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U.S. is said to open criminal inquiry into Boeing

• 1letterunixname 3y ago
  This is accountability theater because of institutional US government support and dependency on Boeing as a strategic defense contractor for other divisions. After MCAS, they know they can't be touched.
• colechristensen 3y ago
  As they should. I said somewhat unpopularly at the time that this is not an incident that should meet with curious blameless fact finding but instead the many responsible parties need to be stomped for negligence by the legal system. Boeing’s board needs to be fired and some executives probably need jail time. Given the defense position of Boeing, the executive branch should probably take some direct action outside the judicial system once there are some more clear cause and effect facts about what’s going on at Boeing.
  • nharada 3y ago
    I suspect the people charged will be low level mechanics and assembly people and maybe a first level manager for appearances sake. You really think anyone at the executive level is getting arrested for this?
    • kabes 3y ago
      Sure it will be executives, since they get paid so much for all the responsibility they carry /s
    • jmspring 3y ago
      The whole VW/Audi dieselgate thing took out a couple execs, but not the main ones. This may be the same.
      • zarzavat 3y ago
        On the one hand, Germany doesn’t extradite its citizens, so there are practical issues, not to mention diplomatic with going after top execs. On the other hand, Boeing is “national security” so there will be political pressure to not fuck with it too much.
        • b112 3y ago
          Or alternatively, there will be immense pressure to do so, to ensure that national security deliverables are not impacted by such gross negligence.
          • dralley 3y ago
            We're a bit late for that. But to some extent it only proves the point. Boeing has been fucking up so badly for so long that the Feds won't give them anything that isn't a fixed price contract.
      • hef19898 3y ago
        The main execs still stand trial in Germany so.
    • colechristensen 3y ago
      >You really think anyone at the executive level is getting arrested for this? There is a current smell of Boeing not being particularly cooperative with investigation. That is the usual path that gets somewhat more important people charged for committing crimes. Various brands of lying, conspiracy, and evidence tampering where people get charge for what goes on during the investigation instead of the actual incidents.
    • rainsford 3y ago
      What makes people so convinced the door plug problem is obviously something that should be blamed on the executives? At the risk of being accused of shilling for corporate executives, convincing yourself that low level people can't be responsible for an issue before responsibility is determined feels like the wrong approach.
      • pixelfarmer 3y ago
        I have a couple books here that carry terms like DO-178C, ISO 26262, IEC 62304 and so on on their covers. All that paperwork, all these processes, all that has a single reason: To make doubly^N sure that humans, who love to do all sorts of mistakes, don't. Creating environments where these processes are kicked into the bucket in whatever way is NOT what workers do, it is coming from the very top. Do I need to continue on ... ? Maybe about what happens to workers if they try to do the right thing? Ever heard about engineers at Boeing who spoke up ... ? It is time the head honchos not just at Boeing but more generally get to see that accountability, responsibility, and all these other fancy words also have some actual meaning. We have to stop playing this stupid game of "deferred responsibility", because in the end it is not a company but humans making decisions and there are always consequences from that. Some just take a while to cause some effects and not all of them take the direct route, either. But that doesn't make the decision makers less/not responsible.
      • jjk166 3y ago
        Part of being a leader is taking responsibility for the actions of those you are in charge of. Obviously it wasn't an executive who failed to properly install bolts, which is the proximate cause of the failure, but someone above the worker should have noticed the missing bolts when they were doing the documentation, someone above that should have noticed the missing documentation when they were auditing, and someone above that should have noticed the missing audit, and so on and so forth up the ladder until you get to an executive that doesn't have someone doublechecking their work. Now maybe the problem was noticed and an executive did take action but for some reason a subordinate deceived their superior into thinking they were following the directions when they weren't, but that seems at best highly unlikely. Even if that is what happened, the deception would have to be very elaborate for the executive to not be responsible for independently verifying that their orders were being properly followed. For better or worse, you don't get to take credit for the successes of those beneath you without also taking the blame for their failings.
  • olliej 3y ago
    > not an incident that should meet with curious blameless fact finding The NTSB "fact finding" is intentionally and necessarily blameless, because if it becomes a prosecutorial investigation then you lose cooperation of everyone involved. If you lose that cooperation, you can't work out what caused an accident, and so the same accidents keeps recurring. The entire point of the NTSB is to find what caused the accident, and that's not going to be "Sarah was tired that day", "Frank was distracted by his kid's academic struggles", etc. That might be relevant (a common action by budget carriers use to be frequent schedule changes for line pilots, so that they had "sufficient" sleep by the law but were being forced to work through their circadian low, etc - stopping that took multiple crashes where the NTSB said "this is the cause"), but it isn't going to be the cause here. Afaict it takes multiple people to install the plug, all of whom failed to do or check the bolts, Boeing has a lot of cross checks, none of them caught this, Alaska did an acceptance flight and had performed maintenance, but did not catch this, etc. Firing the mechanics involved doesn't tell you why they messed up, it doesn't tell you how this got through checks, it doesn't do anything other than provide retribution. It doesn't even do anything to the people who presumably created the environment that allowed this to happen. So instead of trying to get retribution, we try to discover what made it possible for this to happen, so we can stop the same thing happening again in future. That is how flying got as safe as it is today. People who cause accidents due to criminal behavior, or corporations that cause the accidents due to criminal behavior, can be charged or sued, but saying "I want people punished so lets sabotage the accident investigation, and inhibit our ability to prevent them in future" is counter productive.
    • colechristensen 3y ago
      >The NTSB "fact finding" is intentionally and necessarily blameless, because if it becomes a prosecutorial investigation then you lose cooperation of everyone involved. If you lose that cooperation, you can't work out what caused an accident, and so the same accidents keeps recurring. The NTSB is a lovely organization but they're already calling out Boeing for not cooperating. They should continue doing what they're doing but a separate independent criminal investigation is in order. Jail time and large fines also help accidents from not recurring, preferably also legislative action and Congressional investigations. What is actually in order now is the legal discovery process to uncover what people are talking about, recording, failing to record, and otherwise documenting to bring to light the sources of the failed safety and reliability of these planes.
  • NegativeK 3y ago
    The blameless fact finding is necessary to know who to blame. The NTSB needs to know the answers to a bunch of whys about how things got to this point so they can work to prevent it in other aircraft. That requires them using their time-testing blameless process. Afterward, criminal prosecutors can use those facts as leads to pull on when doing their investigation.
    • abenga 3y ago
      Isn't this by definition not blameless?
      • rainsford 3y ago
        I don't think "blameless" means nobody can ever be held responsible if they actually did something truly malicious, negligent, etc. It's that the point of the investigation is to improve the system rather than assign blame. This is in stark contrast to the post by 'colechristensen assuming that someone must be responsible and that they should be "stomped for negligence". I do think the person you're responding to phrased it poorly though. While a blameless investigation can result in someone being held liable (i.e. "blamed"), an equally valid result could be that nobody is blamed when no individual liability is warranted by the facts.
  • rainsford 3y ago
    > Boeing’s board needs to be fired and some executives probably need jail time. You're advocating for punishing specific people before any evidence has pointed to their guilt, which feels like the opposite extreme of treating everyone as blameless (which is also not what blameless fact finding is about, as other replies correctly pointed out).
    • colechristensen 3y ago
      >which is also not what blameless fact finding is about, as other replies correctly pointed out Blameless fact finding is for dealing with errors and failures made in good faith. Far too many things have happened for these to be "good faith" errors and evidence and attitudes which have come out have made this plain. You stop being nice about it when foul play is the most reasonable suspicion at this scale. >You're advocating for punishing specific people before any evidence has pointed to their guilt The Boeing board should be replaced for what is already public. >executives probably need jail Notice the qualifier "probably". What I'm saying is this is what criminality looks like, the exact nature is still being investigated, but it should and is now being investigated like a crime instead of the normal flow for accidents which is the blaming fact finding which is only useful when everybody is actually interested in safety.
• Dah00n 3y ago
  Ordered list of reasons I don't believe anything worthwhile will happen: 1. Boeing is a huge defence contractor with both civil and military products sold worldwide. A big loss to Boeing will be seen as a big loss to American hegemony. 2. GOTO 1
  • Iulioh 3y ago
    >Ordered list of reasons I don't believe anything worthwhile will happen ---------------- You can still cut a few heads, the hydra has plenty. What I'm wondering, could this lead to the government forcing Boeing to "be less profitable"? At the end of the day that's the question.
  • andy_ppp 3y ago
    Actually you could argue having one of your biggest defence contractors behave like this is a bigger loss to American power than holding their feet to the fire and trying to develop a more engineering focused culture.
  • TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    > A big loss to Boeing will be seen as a big loss to American hegemony I mean if USA will decide to isolate itself as trend suggest, then they will lose that hegemony anyway. So at least they could have safe planes
    • forkerenok 3y ago
      Are you referring to Trump's rhetoric? I think that would "only" affect the broader foreign policy. My take is that arms trade is a good business (my assumption) and unprincipled foreign policy could see more indiscriminate trading taking place. I.e. the opposite effect.
      • TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
        And what's the point of having US weapons, when USA won't give you ammunition because it decided it would be escalatory? Swiss arms industry is having same problem, but there it is stemming from neutrality of Swiss government.
• heavyset_go 3y ago
  Good, it's only out of sheer luck that nobody was sitting close enough to get sucked out mid-flight. On a full flight people would have died.
  • userbinator 3y ago
    If you look at the widely-circulated video, someone was sitting one seat over next to the hole. I believe seatbelt use is what prevented them from being forcibly expelled from the aircraft. This is another event that shows why keeping your seatbelt on whenever you're in the seat is a good idea.
    • pauljurczak 3y ago
      Will there be a heavy discount for a seat next to the door plug on 737 Max from now on?
      • myself248 3y ago
        Aisle, middle, window, or porch?
      • mrexroad 3y ago
        Economy-minus section.
      • throwway120385 3y ago
        I'm going to stop asking the flight attendants to open a window for fresh air from now on.
        • pauljurczak 3y ago
          Why open a window if you can open a door...
    • wolverine876 3y ago
      [flagged]
• xyst 3y ago
  There was a small segment on Boeing recently and the industry as a whole on John Oliver’s show. Boeing being the main issue and how this company has repeatedly shit the bed multiple times since the takeover and shift of HQ to Chicago. But one of the interesting facts I learned: the FAA has “regulators” that are paid by the airline industry themselves. This is largely due to how inexperienced the FAA is with the manufacturing process and thus rely on the industry to self-regulate. Someone may raise an issue on the ground floor of these airline manufacturers. But the complaints are sent to people paid for by the airline manufacturers. The conflict of interest is high. Yet FAA thinks this is okay.
  • b112 3y ago
    The conflict of interest is high. Yet FAA thinks this is okay. No, because you're leaving out context. They abide by this, due to a limited budget, and no ability to hire, train, and maintain such capabilities. Amd I'm willing to bet politicians on both sides of the coin have contributed to this.
    • wolverine876 3y ago
      Also many Americans - including many here on HN - reflexively oppose regulation. That's one reason regulator's budgets are cut (and now GOP-appointed judges are hamstringing the 'administrative state). And then when a private business does something wrong, the same people ask, 'where are the regulators'?
      • kbolino 3y ago
        From 2016 [1] to 2023 [2], the FAA's budget went from $16.2 billion to $24.0 billion, an increase of 48% against a CPI increase of only 26%. [1]: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/mission/budget/281191/faa-fy-2018-cj-final.pdf https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/miss... [2]: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2023-03/FAA_FY_2024_President_Budget_508.pdf https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2023-03/F...
      • specialist 3y ago
• helsinkiandrew 3y ago
  https://archive.ph/VsQDn https://archive.ph/VsQDn
• TimSchumann 3y ago
  https://archive.md/vo0rK https://archive.md/vo0rK
• ralph84 3y ago
  The rot runs so much deeper than whichever scapegoats they want to pin it on. The story of Boeing is the story of modern American managerial culture. Excess all around. Excessive executive compensation. Excessive financialization. Excessive outsourcing. Excessive offshoring. Excessive returns to uneconomic activity. Excessive credentialism. Excessive lobbying. Jack Welch is dead but if they wanted to try someone he’d be a great person to start with.
  • ilaksh 3y ago
    I think the only justice would be to see at least one major executive go to prison for several years.
    • monksy 3y ago
      why one?
      • adastra22 3y ago
        at least one
  • hackernewds 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • ben_w 3y ago
      If you can't meet DEI without compromising on merit, your country must have serious fundamental problems at every stage of your education system. And even that's if you need a significant fraction of your nation's elites — given observed problems such as "failing to install bolts correctly" and "management deliberately ignoring raised safety concerns" and "there's no automatic cut off timer for something which will damage the aircraft if left on for more than 5 minutes" don't even need elites, if you really believe what you wrote, you need to campaign for much better fundamental education starting decades ago. Boeing doesn't hire a significant fraction of the USA, so this must, if you were right, be basically endemic across your nation.
• Sparkyte 3y ago
  I really hope they find something. Boeing is stupposed to represent America. Products represent the country you belong to and are support to incentivize trading. If we are not making good planes someone will gap fill that.
  • wolverine876 3y ago
    > Boeing is stupposed to represent America. Products represent the country you belong to and are support to incentivize trading. I've certainly never heard that. Boeing is a private entity and doesn't represent America; nobody voted for them or chose them, and they don't represent America any more than everyone else. People voted for their representatives. Giving special status to these companies ends up giving them special power and treatment in order to facilitate their mission, instead of equality before the law.
• wolverine876 3y ago
  From the NY Times coverage: The company had been asked to produce any documentation it had related to the removal and re-installation of the panel. ... Boeing said it had conducted an extensive search but could not find a record of the information ... “We likewise have shared with the N.T.S.B. what became our working hypothesis: that the documents required by our processes were not created when the door plug was opened,” the Boeing letter reads. “If that hypothesis is correct, there would be no documentation to produce.” In the letter, Boeing also said that it had sent the N.T.S.B. all of the names of the individuals on the 737 door team on March 4, two days after it was requested. How laughably shameless: Offer the lowest-level employees as sacrifices, while burning any connection up the chain to the rest of Boeing. If Trump wins, and Boeing pays what he asks, the government might blame those employees. Watch for the leaks that begin to smear them - alcohol use, a history of (something bad), etc. A traditional way the powerful destroy the weak is to use far superior media resources to smear them. True or not, ordinary people can't fight a tide of disinformation about them.
  • hef19898 3y ago
    There is no way to excuse behaviour of the people working on the door that day, none. Stopping at that level won't work there, Boeing tries to spin it that way, but this plane was not the only one woth issues on the door plug. And they already admitted that there was a work around decision loop regarding the necessary documentation work. And FAA audits do not stop at individuals and their behaviour, the explicitely focus on processes and culture (I assume FAA does in principle the same thing EASA does). But hey Boeing tried to blame the 737 Max crashes on the pilots, so I guess trying the same with shop floor teams tracks.
    • wolverine876 3y ago
      > There is no way to excuse behaviour of the people working on the door that day, none. I'll wait for all the facts and their defense before drawing a conclusion (and even then, I really don't know and would trust a jury more). IME, pointing moral outrage at seemingly sure targets turns out to be a sure way to make myself the sinner.
• deleted 3y ago
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• tjpnz 3y ago
  CEOs often talk about accountability. Would this extend to Dave Calhoun going to prison?
• elric 3y ago
  John Oliver recently did an episode on the Boeing shitstorm. And while I would take anything a comedian says with a large grain of salt, the undercover staff interviews seemed pretty damning. I'm not sure if it's criminal negligence on Boeing's part, but it seems pretty obvious that engineering excellence isn't on the top of their minds.
  • AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > the undercover staff interviews seemed pretty damning This is the least credible possible evidence, because shows like that have a long history of doing selective editing or purposely taking things out of context. Sometimes they don't have to because what they're reporting is real, but you can't tell that one way or the other just by watching the segment.
    • Zetaphor 3y ago
      I was unaware of these accusations, do you have have any supporting information?
      • AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        They're comedy shows. They send someone to record an hour-long interview but the whole segment is 5 minutes long and the clip they air is only a few seconds. Selective editing is built into the format, they don't spend the airtime to run the full interview and their purpose is to choose the short clip which has the most comedy value or makes the target look bad.
        • hef19898 3y ago
          There was not a single interview done by LWTN for that segment, they took those from other sources. And the segment was pretty good actually, covered all the major points and didn't have any major errors. Actually, it is light years ahead of what other news outlets reported. Surey it is not on the same level as an audit report, but that is not its purpose. It is much closer to a comprehensive executive summary of an incident report than anything I have ever seen in media elsewher. Re: selection of statements, the reports in Fukushima and Cherbobyl do the same. The point is to showcase the underlying issues with concrete examples and statements. Nothing wrong with that per-se. And in th LWTN segment, it was not done in bad faith, it is bot FOX news after all.
• pauljurczak 3y ago
  Deferred prosecution worked as intended, i.e. no effect. This company is too big to fail. Some mid-level employee will be sacrificed to mollify DOJ, and business as usual will continue. Crapification of the economy continues...
• hayst4ck 3y ago
  The 737 MAX, stock trading senators, and bribe taking justices are all the same thing for the same reason. Power is doing something and then saying "what are you going to do about it?" The supreme court takes bribes and says "what are you going to do about it?" They clearly have the power to take bribes. Nobody appears to be able to do anything about it. Congresspeople trade stocks of companies they regulate in a gross conflict of interest, then defend their ability to be corrupt as a right. "What are you going to do about it?" Congress clearly has the power to be openly corrupt without consequences. The 2008 crisis was wall street telling the government that they have many answers to that question. "Too big to fail" was born to capture the idea that there is an entity so powerful there are no reasonable answers to them asking "what are you going to do about it?" Boeing is too big to fail. Boeing knows that there is no one with the will or fortitude to do anything about putting profit over safety. Investigations to make it look like you're doing something, sure. Canning a few low level employees that you can pin blame on, no problem. Sacrifice a contractor? That's what they're there for. But to hold a CEO or shareholders responsible for gross mismanagement in any kind of meaningful way, threatening all other American oligarchs and hordes of people rich enough to say "what are you going to do about it?" without answer? Admiral Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, is the past's best answer to Boeing. He deeply understood the forces at play. He had this to say to congress: Political and economic power is increasingly being concentrated among a few large corporations and their officers - power they can apply against society, government and individuals. Through their control of vast resources, these large corporations have become, in effect, another branch of government. They often exercise the power of government, but without the checks and balances inherent in our democratic system. Americans need to start thinking about how to answer someone clearly more powerful saying "what are you going to do about it?" Because every time we say "nothing" those people get that much more powerful.
  • AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    The premise of "too big to fail" is that a thing is depended on by too many other things, innocent people, to allow it to suddenly become rubble. It's an insurance company and its policyholders did nothing wrong. It's a bank and its depositors did nothing wrong. It's Boeing and they're the sole supplier of some critical things. The "easiest" way to fix this is to bail them out, because then the company itself can carry on fulfilling its obligations and you don't need all the people relying on them to individually apply to get bailed out or otherwise have to rearrange their affairs when the institution is instantly vaporized. But that, as they say, is a moral hazard. What you really want to do is to destroy them in slow motion. Step one, the existing owners get nothing, they chose their executives poorly and suffer the consequences. Step two, those executives are out too, and the company gets new leadership and a bailout with the condition that the company will soon cease to exist and be sold off for parts, but first it's going carry on operating for a bit to satisfy its obligations to innocent third parties.
• deleted 3y ago
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• oldpersonintx 3y ago
  [dead]
• korginator 3y ago
  Boeing's dismal track record has been years in the making and the problems we're seeing were inevitable. However, I'm not holding my breath here hoping for a real change. Boeing is a huge defence contractor with deep connections. I hope I'm mistaken but I doubt we'll see any real systemic change.
  • hef19898 3y ago
    Two things: Boeing doesn't have just to worry about the FAA and US prosecution, depending on the outcome their civil aircraft business might face a ton of EASA scrutiny as well. And that actually is a big deal in the industry. And public pressure, Boeings reputation is not great at the moment. If that pressure is kept up, it can lead to change as well.
  • mnau 3y ago
    Their defense and space contracts are not going well. KC-46 tanker replacement was a fixed-price contract and Boeing lost $7 billion on that. Starliner is a similar story, $1.5 billion down the hole. EDIT: T-7A Red Hawk trainer: $1 billion in losses. Air force one VC-25B program: Its losses are now at about $2.4 billion. T-38 Talon trainer, MQ-25... Yea, it's not going well for them. Other programs are still fine, e.g. F-35, but fixed price contracts are in a dump.
    • epolanski 3y ago
      They also losing gargantuan amounts on the new air force one.
      • mcv 3y ago
        Maybe Air Force One should switch to Airbus too.
        • mnau 3y ago
          Airbus wisely decided to forgo AF1 sham of a competition. The experience of mrtt a330 it bid for tanker replacement was enough. It of course went to Being KC-46.
• justinclift 3y ago
  Does this "we can't find the documentation" match what the whistleblower was saying in Jan? https://viewfromthewing.com/boeing-whistleblower-production-line-has-enormous-volume-of-defects-bolts-on-max-9-werent-installed/ https://viewfromthewing.com/boeing-whistleblower-production-... It doesn't really seem like it?
  • blueflow 3y ago
    I'm sure recording and documenting your work is legally required to get certified for aviation things.
    • hef19898 3y ago
      From what I read, there was seperate decision channel to decide what had to be documebted how at Boeing, which is a big problem in itself. The whistelblower account actually rracks, depending on which kind of documentation you talk about. You now, the lazy rethoric trick of providing a technically correct answer, what Boeing did, while still lying through obmission of the general point. If so, don't worry, the NTSB and FAA will find out.
      • wkat4242 3y ago
        > You now, the lazy rethoric trick of providing a technically correct answer, what Boeing did, while still lying through obmission of the general point. Sounds exactly like MCAS.. That omission. I thought that was just to preserve the same type certificate without retraining but it seems like a more systemic problem then.
        • bumby 3y ago
          The article points out that the DoJ previously charged Boeing with withholding information in the MCAS issue (but later dropped the charges).
      • blueflow 3y ago
        I assumed the regulatory body define what kinds of documentation needs to recorded, not Boing. And noncompliance (including not being able to produce that documentation on request) with that might be a (criminal) offense.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• mellutussa 3y ago
  Handy for Boeing if they can just stick it as a criminal act to some low level employees and case closed.
  • nocsi 3y ago
    All the issues are systemic, so it can't be the responsibility of some low-level employees. But it is kind of curious that Boeing suddenly wants to buy Spirit Aerosystems.
    • hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      The curious things is that they divested Spirit Aerosystems in the first place, in a financial engineering move that seemed to serve no business purpose besides a PE pump and dump.
      • hef19898 3y ago
        It kind ofnmade sense so: Tier one aerostructure suppliers are doing the easiest work, not like avionics and engine OEMs. By having those activities in-house, you have a cost center. Having that as a third-party turns it into a profit center. Also, a third party can theoretically work for other customers. Airbus did the same thing. In practice so, there are only two aircraft OEMs. Hence those structure tier ones are kind of screwed. Automotive tier ones have much more choice regarding customers.
        • Sakos 3y ago
          It only makes sense if your only metric is cost. There are a lot of reasons why Airbus owns the subsidiaries who do Spirit's type of work for Airbus (such as the airframe). Airbus does not do the same thing as Boeing.
          • hef19898 3y ago
            Well, Airbus is a customer of Spirit Aerospace. And Premium Aerotec, well, they were very, very close to spin it out completely. Bavk the day, it was part of what today is Defence and Space. And Premium Aerotec is subsiediary of Airbus, it is not part of any of its divisions. So, somewhere between Spirit Aerospace and and being in-house.
• sylware 3y ago
  I agree with the US administration. Something is fishy in Boeing, or the wrong people are being employed there.
  • michaelcampbell 3y ago
    That would be the McDonnell/Douglas merger.
    • hef19898 3y ago
      That would be the starting point, by now it looks like an endemic issue at Boeing.
    • bell-cot 3y ago
      A merger done at the behest of the US Govt., if I recall...
      • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        So the gov who approved the merger should go to jail?
        • hef19898 3y ago
          Almost 30 years after the fact? I don't think so.
          • sandspar 3y ago
            I wouldn't be surprised if we get to this level of legal theatricality at some point. > In 897, the 9-month-old corpse of the late Pope Formosus stood trial by the reigning pontiff, Stephen VII. Stephen VII convicted Formosus, sentenced the cadaveric Pope to have three fingers of his right hand amputated and then had him buried in a common grave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod
        • 3y ago
• gigatexal 3y ago
  Here’s hoping they pay for their cost-cutting crimes (yeah I know it’s not a crime per se but the efforts are putting people at undue risk, allegedly). And that it’s followed up by a civil case. And that the criminal case causes the board and management to change and the civil case somehow makes workers and victims whole.
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > civil case somehow makes workers and victims whole If they’re found criminally liable, the most likely outcome is bankruptcy. Victims (airlines) would have a claim. Workers, their unpaid wages. Whatever comes out of bankruptcy will likely need some public support; even then, it’s hard to imagine we don’t see layoffs.
    • trevoragilbert 3y ago
      Where do you get “the most likely outcome is bankruptcy” and not say, a $5b fine and something akin to a consent decree? Totally exaggerating the likely consequences.
      • deleted 3y ago
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      • delfinom 3y ago
        $5b fine paid by taxpayers through the next air force contract they get with no competition.
        • gigatexal 3y ago
          Anyone know if the DoD is upset at Boeing for their lack of QA? Does their shit QA also apply to military assets?
  • deleted 3y ago
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• jonplackett 3y ago
  It’s quite mad isn’t it. Can you imagine running a company that makes aeroplanes and not going to sleep each night panicking about all the lives you’re ferrying around up in the sky? It turns out there is a whole company of executives who are so not-worried about it that they’ll continuously cut budgets and decrease the time available to make those planes until multiple planes fall out the sky. And even then are still not really that worried about safety.
  • junon 3y ago
    Yep. "We don't need to brief anyone on the technicals of our plane, we know better and it's great for stock prices to mislead buyers into thinking it's just a New and Improved model of the same plane flyable in the exact same way!" It's criminal. They should be criminally charged. I hope this goes through, and I hope prosecutors sweep up all of the floor workers who have already stated they would never fly in the newer planes.
    • nemo44x 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • user_7832 3y ago
        I think criminal negligence might be one. Even if a law doesn't exist, such behaviour should absolutely be corrected, and if the market can't do it then the government must step in.
      • junon 3y ago
        Misleading marketing, skirting inspection regulation by employing your own inspectors, failing to notify pilots of a system that could not initially be overridden (directly causing two flights to nose dive, killing everyone on board). Ignoring safety concerns from employees (negligence). I'm not a lawyer so I'm sure the list could go on. EDIT: probably having a single point of failure for that catastrophic system (a single sensor) could be something.
• LASR 3y ago
  I’m about to fly on a Max-8 airplane in the next 2 hours. I can’t help but be very nervous about the fact that we are still unclear on what exactly happened. This feels very much like the MCAS situation. They spun their wheels for months after the initial crash. And another tragic crashed happened due to the same issue. Come on. Someone somewhere at Boeing knows exactly what happened. Even if they don’t want to reveal this, it’s not even clear to me if they now have better QC procedures to catch these kinds of issues.
  • rainsford 3y ago
    > Come on. Someone somewhere at Boeing knows exactly what happened. I don't think that's true for any of the issues, or airline accidents in general. Remember ultimately we're still talking about very rare events that almost always involve a number of different factors lining up in just the right way. Even the MAX crashes were 2 out of how many thousands of MCAS equipped flights with no issues and those crashes also required other things to go wrong. It's easy to say MCAS was the obvious cause in retrospect, but it's much less clear it should have been easy to predict that outcome before any investigations were done regardless of how much inside knowledge one had. This is not at all to excuse the causes, but there is a reason crash investigations take time. Demanding immediate explanations is just asking for wrong conclusions to be reached in the name of expediency. In fact taking the time to fully investigate probably produces better accountability in the long run because it can uncover more subtle but serious problems.
    • wepple 3y ago
      Along with the very low actual incident rate, grandparent comment also suggests a certain degree of functional organizational coherence which is often wildly missing at large organizations If you ask 50 people at Boeing what happened, you may receive 50 very different answers
      • wepple 3y ago
        To clarify: I too am not excusing Boeing and think they’re likely a hot trash mess that deserves to have C-levels lose their heads with no golden parachute (or maybe their punishment should be a Boeing-produced parachute)
• skip_region 3y ago
  Interesting article about the espoused cultural signaling by Boeing's C-Suite: https://www.talentcanary.com/2024/02/unpacking-boeings-culture-and-implicit.html https://www.talentcanary.com/2024/02/unpacking-boeings-cultu...
  • gottorf 3y ago
    Interesting, but a simplistic analysis. It could very well be the case that the thing being talked about the most in earnings calls (in this case, production) is being talked about because it's constantly being missed, whereas the stuff that is going well aren't being talked about. Like how the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
• amluto 3y ago
  This article, along with other articles I’ve seen about this, talk about the door plug being “opened”. This brings to mind an interesting comment from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39624602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39624602 You can “open” and “close” a door without documenting it. If you “remove” a piece of an airplane, you document it. So perhaps a part of Boeing’s error is that they think about “opening” a door plug but they did not design it such that it could be safely “opened” and “closed” without special care. As I understand it, the door plug is indeed an awkward in-the-middle design in that you can remove four bolts and do something resembling “opening” it without fully removing it. But if you open a door, the plane has better alert the pilots if you try to fly the plane without properly closing the door, and the plug has no such feature.
  • jeffrallen 3y ago
    In a properly functioning quality and safety management system, there's no awkward in-the-middle. The "open door plug" procedure is a planned part of the construction, inspection and maintenance of the airplane. And even if there was a doubt, the thing to do in that case is stop and document the doubt, and then document the process of discussion of the doubt, and then document the decision, including whatever change to the quality system may be needed to avoid this doubt arising the next time. The problem here is not that Boeing does not know how to run both the original quality system and the system to modify it if necessary. The problem is the quality culture that puts "implementing the quality system" above "make line go up" is degraded.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • loosescrews 3y ago
    I think we'd be having a similar discussion if a door opened unexpectedly during flight.
    • thaumasiotes 3y ago
      I think the message of the rest of the comment thread is that a door has two states, "open" and "closed", and the processes around those states know about both of them and handle them appropriately. Whereas a door plug can't be opened and only has one state, "installed", but the internal processes treated it as if it were a door, generating the documentation that would be appropriate for opening and closing a door (nothing) rather than the documentation that would be appropriate for removing and reinstalling a structural element. Then, when the door plug wasn't reinstalled correctly, there was no system checking whether it had been "closed", because that concept doesn't apply to door plugs. Whereas an actual door, if it had been left open, would still have generated no relevant documentation, but the plane wouldn't have taken off in that state because the problem would have been obvious.
• bitcharmer 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • hef19898 3y ago
    You sure about that? It is true so, by the time those people go to jail, they rend to be neither rich nor powerfull anymore. See Elizabeth Holmes, SBF, just spontaniously.
    • Sebguer 3y ago
      They were upstarts who got sent to prison for bilking the rich and famous. They were from well-off families, but not the 'halls of power', really.
      • hef19898 3y ago
        Well, there is a former president who is indicted multiple times, if that counts. Sure, he is no Kennedy, but still.
        • nneonneo 3y ago
          But uh, he’s the de facto leader of his political party and the leading candidate for the next president? Being indicted multiple times has really done very little to diminish his appeal with voters…
          • hef19898 3y ago
            Republican voters, for the record. We'll see in November. Earlier, it seems, for some of his criminal trials.
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• axpy906 3y ago
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• diogenescynic 3y ago
  Go after the executives and management who made the decisions.
  • bumby 3y ago
    Do you think engineers who design the systems also have a duty to the public and should be held accountable?
    • derwiki 3y ago
      That’s an interesting question. The engineering ethics course I was required to take would unequivocally say yes, the engineers should be held accountable. If you, as an engineer, raise the concern, and management overrides you, then what? You could whistleblow and/or quit in protest. But does that leave you jobless? My engineering ethics course didn’t talk about duties to support your family financially.
      • bumby 3y ago
        That’s the question I had in a recent engineering law course. It’s clearer IMO when engineering licenses are involved, but most manufacturing (like aerospace) operate under industrial exemptions for PE licenses. But saying “no, they’ll just be jobless and hire an engineer who’ll rubber stamp it” feels like a cop out to me. Why couldn’t you also extend that further? “no, the board/shareholders will just hire a CEO who prioritizes schedule and profit” fits in the same domain, and nobody is clamoring to hold shareholders accountable. My personal opinion is that there are a few professions (doctor, lawyer, engineer) who have ethical duties to the public, irrespective of the consequences to their personal career. That’s a legal duty, as opposed to a personal duty to your family.
        • givemeethekeys 3y ago
          The company will try to find a a hungry PE to replace the ethical PE.
• jweriewj 3y ago
  You know, I don't like to kick a dead horse while it's down. I bet Boeing feels just awful about all of this and they're someday soon going to start doing their best to remedy it. I don't think one or two or three major problems in rapid succession is anything more than bad luck and hey, look at all the good work they've done for their shareholders! We should just trust that they're a good American company and they're going to get better and leave it at that! Besides, the FAA is almost bankrupt and Trump is about to go back into office so why waste our time on things we know aren't going to get fixed?
  • kstrauser 3y ago
    I can’t tell if this is genuine or sarcasm. Well done.
• geodel 3y ago
  I guess it all comes down to thinking outsourcing is magic. Get same thing done at 1/4th the cost with virtually no downside. Hopefully C suites get what they deserve or at least get fired. But at any point do these consultants like at McKinseys, BCG, AT Kerney etc who advise these money saving tactics get what they deserve?
  • dheera 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • KptMarchewa 3y ago
      It's not SEC whim, but Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. ruling
      • dheera 3y ago
        [flagged]
        • AlbertCory 3y ago
          I don't doubt that it's possible to find out what kind of car the jury members drove, but is there actually a public record of it? If so, please show the link.
          • kristjansson 3y ago
            Finding BMW owners in 1919 would be a treat. Lots of biplane pilots!
      • bbanyc 3y ago
        That overblamed decision was (a) specific to Michigan corporate law, and a reason why Ford reincorporated in Delaware shortly afterwards and (b) a finding that Ford had to pay dividends to its shareholders rather than reinvesting profits in expansion, which no modern court would require. Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs both cancelled dividends and nobody objected. The story behind the lawsuit was that the Dodge brothers had just left Ford (then a private company) and they planned to use their dividends to start a competitor - which Ford suspected and which is the reason why the dividend was canceled.
• gcanyon 3y ago
  I hate how far Boeing has fallen. The merger with McDonnell Douglas seems to have been a disaster of leadership. I'm sure that's not the only factor, but multiple articles I've read have pointed to that as the turning point. For anyone interested in a brief summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URoVKPVDKPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URoVKPVDKPU
  • polynomial 3y ago
    TBF that was 27 years ago.
    • asveikau 3y ago
      They can probably coast on prior successes for a long time. Not to mention many airline fleets will be older stock, the replacement schedules on those things can be long. A systemic deterioration might take decades until people notice.
    • metabagel 3y ago
      It takes a long time to destroy a corporate culture which was built over the better part of a century.
    • Jaepa 3y ago
      This also isn’t the first issue. Ignoring the stock maximization issues & issues like the Dreamliner mess. This reason this is real real bad was because the 737 Max. The C suite said it was real come to Jesus moment. Now we’re finding out not only is the culture not fixed, but it has such mismanagement that there’s no effective QA.
      • dotnet00 3y ago
        It's even worse, because after the initial disastrous test flight of Starliner, NASA had ordered a review of all of Boeing's software practices (especially testing procedures), not just the Starliner code. I'd imagine they'd have caught signs of these QA issues while working through the software stuff.
• _heimdall 3y ago
  Inquiries won't help if they stop at Boeing, or contractors Boeing used. The problem here is much more fundamental to the regulatory bodies overseeing the airline industry and the dependence on a few companies that have become too big for the government to let fail. As long as our government is beholden to large corporations, either through lobbying or the "too big to fail" card, we functionally have a fascist state where industry took over our government. I'm not saying we're all the way there by any means, but that's inevitable if we keep bandaiding problems without getting to the root cause.
  • xwolfi 3y ago
    But why is Airbus so much better ?
    • _heimdall 3y ago
      I don't known nearly as much about thisyhud specifically, but I've seen compelling arguments for how the Boeing merger really damaged leadership and the company as a whole. I can't vouch for that personally, but it was convincing to me. Moreover though, if my original argument is right, the failing system of regulation will fail slowly (presumably then all at once). The FAA and other bodies involved in the air industry may be broken, but it still takes a kick to push a company over the edge. A company like Airbus could continue to operate extremely well despite the broken system, though I'd argue with enough time they will be hit by it as well.
    • MilStdJunkie 3y ago
      Germans. OK, seriously though, when it comes to outsourcing, it's because Airbus/CASA rigorously defined systems interfaces and all sorts of other stuff before outsourcing design. I've been a part of the supplier chain there, and it's intense, but it means your part's got a good shot of slotting in the first time. 787 - and a whole truckload of BDS work - it's less "strict systems interface" and more "what is systems interface". You can get decades pass where the part still doesn't fit.
      • calf 3y ago
• userabchn 3y ago
  I wonder whether the recent release of the Comac C919 [1] has anything to do with it - either through pushing Boeing to cut corners to compete on cost, or through malicious amplification of bad news stories involving Boeing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919
  • nneonneo 3y ago
    Boeing screwed up here and let a door fall out of a flying plane. They don’t need anyone amplifying their bad news; it’s going to come to them. Boeing and its subcontractors apparently didn’t even keep appropriate records of the maintenance that was performed here. That’s a huge oversight and probably a big part in why they’re being criminally investigated.
• WalterBright 3y ago
  I'd be careful about over-regulation and liabilities (especially criminal liability). Such has completely crushed the general aviation business. This is why Cessnas flying today are all from the 1960s. Their engines require leaded gas, which is a big problem, but regulation and liability has made it impractical to develop a modern engine. I.e. not only is innovation crushed by regulation, liability also prevents any new designs, because new designs always carry an element of risk. Criminal liabilities mean people will do their best to deny it and cover it up, rather than fix it. The incredible safety of aviation today is not the result of punishing people who make mistakes.
  • bdcravens 3y ago
    > Criminal liabilities mean people will do their best to deny it and cover it up, rather than fix it. Feels like this has been the status quo for Boeing for a few years regarding the 737 MAX. Actions with real teeth are required to incentive change.
    • WalterBright 3y ago
      You can hang people if you like, but you won't like the result. The aviation industry has not gotten as safe as it is today by whipping, hanging, or jailing people. Even fixing a mistake is an implicit admission of guilt, and so people will not fix them. They will cover up and deny instead.
      • bdcravens 3y ago
        Real teeth don't require hanging anyone. It can involve things like mandatory FAA audits at random, and removing the ability for manufacturers to self-audit. It can involve the SEC delisting stocks from the exchanges. It can involve a government takeover of bad actors, removing the board of directors, and installing a board assigned by the FAA.
        • WalterBright 3y ago
          The penalties you're talking about are not criminal penalties.
• deleted 3y ago
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• 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  In cases where archive.ph is blocked: https://web.archive.org/web/20240309232411if_/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/business/boeing-criminal-inquiry-alaska-airlines-flight.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240309232411if_/https://www.ny...
• code51 3y ago
  Here's a wild guess: Through SpaceX design experience (rip apart, challenge all assumptions and rebuild better), Elon Musk (Falcon Aviation) will try to build a far more efficient and safe alternative to existing 737s. Falcon Aviation got hold of various aircraft, which I think they'll just reverse-engineer and throw out what's not working. It's like taking pretrained weights from an established LLM: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-spacex-bought-a-boeing-737-with-strange-livery-2024-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-spacex-bought-a-b... With Trump coming to power, Boeing's tarnished credibility will be a major issue to address. I'm expecting US government will incentivize this process. Boeing will lose good engineers out to this fresh competition.
  • gabesullice 3y ago
    I love me some wild speculation, but it seems more likely that SpaceX needed a more capable jet to ferry large, critical parts from Hawthorne to Brownsville. Otherwise they'd need to go on a trailer. Now for my own wild speculation: SpaceX has shown renders of using Starship to do point to point passenger travel. And Elon appears to fixate on goals like that. My impression is that he would view reverse-engineering a passenger plane as a distraction for the company.
• brevitea 3y ago
  Will the CEO be held liable? Will their yearly multi-million dollar bonuses be taken?