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Aviation Safety Whistleblower Report on 737 Max [pdf]

235 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

helaoban 5y ago
>Whistleblowers like Mr. Kucera provided information indicating systemic problems continue to exist, including understaffed FAA offices charged with certification oversight responsibility for manufacturers and the continued risk of undue pressure under the FAA’s system of delegated authority. >According to whistleblowers, GE Aviation’s GE9X engine program suffered from undue pressure on production staff acting on behalf of the FAA. For example, Mr. Kucera described being placed in an untenable position where he was responsible for conducting engine conformity tests on behalf of FAA, while also being charged with preparing GE engines to pass these same tests. Wow.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- na85 5y ago
  Once upon a time, being an FAA engineer was a prestigious career move. As government work has become more and more stigmatized, so too has the brain drain from the public to private sectors been more and more pronounced. I used to work in airworthiness and I met some really outstanding people working for the federal government, but they were dwarfed in number by the teeming masses of crayon eaters. Sadly, it's quite hard to get fired from the public sector, for a litany of reasons beyond the scope of this bitter internet comment. I never worked for Boeing or GE but I'm not at all surprised to read those allegations. The ODA program was designed for the same type of world as FTP. To wit: the world was a different, less adversarial place back then.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - helaoban 5y ago
    How much aeronautics/airworthiness/safety R/D is actually conducted by the FAA? My understanding is that they used to do a lot more cutting edge research, the kind that would attract engineering talent. Looking at the 2022 FAA budget[1], they asked for $159M for "Engineering, Development, Test and Evaluation" out of a total budget ask of $18B+. That's less than 1% of the total budget. 1. https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2021-05/FAA-FY-2022-Congressional-Justification.pdf https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2021-05/F...
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      > How much aeronautics/airworthiness/safety R/D is actually conducted by the FAA? Virtually none. It's widely recognized that airine mfg. technology is a rapidly moving target, and the FAA is not in the airline mfg. business. The FAA is in the business of collecting and reviewing certification data, which is why the fake MCAS paperwork is a really big deal. NASA operates the X-planes R/D program, not the FAA. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/images/X-Planes/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/images/X-Planes/index...
      - redis_mlc 5y ago
        Just to add to my comment above, the FAA does have a very important role in air crew and evacuation standards and testing. Not spendy, but getting the pax out 30 seconds faster can save a lot of lives, for example. One hole that I can think of is when a jet lands, but doesn't depressurize and open the doors. There have been a couple airline disasters that killed all the crew and pax when that happened - the pax either suffocated or died of smoke inhalation, and nobody deplaned. Another is that the more entertainment systems that get wired up to seats, the more electrical fires will occur. The Swissair crash off Newfoundland was bad, but there will be more.
  - nielsbot 5y ago
    Stigmatized? I assumed people just preferred getting paid more and possible working at interesting companies.
    - na85 5y ago
      >I assumed people just preferred getting paid more and possible working at interesting companies. There's that too, but at least in my circles there's very much the attitude of "oh you're in the public sector because you couldn't hack in in the private sector where you have to perform". Whether that's a merited attitude to hold is a separate conversation, but the sentiment definitely exists.
      - jhugo 5y ago
        Surely that attitude just flows from the salaries being so low. If the pay was good people would understand why you were in the public sector.
        na85 5y ago
        It's self-reinforcing in both directions, I'm sure.
    - malandrew 5y ago
      Here's the thing, the FAA is no longer a new prestigious institution that is growing. All the ingredients for smart and talented people to succeed and rise to the top. The FAA was founded in 1958. It's now an ossified institution with middle managers, bean counters, process and a litany of other bullshit that talented people shouldn't tolerate and that mediocre people can hide behind. Process is all about risk mitigation. You add process to mitigate the damage that can be done by a single individual. Sadly though when you can't have process that only neuters the liabilities. Processes also neuter your assets. The only attractive thing about government jobs these days is the guaranteed pension. The guaranteed pension is also the exact kind of thing that causes many people to be overly zealous about not rocking the boat. It becomes all about staying in your job at all costs until you've put in your time and can retire worry free.
  - bedobi 5y ago
    I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the crayon eater comment. Hilarious and I'm sure in many cases it's not inaccurate. That said, I personally question whether all gigs have to be prestigious and cutting edge and super interesting. I think there should be plenty of room in government and elsewhere for qualified people who do do a good job, but might not be the 20 something work 80 hour per week and rise fast type. I wish more organizations openly admitted to and positioned themselves that way - like, hey, are you good at your job but don't really want to work super super hard all the time and rise to the top of your organization, or feel like you always have to work on the most prestigious, most cutting edge projects? Then we're the place for you!
    - tristor 5y ago
      I’ve been in a similar boat to the grandparent. The issue with the government (and more broadly government workers) isn’t that the work isn’t “exciting” or some such. It’s a cultural and institutional resistance to change or improvement and the rewarding of toadyism and punishment of innovation. I firmly believe the government would be “better” in some ways if it was forced into transparency by managers being allowed to fire for abusive reasons, rather than the psychological torture they regularly inflict on high-quality employees that don’t tow the line. Instead you either leave of your own volition or you are cowed into silence, becoming complicit in a general miasma of less-than mediocrity. Brain drain is a natural conclusion, but only helps people who are both smart and motivated. Folks who are motivated and not smart get crushed and folks who are smart and not motivated get pushed intentionally into irrelevance. The federal government is the most toxic employer there is, and they gaslight you about their toxicity by being so willing to assign you to BFE and let you languish rather than firing you, as if firing is the worst thing that can happen. Amazon is a well known toxic environment for tech workers and is a massively better work environment for an engineer than the federal government.
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    Part of the problem with government work prestige is that for every FAA engineer, for every NTSB investigator, you get three or four - for the lack of a better word - political commissars these days, whose job is to blindly carry whatever the higher-ups deem "important" at the time down the ranks. Something about rotten apples spoiling the bunch.
  - Stranger43 5y ago
    It's not about prestige as much as budgets and "public/private collaboration", ie prior to Reagan and the "small government movements" most regulatory bodies had well funded labs and engineering teams capable and authorized to do independent research in order to validate claims made by industry. post Reagan when the government budgets were cut and organisation asked to streamline/"rationalize" outsource and cut down on fluff the first thing cut were those labs as the new way of thinking was that they should let the regulated do their own safety research and that the government should merely check that the resulting documentation was conforming to formatting standards rather then validating the results. This causes situations where large companies basically gets to be both accused and judge in cases where the safety of their products are in question, as they are the only one who can realistically produce and present studies to the regulators on the safety of their products. And it's not limited to the Boeing, nor to government as the same ideas of "rationalization" is prevalent in the management textbooks most enterprise managers are trained from.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > As government work has become more and more stigmatized ... > Sadly, it's quite hard to get fired from the public sector ... Aren't you stigmatizing it? IME, it's quite hard to get fired from large corporations or any large institution, except for management adjusting 'human resources' counts in order to cut costs, or if you do something politically 'wrong'. One person I know left a Fortune 100 engineering job - a manufacturer you've certainly have heard of - in frustration over that issue. They simply did not show up for their job and it took ~3 months to lose it, IIRC. The civil service is designed to our government from political maniuplation and firing. IME, the standards of professionalism are very high, higher than businesses.
- Nick87633 5y ago
  This sounds like a normal test engineering position if the operation of the test and preparation of test article has been delegated to that team. Engineers should be empowered to work honestly and tell their company if a test has been failed.
  - hiteshsharma 5y ago
    Now throw sales teams, middle management, executive pressure and competition in this equation. These things push engineers to cut corners and find workarounds. This is true for all software engineering it’s just that sadly in case of airplanes it costs lives.
jalino23 5y ago
I as a frontend web dev. just awed in how do you even begin to program an airplane
- na85 5y ago
  You don't program "an airplane". Each box has its own spec to which it must conform, so for example the little controller that regulates fuel flow into the combustion chamber is first modeled as a system in e.g. MATLAB. For throttle position X, at altitude Y, with air temperature Z and Mach number W, the fuel flow must be ABC pounds per hour so set the servo valve position to DEF. So on and so forth (it gets a lot more complicated than that but you get the idea). Then, you ask the mechanical guys what the operating environment will be (vibration, temperature, pH, etc.) and you source a chip from an approved manufacturer that can handle your system dynamics and the environment. Then you hit the autocode button in MATLAB, flash the generated code to the chip, and run the programmed chip through bench tests.
  - vishnugupta 5y ago
    > For throttle position X, at altitude Y, with air temperature Z and Mach number W, the fuel flow must be ABC pounds per hour so set the servo valve position to DEF. This is fascinating. So underneath it it's a big decision tree with a few defaults thrown in. Is that an accurate description?
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      I don't know how it's done for planes, but I've heard that many automotive ECUs are programmed graphically, as a block diagram. The engineers basically pretend it's an insanely complicated analog system with amplifiers, filters, switches, and what have you. Then the whole thing gets compiled into a real time binary that simulates the system one timestep at a time.
      - mrmlz 5y ago
        That is correct for a lot of aircraft systems as well, especially in the design/requirements phase the actual implementation might vary of course. I've personally used Simulink a lot for control systems. I.e. hydraulics, fuel transfers, ECS etc.
cable2600 5y ago
Michael David Crawford wrote about airplane software and computers and safety but was arrested by the police because he wrote it at Grove Beach McDonalds and was charged with being a nuisance. Soon after these plans like Flight 370 started to happen. He was the first one to discover the bugs in Boeing's software and never got credit for it, just a year in jail with time served.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - pjerem 5y ago
    what ?
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Is there a link to that story? Isn’t that a 1A violation?
  - cable2600 5y ago
    It was on his website because he self published, he killed himself a few years ago and his website is down forever. https://twitter.com/soggymike?lang=en https://twitter.com/soggymike?lang=en Because he had schizoaffective disorder nobody took him seriously. He has a degree in physics and tons of experience in programming and software engineering he worked on Mac System 7.5.X as a contractor for Apple. His name is in some Easter egg on some version of it. It is a 1A violation, but nobody cared about it at the time and he only posted to Kuro5hin which is down forever as well now. It worked they shut him up and hid the evidence. Here is an interview with him on CNN to prove he exists and CNN sees him as an expert on software engineering: https://youtu.be/pv9_M_a0uIg https://youtu.be/pv9_M_a0uIg It is on YouTube because CNN banned it.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      > CNN sees him as an expert on software engineering CNN has zero expertise in engineering.
shahbaby 5y ago
This company priorized cost over safety. That's who they are and finding shortcuts around new regulations is exactly what I'd expect from them. I will never let myself nor anyone I care about fly on a 737 Max. Even if I could be confident in the plane, I cannot forgive nor forget all the people who needlessly died. I've boycotted fast food chains for far less transgressions.
- dodyg 5y ago
  Boeing killed my friend, Anne-K. Feigl, on that Ethiopian flight
  - simonswords82 5y ago
    Hey I'm very sorry to hear that. Sad way to go, I hope you find peace with it
- laydn 5y ago
  There are ~600 delivered MAX aircraft, and ~4700 still on order (including all the cancelled orders). I don't know where you live and how often you fly and for what purpose, but, chances are, a lot of people be somewhat forced to fly on a 737 Max eventually.
  - 0xy 5y ago
    Why would anyone be scared to fly on the most scrutinized plane in history? I certainly don't care. All of the pilots flying the MAX would now receive even more in-depth training on the quirks of the new systems. Chances of critical incident are practically zero. 180 countries have re-certified the plane and design changes were made as well. If you don't trust the FAA or the 179 other authorities, how do you step on ANY plane? Additionally, you don't trust the MAX yet you trust Boeing (you didn't mention their other planes)? If Boeing is negligigent, it's unlikely it's limited to a specific product. How can you then trust maintenance programs and spare parts provided by Boeing for the Dreamliner for example? If Boeing is incompetent, trusting the Dreamliner but not the MAX is irrational.
kevindeasis 5y ago
Edit: is there a place that you can read a tldr, and what this actually "means" ? Anyone here an expert? How safe are these planes and their derivatives if I fly frequently? IIRC, they made some updates to the new planes that uses the same engines. Also more training for the new models? Would those be enough? Also how do you prevent using specific airplanes as a passenger. Some locations, airlines, and their nearby cities i think only uses these planes and their derivatives right? So how do you avoid that? Seems like driving for multiple days is a terrible idea. Would you prefer using multiple nonprimary airports and small engine planes?
- stevesimmons 5y ago
  > 97 pages, geez, is there a place that you can read a tldr? Like most such reports, it starts with a section called "Executive Summary". Maybe start there...
  - kevindeasis 5y ago
    Thanks! will definitely keep that in mind next time i see a white paper
    - dfghdfhs 5y ago
      We in the academia invented it. We call it an Abstract and we put it at the top.
      - kortilla 5y ago
        Abstract and executive summary are not the same thing. https://www.umass.edu/buscomm/absumm.html https://www.umass.edu/buscomm/absumm.html
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  The only update that would be dependable is adding a third AOA indicator to implement voting logic. Boeing is too cheap to do that and the FAA is too gutless to force them.
danuker 5y ago
> For instance, Mr. Ewbank cited gaps in the “Changed Product Rule” which allowed FAA to certify the 737 MAX according to dated airworthiness standards, like those for flight crew alerting systems. So this is why there exist Boeing 737 Classic, Boeing 737 Next Generation, and Boeing 737 MAX. Avoid the need to redesign, in spite of changing regulation. The Boeing 737 first launched in 1967. It is preposterous to use 1967 standards, after discovering through bloodshed more about what is dangerous and what is not.
- rob74 5y ago
  Actually Boeing did design a newer twin-engine narrowbody plane - the 757, which launched in 1982. But (for reasons I'm not entirely sure of) it was never as successful as the 737. As Wikipedia says, already in the planning phase "the shorter 757-100 did not receive any orders and was dropped; 737s later fulfilled its envisioned role" - I guess the 757 was more expensive to operate, and airlines already operating the 737 didn't want a mixed fleet? So after the airline industry downturn caused by 9/11, Boeing decided to discontinue the 757 and go on with the 737. But I wouldn't put the blame only on Boeing, its customers had the choice and chose the cheaper 737...
  - lbriner 5y ago
    I read that the low ground-clearance of the 737 was really popular since it allowed easier/manual luggage loading at smaller airports. I suspect their existing stock of spare parts would also favour a refresh of the existing model compared to a new one?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      And training. Training is massively expensive. You gotta train pilots, crew, mechanics, baggage handlers, etc, etc. The more situations in which you can say "the new one is just like the old one you know" the better. Part of the reason pilots weren't initially properly trained on the MAX8 was because Boeing and the customers were winking and nodding at each other and trying to perpetuate the farce that the new plane was the same as the old plane and giving the pilots minimal training was part of that. If everybody knew how the new MCAS system worked there would likely have not been any crashes but that couldn't happen because it would have created a paper trail that indicated the MAX8 was pushing the limit of what was allowed under the old FAA cert.
flippyhead 5y ago
Check out https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08P98854S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o03?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08P98854S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... for a great history of all this.
coliveira 5y ago
What we didn't hear about is how Boeing is going to change its processes to avoid repeating this nightmare scenario. Because, sure, they fixed the 737Max AFTER hundreds of people died and every airline was forced to ground their airplanes. Who can trust them when they come up with another plane? I, for one, don't.
photochemsyn 5y ago
"Under the leadership of Chair Maria Cantwell..." opensecrets.org reports that Cantwell's #4 lifetime donor is Boeing (Microsoft being #1 by a good margin). No conflict of interest here I suppose... Also, searching the report for 'director' is interesting as there's no mention of the role Boeing's corporate board played on exerting pressure to get the 737MAX to market in order to avoid Airbus getting a ton of orders, right? [1] Another interesting issue is how the software testing took place at Boeing, another subject that seems to be lacking in the Senate report. According to reports testing was highly outsourced to low-paid temp workers [2]. > "Bloomberg's Peter Robison reported on June 28 that Boeing and its suppliers outsourced some of its 737 Max software development and testing to temporary workers. These temp workers, some of whom were recent college graduates, were employees or contract workers for Indian tech firms HCL Technologies and Cyient Ltd. Some of the testers and developers made as little as $9, the longtime engineers told Bloomberg. Former Boeing flight controls engineer Rick Ludtke said the move to outsource was centered on cost-cutting." I suppose asking some of those $9 an hour employees to testify before Congress about their roles in testing would have been just too embarrassing to Boeing. Cantwell instead wants to push the blame onto the FAA for lack of oversight, thereby protecting Boeing's corporate board members from responsibility. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-c... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-outsourced-737-max-report-2019-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-outsourced-737-max-re...

235 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

>Whistleblowers like Mr. Kucera provided information indicating systemic problems continue to exist, including understaffed FAA offices charged with certification oversight responsibility for manufacturers and the continued risk of undue pressure under the FAA’s system of delegated authority. >According to whistleblowers, GE Aviation’s GE9X engine program suffered from undue pressure on production staff acting on behalf of the FAA. For example, Mr. Kucera described being placed in an untenable position where he was responsible for conducting engine conformity tests on behalf of FAA, while also being charged with preparing GE engines to pass these same tests. Wow.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
na85 5y ago
Once upon a time, being an FAA engineer was a prestigious career move. As government work has become more and more stigmatized, so too has the brain drain from the public to private sectors been more and more pronounced. I used to work in airworthiness and I met some really outstanding people working for the federal government, but they were dwarfed in number by the teeming masses of crayon eaters. Sadly, it's quite hard to get fired from the public sector, for a litany of reasons beyond the scope of this bitter internet comment. I never worked for Boeing or GE but I'm not at all surprised to read those allegations. The ODA program was designed for the same type of world as FTP. To wit: the world was a different, less adversarial place back then.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- helaoban 5y ago
  How much aeronautics/airworthiness/safety R/D is actually conducted by the FAA? My understanding is that they used to do a lot more cutting edge research, the kind that would attract engineering talent. Looking at the 2022 FAA budget[1], they asked for $159M for "Engineering, Development, Test and Evaluation" out of a total budget ask of $18B+. That's less than 1% of the total budget. 1. https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2021-05/FAA-FY-2022-Congressional-Justification.pdf https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2021-05/F...
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    > How much aeronautics/airworthiness/safety R/D is actually conducted by the FAA? Virtually none. It's widely recognized that airine mfg. technology is a rapidly moving target, and the FAA is not in the airline mfg. business. The FAA is in the business of collecting and reviewing certification data, which is why the fake MCAS paperwork is a really big deal. NASA operates the X-planes R/D program, not the FAA. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/images/X-Planes/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/images/X-Planes/index...
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      Just to add to my comment above, the FAA does have a very important role in air crew and evacuation standards and testing. Not spendy, but getting the pax out 30 seconds faster can save a lot of lives, for example. One hole that I can think of is when a jet lands, but doesn't depressurize and open the doors. There have been a couple airline disasters that killed all the crew and pax when that happened - the pax either suffocated or died of smoke inhalation, and nobody deplaned. Another is that the more entertainment systems that get wired up to seats, the more electrical fires will occur. The Swissair crash off Newfoundland was bad, but there will be more.
- nielsbot 5y ago
  Stigmatized? I assumed people just preferred getting paid more and possible working at interesting companies.
  - na85 5y ago
    >I assumed people just preferred getting paid more and possible working at interesting companies. There's that too, but at least in my circles there's very much the attitude of "oh you're in the public sector because you couldn't hack in in the private sector where you have to perform". Whether that's a merited attitude to hold is a separate conversation, but the sentiment definitely exists.
    - jhugo 5y ago
      Surely that attitude just flows from the salaries being so low. If the pay was good people would understand why you were in the public sector.
      - na85 5y ago
        It's self-reinforcing in both directions, I'm sure.
  - malandrew 5y ago
    Here's the thing, the FAA is no longer a new prestigious institution that is growing. All the ingredients for smart and talented people to succeed and rise to the top. The FAA was founded in 1958. It's now an ossified institution with middle managers, bean counters, process and a litany of other bullshit that talented people shouldn't tolerate and that mediocre people can hide behind. Process is all about risk mitigation. You add process to mitigate the damage that can be done by a single individual. Sadly though when you can't have process that only neuters the liabilities. Processes also neuter your assets. The only attractive thing about government jobs these days is the guaranteed pension. The guaranteed pension is also the exact kind of thing that causes many people to be overly zealous about not rocking the boat. It becomes all about staying in your job at all costs until you've put in your time and can retire worry free.
- bedobi 5y ago
  I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the crayon eater comment. Hilarious and I'm sure in many cases it's not inaccurate. That said, I personally question whether all gigs have to be prestigious and cutting edge and super interesting. I think there should be plenty of room in government and elsewhere for qualified people who do do a good job, but might not be the 20 something work 80 hour per week and rise fast type. I wish more organizations openly admitted to and positioned themselves that way - like, hey, are you good at your job but don't really want to work super super hard all the time and rise to the top of your organization, or feel like you always have to work on the most prestigious, most cutting edge projects? Then we're the place for you!
  - tristor 5y ago
    I’ve been in a similar boat to the grandparent. The issue with the government (and more broadly government workers) isn’t that the work isn’t “exciting” or some such. It’s a cultural and institutional resistance to change or improvement and the rewarding of toadyism and punishment of innovation. I firmly believe the government would be “better” in some ways if it was forced into transparency by managers being allowed to fire for abusive reasons, rather than the psychological torture they regularly inflict on high-quality employees that don’t tow the line. Instead you either leave of your own volition or you are cowed into silence, becoming complicit in a general miasma of less-than mediocrity. Brain drain is a natural conclusion, but only helps people who are both smart and motivated. Folks who are motivated and not smart get crushed and folks who are smart and not motivated get pushed intentionally into irrelevance. The federal government is the most toxic employer there is, and they gaslight you about their toxicity by being so willing to assign you to BFE and let you languish rather than firing you, as if firing is the worst thing that can happen. Amazon is a well known toxic environment for tech workers and is a massively better work environment for an engineer than the federal government.
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  Part of the problem with government work prestige is that for every FAA engineer, for every NTSB investigator, you get three or four - for the lack of a better word - political commissars these days, whose job is to blindly carry whatever the higher-ups deem "important" at the time down the ranks. Something about rotten apples spoiling the bunch.
- Stranger43 5y ago
  It's not about prestige as much as budgets and "public/private collaboration", ie prior to Reagan and the "small government movements" most regulatory bodies had well funded labs and engineering teams capable and authorized to do independent research in order to validate claims made by industry. post Reagan when the government budgets were cut and organisation asked to streamline/"rationalize" outsource and cut down on fluff the first thing cut were those labs as the new way of thinking was that they should let the regulated do their own safety research and that the government should merely check that the resulting documentation was conforming to formatting standards rather then validating the results. This causes situations where large companies basically gets to be both accused and judge in cases where the safety of their products are in question, as they are the only one who can realistically produce and present studies to the regulators on the safety of their products. And it's not limited to the Boeing, nor to government as the same ideas of "rationalization" is prevalent in the management textbooks most enterprise managers are trained from.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > As government work has become more and more stigmatized ... > Sadly, it's quite hard to get fired from the public sector ... Aren't you stigmatizing it? IME, it's quite hard to get fired from large corporations or any large institution, except for management adjusting 'human resources' counts in order to cut costs, or if you do something politically 'wrong'. One person I know left a Fortune 100 engineering job - a manufacturer you've certainly have heard of - in frustration over that issue. They simply did not show up for their job and it took ~3 months to lose it, IIRC. The civil service is designed to our government from political maniuplation and firing. IME, the standards of professionalism are very high, higher than businesses.
Nick87633 5y ago
This sounds like a normal test engineering position if the operation of the test and preparation of test article has been delegated to that team. Engineers should be empowered to work honestly and tell their company if a test has been failed.
- hiteshsharma 5y ago
  Now throw sales teams, middle management, executive pressure and competition in this equation. These things push engineers to cut corners and find workarounds. This is true for all software engineering it’s just that sadly in case of airplanes it costs lives.

jalino23 5y ago

I as a frontend web dev. just awed in how do you even begin to program an airplane

na85 5y ago
You don't program "an airplane". Each box has its own spec to which it must conform, so for example the little controller that regulates fuel flow into the combustion chamber is first modeled as a system in e.g. MATLAB. For throttle position X, at altitude Y, with air temperature Z and Mach number W, the fuel flow must be ABC pounds per hour so set the servo valve position to DEF. So on and so forth (it gets a lot more complicated than that but you get the idea). Then, you ask the mechanical guys what the operating environment will be (vibration, temperature, pH, etc.) and you source a chip from an approved manufacturer that can handle your system dynamics and the environment. Then you hit the autocode button in MATLAB, flash the generated code to the chip, and run the programmed chip through bench tests.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  > For throttle position X, at altitude Y, with air temperature Z and Mach number W, the fuel flow must be ABC pounds per hour so set the servo valve position to DEF. This is fascinating. So underneath it it's a big decision tree with a few defaults thrown in. Is that an accurate description?
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    I don't know how it's done for planes, but I've heard that many automotive ECUs are programmed graphically, as a block diagram. The engineers basically pretend it's an insanely complicated analog system with amplifiers, filters, switches, and what have you. Then the whole thing gets compiled into a real time binary that simulates the system one timestep at a time.
    - mrmlz 5y ago
      That is correct for a lot of aircraft systems as well, especially in the design/requirements phase the actual implementation might vary of course. I've personally used Simulink a lot for control systems. I.e. hydraulics, fuel transfers, ECS etc.

cable2600 5y ago

Michael David Crawford wrote about airplane software and computers and safety but was arrested by the police because he wrote it at Grove Beach McDonalds and was charged with being a nuisance. Soon after these plans like Flight 370 started to happen. He was the first one to discover the bugs in Boeing's software and never got credit for it, just a year in jail with time served.

a9h74j 5y ago
[flagged]
- pjerem 5y ago
  what ?
quickthrower2 5y ago
Is there a link to that story? Isn’t that a 1A violation?
- cable2600 5y ago
  It was on his website because he self published, he killed himself a few years ago and his website is down forever. https://twitter.com/soggymike?lang=en https://twitter.com/soggymike?lang=en Because he had schizoaffective disorder nobody took him seriously. He has a degree in physics and tons of experience in programming and software engineering he worked on Mac System 7.5.X as a contractor for Apple. His name is in some Easter egg on some version of it. It is a 1A violation, but nobody cared about it at the time and he only posted to Kuro5hin which is down forever as well now. It worked they shut him up and hid the evidence. Here is an interview with him on CNN to prove he exists and CNN sees him as an expert on software engineering: https://youtu.be/pv9_M_a0uIg https://youtu.be/pv9_M_a0uIg It is on YouTube because CNN banned it.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > CNN sees him as an expert on software engineering CNN has zero expertise in engineering.

shahbaby 5y ago

This company priorized cost over safety. That's who they are and finding shortcuts around new regulations is exactly what I'd expect from them. I will never let myself nor anyone I care about fly on a 737 Max. Even if I could be confident in the plane, I cannot forgive nor forget all the people who needlessly died. I've boycotted fast food chains for far less transgressions.

dodyg 5y ago
Boeing killed my friend, Anne-K. Feigl, on that Ethiopian flight
- simonswords82 5y ago
  Hey I'm very sorry to hear that. Sad way to go, I hope you find peace with it
laydn 5y ago
There are ~600 delivered MAX aircraft, and ~4700 still on order (including all the cancelled orders). I don't know where you live and how often you fly and for what purpose, but, chances are, a lot of people be somewhat forced to fly on a 737 Max eventually.
- 0xy 5y ago
  Why would anyone be scared to fly on the most scrutinized plane in history? I certainly don't care. All of the pilots flying the MAX would now receive even more in-depth training on the quirks of the new systems. Chances of critical incident are practically zero. 180 countries have re-certified the plane and design changes were made as well. If you don't trust the FAA or the 179 other authorities, how do you step on ANY plane? Additionally, you don't trust the MAX yet you trust Boeing (you didn't mention their other planes)? If Boeing is negligigent, it's unlikely it's limited to a specific product. How can you then trust maintenance programs and spare parts provided by Boeing for the Dreamliner for example? If Boeing is incompetent, trusting the Dreamliner but not the MAX is irrational.

kevindeasis 5y ago

Edit: is there a place that you can read a tldr, and what this actually "means" ? Anyone here an expert? How safe are these planes and their derivatives if I fly frequently? IIRC, they made some updates to the new planes that uses the same engines. Also more training for the new models? Would those be enough? Also how do you prevent using specific airplanes as a passenger. Some locations, airlines, and their nearby cities i think only uses these planes and their derivatives right? So how do you avoid that? Seems like driving for multiple days is a terrible idea. Would you prefer using multiple nonprimary airports and small engine planes?

stevesimmons 5y ago
> 97 pages, geez, is there a place that you can read a tldr? Like most such reports, it starts with a section called "Executive Summary". Maybe start there...
- kevindeasis 5y ago
  Thanks! will definitely keep that in mind next time i see a white paper
  - dfghdfhs 5y ago
    We in the academia invented it. We call it an Abstract and we put it at the top.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      Abstract and executive summary are not the same thing. https://www.umass.edu/buscomm/absumm.html https://www.umass.edu/buscomm/absumm.html
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
The only update that would be dependable is adding a third AOA indicator to implement voting logic. Boeing is too cheap to do that and the FAA is too gutless to force them.

danuker 5y ago

> For instance, Mr. Ewbank cited gaps in the “Changed Product Rule” which allowed FAA to certify the 737 MAX according to dated airworthiness standards, like those for flight crew alerting systems. So this is why there exist Boeing 737 Classic, Boeing 737 Next Generation, and Boeing 737 MAX. Avoid the need to redesign, in spite of changing regulation. The Boeing 737 first launched in 1967. It is preposterous to use 1967 standards, after discovering through bloodshed more about what is dangerous and what is not.

rob74 5y ago
Actually Boeing did design a newer twin-engine narrowbody plane - the 757, which launched in 1982. But (for reasons I'm not entirely sure of) it was never as successful as the 737. As Wikipedia says, already in the planning phase "the shorter 757-100 did not receive any orders and was dropped; 737s later fulfilled its envisioned role" - I guess the 757 was more expensive to operate, and airlines already operating the 737 didn't want a mixed fleet? So after the airline industry downturn caused by 9/11, Boeing decided to discontinue the 757 and go on with the 737. But I wouldn't put the blame only on Boeing, its customers had the choice and chose the cheaper 737...
- lbriner 5y ago
  I read that the low ground-clearance of the 737 was really popular since it allowed easier/manual luggage loading at smaller airports. I suspect their existing stock of spare parts would also favour a refresh of the existing model compared to a new one?
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    And training. Training is massively expensive. You gotta train pilots, crew, mechanics, baggage handlers, etc, etc. The more situations in which you can say "the new one is just like the old one you know" the better. Part of the reason pilots weren't initially properly trained on the MAX8 was because Boeing and the customers were winking and nodding at each other and trying to perpetuate the farce that the new plane was the same as the old plane and giving the pilots minimal training was part of that. If everybody knew how the new MCAS system worked there would likely have not been any crashes but that couldn't happen because it would have created a paper trail that indicated the MAX8 was pushing the limit of what was allowed under the old FAA cert.

flippyhead 5y ago

Check out https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08P98854S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o03?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08P98854S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... for a great history of all this.

coliveira 5y ago

What we didn't hear about is how Boeing is going to change its processes to avoid repeating this nightmare scenario. Because, sure, they fixed the 737Max AFTER hundreds of people died and every airline was forced to ground their airplanes. Who can trust them when they come up with another plane? I, for one, don't.

photochemsyn 5y ago

"Under the leadership of Chair Maria Cantwell..." opensecrets.org reports that Cantwell's #4 lifetime donor is Boeing (Microsoft being #1 by a good margin). No conflict of interest here I suppose... Also, searching the report for 'director' is interesting as there's no mention of the role Boeing's corporate board played on exerting pressure to get the 737MAX to market in order to avoid Airbus getting a ton of orders, right? [1] Another interesting issue is how the software testing took place at Boeing, another subject that seems to be lacking in the Senate report. According to reports testing was highly outsourced to low-paid temp workers [2]. > "Bloomberg's Peter Robison reported on June 28 that Boeing and its suppliers outsourced some of its 737 Max software development and testing to temporary workers. These temp workers, some of whom were recent college graduates, were employees or contract workers for Indian tech firms HCL Technologies and Cyient Ltd. Some of the testers and developers made as little as $9, the longtime engineers told Bloomberg. Former Boeing flight controls engineer Rick Ludtke said the move to outsource was centered on cost-cutting." I suppose asking some of those $9 an hour employees to testify before Congress about their roles in testing would have been just too embarrassing to Boeing. Cantwell instead wants to push the blame onto the FAA for lack of oversight, thereby protecting Boeing's corporate board members from responsibility. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-c... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-outsourced-737-max-report-2019-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-outsourced-737-max-re...