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US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
- rramadass 3y agohttps://archive.is/Dx8gP https://archive.is/Dx8gP
- voakbasda 3y agoDear regulators, Do it. Do it now. Sincerely, Everyone
- jillesvangurp 3y agoEasier said then done. Inspecting planes is job that requires a lot of skill and knowledge. Most of those people aren't cheap and they tend to work for airplane companies that need their skills and can pay their salaries. Which in the US means Boeing basically employs all the best people for this. IMHO, the system actually works just fine. Accidents are extremely rare and companies tend to learn from them. A better fix would maybe be to just make it really expensive for Boeing to cut corners here and put mechanisms in place to verify that they aren't. And you could argue that is the case already. Their reputation suffered and it probably shows in their order books. So, I'm guessing they are very eager and well incentivized to move on from that. And looking at the Airbus and Boeing stock price suggests that Boeing stock has never recovered from that. Both stocks went down a lot at the beginning of Covid. But the Airbus stock has basically recovered from that and Boeing hasn't. Even the mere threat of regulators getting more strict is probably making investors really nervous. That could end up being more effective than any actual inspections.
- protastus 3y agoInspecting planes does require a lot of skill and knowledge. But one doesn't need deep expertise to detect loose bolts. My experience is that when quality breaks down, the effects are visible at multiple scales and multiple places. Who knows what else is non-compliant in the 737 MAX assembly line (surely this is why the FAA announced an audit). Loose bolts happen because multiple layers of protection were bypassed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
- Dalewyn 3y agoFor all the criticism the American aerospace industry gets, Boeing is the only one clearly suffering the problems they have. If stricter regulations mean Boeing can't do business, tough luck. Boeing's entire business is to make good aircraft, and they are grossly failing to do so; their problems extend far beyond just the 737 MAX. A business that can't sell good products shouldn't be in business one way or another.
- 123pie123 3y ago>Boeing's entire business is to make good aircraft, it looks like from the outside that Boeing c-suite of people think... "Boeing's entire business is to make good profit" without understanding the consequences of cutting corners in the process
- mathverse 3y agoPoach people from Airbus. Just pay them well and bring them over.
- gmerc 3y agoWhat’s there to consider even - political connections?
- thatguy0900 3y agoDoes the faa have enough qualified staff and budget to review boeings planes? Does anyone other than Boeing have them, since noone else does it? Legitimate question. Would you poach a bunch of engineers from the airlines/military?
- bombcar 3y agoYou build it up over time by hiring direct from colleges (or even trade schools). It has to be a complete plan, not just a slap-dash "we can hire some people and the problem is solved". To do it best you do NOT hire from the industry, and if necessary you hire from unrelated industries (perhaps, for example, oil rig/pipeline inspectors).
- burnerthrow008 3y agoAs a practical matter, the FAA might designate someone outside of Boeing to do the inspections (like maybe people from Lockheed or Grumman, who are not directly competing in the commercial airliner space). When you take a checkride at the end of training to earn your pilot certificate, it's not an FAA employee riding with you... it's a "DPE" or Designated Pilot Examiner, who is a private individual designated by the FAA to conduct check rides (and who often charges you a fee to administer the test). Occasionally an FAA employee will ride along with the student pilot and DPE to evaluate how the DPE is evaluating prospective pilots.
- jgeada 3y agoIsn't this the whole point of the "defund the government" approach? Deliberately sabotage the regulatory authorities, then use the fact that they no longer have the expertise and staff as a justification to outsource the regulation function over to the companies that were supposed to be inspected. And when it goes wrong, which it always does, make shocked pikachu face and claim that nothing can be done because we no longer have the capacity to regulate industry. This would be less infuriating if this was the first time, but it keeps happening again and again and people keep falling for it. It is immensely profitable for the few though, that might be why it keeps happening. The fix is easy, just requires time and budget: rebuild that expertise and refuse to certify anything until you have the necessary capabilities.
- game_the0ry 3y agoFinally, after a couple of plane crashes, fantastic investigative journalism, and a door blowing off mid flight (thankfully that was caught on video and shared). Too little, too late. We should regulate the regulators, bc I don't trust them either.
- SoftTalker 3y agoDo you think Boeing would have (or could have) swept that under the rug if there was no video of the incident? I don't think it makes sense for any manufacturer to be solely responsible for their own safety inspections. Too much incentive to cheat. Must be verified or at least randomly spot-checked independently.
- game_the0ry 3y ago> Do you think Boeing would have (or could have) swept that under the rug if there was no video of the incident? Yes. It is way more powerful to actually see what happen than to just hear a report about it. I think it was more powerful than even a plane crash that is not caught on film, even though many people would die. Do not underestimate the power of photo and video evidence.
- danaris 3y agoI dunno; I think that in a case where you can see photos of a guy holding up a blown-off plane door that fell on (or next to? I don't recall the exact details) his house, video of the incident as it happened is just the icing on the cake.
- wolverine876 3y ago> We should regulate the regulators, bc I don't trust them either. We should have oversight, and we do, but it's hard to pick a worse example of bad regulation (or a better example of good regulation) than the FAA. Air travel safety is extraordinary.
- 3y ago
- brink 3y agoWhat other industry is allowed to inspect itself? It completely ruins the point of an inspection. It's like being the judge and jury in your own trial. I'm amazed this is a thing in the first place.
- game_the0ry 3y agoFinance. As proven by the 2008-2010 Great Financial Crisis, self regulation does not work well.
- shermantanktop 3y ago...in all cases. You've got a great counterexample, but it doesn't invalidate the successful use of self-regulation in other areas.
- game_the0ry 3y ago> ...the successful use of self-regulation in other areas. Where has self-regulation been successful?
- moomin 3y agoFamously, in the UK, Railtrack outsourced basically its whole operation. Including inspections, often to the same firms doing the work. This culminated in the Potters Bar crash. I worked with someone who survived it. He was, by his own estimation "not quite right" afterwards. People don't often make the connection, but at that point the government of the day started pressuring Railtrack to fix the rails. Railtrack's countergambit was to demand money from the government, saying they couldn't afford to do it. This did not have the effect they had hoped for and ended up with Tony Blair, a man who had made a name for himself by changing the Labour party constitution so they no longer were about nationalising industries, having to nationalise a section of the railway industry. And to this date, no-one, even a conservative government in power for the last 14 years, has suggested privatising it again.
- pi-e-sigma 3y ago
- psychlops 3y agoI guess they could always use inspectors from Airbus since I doubt the US regulators are qualified.
- Scoundreller 3y agoHave we concluded that the bolts/nuts/door was assembled incorrectly and not faulty metallurgy or faulty assembly instructions? Still unsure if the recent door issue was a matter of sloppy assembly (which inspection should find) or sloppy specifications/equipment (which inspection would reinforce, possibly making things worse).
- MobiusHorizons 3y agoObviously the NTSB report is not finalized, but I think we can rule out metallurgy. Even just from the photos you can see that the tabs in the airplane that the door plug rides up against and the corresponding tabs on the door (even though it fell out of the airplane) are still intact. The only other faulty metallurgy issues remaining would be if certain bolts that have not yet been found had failed. The likelihood of that is extremely low given how new the plane is, and there would be evidence of wear on the corresponding parts, which has not been reported. This pretty much guarantees some level of faulty assembly with incorrectly torqued or (most likely) missing bolts. Very much the sort of accident for which aerospace has a process to prevent.
- sokoloff 3y agoIt's not clear to me which aspects of Boeing's authority are in question even after reading the FT article. Boeing has both have Designated Engineering Representatives (DERs) who are involved in design certification questions for airframe type certificates and quality inspectors who are involved in certifying individual already-built airframes for airworthiness (conformance to type certification and in condition for safe operation). The former are usually not called inspectors, but many of the comments here are covering topics that are the domain of DERs rather than inspectors/A&P w/IA.
- strangattractor 3y agoMany people seem to think this couldn't/wouldn't have happened if someone else had been doing the inspections. This problem was likely caused by a flaw in the process. A mistake a 3rd party could also make. It is not a mistake where Boeing is doing nefarious cost cutting and needs to hide it or has made a huge engineering mistake affecting all the aircraft. Somebody put the plug in - got a phone call, or shift change, put your diversion here - and forgot to put in the bolts. The inspection - if it occurred - failed to notice. I suspect the documentation on the plane will help identify how and by whom. It could just as easily been some other 3rd party mechanics doing routine maintenance.
- treesknees 3y agoI was with you until midway. You're making quite an assumption while the NTSB's investigation is still ongoing. We don't know the root cause - Those bolts may have very well been in place and passed an inspection during install, but rattled loose and fell out (and then subsequently were blown out of the plane when the plug failed.) United reported loose bolts, not missing bolts. This indicates a more systemic issue and not just a miss by an Alaska Airlines maintenance worker taking a phone call. If the systems involved in the failure are all "Boeing", it doesn't seem unreasonable to consider changes, such as requiring a 3rd party with no self-interest in rubber-stamping the go-ahead, to inspect the work.
- graton 3y ago> Those bolts may have very well been in place and passed an inspection during install, but rattled loose and fell out (and then subsequently were blown out of the plane when the plug failed.) The bolts the NTSB can't find are not the ones that have been found to be loose. The bolts they can't find are the ones with the castellated nuts and cotter pin. Very hard to imagine those vibrating loose. And for the door to transit in an upward direction it would really require all four of those to fail or for them to not exist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maLBGFYl9_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maLBGFYl9_o at around the 7:26 mark has a great explanation of how the door is secured and it seems like as long as there is at least one of the four bolts installed the door can't move.
- Animats 3y agoThat should have been done years ago, with the first 737-MAX problems.
- houseofzeus 3y ago[flagged]
- Guzba 3y agoSeems like an empty threat. The obviously best position for gov is to always have the "you all messed up don't make us come regulate" line available to them. It sounds good. The moment they start regulating, all the mess-ups are mud on their face. Who wants that?
- ryanisnan 3y agoI posted this because I was curious to learn that indeed, aviation companies were doing this. This type of self-evaluation is pretty common in software, though audits of compliance are also common. I wonder what sort of scenario might unfold if a company had a team of developers who's sole job it was to test other teams' software in a red-team fashion. I am all too familiar with QA organizations, and the problems in that environment, and am all for developers conducting their own testing as a fundamental part of development, but what if we took it a step further?
- htrp 3y ago>I wonder what sort of scenario might unfold if a company had a team of developers who's sole job it was to test other teams' software in a red-team fashion. I am all too familiar with QA organizations, and the problems in that environment, and am all for developers conducting their own testing as a fundamental part of development, but what if we took it a step further? You get a lot of infighting between the development and validation teams. Big US banks have this for (statistical) models already.
- ryanisnan 3y agoIs the infighting you speak of politically motivated? Is this a QA vs. Dev mentality?
- denimnerd42 3y agoDevelopment slows to a crawl and nothing gets done. We have audit teams up our ass at my job and you can't do anything due to the 100 layers created by previous audits. There has to be someone that says "work needs to get done" we don't really have that.
- wanderingmind 3y agoAs an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.
- gottorf 3y ago> Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another. Absolutely! Any form of government that depends on an unbroken line of "good people" in power will fail, and fail much sooner than anybody thinks. Modern China has already reached the end of their system, a scant 50 years after Mao Zedong. "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition". And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have. Otherwise, people suffer.
- tw04 3y ago> And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have. This immediately falls apart, by that logic we should literally have no government or society to speak of. "Only as much power as you think the worst possible person should have" would mean literally no power - there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of. What you're describing is anarchy. You build checks and balances, but you cannot have a functioning government without the assumption that the people you put in charge will act in good faith, but also have a reliable means to remove them from power if they act in bad faith.
- mikepurvis 3y agoI think that's the right take, with particular attention to overall transparency, since otherwise you have nothing— how do you hold someone accountable if you don't have the right to see what they're up to?
- cromka 3y agoCan someone explain why the focus is on FAA, while there's also EASA and others? Do they also allow Boeing to self-inspect and self-evaluate themselves like FAA does? Can FAA and Boeing be really the only ones to blame here? If Boeing was in bed with FAA that much and they were dropping the ball on safety, shouldn't EASA's own process take note of that and extra-scrutinize Boeing planes during certification for European sky compliance? Especially that it would play in Airbus' advantage, and I am sure some allegiance between the two is definitely in place to some extent at least. How did, for example, EASA allow the MCAS on 737 Max? I mean we know Boeing abused the FAA trust in their process, but why did EASA not raise concern over the same? Something is missing here and I don't appreciate that somehow everyone seems to forget that those planes are absolutely not certified by the FAA for use by the rest of the world. At the very least, EASA is as shitty at certifying those planes as FAA is. Or, actually, is even worse, considering that in theory the reason FAA allowed it is because Boeing took advantage of them, meanwhile EASA should have done the full re-certification?
- yyyfb 3y agoI don't know if that's at play, but the specific door configuration that Alaska 1282 had is apparently not that common in Europe. I'm sure EASA will take note though.
- cromka 3y ago> I'm sure EASA will take note though. There are no 737s operated in that configuration in Europe, so while EASA accepted FAA's grounding notice, it didn't really affect the EU. But that's beyond the point. The point is those flawed quality controls that Boeing does on behalf of FAA could in theory affect other areas, not just the plug door. And so I wonder if EASA also allows Boeing to self-certify, or do they perform the checks themselves?
- jeffrallen 3y agoPretty sure airplanes in Europe have safety critical bolts in them, and pretty sure they need to be torqued right and double checked. So the doors are kind of a distraction from the apparent fact that Boeing has forgotten how to make airplanes which do not threaten the lives of all those in and below them.
- iancmceachern 3y agoShould have never been given.
- Dowwie 3y ago[January 2021] Boeing Charged with 737 Max Fraud Conspiracy and Agrees to Pay over $2.5 Billion: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-conspiracy-and-agrees-pay-over-25-billion https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-...
- shadowgovt 3y agoFWIW, it did NASA wonders when they created the IV&V program to strip individual facilities the right to self-inspect missions.
- nashashmi 3y agoIt is sad to see the number of commments here and no one mentions that a manufacturer not inspecting their own work is like an employee who does not check his own work, or an engineering team that does not check its work. Boeing is great! It does great work. But yes, it lost several moments of pride, and that does not work great for Boeing. In order for a company to do better, you need to take an honest multi-year review of their processes and cite multiple issues, and see through multiple corrections. Then we will have a well corrected company. And that is what Boeing needs, along with a bifurcation for increased competition.
- mattcantstop 3y ago40,000 deaths each year in the United States resulting from cars, and nobody lifts a finger. The side of a plane pops off a few miles up in the air and everybody loses their minds.
- ironmagma 3y agoYou're making your (our) cause look bad. There are a lot of issues with cars but this isn't one of them. Cars essentially work as intended, and when they don't there are recalls, lawsuits, and NHTSA investigations.
- error9348 3y agoThere are all kinds of externalities, including safety, which are ignored. US tax policy which allows write offs only for large vehicles which are more likely to cause deaths. Tire emissions. Congestion pricing -- common in Europe -- needs years or reviews and lawsuits. NHTSA doesn't require bicycle test devices.
- nickvec 3y agoAnd almost all of these deaths are the result of user (driver) error, whereas passengers on a flight have no say in Boeing's design of their planes and/or whether the door gets ripped off mid-flight. You're comparing apples and oranges here.
- philipwhiuk 3y agoBecause passengers are incapable of choosing not to fly?
- _ea1k 3y agoI wouldn't say that nobody lifts a finger. There's a lot of analysis going on each year to try to improve the situation. And vehicle automation is seemingly starting to make progress on reducing various collision types, especially with pedestrians. But the fixes are much more complex and will necessarily take a lot more time. If your point is that we don't think enough about vehicular deaths, except for the ones that are in some way newsworthy, then I think you are completely right. Even worse, we don't account for lives saved and this skews perception in odd and potentially detrimental ways.
- will5421 3y agoWho said show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome?
- nielsbot 3y agoPlease f*cking do it
- inglor_cz 3y ago"Nemo judex in causa sua" - "No one should be judge in their own cause" Technology has changed a lot since the Roman Empire, but human nature is still the same. We shouldn't ignore such old principles just because it is 2024.
- nickvec 3y agoIt's absurd that Boeing even has the right to self-inspect their planes. Logically, it makes zero sense, but money talks I guess.
- baskint 3y agoyou got to be kidding me!!! is this for real? wtf!
- InTheArena 3y agoWhile you at it, do what the Biden Administration threatened to do to Musk - remove Boeing's CEO's ability to be CEO of a large public company.
- feedsmgmt 3y agoAt this point why allow anyone to self inspect or self report anything? What's the upside to allowing the risk?
- EasyMark 3y agoThe upside is obviously that it's cheaper for the government. However, given Boeing's failures, that is no longer a reasonable bet to hedge on. We need to stop it before air travel becomes even more dangerous than car travel. Self-regulation with occasional friendly audits did work for a few decades, though, but Boeing got lazy and cocky and the FAA got too friendly and incestuous.
- EasyMark 3y agoThat would be a very logical step to take given their recent history, they don't seem to be able to police themselves since the bean counters are in charge rather than engineering/long-term centered executives.
- whiplash451 3y agoWait, the inspection of planes is not done by an independent 3rd party?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pdonis 3y agoMy question would be, what bonehead gave manufacturers [edited] the right to self-inspect planes in the first place without having their "fox guarding the henhouse" alarms go off? We're lucky that our aircraft safety record has stayed as good as it has for this long.
- sfifs 3y agoMy guess of what may have happened reading between the lines of many reports is - Boeing originally instructed Spirit to loosely fit the plug and not secure it because they planned to remove it to fit out the interiors. In this case Boeing would be accountable to secure the plug door after the interior is done to the right specs. Somewhere down the line, Boeing probably decided not to remove the plug to fit the interiors and instead just load them through the main bigger openings only. They probably did not document/log this change in practice and think through implications and probably did not update instructions to Spirit to secure the plug door going forward (or maybe they did but Spirit didn't pay attention) Hence we have many planes with Spirit assuming Boeing will secure it as per the previous practice and Boeing not securing it because they didn't remove it while fitting out. Now the obvious question is if Boeing or Spirit has deviated from documented production practice in this area, have they deviated in other areas and hence the entire production process of max lines will probably need to be re-audited
- stuckkeys 3y agoAny public facing service should not be allowed to certify internally. Other than quality assurance ofc, external certification should be mandatory and be done by certified agents.
- aviat 3y agohow about getting SpaceX to disrupt the airliner market? Or how about US Govt can funding a second airliner manufacturer?