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FAA lets Boeing sign off on 737 MAX, 787 airworthiness certificates again
- greatgib 3mo agoTotally insane. Repeating the same errors as in the past and hoping for a better outcome... Only corruption can explain that...
- bob001 3mo agoLet's see if the EU shows some backbone or not.
- shevy-java 3mo agoThe EU is like a tiger - without teeth, fur or claws. I think the only thing that works here is total boycott of airplanes that constantly unalive people through mass crashes. (Wikipedia really gathers useful data here in a simple-to-read manner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...)
- freeone3000 3mo agoYou can and should say the word “kill”.
- inigyou 3mo agoKill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Exterminate. Exterminate. Humans must die. Humans must die. Exterminate. Exterminate. Exterminate. Exterminate. Am I doing it right?
- burnt-resistor 3mo agoIt's a self-censorship habit of people who frequent TikTok, Youtube, and other platforms that shadowban or outright ban particular keywords. I think it's excessively obtuse euphemisms for pseudo-civility that George Carlin would've ripped to shreds.
- worik 3mo agoInteresting analogy, maybe a house cat? I think a better analogy is "The EU is like a lumbering elephant. You can steer it, but only if you know how. Otherwise it just keeps on lumbering" Airbus was a bureaucrats wet dream, and by modern Biz Bro standards should never have got off the ground. Now it rules the skies. Boeing, having drunk the financial Kool Aid is wilting Tortoise and the hare?
- moomin 3mo agoIt turns out that sometimes you really do want health and safety obsessed bureaucrats.
- cindyllm 3mo ago[dead]
- Octoth0rpe 3mo ago> The EU is like a tiger - without teeth, fur or claws. EU regs forced apple to move to type-c. They appear to be moving towards either requiring replaceable batteries, or requiring a higher quality batter (larger % of original charge after 1000 cycles). Those both seem valuable to consumers, and coming from a position of regulatory strength.
- 15155 3mo ago> coming from a position of regulatory strength Power is defined by the ability to force people to do things they don't want to do - not things that they might have done anyway eventually or that they can feasibly see might benefit them. In this specific case, the EU gave Apple a golden bridge to retreat over by deprecating the 30-pin cable. If Apple did it themselves, people would have been pissed that they had to buy yet another charger. "Europe is the bad guy, not Apple."
- bobthebob 3mo agoCan you explain exactly why this is bad?
- estearum 3mo ago[flagged]
- rcxdude 3mo agoI would assume the poster is asking for a more detailed explanation of the implied connection between this and the plane crashes.
- estearum 3mo agoWell that is profoundly lazy. Here, put it into your favorite LLM: "Is there a suspected or established relationship between Boeing's self-certification and the 737 MAX crashes?" That will almost certainly link to the thousands of pages of Congressional, OIG, FAA testimony, investigation, and reporting. Does GP think Boeing's self-certification authority was revoked after the accidents just for funsies? By random chance?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- akerl_ 3mo agoAs has been noted in several of the comments, the crashes were a result of a faulty design, not aircraft failing to meet the design. The self-certification here wasn’t part of the chain of events that led to the crashes; it appears to have been related to other issues the FAA uncovered as a side effect of their investigation.
- estearum 3mo agoAs has been noted in the actual reports, the crashes (as is true of all crashes) were the result of a specific chain of failures across several functions and organizations. One component of that chain of failures is the self-certification process. If the FAA had the resource and mandate to actually understand each aircraft design change, then it's very likely (not guaranteed, but very likely) that the MCAS design having a single point of failure on the AoA sensor would have been flagged as problematic by FAA.
- kube-system 3mo agoI have read that self-issuance of airworthiness certificates has been normal since the 1950s. Given that, I don't think the issue is due to regulatory corruption but an issue at Boeing which has (hopefully) been resolved.
- estearum 3mo ago"The issue" at Boeing is obscene levels of financialization which, of course, has not been "solved."
- appreciatorBus 3mo ago[flagged]
- estearum 3mo agoNo it's actually bad when financialization reaches such a degree that planes fall out of the sky. You as an oncologist: "cells have been dividing for thousands of years and are better off for it. the word is meaningless. I would hate to be a single-celled organism." lmao Great insight! Therefore there's no such thing as pathological cell division or pathological financialization. Or maybe it's just if someone is super super super smart, they get so smart they somehow lose the ability to distinguish between productive and pathological financialization, and then they get to make asinine comments on HN.
- appreciatorBus 3mo agoCancer is a disease that attacks living organisms, similar to how collectivism attacks living societies. "Financialization" is a 7 syllable word with no definition. There is nothing about how Boeing builds & sells planes today that is qualitatively different than how they did it 50 years ago. Yes I am familiar with the concern that engineers hold less sway than previously and I agree this is a concern. I would not be shocked to discover that it's true. But this is not a new thing. People who sell a thing, be they multinational airline manufactures, or a kid selling lemonade, have been able to profit by lying or skimping on quality since the dawn of time. If your concern is that Boeing will skimp on quality & safety, then say that, instead of a buzz word like "financialization" I have no idea where you came across the word, but when I see it used, there's generally a lot of handwaving and some vague implication that it's some new concept/activity that started in the 1970's. The only consistencies I've observed in attempts to define it is that money = financialization or "number go up" = financialization, and the speaker is generally uncomfortable with money as one of the tools we use to organize society.
- UltraSane 3mo agoThe EU should refuse to allow such planes to enter their airspace.
- cebert 3mo agoThis is absolutely frightening.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- bobthebob 3mo agoWhy?
- armada651 3mo agoHaving airworthiness certification done by an independent organization not beholden to Boeing's shareholders makes much more sense to me. Giving the authority to Boeing to do its own airworthiness certification feels like the fox guarding the hen house.
- niffydroid 3mo agoBut independents would need to be embedded into the company every step of the way, it would get to be point they would look exactly like Boeing employees. But what does happen is audits where the work is checked
- dudinax 3mo agoThat's one way it could go but it doesn't have to. The NRC guy walking into a comtrol room is not anybody's friend.
- amomchilov 3mo agoDifferent incentives.
- rogerrogerr 3mo ago[flagged]
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- bushido 3mo agoThe 737 has had 14 major recertifications. The aircraft today looks/behaves nothing like the original from the 1960s. The main motivation for recertifications comes from commercial pressure where if a aircraft is given a new number and not recertified, then the pilots have to be retrained. Honestly, back when the 737 MAX debacle happened, a lot of consumers claimed that they would stop flying aircrafts if they ran into 737 MAXs. And I don't think it happened in enough numbers - or even enough to make news. Sales went through the roof, everything kept working. Recertifications are very common. The issue really is is the aircraft is AS different and untested as the old MAXs, and I really can't see that happening again in the next decade or two atleast.
- pudgywalsh 3mo agoConsumers are indeed very concerned... that they be able to purchase £49 tickets on RyanAir.
- ghaff 3mo agoAnd then they complain about seat sizes and baggage dimensions.
- Dylan16807 3mo agoPeople want to get what they're promised in a reasonable fashion. If the prices are hiding something like nonstandard seats or unreasonable baggage procedures, then that's a legitimate problem, not something they should shut up about because they should have known.
- ghaff 3mo agoThey're getting from Point A to Point B for a pittance. What more should they expect?
- Dylan16807 3mo agoThey deserve to know upfront how big the seat is, how big of a bag they can bring, and how much extra bags cost. On top of that, it can be useful if bag sizes and measurement have some standardization across the industry. Nothing major here or hard to provide.
- shevy-java 3mo agoUntil the next mass crash ...
- markasoftware 3mo ago[Deleted]
- kube-system 3mo agoThis is not exactly the same thing, this isn't Boeing being allowed to sign off on their design -- this is only the airworthiness certificate which means "this particular airplane we just built follows the spec which was already otherwise approved".
- brikym 3mo agoAll I read is that the US govt signs on off US export. I'd be surprised if there was not pressure on FAA to lower the bar.
- munk-a 3mo agoJust to comprehend this a bit better - it sounds like the FAA had stripped Boeing of the ability to self-recertify and actually sent inspectors for the most recent certifications. After several successful certifications and what would appear, to the inspectors, to be real process improvements, they're now re-granting Boeing the ability to self-recertify when self-recertification is allowed? This is well outside my knowledge domain so I'm not trying to make any statements on whether this was correct, but rather to better comprehend the change.
- rogerrogerr 3mo agoThis is accurate, except “recertify” is the wrong verb. This is about signing off on individual airplanes.
- blitzar 3mo agoWho gave whom a golden airplane ... totally worth it, for them at least.
- greenleafone7 3mo agoYeah, not thanks. A company being kept alive by the US government is not one I'll ever trust with my life.
- ronnieron 3mo agoI only fly airbus. If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going.
- ifwinterco 3mo agoI don't go that far and I'm not exactly scared to fly on a Boeing (because statistically it's still very safe, I ride motorbikes which is probably 100x more dangerous etc etc). However I definitely prefer flying on an Airbus, put it that way
- burnt-resistor 3mo agoI was just going to say this. Post-MD management disasters like the 737 NG Ducommun scandal that barely anyone knows about and nothing was done to rectify poor quality "approved" structural parts and mishandled assembly line installation doesn't win confidence in the flying inventory.
- tzs 3mo ago> The U.S. government on Friday said Boeing can once again issue airworthiness certificates for its bestselling 737 Max aircraft and 787 Dreamliners, an authority that was stripped from the manufacturer after fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 of the 737 Max. I'm a bit confused by this. From what I've read an "airworthiness certificate" is not a certificate that the aircraft design is good and safe. That would be a type certificate. The airworthiness certificate is issued for a particular aircraft and certifies that it conforms to the approved design for that type of aircraft, all outstanding airworthiness directives applicable to the type have been applied, no unsafe alterations or repairs have been made, all required documentation and logs are present, the inspector doesn't see any damage, leaks, or other problems that could make it unsafe, and other things like that. The two 737 MAX crashes had nothing to do with anything that would have been found during their airworthiness inspections. They were functioning exactly as they were designed to, as covered by their type certificate. So what was the point of suspending Boeing's authority to do those inspections?
- taneq 3mo ago“You can no longer certify aircraft of this design as safe” seems a reasonable response to a design flaw causing multiple crashes. My question would be whether the design flaws have been addressed. If not, then allowing them to keep making and certifying them does turn the whole exercise into a piece of theatre. Unfortunately, it’s a totally believable decision for some bureaucracies.
- rcxdude 3mo agoThe two are unrelated, though. The airworthiness certificate is focused on whether a particular plane is built according to the design. It doesn't say anything about the design. And the planes were still being certified, just by the FAA instead of Boeing. (Looking at a bit more research, I think this bit was revoked because during the investigation the FAA found that Boeing was skimping on these inspections too, but the details are a little unclear)
- wahern 3mo agoDoesn't directly answer your question, but the CNBC article appears to be correct. See https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-statement-boeing-airworthiness-certificates https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-statement-boeing-airworthin... > The FAA stopped allowing Boeing to issue airworthiness certificates for 737 MAX airplanes in 2019 during their return to service following the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, and for Boeing 787 airplanes in 2022 because of production quality issues.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- xgulfie 3mo agoPeople are Boeing to die
- t1234s 3mo agoRecently I was on the tarmac watching people load up on a 737 MAX on an island runway where the takeoff direction was TOWARDS a mountain. I said a prayer.
- inigyou 3mo agoThat isn't what the problem with the 737 MAX was.
- warumdarum 3mo agoIf the deterenc3 to newplanes is type certifications of pilots, how would a law change look that circumvents this hurdle?
- linzhangrun 3mo agoThey should never have allowed aircraft manufacturers to sign their own airworthiness certificates in the first place. Are there that many new aircraft types every year? What is the FAA for? Why does it not take responsibility for certification itself, instead of trusting the aircraft manufacturer’s “Trust Me Bro”?
- greenavocado 3mo agoWe investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing
- Havoc 3mo agoHas anything changed about their corporate culture?