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The question is not "which team is responsible for installing or removing the plug?" it is explicitly "which specific people did this specific job?". Boeing is
by olliej 3y ago
The question is not "which team is responsible for installing or removing the plug?" it is explicitly "which specific people did this specific job?".
Boeing is meant to have the answer to the second part documented - because that's how QA in this type of operation is meant to work: you document the people who did the task, and they document the exact tasks they did, you document the people who checked the task completion, and they document what they checked and the outcome of those checks.
In software terms if it helps the NTSB is asking "which engineer landed this change?" and Boeing is responding with "this is the team that maintains that code".
The reason the NTSB wants to know the exact people involved is not to assign blame. The goal, and sole reason the NTSB exists, is to determine why an accident occurred, so they can work out what needs to happen to stop it happening again. So the NTSB needs to know the exact people involved, so it can interview them, and see what they were doing and experiencing leading up to and during the maintenance work that may have contributed to the accident. These interviews are what led NTSB to find out things like sleep issues contributing to accidents, and so investigate what issues were leading to those sleep issues, etc which is why there are now strict rules about pilot flight times and scheduling changes. These interviews with the actual people involved are _extremely_ valuable for reducing recurrence of accidents.
The fact that numerous other aircraft were found with missing bolts and similar implies something systemic is occurring in the installation of these plugs (imo the core issue is the attempts to make the plugs "permanent" leading to inspection of these connection points being essentially impossible is the core issue, but also that Boeing missed the issue repeatedly shows something else is wrong). So interviewing the people doing the work will presumably shine a light on what is causing the oversights, which again, is the goal of the NTSB.
- lopkeny12ko 3y ago> The reason the NTSB wants to know the exact people involved is not to assign blame. The goal, and sole reason the NTSB exists, is to determine why an accident occurred, so they can work out what needs to happen to stop it happening again. Anyone who has ever worked at basically any corporation knows this is career suicide. If Boeing ever discloses who that person is, he will effectively be barred from working in aviation for the rest of his career, full stop.
- krisoft 3y agoWhat are you talking about? The NTSB regularly interviews individuals of all sort. This is not career suicide.
- lopkeny12ko 3y agoI'll state it another way: If you were an airline, would you knowingly hire the same maintenance engineer who installed a door that failed and nearly killed hundreds of people? If you were a patient, would you knowingly accept surgery from a doctor who had a documented record of making fatal mistakes in surgeries? Once this man's name is released, he will be unhireable.
- krisoft 3y ago> Once this man's name is released There are multiple unfounded assumptions here. Just because boeing tells the investigators the name of the individual the name does not “get released”. NTSB reports most of the time describe people in general terms such as “the captain of the accident flight” or “maintainer 2”. Then the assumption is that it is a single individual, when it is most likely multiple people. (There were multiple aircrafts found with the missing screws.) Then of course you are also assuming a gender. Not everyone who works on airplanes is a male you know. > would you knowingly hire the same maintenance engineer who installed a door that failed Yes. Assuming that it wasn’t an intentional act of sabotage, my answer is yes. We don’t get good results by assuming that nobody makes mistakes.
- olliej 3y ago> > would you knowingly hire the same maintenance engineer who installed a door that failed > Yes. Assuming that it wasn’t an intentional act of sabotage, my answer is yes. We don’t get good results by assuming that nobody makes mistakes. And in fact that's the whole point of these interviews. A safety system that fails if a single person makes a mistake indicates a failure of the safety system, not the individual that actually made the mistake. The design of the system is meant to be such that even if one of there was a mechanic that was trying to intentionally sabotage the maintenance it would not result in a safety issue.