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phkahler
CivBase
> the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing's engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing's management
My experience in this industry is that many of the most important engineering decisions are made by management. Not to excuse their engineers, but on the topic of management getting of lightly, I wonder how many of those "faulty technical assumptions" should fall at the feet of Boeing's management.
mywittyname
The only engineers with real power are the ones that own the company. And even then, they can still be out-maneuvered by politically astute executives.
Engineers are almost never to blame in these situations, even if they are the direct cause of an issue. There's usually so many of them that someone catches problems. But they are powerless to do much more than send a strongly worded email to their management.
Until C-suites and board members are held personally liable for tragedies like this, I doubt much will ever change. There's no real incentive to fix problems, when it costs too much money because the worst thing that will happen is, a few years down the road, there might be a Congressional inquiry and a modest fine.
Of course, any engineer whose malfeasance costs the company even 0.001% of that fine will find themselves in jail at the behest of company leadership, even if no lives were lost or any measurable damage was done to the company..
bumby
>Engineers are almost never to blame in these situations
I strongly disagree with this. Engineering is a profession of public trust, even if operating under an industrial exemption to circumnavigate licensure. We need to hold ourselves accountable to those standards or else it risks becoming a vocation devoid of responsibility and lacking accountability similar to the C-suite positions that people rail against in this thread. I don't think society would cut a doctor or lawyer slack for 'just doing as they're told' and I think engineers are in the same area of public trust.
Good organizations should have dissenting opinion processes. The advantage is that it gives a way to hold management accountable (e.g., they must formally acknowledge that risk). Sure, using that process may come with professional risk, but that should come with the territory of a position of public trust.
HumblyTossed
> I wonder how many of those "faulty technical assumptions" should fall at the feet of Boeing's management.
Most. If engineering has to be subordinate to management and not equal, then management must take responsibility for their decisions.
ulfw
The lines get thin once you get into the realms of “Engineering Management”
choward
It reminds me of people who blame programmers for "dark patterns". Sure, they implement them but they aren't the ones who decide that they should be implemented. However, both programmers and Boeing engineers could (should) quit if they feel what they are doing is unethical.
raxxorrax
Anyone working in engineering knows that any form of resistance would have been futile. I bet the engineers of MCAS didn't even have a view on the overall system and their solution probably fits the risk- and requirements analysis. You should be able check that, that is why we focus on documentation in security relevant branches.
Responsibility is for the stupid, certainly not for management.
phkahler
>> Anyone working in engineering knows that any form of resistance would have been futile.
That's a management failure right there. But fine, if managers want to take a "shut up and do as I say" attitude, then they need to be responsible for the results of what they said to do.
Also, the thing they were least transparent about was probably hiding the differences between the Max and the regular 737. They hid those differences so that they could be certified as the same type and not require additional pilot training. That's not a lack of transparency, it's deception.
dylan604
> then they need to be responsible for the results of what they said to do.
"You clearly misunderstood what I said. I never said to design MCAS. I wanted you to build MCAAS. The extra A implies the redundancy the system requires. Sheeesh." Phew, now I'm no longer responsible for this mess.
stjohnswarts
That's not true. In industries like medical and aerospace engineers have more power than they think. I've been there and done that. Safety is relevant still so you can't throw you hands up and do nothing. They don't have the same mentality as FANG companies, safety, redundancy, and being vigilant is part of the job. However, things will happen if everyone isn't vigilent. There are lots of companies out there doing it the right way, don't throw them all under the bus with Boeing.
raxxorrax
Not intending to throw Boeing under the bus at all and I do think engineers take security seriously.
But generally there is a R&D lead that makes the decision to implement it. There may be responsibility there, but the decision to design the plane this way was an economic one.
Some reported internal pressure to develop quickly. By now, that is probably standard in the industry where any software is involved. So apart from an engineering position that could nearly crash or delay such a project...
If the system reactivated wrongly, it is certainly a bug and I think they have already fixed that problem. But an error that is hard to identify and the system was basically just designed to conform to regulations defining flight characteristics to evade renewed certification and training.
Of course there are still valid design criticisms possible if you take security real serious.
HelloNurse
If there are "the engineers of MCAS", with a narrow mandate to build the MCAS, there must also be other engineers who don't delve into MCAS details but understand the overall system and therefore understand that the MCAS is dangerous. If not, how was that thing allowed to fly?
deelowe
There are. It's an entire engineering discipline and a required one on aviation/military projects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_engineering
There absolutely would have been systems engineers in charge of the various budgets and margins baked into the design. Safety is always a top one in aviation. In fact, Id be surprised to find there wasn't a team of systems safety engineering on the max. We need to see their analysis to understand whether this was a fault of engineering or management. If the engineers had done a thorough systems safety analysis and quantified the risk, then the responsibility definitely does not fall on engineering.
moeris
> I bet the engineers of MCAS didn't even have a view on the overall system
By system so your mean the MCAS, the airplane, it Boeing. I don't think you're correct if your mean the MCAS or how it integrated with the airplane. You don't think they had any sort of integration tests established? Also, one one the failings was that the system only relied on input from a single sensor, so that failing should have been extremely obvious.
Unless by system you mean Boeing as a whole. I'm sure that as a part of the requirements process they were told that the system can be deactivated (which it could be), and I'm sure they were probably unaware that pilots were not being trained in disabling the MCAS. That makes those technical failures still obvious, but nonetheless understandable and maybe even acceptable in that context.
raxxorrax
No, with system I meant the aircraft as a whole.
I meant to say that few things are that obvious if they aren't specified. There should be a point in the risk analysis that handles sensory errors, possible consequences and risk mitigation and if it wasn't specified there, it would have been an error. Go up the chain from there.
I doubt that software engineers necessarily know much about the reliability of sensors. You mostly learn that from experience. That is why you should include as much experience in the analysis process as possible. A pilot or the air techs would probably have mentioned the tendency of sensors freezing or having some form of malfunction.
Only then can the softies develop a fault tolerant system. After a failure it is always obvious to everyone, but as you said, perhaps they just thought the pilots would notice the error and override the system. Also an obvious assumption that should be documented as mitigation to reduce risk.
No risk analysis is perfect, but after the accidents we can expect some diligence and discipline in my opinion and hopefully this accident leads to a review on these processes instead of finding some fall guys.
A thorough integration test would probably also have detected the issue at some point and maybe here are faults as well.
HappySweeney
One of the main selling points of the plane was the lack of need to retrain pilots. So, Boeing was acutely aware of the lack of training regarding MCAS.
jcims
Depends how the engineering teams are partitioned really. MCAS could be built as a closed system with a set of interface specs that the avionics teams would then have to integrate and test. That said, someone definitely should be doing integration tests.
mannykannot
Furthermore, I doubt that the lack of ‘transparency’ was entirely accidental. At least since Enron, the management of large enterprises has become adept at encouraging or subtly coercing its employees to do what it takes to get the desired results, while they remain nominally unaware of what is being done.
throwaway0a5e
They're not stupid. What do you expect them to do? Being transparent clearly comes with risk and 2020 clearly increases risk. To not insulate against that would be to not do their jobs. You get what you incentivize.
bumby
>What do you expect them to do?
For starters, display good leadership traits like accountability, including to themselves. I'm worried the signal we're sending right now is that weak leadership traits are rewarded which incentivizes weak leaders.
mannykannot
> What do you expect them to do?
Who are 'them'? The executives of these companies? Yes, of course some of them will act this way at least some of the time, and the question is what do we do, if we don't like it? We have some options, such as preferring candidates who favor stronger accountability and effective protection of whistle-blowers, and who are opposed to installing, as the political appointees heading the regulatory bodies such as the FAA, people to whom these executives can go to to get pressure applied to the professional regulators to back off their objections to what is going on. We can also support responsible investigative journalism by subscribing to it.
So, yeah, I'm not expecting things to improve anytime soon.
Jgrubb
Like the mob.
headmelted
This.
Also, I’m astonished that Boeing continues to talk about when it’ll deliver the 737 Max when no-one will ever willingly fly in one of those planes.
Even their own staff have said in writing that they wouldn’t let their families fly in one of those planes.
Boeing’s utter lack of awareness of the gravity of the situation continues to amaze as much as the absurdity of this statement.
toast0
I'm sure there will be some people who refuse to fly on 737 Max. Those people will have to track airlines and routes to avoid airlines that fly 737 Max and/or routes where 737 Max is used, but also they're going to need to be willing to turn around in the jetway when they get to the plane and it's not the one that's scheduled and accept that they just lit their ticket on fire, and will have to pay for a new one.
When Boeing starts shipping 737-8200 instead of 737 Max 8, then most people are going to be releaved that they're not on a Max, when they are.
Personally, I'd like to see what experts think about the fixes, and let other people try out the planes first, but this doesn't seem like an unfixable problem. The proposed fixes seem to me like they'll be effective even if I think other changes would be better. Although there was a lot of new scrutiny, there weren't many other issues uncovered.
derwiki
No one? There are a lot of people who fly but don’t follow the news and have missed all of this. And then others who will forget/not check every time they fly.
sjm-lbm
I fly, follow the news, and assume I'll probably fly one one at some point because there's not enough alternative options. It's not what I want, but if they have a fix proven out by a lot of successful flight time and a MAX flight has the arrival time I need.. why not?
Part of the reason Boeing is going to survive is the pure fact that Airbus can't make enough airplanes to cover the market.
donarb
After the E. coli incident at Jack in the Box, people flocked to eat there. Who wouldn't, since they were so heavily scrutinized during their mitigation period.
throwaway0a5e
Same thing happened with post-BP gulf coast seafood.
natch
They’re also renaming it so it will be easier to get around this problem. I find this sneaky.
dylan604
Astonished? Really? They have sooooo much money tied up in this plane. They have soooo much money in orders to fulfill. It's not like they can just say, "instead of the 737Max you ordered, we're giving you this nice 777 instead". Of course they want this plane back in the air as quickly as possible. The airlines do too (maybe less with COVID).
jimbob45
They could still be used for cargo shipping. I’m not saying that Boeing isn’t taking a huge loss on this because they 100% are but I can certainly envision scenarios that begin to mitigate that loss.
xxpor
But I bet you'll still get in a car to go to the airport.
LinuxBender
I used to say something similar, but then someone challenged me to listen to all the ATC conversations, so I did. There are literally thousands of mayday's and pan-pans called every year, many that come dangerously close to a crash. The passengers rarely even know something is going horribly wrong. It seems those planes are really old and falling apart. At least, that is the perception I take away.
I am really impressed with the flight crews ability to work as a team to get the thing on the ground upright most of the time while remaining calm on the radio. Don't get me wrong, I love flying and plan to get my pilots license some day. I am just not a fan of the aging fleet and very dated technology.
wyattpeak
> so I guess the FAA failed by allowing that
Yes, but that failure is enormous. That a certifier should hand off certification duties to the entity being certified boggles the mind, and they should bear very substantial blame for that decision.
lurker458
They did so because politicians told them to, with the threat of withholding funding, due to lobbying by Boeing. Boeing management is the root cause.
csours
I think about this every time I take my corporate CYA training - the courses you have to take every year to ensure you follow security protocols, don't break the law, don't harass people, etc. Since there's a record that I took the classes, the company can blame any problems on me.
Blame in an engineering context is rarely if ever productive. But, if you have to blame, you really need to check if the issue was raised to management before you blame. In this case I'm pretty sure the issue was raised, so it's not really on the engineers.
dheera
To what extent should we be faulting the SEC for requiring quarterly earnings reports, which is a rather meaningless frequency for an aircraft company? How many companies have cut corners on safety due to earnings report requirements?
To what extent should shareholders take some of the brunt for their fickle behavior and threatening to short Boeing stock if they don't sell sell sell earn earn earn, instead of holding long term for Boeing to resolve safety issues at the right pace, which in turn sets the behavior of internal managers at Boeing?
astockwell
When "management" are the ones testifying, of course their fingers point to... the engineers.
bregma
Management testifying to politicians. Like wolves testifying to foxes about the culpability of chickens who jump into their mouths.
tremon
sigh.
> Republicans on the committee did not endorse the investigative report. [..] criticized Democrats for an investigation that "began by concluding that our system was broken and worked backwards from there."
So, do many republicans hold the view that killing 346 people in the first year of service is acceptable business practice?
GuB-42
The system is supposed to prevent people from dying, 346 people died, the system is broken, it is a fact. Of course we work backward from there.
Even if the conclusion is that it is "acceptable business practice", it doesn't make the system less broken. Just as making a bug "won't fix" doesn't make the bug disappear.
But this is all political bickering, I don't think republicans are proud when American planes crash and kill their passengers, some of them US citizens. But because the report is written by democrats, and I suspect it is a little about safety and a lot about attacking the republican government, somehow, republicans feel the need to fight back instead of trying to find solutions.
I hope there are real engineers trying to actually solve the problem behind the scenes.
heyflyguy
I agree with you and the report itself has some inflammatory and accusatory information that while seemingly a conviction of Boeing is also a validation that the FAA has created a system the rewards these behaviors.
As a parallel I submit to you the FAA Medical process - a system by which it is better for a pilot to conceal or not report until terrible a condition that could invalidate their medical and remove them from flight duties.
While both of these are bad for the consumer, I ask - who is at fault? The big company, the pilot, or the people making the rules that encourage such behaviors.
brennebeck
Shouldn’t all three bear some fault? The big company for not proactively supporting their staff to report (e.g. benefits), the pilot for doing something ethically wrong, and the regulatory body for encouraging the broken system?
ncmncm
There is more than enough blame to go around, in these as in all cases.
AniseAbyss
Great now even air crash investigations are about Washington party politics. That will only erode international trust in the FAA further.
jacquesm
Trust can't really go further down than '0' which is roughly where you are right now. The FAA will not be able to walk away from this one without a decade(s) long effort ahead of them to recover the trust they once had.
sofixa
Don't worry, nobody actually trust the FAA anymore. It will take decades to undo the damage.
hoorayimhelping
>The system is supposed to prevent people from dying, 346 people died, the system is broken, it is a fact. Of course we work backward from there.
Isn't this just outcome bias though? You're arguing that because there are 346 deaths, the system is necessarily broken. That may not be the case. From what I've seen, it probably is, but it's not a foregone conclusion, and we shouldn't look for evidence supporting that conclusion. 346 deaths might actually be a very small number compared to what could have happened had the system actually been broken. The point is, it's a logical fallacy to say that because there were 346 deaths, the system is broken, and we need to work back from there. This could have been a rare combinatorial explosion of bad luck.
ncmncm
The FAA insisting the plane was airworthy even after two crashes from the same cause eliminates outcome bias.
And no system is so broken and corrupt that you won't find plenty of people willing to insist that it is all just fine as it is.
ta1234567890
> I hope there are real engineers trying to actually solve the problem behind the scenes.
This is mostly a management and political issue, not an engineering one. And being cynical, I'm pretty hopeless about politicians or managers taking responsibility for their actions here.
nautilus12
Not defending their actions, but just throwing your hands up and saying the system is broken (and implying the system should be replaced wholesale)isn't productive either. Why not start first by fixing the specific pain points in this system that lead to this scenario rather than replace it and see where that gets you. I feel like democrats have a very deconstructionist perspective these days towards nearly everything. When I do my job I don't start by saying the internet is broken and needs to be replaced. I think sometimes we need to balance our idealism with a couple doses of pragmatism.
trabant00
> The system is supposed to prevent people from dying, 346 people died, the system is broken, it is a fact.
Please present one system that you designed and implemented and it worked without faults. Imperfect (as all things are) does not equal broken!
From a system design point of view I've lived to see multiple "broken" systems being replaced by a worse system with the best of intentions.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_analysis
To be clear: I am not saying FAA is faultless, I am no expert on aviation security, I simply have no opinion. I'm just saying some people are quick to take out the pitchforks.
braythwayt
I make software that is broken ALL THE TIME. And what do I do then? Find the faults and then fix them. Just because software is not perfect does not mean that I sit like a dog in a house fire saying, "this is fine."
Killing 300+ people is broken. And our obligation is to admit that it is broken, and fix that thing. When we find another thing, we admit that the system is broken there as well, and go fix that.
Trying to diminish the seriousness of 300 deaths with mealy-mouth terms like "imperfect" is pure spin. If a plane, staffed by pilots allegedly trained on how to fly it, crashes from pilot error... TWICE, the system is broken. terribly broken.
See also: Security, physical or digital.
Terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center. The system was broken. We fixed some of it. We put on some secuity theatre too. But we didn't say, "It's impossible to fix everything, so the system is fine." We didn't shrug it off as "imperfect."
We always begin by being truthful with ourselves about the fact that we have discovered that the system is broken. And if the consequences of its broken-ness are unacceptable, we fix it.
"Imperfect" is a word that should only be used for acceptable faults. Like, "The seating in economy is imperfect." It's too close together, but we don't have planes falling from the sky because they're cramming passengers together.
---
And now a footnote: Please avoid ad hominem arguments like "please name one system you've..." If the speaker's argument has a logical fallacy, point it out. If the speaker's argument is sound, it doesn't matter whether they write faultless software, or even whether they write software at all.
It's the argument we are discussing, not the person making it.
emptyfile
>I'm just saying some people are quick to take out the pitchforks.
Very, very funny considering it took TWO crashes for people to start bringing out pitchforks.
trabant00
> do many republicans hold the view that killing 346 people in the first year of service is acceptable business practice?
First you very carefully selected what to quote. You cut out this part:
> A statement from ranking member Sam Graves of Missouri says, "if aviation and safety experts determine that areas in the FAA's processes for certifying aircraft and equipment can be improved, then Congress will act."
Which makes it clear they mostly disagree about what the investigation results say about FAA, not Boeing business.
Then you suggest the republicans not being ok with the investigation findings means they are ok with killing people. They do not agree with WHY and HOW these people got killed, obviously not disagree that this should have not happened.
How you can misrepresent the other side so badly and still be so self righteous is beyond me.
cmiles74
I disagree that anything was misrepresented. After two airliner crashes I think it is clear that the "system" (in this case the ability of the FAA to provide sufficient oversight to ensure safety of these planes and companies like Boeing to provide the FAA with the information they need) is broken. Wouldn't we all agree that the entire point of this inquiry was to "work backwards from there" and figure out where things could be improved?
I'm less clear on what Sam Graves means when he says "if aviation and safety experts determine that areas in the FAA's processes for certifying aircraft and equipment can be improved, then Congress will act," but I can see why people would be upset. It seems to me that we don't need input from anyone after two crashed airliners, be they safety experts or not: there clearly are areas in which the FAA's processes can be improved and they should be improved ASAP.
JshWright
I don't think the parent comment misrepresented anything at all. Even without reading the article yet, I assumed "our system" referred to the government's system (i.e. the FAA's process).
It takes some pretty significant mental gymnastics to convince yourself that the FAA's approval process wasn't critically flawed in the case of the MAX.
cmurf
The FAA's approval process was the outcome of ideology that government should not work the way it had been working. That there were too many regulations and too much oversight, and now it was time for businesses (Boeing in this case) to have a stronger role in certification and FAA a reduced role. Whether this ideology is about protecting corporate masters, supporting a sort of neo-feudalism where big companies are the new aristocrats, or whether it's sincere belief that free markets always produce better results - almost doesn't matter. The consistent theme is that public servants should not really have the final say on airplane certification. Say they have the final say but ensure they don't have the funding, political, or legal capital to consistently actualize it.
The reality is one party long believes in giving business a lot of slack, and then only speaks in grumpy platitudes about the limits of business free-for-all when people die. They don't want a bullshit idea to be seen as bullshit. They just want to profit as much as possible with a number of deaths that the public finds acceptable enough to not call b.s. on the system itself.
If any event involving hundreds of deaths at the same time could be pinned on a person, they'd go to prison. This system is expressly designed to spread the blame and obfuscate just enough that fines will be paid, and life goes on. Except for those who died.
tremon
I did not try to misrepresent anything. That first quote I left out because it was standard politician's doublespeak, i.e. not admitting anything nor committing to anything.
Yes, my comment was a gut reaction. That reaction was purely based on the gall of calling into question whether the system is broken at all. To formalize my thought process:
1. $system exists to certify machines in $domain (premise)
2. 346 people die in two related $domain failures (premise)
3. $politician rejects the notion that $system is broken (premise)
4. a well-functioning system is apparently allowed to result in 346 deaths (conclusion)
kortilla
Perhaps you’re just used to dealing with an industry that has little physical risks where the thought of people dying in a normal functioning system seems hard to believe?
Hundreds to thousands of people die everyday in vehicles and the NTSB doesn’t even open investigations. It’s regarded as a well-functioning system. Are Democrats fine with thousands of deaths every year?
DuskStar
So, corollary. Should we completely rework the process for certifying cars (safety testing) and drivers (drivers licenses, training) due to the FAR more than 346 roadway deaths last year?
Adding just a few lessons from Aviation - things like "only allow the use of spare parts that are approved by the manufacturer", "forbid use when diagnostic errors are present", "mandate pilot rest periods and duty cycles" and "revoke the license of anyone with a sufficiently serious medical condition" would have huge consequences. I'm personally confident that each of those would reduce driving fatalities in the US by more than 346/yr. Of course, they'd also destroy the livelihoods of millions, make car travel far more expensive, and have (prior to 2020) unfathomable social consequences. But hey, any system that allowed that many deaths must be broken!
mannykannot
> Which makes it clear they mostly disagree about what the investigation results say about FAA, not Boeing business.
Yes, but for me, regulatory capture seems to be a central issue in what went wrong, so I am highly skeptical that this is not an ideologically-flavored conclusion.
FWIW, I first approached this incident (prior to the second crash) from the point of view that it was probably either pilot error and/or an unfortunate malfunction, so I think I can fairly say that I have come to my conclusions in a forwards direction.
SaltyBackendGuy
> regulatory capture
The fact that this is an accepted business practice is insane to me.
elliekelly
How often does an entity, when investigating itself, accurately and truthfully identify the issues the entity is facing? I have immense respect for the FAA and if any regulator could do it I would think the FAA would conduct a more honest self-investigation than most US regulators. But it’s still a pretty dubious proposition that people in Congress responsible for the agency’s oversight would defer to the judgment of the FAA in determining the agency’s accountability.
It’s ironically not unlike the regulatory landscape that led to the Boeing situation in the first place - the entity charged with oversight was much too deferential to those it was supposed to be overseeing.
criley2
>> A statement from ranking member Sam Graves of Missouri says, "if aviation and safety experts determine that areas in the FAA's processes for certifying aircraft and equipment can be improved, then Congress will act."
This statement alone is hilarious considering that the FAA approval is a poster-child example of regulatory capture.
Here's the secret: the FAA let's the companies SELF-REGULATE and SELF-APPROVE planes.
The FAA did NOT approve the Max, because Boeing did.
>>A total of 79 companies are allowed under federal policies to let engineers or other workers considered qualified report on safety to the FAA on systems deemed not to be the most critical rather than leaving all inspections to the government agency.
>>To critics, it's a regulatory blind spot.
Once you know how this works, that statement by bad-faith-actor Sam Graves is laid bare. Of course we know how to improve the processes: Step 1: Don't put the Fox in charge of the Hens!
>>> How you can misrepresent the other side so badly and still be so self righteous is beyond me."
Something you yourself could have learned from before posting!
TheHypnotist
Bad faith brought to you by Boeing:
"Here are the total contributions from Boeing to members of the House Aviation Subcommittee during the 2018 election cycle. Republicans: Troy Balderson (R-Ohio) $0. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pennsylvania) $9,700. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin) $5,999. Garret Graves (R-Louisiana) $6,000. Sam Graves (R-Missouri) $10,000. John Katko (R-New York) $15,400. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) $0. Brian Mast (R-Florida) $7,681. Paul Mitchell (R-Michigan) $5,000. Scott Perry (R-Pennsylvania) $3,000. David Rouzer (R-North Carolina) $2,000. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pennsylvania) $8,000. Ross Spano (R-Florida) $0. Pete Stauber (R-Minnesota) $0. Daniel Webster (R-Florida) $0. Rob Woodall (R-Georgia) $2,000. Don Young (R-Alaska) $1,000. Total Boeing Contributions to Republicans on the Aviation Subcommittee $75,780. Average for each of the 17 members: $4,457.
Democrats: Colin Allred (D-Texas) $94. Anthony Brown (D-Maryland) $8,500. Julia Brownley (D-California) $0. Salud Carbajal (D-California) $5,000. Andre Carson (D-Indiana) $10,000. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) $2,000. Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) $703. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas) $122. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) $5,000. Jesus Garcia (D-Illinois) $0. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) $6,000. Henry Johnson (D-Georgia) $1,000. Rick Larsen (D-Washington) $7,048. Daniel Lipinski (D-Illinois) $6,000. Stephen Lynch (D-Massachusetts) $0. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-New York) $3,500. Grace Napolitano (D-Washington) $0. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) $0. Donald Payne (D-New Jersey) $1,000. Stacey Plaskett (D-USVI) $0. Greg Stanton (D-Arizona) $2. Dina Titus (D-Nevada) $3,000. Total Amount Boeing contributions to Democrats on the Aviation Subcommittee in 2018 cycle: $58,969. Average for each of the 22 members. $2,680.
Total contributed by Boeing to the 39 members of the Subcommittee: $134,749. Average per member: $3,455."
Source: https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/blaming-dead...
kortilla
> Don't put the Fox in charge of the Hens!
The implication of course being that Boeing and its engineers want to kill people and the only thing standing between them and their goals of mass murder is the government.
TheHypnotist
I don't claim to know much about FAA procedure for approving flight of new aircraft, but I think it's safe to assume that whatever testing, regulation, other processes they have in place that allowed for this type of grave error to fly is either insufficient or broken.
I agree this doesn't exactly equate to the conclusion drawn about republicans, but it does further expose that there is no limit to generating partisan/political quotes where they don't belong.
Regardless of who you side with, note that many on the congressional investigative team took contributions from Boeing and tried to steer blame to individual pilots/airlines (including Sam Graves and some democrats).
Source: https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/blaming-dead...
nickff
>" I don't claim to know much about FAA procedure for approving flight of new aircraft, but I think it's safe to assume that whatever testing, regulation, other processes they have in place that allowed for this type of grave error to fly is either insufficient or broken."
That's quite the assumption. I don't even know what 'broken' would mean for a certification process as byzantine as the one used by the FAA. I think you should either be more specific, or take the time to learn a bit about the systems, processes, and failure modes of complex multi-stakeholder processes.
jasonlotito
> "if aviation and safety experts determine that areas in the FAA's processes for certifying aircraft and equipment can be improved, then Congress will act."
Climate experts determined things too. Congress has acted... by ignoring those experts. Why should we expect them to listen this time when they have demonstrated an unwillingness to listen in the past? Judging by history, they aren't planning on acting.
dfxm12
It follows, given their response to the Corona Virus. It's quite clear that they serve corporate interests, and not people.
jonplackett
It doesn't really matter if you work backwards or forwards if you can prove your conclusion.
koolba
Yes it does.
Working backwards from a desired claim to generate only supporting facts would reinforce only that claim. It’d be like the police only investigating the one usual suspect and refusing to look for evidence that did not pertain to that suspect.
Working forwards from gathering facts to a conclusion may lead to the same place or somewhere entirely different.
cmiles74
The use of the term "desired claim" strikes me as unreasonable and unfair in this instance. No one is happy with two airliner crashes, it was no ones "desired claim". Unfortunately these crashes are what initiated the inquiry into the certification of this model airliner.
In my opinion, the crashes are not facts with which anyone could reasonably argue. I don't think there's room to argue that maybe the crashes were unrelated, for instance. Given that we can all agree that the crashes occurred and were caused by a similar fault (in this case MCAS), I think it's entirely reasonable to "work back from there" and figure out _why_ this airliner was certified as safe and through that exercise discover what changes can be made to that certification process to prevent other dangerous airliners from being certified.
jacquesm
This isn't some open ended research problem. It's an investigation into something that went glaringly and obviously wrong. Of course you start from what went wrong and work backwards from there. If you didn't you might end up in a different place altogether which would serve no purpose. That's what a congressional inquiry is for: to establish why a particular thing went the way it did.
jonplackett
All of science starts with something you're trying to prove or disprove. It can work either way.
colejohnson66
> Working backwards from a desired claim to generate only supporting facts would reinforce only that claim.
It’s called parallel construction. When police use it, it’s grounds to get your whole case thrown out (for very valid reasons... if you can prove it).
tremon
Scientists regularly work backwards from a conclusion, though it's usually called a hypothesis in that case. It's still very much an accepted way of doing science.
sarakayakomzin
>if you can prove your conclusion.
please don't get a job as a compiler if you miss obvious if statements like this.
rjtavares
It also seems reasonable to assume that such an extreme situation is the result of a broken system. The tricky think is to identify what exactly is broken.
superice
'Beyond a reasonable doubt' works because the system should generate doubts as well. There might be two theories that are equally likely, but if you only have facts to support theory one without even having thought of the other theory that might still lead to a wrongful indictment.
mratsim
yes it does, it's called confirmation bias. Not that I endorse their claim as well.
dylan604
The people the quoted comment was meant for are not readers of HN. It is for people looking for political fighting that are no longer looking at things like facts/evidence.
dboreham
Because money.
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dangus
Yes, Republicans are actually okay with 195,000 deaths as well. They say this daily, that they’re doing a great job and that it could be worse, especially if you don’t vote for them.
avsteele
Are there any experts here who have read the report? If so I have two questions.
1) How qualified are the congressional investigators to evaluate technical decisions in the MCAS design?
2)Second point: Notably, the article is quite vague about the actual mistakes that where made. Is there any specific bad decisions it notes that would be errors without the benefit of hindsight?
salawat
I read the FAA's final report, and to be frank, I feel like many punches were pulled. There were mountains of evidence of a dysfunctional culture and cavalier attitude toward regulation at Boeing.
Despite the punch pulling, there were also admissions that the plane (without the MCAS flight law) would not have passed certification requirements for carrying passengers, cementing a solid motive for regulatory obstruction and perception management.
Mary a mention or touching on any of that in the report. It went to great lengths to show that the "process worked as followed" yet never addressed the issue that said process led to 346 deaths.
It's frustrating, because I left the report with the feeling the conclusion was "Process is fine, people just need to follow it better" when the entire point of having a process is to take into account human capacity to err and designing it out.
I think Representatives are basically applying their plank to the report. Which is bloody stupid, because they need to be reading between the lines and focusing on the problem, not whether their party leaders approve of their approach or output.
wil421
For point 1 I don’t think it matters if they understand the technical design. As long as they understand the failures that led to a flawed design. Mostly likely the FAA trusting Boeing and a lot of managerial failures on Boeing due to management glossing over engineers and pilot feedback.
bearjaws
Who would have thought that after decades of privatization and corporate lobbying, the FAA would no longer be functional enough to prevent this kind of disaster?
This same story is repeating throughout all the American regulatory bodies and it is only going to get worse.
varispeed
This is a case of privatisation of profits. The company for all intents and purposes is a state run company through regulations. Corruption and greed enabled to side step these
t3rabytes
Great. Now what we do to keep it from happening again? How do we reduce corporatocracy and regulatory capture?
gmac
If the US system is even slightly functional, the FAA will get beefed up and we'll be fine for a decade or two.
Then people will again start saying "we've had no accidents for years, therefore flying is really safe, so why all this burdensome regulation?". Regulation will get scaled back, something like the 737 MAX will happen again, the FAA will get beefed up, and so on, ad infinitum.
It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power).
ethbr0
> regulatory boom and bust
The root cause is pretty easy to describe: benefits are apparent and risks are hidden.
It's much harder for people to weigh things that might happen against things that will happen. Especially when the former is negative and latter is positive (positive outcome bias).
Consequently, in meeting after meeting, risk safeguards are erroded. Because each meeting has a relatively minor "Do we want this benefit, or to hedge this risk?" decision, and in aggregate, people pick the former.
joss82
Nuclear power is not that dangerous on a large scale compared to coal power. Or burning any fossil fuel for that matter.
sgt101
Juggling chainsaws is not so dangerous compared to Russian roulette.
yrro
So far, no. But a single nuclear power plant has the potential for continent-wide devastation. Is the same true of the world's largest coal power plants (~6.7 GW)?
ekianjo
> It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power).
You had a good comment except for the last line. Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production out there (and by far).
furyg3
His point is not that nuclear power is not dangerous, his point is that according to his theory, humans will get complacent and walk-back regulations when nothing happens, leading to potential nuclear accidents that were needless.
05
> Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production out there (and by far).
Only on average. The potential worst case fuckup is the most spectacular compared to any other energy source.
Chris2048
Fine if humanity will never have to tackle anything complex for it's own survival, e.g. deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with earth (or evacuating the planet before it does), dealing with global warming, or some other planetary change (natural or otherwise), dealing with overpopulation / resources etc.
It would also require every other nation on earth to agree with the restriction, which isn't really compatible with the premise in the first place; if the regulations are self-imposed, people will stop following them.
notimetorelax
I think it’s an optimization problem and incentives problem. We should be reevaluating level of funding over time, otherwise government organizations will grow indefinitely, but here’s where the incentives come in play, who would be interested in doing this evaluation gradually and with the backing of data? I believe the latter depends on the society and the politics.
DangerousPie
> If the US system is even slightly functional
I have some bad news for you...
bufferoverflow
Nuclear power in western countries has been regulated to the crazy safety standards (not to confuse with the military fuckups).
emarsden
> It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power).
For more thinking along these lines, see the book “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies” (1984) by sociologist Charles Perrow (concerning nuclear power), the book “The Limits of Safety — Organizations, Accidents and Nuclear Weapons” (1993) by Scott Sagan concerning nuclear weapons, and the work of philosopher Hans Jonas on the “imperative of responsibility” (1980s).
mcny
I still believe capping executive pay is a necessary (though not sufficient) part of any practical solution. At least for publicly traded companies, we must cap compensation at no more than 50x minimum wage or something. No, executive compensation does not "come from a different pot" or any such nonsense. Don't listen to such silly arguments. Literally no shareholder wants to pay executives more unless they are executives at a different company where their buddies are on the board.
Some HN readers apparently don't like to hear this but I don't see any other way.
As for how we can reduce regulatory capture, I don't believe there is any good solution other than constant vigilance.
tremon
Some things come to mind:
- Better whistleblower protections
- Personal liability for making false or misleading statements to a regulatory agent
- Corporate death penalty. No more "too big to fail" nonsense. If there were actual competition among aviation manufacturers, the government could just dissolve the company and auction off the product lines to competitors.
Safeguarding against capture from the regulatory side is more difficult. But I guess term limits for decision-making positions could help, or having a good process for identifying and declaring conflicts of interest?
sneak
Not only would such a corporate death penalty never, ever get used against Boeing by the USG if such a thing were to exist, the USG would not advance such a circumstance where it could exist in the first place.
There are a number of industries and companies that will exist as long as the current USG does, at least for our lifetimes, due to decisions that were made long ago.
Examples include Lockheed, Boeing, and Microsoft.
Any solution to the problem needs to accept and address the levels of deep integration between these companies and the state.
ekianjo
> I still believe capping executive pay is a necessary (though not sufficient) part of any practical solution. At least for publicly traded companies, we must cap compensation at no more than 50x minimum wage or something.
I am not sure what capping executive salaries would achieve. You'd still get the same kind of people at the top anyway - even if the top salaries were identical to that of a janitor, the fact that you have power over others is its own motivator for many people out there. Proof in point: politicians don't make outrageous amounts of money (compared to CEOs), but they are addicted to power and control just as well.
tyingq
50x minimum wage would be ~$750k/year in the US. That may not be a realistic goal, especially if you're including stock comp.
There are some CEOs in the Fortune 500 with 750k base, but bonus and stock exceed that by multiples.
sgt101
Why would that be unrealistic? There are some people in prison in the UK who have murdered five people, yet murdering one is still prohibited.
mcny
The goal is to increase minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour which will allow USD 1.5M annual compensation (15 * 2000 * 50)
I think a fifty times multiplier is already too high though so I don't know if I can agree to pushing that up any further. The goal is specifically to change things for the better, to NOT maintain the status quo.
MaxBarraclough
> Literally no shareholder wants to pay executives more unless they are executives at a different company where their buddies are on the board.
You might have seen this recent news article. I won't summarise, as I don't think I can do better than the URL:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/08/ea-shareholders-say-n...
lucaspm98
Do you not think executive pay in the aggregate directly correlates to the value they provide to the company? Clearly not in terms of their individual labor, but the value of the unique guidance and leadership they provide. Of course there are plenty of examples of executives being paid too much, but those companies are providing opportunities for competitors with more appropriate pay structure to undercut them. In the long term, in a free market this should only be an issue with monopolies which are already regulated.
Operyl
In classic American fashion it’ll be increased as the solution!
lordnacho
Not meaning to open a whole can of worms, but it might be the case that the US needs a better constitution.
It seems like the current two-party system is in fact part of the "corporatocracy and regulatory capture", but with current electoral law they are unlikely to ever be dislodged.
dane-pgp
> with current electoral law they are unlikely to ever be dislodged.
Fortunately, the individual states are not prevented from implementing reforms like Ranked Choice Voting, which would allow new parties to form and gain a reputation in politics at least at the state level.
If a party repeated that success across multiple states, that could be used to pressure the largest two parties to support similar reforms, like making Congressional districts return multiple representatives (proportional to the vote within that district).
yholio
A big part of the solution that does not involve the government is the market reaction driven by sometimes irrational consumer behavior. Some passengers are now weary of all recent Boeing designs, and even of the excelent 737. The margins are razor thin and if 5% decide to book elsewhere, it can turn a profitable route into a flop.
So Boing will pay not only the massive costs of withdrawing the MAX since orders for it are plummeting. But this event will affect all its business. This is why there is lobbying/political pressure to divert at least some of the blame, the implications are in the tens of billions in the next few years.
So the good news is that the company will be forced to clean-up its act voluntarily, a similar safety disaster could mean extinction.
tboyd47
I wish that kind of free-market-driven correction were possible, but passengers have no control over which airplanes they fly in. You don't book tickets with Boeing or Airbus; you book tickets with Southwest or Spirit, and even if they tell you the make of the plane you'll be flying, they can change it up at any time without refunding you.
yholio
Many european airlines announced a no questions asked refund policy on 737 Max tickets. Even Ryanair who initially rejected the idea, latter made a U-turn under pressure from concerned passengers: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ryanair...
The refund would be made at gate level, since the plane allocations are made in the last minute.
It's certainly a factor behind the hundreds of MAX orders that were canceled thus far. Fitch lowered it's delivery estimate from 700 to 75 MAX planes for 2020.
dfxm12
How do we reduce corporatocracy and regulatory capture?
There are elections coming up in November. You'll have at least 2 federal races on the ballot. Figure out where the candidates stand with regards to corporatocracy and regulatory capture and vote accordingly.
If you don't like where any of the candidates stand, there will be another election in 2 years. In the mean time, let the candidates know how you feel. Donate to, or volunteer for the candidates who you want to win.
dirtyid
Actually punish white collar crime.
redis_mlc
It's worse than regulatory capture.
The FAA delegates oversight to non-FAA contractors working and being paid at Boeing. If they don't agree with Boeing mgmt., they are fired.
Also, the FAA manages safety using paperwork. The submitted paperwork did not match the excessive MCAS trim rate.
"The problem is it was compliant and not safe." is a false statement. MCAS performance did not match the paperwork filed with the FAA.
The Republican comment about it not being a system problem is also false. The FAA has a history of losing control until an accident. The result of the 1956 Grand Canyon accident was that they determined the ATC system "was not a system." In the case of the 737 MAX, the FAA latitude given to Boeing allowing it to outsource everything and self-certify bad designs is a system failure for airliner design and mfg.
Midair collision between a Trans World Airlines Lockheed 1049A and a United Airlines Douglas DC-7
https://lessonslearned.faa.gov/ll_main.cfm?TabID=1&LLID=50
Equally disturbing, and it illustrates Boeing's extreme mgmt. dysfunction, is the gamifications with the meeting room shotclock and the Southwest $1 million penalty per plane for a different sim.
Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.
bufferoverflow
I hope prison time for the execs.
But probably will not happen.
sebazzz
Remember Equifax? We don't talk about that.
tuna-piano
I understand there were problems at Boeing and the FAA that lead to the unexpected first crash. I'm honestly not that bothered that a plane crashed (besides the general sadness of any loss of life tragedies). Sometimes bad things happen... these are complex machines and regulatory systems. The process seems to be working and problems are being addressed. Plane crashes are super, super rare.
What I don't understand, and does bother me, is why the plane continued to fly after the first crash and even, inexcusably, for days after the second crash! That seems to me a bigger indictment of Boeing's and the FAA's reluctance to put safety over money.
known
"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them" --Einstein
stjohnswarts
I think any engineer who won't refuse to work on dangerous projects and not take precautions is as guilty as the manager pushing for any unsafe changes. You have to step up and let them know you'll leave if they don't change. Talk to their managers if you don't have to. Save your emails too. Don't be party to stuff like this, a big spot of blood will be on your shirt at the end of the day if someone (or multiple someones) dies as a result. No one can forsee everything but if you do and you don't do anything about it you are as guilty as anyone down the chain of "unfortunate situations" that allowed it to happen.
varispeed
Surely it was engineers decision to do short cuts. This is just appalling. All managers should be in prison.
supernova87a
As with so many "root cause" investigations, there are deeper issues the more you dig. And these issues turn out to be both a gradual evolution of circumstances that changed Boeings, Congress's, and our collective responsibility for the matter when you peel back the layers.
It turns out (in my view) that this is just the inevitable result of a slow abandonment of the role that the military, federal government, and the US people elected to play in the development of civil aviation in the last century.
Maybe many have forgotten, but our civil aviation legacy largely came from R&D and production of aircraft during WW2 and later. Boeing, McDonnell, Grumman, Northrop, these were all companies that formed from that legacy. But what they produced besides planes was a government infrastructure that was expert in procuring, regulating, and evaluating the performance of not just aircraft but also companies.
And it also produced aircraft companies that worked closely with government -- but most importantly, with their concerns in mind. They were partly the customer!
Over 50 years, the pressures of public debt, cost of employees, efficiency, etc. meant that that expertise in the regulatory bodies gradually began to be hollowed out. Experts in government found themselves too bothered by the heavier and heavier constraints of government, and lured by the higher salaries of the private sector. The leaders of a new field were replaced by mere maintainers of it. We all know what happens as that changes, I think.
Government gradually also became less of a "customer" in the design and production of planes. And the airplane companies themselves became more profit-need-driven. They are basically like the auto manufacturers with huge workforces that need their insurance and IAM wages paid.
So what do you get in a situation like this? The inevitable:
Aircraft manufacturers that start to optimize their designs and production for low cost and "simple" variations on old designs (don't want to invest in from-scratch new planes). Regulators who don't know how to evaluate properly new designs, and anyway whose responsibilities are basically staffed for and by the airline because few people want to be regulators. And a public that incentivizes this all because we have other debts to pay and don't want to cough up the $ in ticket prices or taxes.
Until a plane crashes.
Anyway, that's my take. So if they were honest, Congress would point the mirror at themselves too, in this exercise.
known
Proper Whistle blower program would have prevented these failures
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>> the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing's engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing's management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA.
That is being very kind to Boeing management. Its blaming the engineers and the FAA but the management was just not transparent? Boeing fought hard for their autonomy and ability to self certify, so I guess the FAA failed by allowing that. But that doesnt exempt the management at Boeing who was supposed to create an organisation with processes in place to design and build safe airplanes. They had such an organisation but failed to maintain it as such. That's more than a lack of transparency.