8 ms·

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

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.
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - junon 3y ago
        Negligent homicide and/or involuntary manslaughter, and false or misleading information resulting in a death (18 U.S. Code § 1038) both are. I would imagine evidence tampering is another.
    - rainsford 3y ago
      I'm all for calling the MCAS system bad engineering, but raising any of those things to the level of criminality seems a bit ridiculous. Lacking sensor redundancy is arguably a bad design decision, but what law was actually broken?
      - salawat 3y ago
        Criminal negligence. It is obvious to any practitioner the safety consequences of implementing systems that way. Fraud would be another. Agents of Boeing represented to airlines and regulators that training nor knowledge of implementation details were necessary for safe operation. Airlines and regulators relied on that misrepresentation to the public's and their own detriment. Finally, securities fraud. The problem of course, is any evidence from the NTSB must be omitted from any criminal prosecution.
        rainsford 3y ago
        > Criminal negligence. It is obvious to any practitioner the safety consequences of implementing systems that way. I'm not an aerospace engineer, but it doesn't seem at all obvious the design of MCAS would rise to the level of criminal negligence, which is an understandably high bar. It's not a flight critical system (pilots can easily safely fly the plane without it functioning) and pilots are trained to respond to issues with automatic trim regardless of the cause. The particular failure mode of the system and the difficulty the pilots had in responding to it, even after they knew about it in the case of the second MAX crash, should obviously be addressed and arguably should have been considered during the design phase. But I don't see any world where that reasonably meets the bar of criminal liability. > Fraud would be another. Agents of Boeing represented to airlines and regulators that training nor knowledge of implementation details were necessary for safe operation. Again I don't see how that meets the criminal fraud bar unless Boeing knew in advance that extra training and awareness were required and deliberately chose not to provide those things.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Negligent homicide would be one that seems applicable to this non-lawyer but watches cop/lawyer dramas on TV. Or you could take your pick from this wiki article on Corporate Crime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_crime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_crime
  - dclowd9901 3y ago
    Criminal negligence is the act of knowingly creating a dangerous situation. Of course, it’s extremely difficult to prosecute that “knowingly” part. Though I’d argue a reinterpretation of that is in order: as a company exec, it is negligent to not know what is going on within your company.
bambax 3y ago
The reason they're not worried is because in the worst case, they will get millions of dollars of severance payment, instead of jail time. I'm sure there are sound legal and even economic reasons behind this, but it's still unacceptable and infuriating.
beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
In my experience, this is yet more evidence of the quite unethical culture that has come to dominate executives in the last 4-5 decades across many industries. So many of them fail upwards by mindlessly focusing on shareholder value and cost-cutting for short term gains and the long term detriment of products and consumers under their watch. The way that safety and the health of customers and the general public is consistently ignored or thrown under the bus by executives in the name of cost-cutting and shareholder value, often against the explicit recommendations of employees, has become so common that I can't help but think there is something seriously wrong in the "education" (MBAs are more like finishing schools for corporate climbers) and hiring of these executives. We've incentivized ghouls to take over the reins who spend their days a bubbled class that have no need to, and can afford through absurd wealth to not, interact with or see the consequences of their asinine and dangerous decisions.
- rapind 3y ago
  It’s a symptom of decades of gutting regulations. Next time you hear corp talk about how regulations make x unaffordable, look for the real incentives and benefactors of gutting that regulation.
  - wredue 3y ago
    Incidentally, never believe tales of “we can self regulate!” If they had any intention of self regulating, they wouldn’t be spending billions to get rid of regulation.
  - beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
    I think it's even broader than that. An entire corporate philosophy has arisen that insists that mindlessly searching for profits and shareholder value over everything else will actually be better for everyone, employees and public included. This insulates them from criticism by insinuating that maximizing profits and shareholder value is a moral imperative - if you're against them then you're against the mutual uplifting of everyone through corporate benevolence. It turns out, however, that it's really just better for the execs, who conveniently just so happen to also have their compensation tied to the share price.
ajross 3y ago
> 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? I dunno. I think that's a little melodramatic. There are a lot of activities in the world with dangerous failure modes, and flying is pretty far down the list in terms of impact. You could make the same argument about chemical engineers designing pesticide plants, insulin pump manufacturers, hell even folks doing car suspensions are probably responsible for more deaths than Boeing. People do their jobs, and if the impact is low they'll live with it. Clearly Boeing's leadership thought they were doing OK. And even in hindsight they... kinda were? The MAX is the most dangerous airliner in decades, maybe a half century. But I'd still fly on it.
deepsquirrelnet 3y ago
> 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? For my entire life, the most pervasive theme in executive leadership is that the _only_ responsibility of a company is to make money for its shareholders. Boeing may reach a point where it has to stop killing passengers, but dead passengers aren’t an issue at all until it creates a major threat to their bottom line. If you think it shouldn’t take many downed planes before that happens, then given the situation, the real question is why it hasn’t threatened their business enough yet.
- yadaeno 3y ago
  They’re too big to fail. When that’s the case punishing executives is the only way you can have accountability. The alternative—fining the company into the bankruptcy and letting the courts restructure the company has too many downsides for the shareholders.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Boeing's stock was cut in half by the MAX crashes, and has not recovered.
ysofunny 3y ago
they've offshored all safety corncerns to an insurance corporation /joking, but I mean.... it doesn't sound as far fetched as it should
actuallyquiteso 3y ago
Actually this is how it's supposed to work. Because the focus is on capital the feedback loop that reigns them in happens too late to penalize and bring change. Gov really needs to create a mechanism where the feedback loop happens before lives are affected in critical industries. We will see if they get the point.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
P_I_Staker 3y ago
Knowing the way the world works, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them literally think "you know we could kill a lot more people, planes are pretty safe"

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.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - junon 3y ago
      Negligent homicide and/or involuntary manslaughter, and false or misleading information resulting in a death (18 U.S. Code § 1038) both are. I would imagine evidence tampering is another.
  - rainsford 3y ago
    I'm all for calling the MCAS system bad engineering, but raising any of those things to the level of criminality seems a bit ridiculous. Lacking sensor redundancy is arguably a bad design decision, but what law was actually broken?
    - salawat 3y ago
      Criminal negligence. It is obvious to any practitioner the safety consequences of implementing systems that way. Fraud would be another. Agents of Boeing represented to airlines and regulators that training nor knowledge of implementation details were necessary for safe operation. Airlines and regulators relied on that misrepresentation to the public's and their own detriment. Finally, securities fraud. The problem of course, is any evidence from the NTSB must be omitted from any criminal prosecution.
      - rainsford 3y ago
        > Criminal negligence. It is obvious to any practitioner the safety consequences of implementing systems that way. I'm not an aerospace engineer, but it doesn't seem at all obvious the design of MCAS would rise to the level of criminal negligence, which is an understandably high bar. It's not a flight critical system (pilots can easily safely fly the plane without it functioning) and pilots are trained to respond to issues with automatic trim regardless of the cause. The particular failure mode of the system and the difficulty the pilots had in responding to it, even after they knew about it in the case of the second MAX crash, should obviously be addressed and arguably should have been considered during the design phase. But I don't see any world where that reasonably meets the bar of criminal liability. > Fraud would be another. Agents of Boeing represented to airlines and regulators that training nor knowledge of implementation details were necessary for safe operation. Again I don't see how that meets the criminal fraud bar unless Boeing knew in advance that extra training and awareness were required and deliberately chose not to provide those things.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Negligent homicide would be one that seems applicable to this non-lawyer but watches cop/lawyer dramas on TV. Or you could take your pick from this wiki article on Corporate Crime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_crime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_crime
- dclowd9901 3y ago
  Criminal negligence is the act of knowingly creating a dangerous situation. Of course, it’s extremely difficult to prosecute that “knowingly” part. Though I’d argue a reinterpretation of that is in order: as a company exec, it is negligent to not know what is going on within your company.

bambax 3y ago

The reason they're not worried is because in the worst case, they will get millions of dollars of severance payment, instead of jail time. I'm sure there are sound legal and even economic reasons behind this, but it's still unacceptable and infuriating.

beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago

In my experience, this is yet more evidence of the quite unethical culture that has come to dominate executives in the last 4-5 decades across many industries. So many of them fail upwards by mindlessly focusing on shareholder value and cost-cutting for short term gains and the long term detriment of products and consumers under their watch. The way that safety and the health of customers and the general public is consistently ignored or thrown under the bus by executives in the name of cost-cutting and shareholder value, often against the explicit recommendations of employees, has become so common that I can't help but think there is something seriously wrong in the "education" (MBAs are more like finishing schools for corporate climbers) and hiring of these executives. We've incentivized ghouls to take over the reins who spend their days a bubbled class that have no need to, and can afford through absurd wealth to not, interact with or see the consequences of their asinine and dangerous decisions.

rapind 3y ago
It’s a symptom of decades of gutting regulations. Next time you hear corp talk about how regulations make x unaffordable, look for the real incentives and benefactors of gutting that regulation.
- wredue 3y ago
  Incidentally, never believe tales of “we can self regulate!” If they had any intention of self regulating, they wouldn’t be spending billions to get rid of regulation.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
  I think it's even broader than that. An entire corporate philosophy has arisen that insists that mindlessly searching for profits and shareholder value over everything else will actually be better for everyone, employees and public included. This insulates them from criticism by insinuating that maximizing profits and shareholder value is a moral imperative - if you're against them then you're against the mutual uplifting of everyone through corporate benevolence. It turns out, however, that it's really just better for the execs, who conveniently just so happen to also have their compensation tied to the share price.

ajross 3y ago

> 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? I dunno. I think that's a little melodramatic. There are a lot of activities in the world with dangerous failure modes, and flying is pretty far down the list in terms of impact. You could make the same argument about chemical engineers designing pesticide plants, insulin pump manufacturers, hell even folks doing car suspensions are probably responsible for more deaths than Boeing. People do their jobs, and if the impact is low they'll live with it. Clearly Boeing's leadership thought they were doing OK. And even in hindsight they... kinda were? The MAX is the most dangerous airliner in decades, maybe a half century. But I'd still fly on it.

deepsquirrelnet 3y ago

> 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? For my entire life, the most pervasive theme in executive leadership is that the _only_ responsibility of a company is to make money for its shareholders. Boeing may reach a point where it has to stop killing passengers, but dead passengers aren’t an issue at all until it creates a major threat to their bottom line. If you think it shouldn’t take many downed planes before that happens, then given the situation, the real question is why it hasn’t threatened their business enough yet.

yadaeno 3y ago
They’re too big to fail. When that’s the case punishing executives is the only way you can have accountability. The alternative—fining the company into the bankruptcy and letting the courts restructure the company has too many downsides for the shareholders.
WalterBright 3y ago
Boeing's stock was cut in half by the MAX crashes, and has not recovered.

ysofunny 3y ago

they've offshored all safety corncerns to an insurance corporation /joking, but I mean.... it doesn't sound as far fetched as it should

actuallyquiteso 3y ago

Actually this is how it's supposed to work. Because the focus is on capital the feedback loop that reigns them in happens too late to penalize and bring change. Gov really needs to create a mechanism where the feedback loop happens before lives are affected in critical industries. We will see if they get the point.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

P_I_Staker 3y ago

Knowing the way the world works, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them literally think "you know we could kill a lot more people, planes are pretty safe"