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> At least Airbus seems to be competent in building safe aircraft. Prior to new models released in the last ~10yrs-ish, Boeing made the safest planes in the sk
by mrandish 3y ago
> At least Airbus seems to be competent in building safe aircraft.
Prior to new models released in the last ~10yrs-ish, Boeing made the safest planes in the sky (as measured by passenger miles). Many of those planes are still flying and still doing great.
For me the interesting question is what changed in Boeing's design, testing and/or manufacturing processes which is apparently resulting in worse safety performance.
- sp332 3y agoSome corporate history https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304277
- intunderflow 3y agoI've heard that when they merged with McDonnell Douglas their new (McDonnell) management pushed out the good engineering culture and dropped their quality standards in a chase for more profit, leading to engineering experiencing the dead sea effect.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y agoin other words: capitalism, the system we've designed our whole society around
- crisdux 3y agoNo, this isn't a well-functioning capitalist system. Competition is a core principle of capitalism. What occurred in the aerospace industry represents a government-sanctioned monopoly.
- windowsrookie 3y agoIn the last 20 years nearly every industry has seen major consolidation between just a few large companies. Is any part of the capitalist system "well functioning" anymore?
- jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago>Competition is a core principle of capitalism Capitalism is literally defined by the ability to invest capital to accumulate more of it by way of profit. The logical end of this process is straightforwardly monopoly.
- onpointed 3y agoAnd if the world/environment/context of the business didn’t change then the monopolies might last, but because there is change there is room to innovate and outcompete the monopolies.
- jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y agoWho doesn't love a fundamentally disastrous system justified by a sometimes possible exception?
- orwin 3y agoYeah, no. You'll be bought in 95% of cases if you threaten a monopolistic position. That's why I'm really fond of signal btw.
- crisdux 3y agoCapitalism is not only defined by the accumulation of capital, but also by competition. The interplay between market forces, competition, innovation, and regulation in capitalism works against the formation of monopolies. The aerospace industry is not a good example of capitalism. What we have with Boeing is basically a government sanctioned monopoly. It’s basically a weak form of nationalization, without the stigma.
- jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago>Capitalism is not only defined by the accumulation of capital, but also by competition That's wrong. In reality, the mere theoretical potential for competition has always been more than enough to call it capitalism from any perspective. The facts are that actual competition is not a requirement.
- malfist 3y agoMonopolies are the end goal of capitalism
- halJordan 3y agoMonopolies are broken by capitalism just as much as they're created by capitalism. The whole "end-stage capitalism" schtick is wrong because a free market will lead to the ossification and then breakdown of a monopolist. You just have to finish spring semester of Econ101 to find out how.
- jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago>Monopolies are broken by capitalism just as much as they're created by capitalism. Source?
- orwin 3y agoCapitalism != free market. You think of liberalism here. Capitalism is about private ownership of the means of production, no? Maybe the definition changed in the US?
- pi-e-sigma 3y agoIn it's origins it was about the capital ruling, as opposed to the aristocracy. So political power would be in the hands of people with capital, not the landed aristocracy. The means of production only entered the equation with the industrial revolution. And capitalism is older than that, albeit not much older
- camillomiller 3y agoIt’s always so funny to read this kind of answer when someone points out the evident flaws of capitalism! “Hey, wait a minute, this is not how capitalism is supposed to work, so you can’t say it’s capitalism”. Too bad that capitalism isn’t one monolithic thing and this is ABSOLUTELY how loosely regulated American capitalism works. It’s a form of capitalism where human life is an optimization problem that sits on the way to profits.
- WalterBright 3y agoAnd Soviet built airliners are known for their safety?
- vkou 3y agoIs there any kind of alternative that could be found, or have we reached the end of history, with our only two options being 2023 capitalism versus 1960s Soviet state capitalism?
- WalterBright 3y agoAirplanes are designed by people, and are enormously complex. No system involving humans will be free of mistakes.
- vkou 3y agoI'm less concerned about mistakes as I am about systemic failures and bad incentives. Boeing seems to have created a political and regulatory environment for itself where its better for it to design and build planes poorly, than it is for it to design and build planes well.
- WalterBright 3y agoConsider the incentives of the people at the FAA. Their incentive is to never approve a design, because if they approve a faulty design, they get the heat, too. It's much safer to just not approve anything, or at least delay demanding ever more documentation. Hence there's always going to be a tug of war between the FAA and the industry. The FAA never wants to approve anything, and industry goes out of business if the FAA doesn't approve it. You'll see the same forces in action with the FDA. BTW, as is abundantly clear from history, a fatal design mistake can and has destroyed several airframe companies. Boeing's finances were punished severely after the MAX crashes. Boeing does not win by making an unsafe design. When I worked at Boeing, I didn't know any engineer who was willing to sign his name to a faulty design. Yes, the engineer responsible for a piece of work gets his name on the drawings. It's career suicide for him if he signed off on a bad design.
- tpm 3y agoAny system where management incentives are not aligned with end-user incentives. So all of them really.
- halJordan 3y agoAh yes, the same capitalism that was around for the building of this industry that was incredibly safe up until it wasnt? Or was it safe because it was heavily regulated back then but the heavy regulations today we ignore because "capitalism"? You cant just throw these single word thought-terminators out there. When an actual cartoon is doing better than you it's time to recalibrate. "Think Mark! Think!"
- calf 3y agoSo you think that the failure of industry regulation is not due to capitalism as it actually exists? What then causes regulatory failure over time?
- jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y agoWhy do you think regulatory efforts have been undermined? Karl Marx showed us 150 years ago how a government under capitalism always tends toward domination by capitalists.
- ntkaspca1931 3y agoThere is also capitalism in Switzerland, Singapore, Australia and countless other countries. America looks like it's speed running the soviet union and south africa.
- neilv 3y agoIs there an opposite of the Dead Sea Effect? (I'm not talking about self-congratulatory conceits, like "raising the bar" and "fire fast", since the companies that first come to mind as saying those things tend to produce a large quantity of often poor quality, in very visible ways. Do we have concepts or terms lately for a place where most everyone does great work, and people who don't rise to that don't remain there?)
- cf1241290841 3y agoThere is a book recommendation in the other thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38894227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38894227 The McDonnell Douglas merger is also worth mentioning in this context.
- hinkley 3y agoI’ve heard it argued that the US government coerced that merger.
- ls612 3y agoAfter the unfortunate incident in Japan this week, the Boeing 787, a plane designed in the 2000s and flying since 2013, is now the only passenger airliner without a hull loss. So they are clearly capable of producing modern safe airliners post merger.
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoProducing, what about “designing safe aircraft post-merger”?
- ryanwaggoner 3y agoDo you have a source for that? This lists a number of others: https://simpleflying.com/aircraft-types-zero-hull-losses/ https://simpleflying.com/aircraft-types-zero-hull-losses/
- ls612 3y agoHuh I never realized the 717 had no crashes either that’s even more impressive considering the era it was designed in tbh. The others on that list look like subtypes (ie the 747-8; there have been numerous 747 crashes).
- sjm-lbm 3y agoTo be fair, the 717 is a DC-9 subtype if we're being honest with ourselves. If the 717 counts as type without a hull loss, the 747-8 should count as well.
- ryanwaggoner 3y agoA380?
- oceanplexian 3y agoI don’t feel like hull loss without context is a meaningful metric of anything. At the end of the day they are airplanes flown by pilots. You could have a less safe design flown by highly competent pilots and never lose a plane, or an incredibly sophisticated, technically advanced aircraft where the pilot makes a decision resulting the destruction of the aircraft.
- BoardsOfCanada 3y agoProbably some upper-middle manager that needed to push something through to get a bonus.
- jnsaff2 3y ago787 program: - designed to outsource most manufacturing to the lowest bidder, many program management problems, overruns and delays - to bust unions new factory was created in South Carolina and this has very poor QC, there are rumors that a certain large middle eastern airline refuses to accept any planes assembled there 737 program: - they decided that they are not going to do a clean sheet 737NG and use the existing platform to put on new engines and do other modernization. They did it the cheap way and tried to paper over problems in software to make sure that their biggest customers would not need to send their pilots through extra training. Killed hundreds already.
- WalterBright 3y agoIt's safer to have a new airplane design behave like the old one. There have been many crashes due a pilot being stressed and automatically doing something that would have been right on a previous airplane he was familiar with, but which was wrong for the current airplane he is flying. All jet airliners are aerodynamically unstable and use active controls to "paper over" that. There is nothing inherently wrong with doing that. The MCAS problem was not due to its purpose. The problem was the software for it had too much authority, and did not shut off when the pilot countermanded it. A worse problem was the pilots did not follow emergency procedures for runaway trim. For reference, the emergency procedures are: 1. restore normal trim with the electric trim switches (which overrides MCAS) 2. turn off the trim via a switch on the console
- VBprogrammer 3y agoI don't think it's worth relitigating MCAS here but your analysis here is very generous to Boeing and harsh to the pilots who where unwitting test pilots in Boeing's mistake.
- WalterBright 3y agoIn the LA crash, the crew restored normal trim 25 times, and never thought to turn off the trim. Turning off the trim is a "memory item", meaning the pilots should not need to consult a checklist for it. The switch is right there on the center console within easy reach. The FAA sent around an Emergency Airworthiness Directive reiterating the two step process before the EA crash: Boeing Emergency Airworthiness Directive "Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are moved to CUTOUT." https://theaircurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/B737-MAX-AD-1107.pdf https://theaircurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/B737-MA... They also ignored the overspeed warning horn because they were apparently operating at full throttle. This was a large contributory factor to being unable to move the trim by hand. So, yeah, it is harsh to the crews. I've also talked with MAX pilots who were quite harsh towards them. I'm amazed that one would not be harsh towards a pilot who did not bother to read/understand/remember and EMERGENCY AIRWORTHINESS DIRECTIVE about how not to crash. Would you get on an airplane knowing it had such a pilot? Not me. I assign 50% responsibility to the pilots and 50% to Boeing.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoRead this: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout One of the tenets of the article is that the breakdown of the once-impermeable wall between civilian and military divisions has resulted in disaster.
- Nextgrid 3y ago> what changed in Boeing's design, testing and/or manufacturing processes My theory is that this is not limited to Boeing or even aircraft design, it's a much deeper and systemic problem affecting all kinds of fields. We've had a lot of industrial accidents lately. When aircraft manufacturing was an emerging industry there were tons of undocumented safety margins and "slack" in the design and production pipeline. Over time, the beancounters start optimizing stuff, so these undocumented safety margins are eroded in the name of efficiency/profit (and sometimes even documented safety margins too). Furthermore, workers back in the day had a much better life when it comes to purchasing power (especially when it comes to property), and so could actually "give more fucks" about the job than they do now which is a compounding factor. You used to get a lot of implicit quality assurance back then which you don't get now. We've now reached a stage where these undocumented safety margins have been eroded enough that it actually starts to cause issues, and the safeguards that are supposed to catch them aren't good enough, either due to 1) they've never been good enough but just weren't really needed before or 2) they too have been eroded in the same way for the same reason. This also applies to software - software quality nowadays has gone down the drain for the same reasons, and even brands that were built on quality and polish (Apple) are now churning out shit (see the endless calls for another "Snow Leopard" bugfix-only macOS release).
- danpalmer 3y agoI pretty much agree with this. The aggressive push towards optimisation everywhere in life is causing strain at the margins. I think this has always happened though, including without capitalism – it's basically the definition of growing pains. It's a natural process to some extent, and I'm not sure that corrections ever really happen, we just find new areas, new things that don't have the same limitations and grow into those.
- walleeee 3y agoSeems more parsimonious to explain aggressive optimisation everywhere as contraction pains. Efficiency and optimization as the obsession of a society aiming to rescue itself from encroaching constraints within a historically successful but fading paradigm- the facade of which may long outlast its public interest utility, propped up for the convenient credibility it lends private, perhaps mercenary, interests
- sio8ohPi 3y agoBack when their planes blew up on their own (TWA 800, Philippine 143, Thai Airways 114), and when the rudders liked to jam themselves to full-deflection (UA 525, USAir 427)?