FAA safety engineer goes public to slam the agency’s oversight of Boeing’s 737 MAX"

fotta 5y ago

From the original New Yorker article [0]: > An F.A.A. spokesperson confirmed that Virgin Galactic “deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance” and that an “investigation is ongoing." So this isn't a new investigation. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-red-warning-light-on-richard-bransons-space-flight https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-red-warning-lig...

ascar 5y ago

Quoting the article from yesterday: > An F.A.A. spokesperson confirmed that Virgin Galactic “deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance” and that an “investigation is ongoing.” So I don't know where that whole narrative of the article causing the action is coming from. The investigation was already ongoing and it seems highly unlikely that bureaucrats rush something within 24 hours just because of an article in the newyorker.

rrss 5y ago
I think the originally submitted HN title was something like “flights grounded after New Yorker article” instead of the article’s title.
beerandt 5y ago
I also doubt that the FAA investigation would have much to do with the major narrative of the article. From their perspective, the flight went off course for 2 mins, and they're looking for the proximate cause. They're looking for a specific safety issue, not any underlying generalized sense of a rotten safety culture at the company. The acute problem might lead directly to a bigger general issue, if there's some direct evidence of fudged risk analysis or some specific, similar, overtly wrong behavior. But more likely, it'll just be: we misjudged how it would handle that specific wind and were blown off course. Or something similar. ETA: Has it even been established that the warning light/entry angle was the cause of or directly related to the airspace violation? Other than the new yorker author's assumption?
- nieve 5y ago
  Either they deviated by a large margin or the area they were cleared for was too small because you don't just get mildly blown off course enough to exit a decent clearance area.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Maybe. There are lots of explanations for not having a larger test area, or for miscalculating a manually piloted crafts mach 3+ trajectory. But you're missing the bigger point. It may have been completely unrelated to weather. By "something similar" I mean an innocent, isolated, non-cultural and non-conspiratorial explanation, that won't involve the FAA digging (or having to dig) any deeper than the superficial proximate cause. It was a test flight of a manually piloted craft. To some extent, things will not go as expected. Boeing and Russias last manned flights weren't manually controlled, and both had significant problems- early rocket shutdown and an unintentional, initially unstoppable thruster firing. Yeah it needs investigating, but it's hardly unexpected or uncommon, especially for a test flight.

hinkley 5y ago

I was just talking to an amateur pilot the other day and somehow this general topic came up. The FAA works on an honor system. If they chased people around looking for violations and fining people (which apparently they used to do) then people would try to circumvent detection, or avoid declaring an emergency and end up creating a bigger one. They need transparency for things to improve, so they expect you to self report and they bring the hammer down if you don’t by hitting you where it hurts: right in the flight certifications. From what I’m seeing it looks like Virgin didn’t self report before the news folks got wind and the FAA heard it through the grapevine, so they’ll get a big fat wake up call, and if that doesn’t get their attention then things will get much worse for them. Or, this is just SOP and an angle that sells ads and so it’s being hyped while nothing particularly egregious is happening from the FAA’s point of view.

edrxty 5y ago
Can second this. A couple decades ago the FAA was pretty tyrannical in their approach to compliance. Among other things they'd commonly stick inspectors at random airports and run through everyone's paperwork as they came in, handing out incredibly harsh punishments to anyone out of compliance. This garnered a lot of distrust from the community and lead to people devising ways of avoiding them as well as a general sentiment of hiding errors so they wouldn't get aggressively sanctioned. Unusually for federal agencies, the FAA actually reversed course on this behavior and generally just tries to come down on egregious cases. People are encouraged to report on safety slips and near-misses using NASA as an unbiased intermediary. They've been known to be lenient towards minor negligence (ie. unintentional mistakes, airspace/runway incursions, etc) if the pilot recognized it and reported on it for the sake of providing stats for policy decisions. All that said, more recently where the FAA has stopped, insurance has picked up. Insurance companies have been quick to jump on the availability of more sophisticated flight recording/tracking and the prevalence of social media to enforce their own views on aviation safety. Rates have been skyrocketing and it's becoming much harder to insure anything that isn't a simple fixed tricycle gear utility category certified 2-4 seater.
- NetOpWibby 5y ago

didntknowya 5y ago

only really have to look at the Boeing fiasco to realize the FAA has lost it's tooth. Many companies will take the risk for profit or glory while the FAA take a reactive rather than preventative approach.

lmilcin 5y ago

I am convinced that at the moment fierce competition in this area causes competitors to try to use any excuse possible to do anything they can to stall opponents. Getting any small problem to have as much publicity as possible? Yeah, sounds about right. Pretty sure an anomaly like this would not be happening if space didn't get commercial attention.