16 ms·

FAA overruled engineers, let Boeing Max keep flying

347 points by FridayoLeary 3y ago

kayodelycaon 3y ago
Okay? Without knowing how often this happens and how often the engineers are wrong, we don’t know if this is newsworthy or not. The “safe” recommendation is to ground all the planes of that model any time there is a suspected issue. That said, the FAA has a long history of not implementing safety recommendations. NASA had this issue with the space shuttle.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > That said, the FAA has a long history of not implementing safety recommendations The counterpoint is that their safety record speaks for itself. When was the last commercial airliner crash in the US? 2009?
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    At least as recent as 2013. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 If you mean domestic airline, then it was probably the 2009 Colgan Ait crash that led to major procedure and training g changes in the US.
    - pfannkuchen 3y ago
      If you don’t mind, I’m curious what sort of procedure and training changes occurred after the 2009 incident. The streak of no major domestic crashes (and basically no crashes at all) is really impressive and I think it should be talked about more. If the procedure and training changes are responsible for the streak we should be holding a parade or something for those responsible. Speaking of parades, I wonder what changed to make them seem lame these days. Are they just boring relative to film?
      - alistairSH 3y ago
        Many of the changes can be read about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407 The biggest one was requiring both pilots to have ATP certificates, effectively moving the bar to co-pilot from 250 hours to 1500 hours of flying. Lots of other changes that taken on their own are small, but overall it was a pretty massive set of changes.
        Shivatron 3y ago
        You probably know this, but for the GP: It's not clear whether the 1500 hour rule directly improved safety. Both the Colgan captain and the FO had more than 1500 hours at the time of the accident. What the rule did unambiguously is severely restrict the supply of new pilots to regional airlines. This significantly improved quality of life for regional pilots, who prior to Colgan were effectively making minimum wage or worse. (That may have indirectly improved safety, by making pilots more well-rested and fed...) Another point of comparison is Europe, which has a not-dissimilar safety record, but still allows FOs to have 250 hours. That said, from what I understand, they have a very different training culture where students start in a multi-crew environment very early.
        alistairSH 3y ago
        I remember reading about the typical lifestyle of a new regional pilot. Low wages, long hours, and often flying many hours as a passenger to get to work (living in Pitts, grabbing the first flight to NYC to work, etc). It sounded miserable.
      - kayfox 3y ago
        Fatigue rules were changed to be more strict. Requirements for regional airlines pilots were changed to require at least a minimum of 1500 hours for both pilots, previously only one pilot was required to have 1500 hours. Standards for grading stall recovery were changed to avoid incentivising the behavior observed in the pilots in the 2009 crash.
      - deleted 3y ago
  - Prickle 3y ago
    The most recent airliner crash would be PenAir Flight 3296 in 2019. For jet-airliners, Atlas Air Flight 3591 also in 2019. If we count smaller craft like commercial single engine float planes, then the Puget Sound plane crash in 2022.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  That's actually not true. The "safe" recommendation is to keep all planes in the sky regardless of suspected safety issues because alternative transportation is not safer than a dangerous airplane.
  - acover 3y ago
    There are other planes.
    - boringuser2 3y ago
      Yes, but can you reasonably suggest that air travel wouldn't be in any way disrupted by grounding planes in active rotation for an airline? This must be your position if you were to post this.
      - dendriti 3y ago
        Nobody mentioned anything about lack of disruption except you. Moving those goalposts.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    If the alternative to flying is not taking the trip at all, then that's certainly safest. And I imagine that's the case for many trips, especially those where the flight is more than an hour and a half or so. (Consider that I can fly from SF to LA in an hour and a half, but it's a 6-hour drive. If my flight was canceled and I couldn't find an alternative flight, I just wouldn't go at all. Certainly there are some extreme situations where I might bite the bullet and drive, but that'd be rare.) Put another way: when we know something is unsafe, we shouldn't keep it going just because of the theoretical risk of alternatives. And yes, I know that the risk of driving isn't "theoretical", but we can't fully predict what humans will do absent their first choice of transportation.
    - boringuser2 3y ago
      Most flight isn't for pleasure.
- nunuvit 3y ago
  You can infer that it is newsworthy. > One engineer made a preliminary estimate that the chance of another Max crash was more than 13 times greater than FAA risk guidelines allow. > However, this document was not completed and did not go through managerial review due to lack of detailed flight data A plane crash is too significant for the FAA not to even disposition the analysis, meaning formally receiving, reviewing, and deciding what to do. Incomplete data would just be part of the decision process, it's not a legitimate excuse for not looking at it. Killing the report like this where no one is on record opposing it is a pretty common tactic to at least buy some time when you know what the result will be. They were hoping to find a reason not to ground the plane. They didn't find one, so they eventually ground it.
jmclnx 3y ago
Money talks. The head of the FAA are chosen by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Usually the heads are people who use to work for the Airline Industry or Manufactures of Airlines. So, major conflict of interest here.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  The problem is that airline industry people are actually also the most qualified (on paper) to run the FAA.
  - ouid 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - School-Cotton 3y ago
      No, treason is aiding a foreign power that is at war with the US.
    - Georgelemental 3y ago
      Regulatory capture is not a problem that can be solved by executing examples, because the captured officials usually don't even think of themselves as captured. The solution is to align incentives, for example by closing the revolving door
    - tiedieconderoga 3y ago
      Organized sedition, maybe, but "treason" is narrowly defined in the US constitution: >Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. >The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood¹, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted. ¹: "Corruption of blood" is a legal term. This passage means that treason charges cannot be carried to future generations, they only apply to the person who committed the act.
nickpeterson 3y ago
I'd like to believe that this was a case for engineers being overcautious and the FAA deeming the risk low enough that it wouldn't be worth the reputation damage, but honestly who knows at this point? I don't follow aviation or Boeing actively, but in the last few years I seem to recall the max grounded for literally killing people, the 787 having tons of manufacturing issues,and something about the NASA contracts having a lawsuit from SpaceX. Feels like we're seeing a company in crisis.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  The FAA shouldn't concern itself with reputation damage, it should purely look at safety. This is part of the problem.
  - PedroBatista 3y ago
    Sure, but the revolving door between the FAA and Boeing is widely documented. For decades it has been discussed the whole situation stinks and someday the consequences would start to materialize. They did with the MAX and I fear it’s just the beginning.
fweimer 3y ago
For less than three days. Not sure why this is left out of the reporting.
- nottorp 3y ago
  Iirc they had no choice because everyone except the US had already grounded them. Doesn't sound like they changed their minds based on new data to me.
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  FAA didn't decide to ground. Trump did. That's why it's left out.
  - IntelMiner 3y ago
    How are those two things related exactly?
linuxftw 3y ago
[flagged]
observer987 3y ago
I was fully expecting a grounding once I first heard the details of the second crash and saw how closely it resembled the first. I was shocked that it didn’t happen before other international agencies did it. The FAA did itself no favor here.
- dboreham 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - myko 3y ago
    I didn't recall the specifics here but it's worse than I assumed from your comment, trump blamed "foreign pilots" for the crashes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-two-faulty-boeing-jets-crash-the-trump-administration-blames-foreign-pilots/2019/05/15/e940a692-774e-11e9-b3f5-5673edf2d127_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-two-faulty-boe...
    - ecommerceguy 3y ago
      My pilot neighbor, who is a captain at a major domestic us airline that flys maxes, also blamed foreign airlines pilots for lack of proper training.
      - yenda 3y ago
        What was the training? From what I read the plane was sold as being flown without the need for new training to counter the Airbus jet?
        YeBanKo 3y ago
        Our club has few professional pilots and iirc their more or less shared opinion was that boeing fucked up, but the expectation was that pilots training should have prevented the crashes. Regardless of Airbus, Boeing expectation still is that pilots can fly with minimum automation, and if something is wrong / odd they know how to disable it all, take full control, gain altitude and figure things out.
H8crilA 3y ago
At some point this becomes a national security concern - the Air Force would never accept Airbus-based tankers or AWACS platforms should Boeing go under. Then perhaps I'm exaggerating, a restructuring bankruptcy can sometimes do magic to rotting corporations.
- albertopv 3y ago
  Then why US allies should buy US technology, but not the other way around? Allies only when it suits US?
  - Consultant32452 3y ago
    Yes, obviously.
  - H8crilA 3y ago
    There is the cynical answer, but there's also the fact that the US equipment is actually pretty damn good and can be delivered in large quantities, though it it usually more expensive. You also have to consider alliances, if you buy equipment from country X then that country will be able to provide spares/ammunition/trained personnel if shit hits the fan. And the US is not blocking allied countries from purchasing equipment elsewhere or from developing their own industries. In fact it is usually angry at countries like Germany for not pulling their weight in domestic production. Military sales are more politics than business. The French behave much like the US, they'll buy foreign kit only as a very last resort. It is a strategic decision that a country has to make based on manufacturing capabilities, ability to generate orders (domestic and foreign) and the planned purpose for their military forces.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > the Air Force would never accept Airbus-based tankers or AWACS platforms should Boeing go under. Really? Because the Airbus A330 MRTT originally won the KC-X competition (before Boeing filed a challenge): > The USAF issued the KC-X request for proposal in January 2007,[2] then selected the Northrop Grumman/EADS team and their Airbus A330 MRTT-based tankers in February 2008.[3] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X
29athrowaway 3y ago
What else do you expect in an oligarchy.
jpgvm 3y ago
Turned out China was right on this one - ground first, ask questions later. That approach has historically been the FAA strategy. Maybe they should stick to what works? Especially given the airframe was so new and they also knew it had really stretched what should be allowable under the same type rating the caution was definitely warranted. The better question still remains as to how it got to keep the type rating despite the huge changes in the flight handling characteristics without a software system that didn't need to be sold in a redundant configuration and additionally without any additional training being mandated for pilots in the case of that system malfunctioning. Sure Boeing failed here but they are a company, companies especially of that size are absent of morals and driven only by profit. The FAA is meant to be the backstop, the voice of reason that prevents rampant capitalism from accidentally destroying itself. Airline travel only is what it is because of perceived safety, it's best all the stakeholders start remembering that.
- ecommerceguy 3y ago
  >>Especially given the airframe was so new Was it a new airframe though? Not too sure that statement is correct...
  - kelnos 3y ago
    The airframe was not new, but the overall design was new. GP's overall point still stands, regardless.
  - ummonk 3y ago
    Nacelles are part of the airframe, so yes.
alpos 3y ago
The underlying problems here run much deeper in that the root cause of the issues has more to do with the shenanigans Boeing and any other aircraft manufacturers end up having to do in order to avoid having to certify a whole new aircraft and especially to avoid needing to obtain a new type certification. Both cases are absurdly expensive and time consuming to the point that any new aircraft designs are basically experimental or dead on paper in terms of being able to sell the plane at a price people or even companies can actually pay. In this case, my understanding is that, the new engines are a bit bigger which necessitated a change in mounting position relative to the main body in order to maintain ground clearance on takeoff and landing, this should have meant larger landing gear sitting a bit higher and/or a slightly different wing shape and mounting position on the body. However, any of those kind of changes would have moved the Max8 into a new type certificate which would then require all pilots flying it to certify on that type in addition to additional flight testing and manufacturing certifications. All of that would move the cost of the plane well above the point where the efficiency gains would make it worth buying and delay production to the point where there would no longer be a market for it. So there would simply be no Max8. And one could say, "well that's business, Airbus beat you to it, Boeing should lose then". And that would be fine as long as we're willing to accept a world where the US produces no commercial aircraft at all and airline ticket prices and accommodations continue to get even worse. Are we good with making travel by air something only the rich can afford? So Boeing went with extending the engines forward and slightly upward which necessitated more down force from the horizontal stabilizers to balance the increased weight forward of the center of lift and introduced a potential disruption of airflow over the wings in a high pitch up situation. Changing the size, shape, or position of the horizontal stabilizers or anything else that would address the airflow issues would also run into certification cost issues. Therefore Boeing settled on an active control solution which they integrated into the existing flight control software (poorly) and found creative ways to convince regulators that nothing much had changed in the software such that the whole design could be built at a price point and time to market that would actually make the project worth doing at all. This kind of creative engineering of what you can get past the regulators is the dark side of any over-regulated industry and continues even in the re-certification process for the Max8 https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/18/22189609/faa-boeing-737-max-senate-report-coverup-tests-whistleblowers https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/18/22189609/faa-boeing-737-... The reasons for it are pretty straight forward and can be seen as bad actors being bad or simply the result you are bound to get when you regulate without accounting for the reality of how people and businesses work. You can't just say "safety is our top priority" and continue to add layers of regulation until it's impossible to do anything without manipulating or bypassing those regulations. Doing so will counter-productively NOT get you safer designs. What it will reliably get you is a shift in the focus of efforts from engineering the safest and most efficient aircraft possible to getting ever more creative about designing things you can get past the regulators. You don't want smart people dedicating large amounts of time, energy, and money to efforts to manipulate regulators. We the public would be much better served by an FAA that regulates with safety as the top priority AND an eye for making it possible and profitable to actually introduce new designs and new ways to manufacture things. Right now it is simply impossible to start a company with the goal of introducing a new aircraft or aircraft engine to the US market. It costs astronomical amounts to get to the point where you can sell your first plane and separately astronomical amounts to get to where you can sell your first engine. Even for single engine, fixed gear, small and light, GA planes. This is why almost no normal US citizen can afford to fly personally, even just occasionally for fun. It is also why GA planes still use leaded gasoline and burn around 10 gallons per hour. It is also why "new" aircraft are all actually >95% similar to existing designs (even if that makes them inefficient), always use existing decades old engines, and still cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, making them priced out for all but the wealthiest potential customers. The only possible route for any innovation in flight has been Experimental airworthiness certificates. And you can sell a few planes that way; but once you have a known good and tested design, you are still stuck in the Experimental category indefinitely because you will never sell enough planes to afford a standard category certificate. Best of luck to the flying car startups but no pilot in the US expects them to have a snowball's chance in hell of making it to the point where they are profitably selling a genuinely new type of aircraft.
j16sdiz 3y ago
This article miss so many details it is impossible to tell it is newsworthy or not. Is the report quoted in the article public?
glyphy177 3y ago
[dead]
SoftTalker 3y ago
Let's be honest, if the two crashes had happened to top-tier US or European airlines, there would have been a grounding after two similar crashes. But the crashes happened to third world Indonesian and African airlines, and the first, second, and third instinct was to blame pilot incompentency or poor training.
- fuzzybiscuit 3y ago
  [flagged]
- zarzavat 3y ago
  If there had been one crash in the EU or US, it would have been grounded immediately. Especially on land. Lion Air were a convenient scapegoat given their past history, Boeing PR hardly needed to do anything. When the first crash happened many people even here on HN were convinced it was the fault of Lion Air, even after the MCAS system had been exposed. Ultimately I think EASA deserves a little bit more blame. You can somewhat understand the FAA having a bias towards their own national aircraft maker, but what the hell was EASA doing? They were supposed to be the check against that kind of nationalist bias, but they were just as deferential as the FAA.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    Until someone told me about what MCAS does I was also fairly certain it was pilot error. After I was told I was just wondering what fool thought led someone to think installing it was a good idea. It’s like using a cron job that restarts your server once a day to deal with memory issues.
jvans 3y ago
The suits know the profit math and find the risks acceptable. The engineers know the mortality math and do not.
- frankfrankfrank 3y ago
  Geez. It’s fine! Important people don’t fly commercial anyways.
  - KyeRussell 3y ago
    If people want to survive they can choose to not buy a MAX. It’s the free market at work, people! /s
  - drstewart 3y ago
    Is your implication that private aviation has a better safety record?
santoshalper 3y ago
Has any happy story ever begun with ignoring your engineers?
- yellowapple 3y ago
  glances nervously at the O-rings
- Aeolun 3y ago
  I think it’s more interesting to see how many unhappy stories began after listening to your engineers.
gumby 3y ago
> top officials in the agency overruled them Unfortunately the article is unclear: was the overruling by appointees or civil servants? This distinction is crucial for any repair to the system. There is unfortunately a serious and destructive plan from one of the political parties to abandon the Pendleton act and return to the spoils system. If that happens we will see a lot more of this happening.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nunuvit 3y ago
  It had to be the appointee. The analysis was squashed at a low level by a procedural technicality, and the issue was too significant for the agency head to be uninvolved. On paper though, everyone's hands are clean.
- Haga 3y ago
  [dead]
tecoholic 3y ago
“Flying Blind” by Peter Robison is a great book on the MAX. I am surprised no one has mentioned it. It digs into the history of Boeing and the changes in the organisation and culture of corporate America that led to the MAX. I am surprised no one has mentioned it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55994102-flying-blind https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55994102-flying-blind
- sedawk 3y ago
  [dead]
sneak 3y ago
I still won't fly on these planes.
alkonaut 3y ago
What is the record of MAX flights since the grounding was removed? Have there been enough hours to say anything about accident statistics yet? No serious accidents I gather, but perhaps some data from close calls or minor incidents in related systems?

347 points by FridayoLeary 3y ago

Okay? Without knowing how often this happens and how often the engineers are wrong, we don’t know if this is newsworthy or not. The “safe” recommendation is to ground all the planes of that model any time there is a suspected issue. That said, the FAA has a long history of not implementing safety recommendations. NASA had this issue with the space shuttle.

rootusrootus 3y ago
> That said, the FAA has a long history of not implementing safety recommendations The counterpoint is that their safety record speaks for itself. When was the last commercial airliner crash in the US? 2009?
- alistairSH 3y ago
  At least as recent as 2013. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 If you mean domestic airline, then it was probably the 2009 Colgan Ait crash that led to major procedure and training g changes in the US.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    If you don’t mind, I’m curious what sort of procedure and training changes occurred after the 2009 incident. The streak of no major domestic crashes (and basically no crashes at all) is really impressive and I think it should be talked about more. If the procedure and training changes are responsible for the streak we should be holding a parade or something for those responsible. Speaking of parades, I wonder what changed to make them seem lame these days. Are they just boring relative to film?
    - alistairSH 3y ago
      Many of the changes can be read about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407 The biggest one was requiring both pilots to have ATP certificates, effectively moving the bar to co-pilot from 250 hours to 1500 hours of flying. Lots of other changes that taken on their own are small, but overall it was a pretty massive set of changes.
      - Shivatron 3y ago
        You probably know this, but for the GP: It's not clear whether the 1500 hour rule directly improved safety. Both the Colgan captain and the FO had more than 1500 hours at the time of the accident. What the rule did unambiguously is severely restrict the supply of new pilots to regional airlines. This significantly improved quality of life for regional pilots, who prior to Colgan were effectively making minimum wage or worse. (That may have indirectly improved safety, by making pilots more well-rested and fed...) Another point of comparison is Europe, which has a not-dissimilar safety record, but still allows FOs to have 250 hours. That said, from what I understand, they have a very different training culture where students start in a multi-crew environment very early.
        alistairSH 3y ago
        I remember reading about the typical lifestyle of a new regional pilot. Low wages, long hours, and often flying many hours as a passenger to get to work (living in Pitts, grabbing the first flight to NYC to work, etc). It sounded miserable.
    - kayfox 3y ago
      Fatigue rules were changed to be more strict. Requirements for regional airlines pilots were changed to require at least a minimum of 1500 hours for both pilots, previously only one pilot was required to have 1500 hours. Standards for grading stall recovery were changed to avoid incentivising the behavior observed in the pilots in the 2009 crash.
    - deleted 3y ago
- Prickle 3y ago
  The most recent airliner crash would be PenAir Flight 3296 in 2019. For jet-airliners, Atlas Air Flight 3591 also in 2019. If we count smaller craft like commercial single engine float planes, then the Puget Sound plane crash in 2022.
boringuser2 3y ago
That's actually not true. The "safe" recommendation is to keep all planes in the sky regardless of suspected safety issues because alternative transportation is not safer than a dangerous airplane.
- acover 3y ago
  There are other planes.
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    Yes, but can you reasonably suggest that air travel wouldn't be in any way disrupted by grounding planes in active rotation for an airline? This must be your position if you were to post this.
    - dendriti 3y ago
      Nobody mentioned anything about lack of disruption except you. Moving those goalposts.
- kelnos 3y ago
  If the alternative to flying is not taking the trip at all, then that's certainly safest. And I imagine that's the case for many trips, especially those where the flight is more than an hour and a half or so. (Consider that I can fly from SF to LA in an hour and a half, but it's a 6-hour drive. If my flight was canceled and I couldn't find an alternative flight, I just wouldn't go at all. Certainly there are some extreme situations where I might bite the bullet and drive, but that'd be rare.) Put another way: when we know something is unsafe, we shouldn't keep it going just because of the theoretical risk of alternatives. And yes, I know that the risk of driving isn't "theoretical", but we can't fully predict what humans will do absent their first choice of transportation.
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    Most flight isn't for pleasure.
nunuvit 3y ago
You can infer that it is newsworthy. > One engineer made a preliminary estimate that the chance of another Max crash was more than 13 times greater than FAA risk guidelines allow. > However, this document was not completed and did not go through managerial review due to lack of detailed flight data A plane crash is too significant for the FAA not to even disposition the analysis, meaning formally receiving, reviewing, and deciding what to do. Incomplete data would just be part of the decision process, it's not a legitimate excuse for not looking at it. Killing the report like this where no one is on record opposing it is a pretty common tactic to at least buy some time when you know what the result will be. They were hoping to find a reason not to ground the plane. They didn't find one, so they eventually ground it.

jmclnx 3y ago

Money talks. The head of the FAA are chosen by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Usually the heads are people who use to work for the Airline Industry or Manufactures of Airlines. So, major conflict of interest here.

nerdponx 3y ago
The problem is that airline industry people are actually also the most qualified (on paper) to run the FAA.
- ouid 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    No, treason is aiding a foreign power that is at war with the US.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    Regulatory capture is not a problem that can be solved by executing examples, because the captured officials usually don't even think of themselves as captured. The solution is to align incentives, for example by closing the revolving door
  - tiedieconderoga 3y ago
    Organized sedition, maybe, but "treason" is narrowly defined in the US constitution: >Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. >The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood¹, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted. ¹: "Corruption of blood" is a legal term. This passage means that treason charges cannot be carried to future generations, they only apply to the person who committed the act.

nickpeterson 3y ago

I'd like to believe that this was a case for engineers being overcautious and the FAA deeming the risk low enough that it wouldn't be worth the reputation damage, but honestly who knows at this point? I don't follow aviation or Boeing actively, but in the last few years I seem to recall the max grounded for literally killing people, the 787 having tons of manufacturing issues,and something about the NASA contracts having a lawsuit from SpaceX. Feels like we're seeing a company in crisis.

wkat4242 3y ago
The FAA shouldn't concern itself with reputation damage, it should purely look at safety. This is part of the problem.
- PedroBatista 3y ago
  Sure, but the revolving door between the FAA and Boeing is widely documented. For decades it has been discussed the whole situation stinks and someday the consequences would start to materialize. They did with the MAX and I fear it’s just the beginning.

fweimer 3y ago

For less than three days. Not sure why this is left out of the reporting.

nottorp 3y ago
Iirc they had no choice because everyone except the US had already grounded them. Doesn't sound like they changed their minds based on new data to me.
local_crmdgeon 3y ago
FAA didn't decide to ground. Trump did. That's why it's left out.
- IntelMiner 3y ago
  How are those two things related exactly?

linuxftw 3y ago

[flagged]

observer987 3y ago

I was fully expecting a grounding once I first heard the details of the second crash and saw how closely it resembled the first. I was shocked that it didn’t happen before other international agencies did it. The FAA did itself no favor here.

dboreham 3y ago
[flagged]
- myko 3y ago
  I didn't recall the specifics here but it's worse than I assumed from your comment, trump blamed "foreign pilots" for the crashes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-two-faulty-boeing-jets-crash-the-trump-administration-blames-foreign-pilots/2019/05/15/e940a692-774e-11e9-b3f5-5673edf2d127_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-two-faulty-boe...
  - ecommerceguy 3y ago
    My pilot neighbor, who is a captain at a major domestic us airline that flys maxes, also blamed foreign airlines pilots for lack of proper training.
    - yenda 3y ago
      What was the training? From what I read the plane was sold as being flown without the need for new training to counter the Airbus jet?
      - YeBanKo 3y ago
        Our club has few professional pilots and iirc their more or less shared opinion was that boeing fucked up, but the expectation was that pilots training should have prevented the crashes. Regardless of Airbus, Boeing expectation still is that pilots can fly with minimum automation, and if something is wrong / odd they know how to disable it all, take full control, gain altitude and figure things out.

H8crilA 3y ago

At some point this becomes a national security concern - the Air Force would never accept Airbus-based tankers or AWACS platforms should Boeing go under. Then perhaps I'm exaggerating, a restructuring bankruptcy can sometimes do magic to rotting corporations.

albertopv 3y ago
Then why US allies should buy US technology, but not the other way around? Allies only when it suits US?
- Consultant32452 3y ago
  Yes, obviously.
- H8crilA 3y ago
  There is the cynical answer, but there's also the fact that the US equipment is actually pretty damn good and can be delivered in large quantities, though it it usually more expensive. You also have to consider alliances, if you buy equipment from country X then that country will be able to provide spares/ammunition/trained personnel if shit hits the fan. And the US is not blocking allied countries from purchasing equipment elsewhere or from developing their own industries. In fact it is usually angry at countries like Germany for not pulling their weight in domestic production. Military sales are more politics than business. The French behave much like the US, they'll buy foreign kit only as a very last resort. It is a strategic decision that a country has to make based on manufacturing capabilities, ability to generate orders (domestic and foreign) and the planned purpose for their military forces.
throw0101b 3y ago
> the Air Force would never accept Airbus-based tankers or AWACS platforms should Boeing go under. Really? Because the Airbus A330 MRTT originally won the KC-X competition (before Boeing filed a challenge): > The USAF issued the KC-X request for proposal in January 2007,[2] then selected the Northrop Grumman/EADS team and their Airbus A330 MRTT-based tankers in February 2008.[3] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X

29athrowaway 3y ago

What else do you expect in an oligarchy.

jpgvm 3y ago

Turned out China was right on this one - ground first, ask questions later. That approach has historically been the FAA strategy. Maybe they should stick to what works? Especially given the airframe was so new and they also knew it had really stretched what should be allowable under the same type rating the caution was definitely warranted. The better question still remains as to how it got to keep the type rating despite the huge changes in the flight handling characteristics without a software system that didn't need to be sold in a redundant configuration and additionally without any additional training being mandated for pilots in the case of that system malfunctioning. Sure Boeing failed here but they are a company, companies especially of that size are absent of morals and driven only by profit. The FAA is meant to be the backstop, the voice of reason that prevents rampant capitalism from accidentally destroying itself. Airline travel only is what it is because of perceived safety, it's best all the stakeholders start remembering that.

ecommerceguy 3y ago
>>Especially given the airframe was so new Was it a new airframe though? Not too sure that statement is correct...
- kelnos 3y ago
  The airframe was not new, but the overall design was new. GP's overall point still stands, regardless.
- ummonk 3y ago
  Nacelles are part of the airframe, so yes.

alpos 3y ago

The underlying problems here run much deeper in that the root cause of the issues has more to do with the shenanigans Boeing and any other aircraft manufacturers end up having to do in order to avoid having to certify a whole new aircraft and especially to avoid needing to obtain a new type certification. Both cases are absurdly expensive and time consuming to the point that any new aircraft designs are basically experimental or dead on paper in terms of being able to sell the plane at a price people or even companies can actually pay. In this case, my understanding is that, the new engines are a bit bigger which necessitated a change in mounting position relative to the main body in order to maintain ground clearance on takeoff and landing, this should have meant larger landing gear sitting a bit higher and/or a slightly different wing shape and mounting position on the body. However, any of those kind of changes would have moved the Max8 into a new type certificate which would then require all pilots flying it to certify on that type in addition to additional flight testing and manufacturing certifications. All of that would move the cost of the plane well above the point where the efficiency gains would make it worth buying and delay production to the point where there would no longer be a market for it. So there would simply be no Max8. And one could say, "well that's business, Airbus beat you to it, Boeing should lose then". And that would be fine as long as we're willing to accept a world where the US produces no commercial aircraft at all and airline ticket prices and accommodations continue to get even worse. Are we good with making travel by air something only the rich can afford? So Boeing went with extending the engines forward and slightly upward which necessitated more down force from the horizontal stabilizers to balance the increased weight forward of the center of lift and introduced a potential disruption of airflow over the wings in a high pitch up situation. Changing the size, shape, or position of the horizontal stabilizers or anything else that would address the airflow issues would also run into certification cost issues. Therefore Boeing settled on an active control solution which they integrated into the existing flight control software (poorly) and found creative ways to convince regulators that nothing much had changed in the software such that the whole design could be built at a price point and time to market that would actually make the project worth doing at all. This kind of creative engineering of what you can get past the regulators is the dark side of any over-regulated industry and continues even in the re-certification process for the Max8 https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/18/22189609/faa-boeing-737-max-senate-report-coverup-tests-whistleblowers https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/18/22189609/faa-boeing-737-... The reasons for it are pretty straight forward and can be seen as bad actors being bad or simply the result you are bound to get when you regulate without accounting for the reality of how people and businesses work. You can't just say "safety is our top priority" and continue to add layers of regulation until it's impossible to do anything without manipulating or bypassing those regulations. Doing so will counter-productively NOT get you safer designs. What it will reliably get you is a shift in the focus of efforts from engineering the safest and most efficient aircraft possible to getting ever more creative about designing things you can get past the regulators. You don't want smart people dedicating large amounts of time, energy, and money to efforts to manipulate regulators. We the public would be much better served by an FAA that regulates with safety as the top priority AND an eye for making it possible and profitable to actually introduce new designs and new ways to manufacture things. Right now it is simply impossible to start a company with the goal of introducing a new aircraft or aircraft engine to the US market. It costs astronomical amounts to get to the point where you can sell your first plane and separately astronomical amounts to get to where you can sell your first engine. Even for single engine, fixed gear, small and light, GA planes. This is why almost no normal US citizen can afford to fly personally, even just occasionally for fun. It is also why GA planes still use leaded gasoline and burn around 10 gallons per hour. It is also why "new" aircraft are all actually >95% similar to existing designs (even if that makes them inefficient), always use existing decades old engines, and still cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, making them priced out for all but the wealthiest potential customers. The only possible route for any innovation in flight has been Experimental airworthiness certificates. And you can sell a few planes that way; but once you have a known good and tested design, you are still stuck in the Experimental category indefinitely because you will never sell enough planes to afford a standard category certificate. Best of luck to the flying car startups but no pilot in the US expects them to have a snowball's chance in hell of making it to the point where they are profitably selling a genuinely new type of aircraft.

j16sdiz 3y ago

This article miss so many details it is impossible to tell it is newsworthy or not. Is the report quoted in the article public?

glyphy177 3y ago

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SoftTalker 3y ago

Let's be honest, if the two crashes had happened to top-tier US or European airlines, there would have been a grounding after two similar crashes. But the crashes happened to third world Indonesian and African airlines, and the first, second, and third instinct was to blame pilot incompentency or poor training.

fuzzybiscuit 3y ago
[flagged]
zarzavat 3y ago
If there had been one crash in the EU or US, it would have been grounded immediately. Especially on land. Lion Air were a convenient scapegoat given their past history, Boeing PR hardly needed to do anything. When the first crash happened many people even here on HN were convinced it was the fault of Lion Air, even after the MCAS system had been exposed. Ultimately I think EASA deserves a little bit more blame. You can somewhat understand the FAA having a bias towards their own national aircraft maker, but what the hell was EASA doing? They were supposed to be the check against that kind of nationalist bias, but they were just as deferential as the FAA.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  Until someone told me about what MCAS does I was also fairly certain it was pilot error. After I was told I was just wondering what fool thought led someone to think installing it was a good idea. It’s like using a cron job that restarts your server once a day to deal with memory issues.

jvans 3y ago

The suits know the profit math and find the risks acceptable. The engineers know the mortality math and do not.

frankfrankfrank 3y ago
Geez. It’s fine! Important people don’t fly commercial anyways.
- KyeRussell 3y ago
  If people want to survive they can choose to not buy a MAX. It’s the free market at work, people! /s
- drstewart 3y ago
  Is your implication that private aviation has a better safety record?

santoshalper 3y ago

Has any happy story ever begun with ignoring your engineers?

yellowapple 3y ago
glances nervously at the O-rings
Aeolun 3y ago
I think it’s more interesting to see how many unhappy stories began after listening to your engineers.

gumby 3y ago

> top officials in the agency overruled them Unfortunately the article is unclear: was the overruling by appointees or civil servants? This distinction is crucial for any repair to the system. There is unfortunately a serious and destructive plan from one of the political parties to abandon the Pendleton act and return to the spoils system. If that happens we will see a lot more of this happening.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nunuvit 3y ago
It had to be the appointee. The analysis was squashed at a low level by a procedural technicality, and the issue was too significant for the agency head to be uninvolved. On paper though, everyone's hands are clean.
Haga 3y ago
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tecoholic 3y ago

“Flying Blind” by Peter Robison is a great book on the MAX. I am surprised no one has mentioned it. It digs into the history of Boeing and the changes in the organisation and culture of corporate America that led to the MAX. I am surprised no one has mentioned it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55994102-flying-blind https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55994102-flying-blind

sedawk 3y ago
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sneak 3y ago

I still won't fly on these planes.

alkonaut 3y ago

What is the record of MAX flights since the grounding was removed? Have there been enough hours to say anything about accident statistics yet? No serious accidents I gather, but perhaps some data from close calls or minor incidents in related systems?