[HN Gopher] FAA safety engineer goes public to slam agency's ove...
___________________________________________________________________
FAA safety engineer goes public to slam agency's oversight of
Boeing's 737 Max
Author : lukewrites
Score : 206 points
Date : 2021-03-07 15:27 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.seattletimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.seattletimes.com)
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I think instead of talking about the past 2 accidents so much, at
| this point the question is if the current system is safe enough.
| I wish he went more into the details of the software
| certification.
| sho_hn wrote:
| The key point I took away from the article is that some complex
| interactions with and misbehaviors of the autothrottle system
| remain unaddressed in the upgrades (or at least Boeing was not
| ordered to make changes there, and Jacobsen chose to make this
| public, so _presumably_ they remain unaddressed), so I think it
| answers your question.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| For some reason the pilots are still confident enough to fly
| the new planes, though they don't have many options now that
| a big part of them have been laid off because of the
| coronavirus.
|
| It seems that now the Boeing hopes that those complex
| interactions are rare enough that they don't pose a serious
| problem. We'll see in a few years.
| sho_hn wrote:
| One takeaway I got from reading many articles like this
| over the past two years: Airplanes are a lot like
| JavaScript, quirky and full of gotchas, and what the pilots
| rely on is being well-informed and having access to good
| documentation on the evil. Everything seems to rely on a
| complex system of diseminating errata through bulletins,
| checklist and manual updates and training. The best
| airplane might not be the most bug-free but the best
| documented and most well-understood. The worst airplane may
| be the one with the most undefined or unknown (by pilots)
| behavior.
|
| Part of what made this such a fiasco is that the behavior
| and interactions of these systems were purposely _not_
| documented and kept not just from the FAA, but pilots in
| particular. This meant they had no chance to do their job
| well and operate the equipment correctly. Add to this
| manufacturers reaching for "pilot error" quickly and as a
| pilot I'd imagine being rather pissed off.
|
| This seems interesting with the 737 in particular: It's
| been around for a long time and was probably considered
| well-understood. Boeing introduced the MAX telling everyone
| "it's still the same", and then threw pilots one gigantic
| (as well as defectively implemented) curveball. Instead,
| deviations from and additions to a well-known system should
| have been pointed out and documented especially well.
|
| It also seems to suggest there must be a system complexity
| ceiling where pilot recall of checklists and subsystem
| interaction permutations fails to scale anymore, and the
| addition of new systems probably needs to be evaluated
| against that notion. Assistance systems like MCAS are
| supposed to make things easier - but their edge cases and
| interactions potentially carry a "recall tax".
|
| Another pattern I see in articles like this (another
| example is the A380 engine failure in I think a Quantas
| plane years ago) is that planes rely on informing pilots of
| subsystem state through what's basically a stack of
| notification message dialogs with the goal to get pilots to
| explicitly confirm/react to each one, but that means by the
| time the pilot has time to work through the stack during a
| crisis the content may already be outdated, or there's no
| time to tend to the stack to begin with. There may be
| better UX designs possible such as master system diagrams
| with status? Dunno.
|
| Note: I'm a layman, and in topics like this I feel uneasy
| whenever I relay or suggest what may be based on wrong
| assumptions.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| Also on the subject of documentation, I understand that
| the manufacturers regularly update their manuals. the
| owners are legally required to have these manuals. They
| are therefore compelled to shell out exorbitant sums of
| money for something that should be free. Can't remember
| where i picked up this tidbit.
| yborg wrote:
| The thing that should really be discussed is that given the
| full regulatory capture of the FAA over the last 20 years, how
| many _other_ such hidden timebombs exist in the complex
| software systems in aircraft.
|
| As a software tester, it's actually fairly amazing to me that
| planes these days don't fall from the skies every day.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| It's because we test planes and use old designs for a long
| time, hard for a 30 year old plane to fall out of the sky for
| something that hasn't been found in 30 years.
| jskrablin wrote:
| That remains to be seen. However it still doesn't inspire a lot
| of trust. Wondering what would the fallout be if another MAX
| crashed because of another ugly hack turned deadly.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| It seems to me like Boeing management doesn't care, they just
| want their stock bonuses as soon as possible to finance their
| lifestyle.
| inetsee wrote:
| I would image that if another Boeing 737 Max crashes,
| especially if it crashed in the United States, that it would
| be the end of Boeing as an airliner manufacturer. I could see
| all the 737 Maxes ending up in an aircraft boneyard, and
| airlines looking at alternatives for other classes of
| aircraft too.
| interestica wrote:
| I think Boeing is just in the too-big-to-let-fail group--
| especially if we enter a post-pandemic world on a rebound.
| The US wouldn't let such a key company fall -- especially
| as China pushes their competing airplanes.
|
| A US-crash, I think, would push greater scrutiny and
| overhaul of the FAA. Boeing could shift some of the blame
| to them. And they could actually _benefit_ in the long run
| (as terrible as that is.)
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| It seems a bit presumptuous to call how the FAA dealt with Boeing
| "oversight". "Total subservience" might be closer to the mark.
| there is IMO an excellent series of articles documenting exactly
| what the problems with MCAS were and how it went wrong. It's
| written by a pilot called Bjorn on leehamnews.com if anyone is
| interested.
| heymijo wrote:
| "In his letter, Jacobsen recommends that Boeing upgrade the MAX's
| autothrottle logic to either disconnect or give the pilots a
| warning when the computer registers invalid data.
|
| In the upgrade to the MAX that allowed it to return to service,
| the FAA did not require any such change but did add an explicit
| instruction that pilots in this kind of emergency should
| "disengage the autothrottle.""
|
| In the many articles about the MAX that have shown up on HN the
| underlying concern seems to be that this is still not a safe
| plane. This excerpt is scary.
|
| Anyone with aviation experience want to weigh in?
| creamytaco wrote:
| Of course it's not a safe plane, common sense says so. Would
| you trust a bunch of bureaucrats and corporate sellouts with
| your life, when engineers have been ringing alarm bells for
| years?
|
| Not only will I never fly this plane again, but I'll do my best
| to avoid Boeing altogether. Given that I'm European, it should
| be fairly easy.
| dataflow wrote:
| > I'll do my best to avoid Boeing altogether
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-probe/airbus-
| bribe...
| saiya-jin wrote:
| This is about Airbus bribing to get more deals, which is
| abhorable but common practice in _any_ multinational
| corporation even these days, be it soda, weapons or
| banking. Boeing is about utterly incompetent management
| killing 300+ civilians +-knowingly, and acting like little
| children. Still refusing to take blame, still refusing to
| actually fix the source of the issue. As a passenger, I and
| my family are in direct risk from this incompetence.
|
| Yes, in almost duopoly in civilian flying, I will take
| Airbus anytime. And never, ever, fucking ever 737 Max.
| dataflow wrote:
| What I was trying to say was: yes, you probably shouldn't
| fly the 737 _Max_ in particular (and perhaps 787), no
| doubt about that. But to write off the _entire company 's
| fleet of airliners_ when they still obviously have planes
| that continue to maintain excellent history seems kind of
| extreme and unwarranted. Like presumably you think they
| somehow compromised on safety on their other models too,
| _despite_ their safety records, to bring them into the
| market. Shouldn 't that give you pause on Airbus too,
| given they've _actually gone so far as to to bribe
| people_ to get their planes into the market?
|
| I've more critical of Boeing than some folks here in the
| past, but if your goal is safety, you're just limiting
| your own options by rejecting planes with provably good
| safety records. (Or if you somehow think that's
| warranted, then there seem to be plenty of reasons to
| question Airbus's integrity too.) OTOH, if your goal is
| to just do this as some kind of economic retaliation (a
| "vote with your wallet" thing), in which case, never
| mind, I misunderstood your goal as being safety-related.
| Though you're not the person who wrote the initial
| comment, so I guess your reason could be different.
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| With the current leadership of Boeing I wouldn't really
| trust anything they do or say.
| avereveard wrote:
| textbook whataboutism
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I think his point was Airbus also isn't safe, not Boeing
| is okay.
| avereveard wrote:
| which is a textbook whataboutism
| Judgmentality wrote:
| As the other commenter pointed out, whataboutism would
| imply defense of Boeing.
|
| I think we disagree on what whataboutism means. I think
| we're just gonna have to agree to disagree, because we're
| having a meta argument at this point.
| dataflow wrote:
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/whataboutism
|
| > A conversational tactic in which a person responds to
| an argument or attack by changing the subject to focus on
| someone else's misconduct, implying that all criticism is
| invalid because no one is completely blameless
|
| > _Excusing your mistakes with whataboutism is not the
| same as defending your record._
|
| This was emphatically not what I was doing.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Actually, pointing out similar actions in peers of the
| accused is a valid method to demonstrate that such
| actions are not misconduct. Or, if we still insist on
| calling these actions misconduct, then a double standard
| has been demonstrated.
|
| That said, GGP post did not point out similar actions.
| Airbus did not risk passengers' lives. That is the issue
| here: public safety.
| avereveard wrote:
| > by changing the subject to focus on someone else's
| misconduct
|
| and how is highlighting airbus misconduct not a textbook
| example of this?
|
| you even linked the explanation sentence, but did you
| read it?
| dataflow wrote:
| If you read the entirety of what I wrote in all my
| comments here it should be fairly obvious how. You seem
| very keen to start a fight though, and I'm not sure I'm
| up for a match here, so I'll leave it at this.
| missedthecue wrote:
| _Given that I 'm European, it should be fairly easy._
|
| Why does this change anything? Every major European carrier
| flies Boeing aircraft. Some exclusively.
| creamytaco wrote:
| Airbus is much more common.
| oxley wrote:
| > Not only will I never fly this plane again, but I'll do my
| best to avoid Boeing altogether.
|
| Seems excessive. Most of Boeing plane families have been
| flying for decades. We're unlikely to discover new major
| failure modes in them at this point.
|
| If anything, I'd wait before flying any _recent_ Boeing
| designs.
| hanniabu wrote:
| It's a matter of principle
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Seems irrational given the probabilities. Do you stop driving
| non-Tesla cars? That should give you a bigger bump in
| expected mortality (obviously depending on your relative
| mileage)
| rualca wrote:
| > Seems irrational given the probabilities.
|
| Two Boeing 737max out of a total close to 400 crashed in
| the span of around a year before being grounded.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings
|
| The FAA predicted that the Boeing 737max would cause about
| 15 crashes during the next 30 years.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| The right figure to look at is the number of fatalities
| per million miles traveled. Those 400 covered an awful
| lot of distance over that year (but also, not all of them
| were yet flying at the beginning of the year).
| rualca wrote:
| > The right figure to look at is the number of fatalities
| per million miles traveled.
|
| The right figure to look at is how many plane crashes
| there are with other commercial flight planes of the same
| class due to design defects covered up like Boeig did,
| which is zero.
| amyjess wrote:
| I've already decided that once it's safe to fly again, I'm
| going to fly Spirit exclusively. They're a US-based carrier
| with an all-Airbus fleet.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| If you want to not be charged fees up the wazoo, JetBlue
| also has no Boeings.
| wheaties wrote:
| The MAX had the MCAS installed to make it so that pilots could
| operate it under the type certificate of a 737. Otherwise, the
| plane would behave differently and would require retraining.
| What he's probably saying is there is nothing wrong with the
| plane's design without the MCAS. Financially, the 737 MAX
| wouldn't be a success that way.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> What he's probably saying is there is nothing wrong with
| the plane's design without the MCAS.
|
| That is a common IMHO misconception. Since the new version
| with "fixed" MCAS requires additional training, it does not
| follow that MCAS exists simply to avoid retraining and non
| certifying it the same. In that case, Boeing should have
| simply dropped MCAS and did the certification and training.
| Instead they opted for the near financial disaster and
| disruption to their supply chain AND failure to avoid
| additional training.
|
| I suspect MCAS is covering for a very bad corner case in the
| flight dynamics.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > I suspect MCAS is covering for a very bad corner case in
| the flight dynamics.
|
| yeah, much larger, stronger, and more forward positioned
| engines so the thrust leads to pitch up stalls in worst
| case scenarios.
| phire wrote:
| Your suspicion is correct.
|
| FAA rules require on all planes that the control stick
| takes more and more pressure to pull back as the plane
| approaches stall.
|
| The 737 MAX doesn't meet this requirement, apparently it
| gets easier to pull the stick back as it approaches stall
| due to engine nacelles. This is what MCAS fixes, as the
| plane approaches stall, it adjusts trim to provide that
| extra back-pressure on the stick.
|
| No amount of additional pilot training will allow the plane
| to fly without MCAS, because this is a hard rule and it's
| not certifiable without it.
| AnssiH wrote:
| > I suspect MCAS is covering for a very bad corner case in
| the flight dynamics.
|
| I cannot judge the severity, but it covers for rule 14CFR
| SS25.203(a) "Stall characteristics", see
| http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm#background
| cashsterling wrote:
| It is important to note that the MCAS was implemented on the
| MAX because the larger engines, and larger possible thrust
| vector further away from the planes center of mass, make it
| much easier to flip the plane over.
|
| The MAX is a bad aeronautical design that Boeing made more
| "controllable" through additional control system engineering.
| Problem is, the additional control system engineering was
| pretty bad.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah the 737MAX should have been an entirely new airframe
| and not been a 737 at all.
| dboreham wrote:
| 757
| CydeWeys wrote:
| The 757 is long dead. They stopped manufacturing it in
| 2004. The real answer was the 797, which Boeing scrapped
| in favor of the 737 MAX.
| dboreham wrote:
| My point is that the 757 was the replacement for the 737,
| to accommodate high bypass engines. So we are a very long
| way down this road.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > The MAX is a bad aeronautical design that Boeing made
| more "controllable" through additional control system
| engineering. Problem is, the additional control system
| engineering was pretty bad.
|
| Yeah, it's really frustrating that the solution was already
| a band-aid, and they didn't even bother to do that properly
| so they covered up what was questionably fraud (the lazy
| way of not getting a new certification) with what was
| unquestionably fraud (lying about the MCAS system).
|
| What's really sad though is it exposes just how defanged
| the FAA has become over the years, so now who the hell do
| we rely on to tell us what's safe for aviation?
| rurban wrote:
| Without the MCAS the plane would stall. Which would lead to
| much more accidents than without MCAS or with the broken MCAS
| as we have now.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| I understand MCAS is only necessary when performing the
| most extreme, emergency maneuvers. Even then a good pilot
| would cope without it.
| ah88 wrote:
| It's common practice to change procedures instead of
| certification.
|
| I flew an airplane that was getting ready to be retired after
| it's been in service for ~30 years and we had a lot of
| emergency procedures and memory items (items that pilots have
| to memorize) that were add over the years after various
| incidents.
|
| The 737 MAX wasn't necessarily an unsafe airplane, it's pilots
| were not made aware of how everything worked, which led to the
| two crashes.
| cmurf wrote:
| It was both an unsafe airplane and pilots were not made aware
| of how everything worked.
|
| A human pilot properly informed in advance could paper over
| an act of sabotage by a flight control system, but that does
| not make the airplane safe.
|
| A single sensor reporting bogus data was used by a system to
| automatically take dangerous action. Both are dangerous. But
| in particular the latter, because it permits an excessive
| reaction to what is supposed to be merely stall avoidance,
| not recovery. Even stall recovery does not require anywhere
| near the kind of nose down amount MCAS was permitted to
| induce. That behavior is sabotage. If a human pilot did the
| same thing, with the same available bogus information, it
| would be incompetency. And if it lead to death, it would be
| manslaughter.
| vkou wrote:
| Is it common for commercial airlines to nose-up when
| approaching stall conditions, thus making them easier to
| stall? (Or something else, that sounds similarly sure to a
| layman?)
| violetgarden wrote:
| This is so sad. Reminds me of the Challenger where the concerns
| from engineering were ignored due to pressure from management.
| heymijo wrote:
| The great tragedy to me is the regulatory capture of the FAA
| and the erosion of trust in commercial flight.
| thewileyone wrote:
| Hard to disagree with him when he says to just take out MCAS. It
| was never a critical component that was required for flight.
| That's what Boeing should have done.
| breakingcups wrote:
| Am I wrong in remembering that the reason the MCAS is on the
| MAX in the first place is because they moved the engines to a
| position which creates dangerous situations, which was
| compensated by software (MCAS), so that Boeing could avoid
| having to re-certify the airframe?
| hanniabu wrote:
| Ah yes, the bad decision feedback loop. Instead of fixing the
| root cause you just add another layer of bad decisions. I
| suppose the most recent layer is the "good enough, let's just
| sweep any further complaints under the rug" logic
| WalterBright wrote:
| The article says:
|
| "The ET302 pilots, however, jumped immediately to the step in the
| checklist that Boeing emphasized in its bulletin after the Lion
| Air crash: hitting the cutoff switches to stop MCAS from pushing
| the jet's nose down. In their rush to do that, they didn't first
| bring the nose back up with the electrical switches and didn't
| disengage the autothrottle."
|
| What the bulletin (actually an EMERGENCY AIRWORTHINESS DIRECTIVE)
| says is:
|
| "Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any
| stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer
| trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before
| moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer
| trim can be used before and after the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches
| are moved to CUTOUT."
|
| https://theaircurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/B737-MA...
|
| The pilots simply did not follow the procedure.
|
| Note that this procedure was followed in the first incident of
| MCAS failure, and the Lion Air airplane recovered and landed
| safely. (That same airplane crashed on the very next flight with
| a different crew on it.)
| WalterBright wrote:
| What I posted was 100% factual.
| dboreham wrote:
| But horrific. "To prevent the computer from flying your plane
| into the ground perform this complex and counterintuitive set
| of steps that may involve muscle forces you don't have".
| Nice. How about "make computer not fly plane into ground?"
| amluto wrote:
| The part about "the pilots simply did not follow the
| procedure" does not appear 100% factual based on your quote.
| Consider:
|
| > Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control
| column pitch
|
| Maybe EADs are written in a different language than computer
| standards, but, when an RFC says that one "can" do something,
| it generally does not mean that one actually MUST do it at
| risk of failure to interoperate or death.
| V_Terranova_Jr wrote:
| Having been involved with a large U.S. Government aerospace
| project that ultimately failed (there are a lot of USG program
| failures, and a lot of them in aerospace) Mr. Jacobsen's
| statement that "FAA leadership seems to be denying any
| wrongdoing" sadly seems to ring quite true. So does the FAA PM
| asking him why he was in meetings related to MAX even though it
| may not have been in his formal "swim lane".
|
| There is generally a very sad reticence to acknowledge mistakes
| within organizations, but failure to earnestly acknowledge, show
| contrition, and learn from mistakes is dereliction of duty in the
| public sector in my view. In my own experience, I was a lone
| voice asking "What are we going do based on learning from this
| that lessens the likelihood of future such failures?" It was and
| is an unpopular question. I don't foresee any organizational
| changes taking place, even though they should. And I don't just
| mean staff changes, I also mean clear commitments to principle,
| intent, and wiser behavior.
| ilaksh wrote:
| The fact that no Boing or FAA leaders are going to prison points
| to severe structural issues in our society.
| platinumrad wrote:
| No, one of the severe structural issues in our society is our
| habit of trying to solve all of our problems with imprisonment.
| vkou wrote:
| Our society does not try to solve high-level problems with
| prison, only low-level ones.
|
| Steal $500 from your boss, you _may_ get prison time. Your
| boss steals $500 from each of his employees through wage
| theft, and the worst he would face is being out some money
| from losing a civil labour lawsuit.
|
| That's because most high level behaviour has an incredibly
| high bar that it needs to meet to be criminal, with a lot of
| subjective argument over intent.
|
| The bar for low level crime is much easier to meet. Take
| something that doesn't belong to you? Hit your neighbour with
| a club? Ingest a taboo mind-altering chemical? All of those
| are crystal-meth-clear violations of the social contract.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Hundreds of people _died_. I agree that prisons are used
| _way_ too much (especially relating to drugs, three strikes
| crap, fare dodging, crimes relating to poverty aka petty
| theft) - but gross negligence that leads to multiple deaths
| _should_ warrant some prison time, if only to serve as an
| incentive for management to not cut corners.
| igorstellar wrote:
| Do you think our prisons have enough capacity to take more
| people in? I think the proper punishment for the leadership
| would be something like getting their retirement package away
| and leaving the industry without an ability to get back in.
| hedora wrote:
| US prisons house about 0.7% of the population, or about 1.4M
| people (depending on the source).
|
| The US has about 200,000 CEOs. Not all CxO's are crooks, but
| if they were, we could jail all the CEO's and an average of 6
| of each one's direct reports using our existing prison
| infrastructure.
|
| I'd wager the average criminal CxO does significantly more
| ongoing damage to society than the average person in US
| prisons would if released.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| I'm not endorsing the idea of prison time, but the short
| answer is: yes, of course there's room, assuming we're
| talking about C-suite level executives and maybe 1 or 2 hops
| below. That's just a handful of potential prisoners and would
| be quite manageable.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > Ahead of his planned retirement from the FAA at the end of this
| month.
|
| Free at last to speak hard truth.
| neonological wrote:
| He's consciously risking his retirement package. They can fire
| him. Read the article, it says this.
| rkagerer wrote:
| That's not quite what it says. Rather, his prospects for gigs
| involving FAA interaction from the other side:
|
| _Now sharing his concerns with the press for the first time,
| he's risking his post-FAA employment prospects._
|
| ....
|
| _After retiring from the FAA, Jacobsen hopes to work part-
| time.
|
| Someone with his credentials would typically find lots of
| lucrative freelance work at smaller aerospace companies who
| need help navigating the maze of FAA regulatory compliance to
| certify their products.
|
| Now, he may struggle to get such gigs if he's perceived as an
| antagonist of the agency.
|
| "I recognize this could cost me future employment
| opportunities," Jacobsen said. "But I feel like my allegiance
| right now is to these families."_
|
| It doesn't mention any retirement package.
| neonological wrote:
| You're right, I misinterpreted it. I thought the "post-FAA
| employment prospects" was the package, but of course it
| means actual post employment opportunities. I'm just
| skimming through it too quickly.
|
| As of right now my post has 7 upvotes and no downvotes
| which means 7 people agreed with me. That means either a
| lot of people didn't read the article or they misread the
| article like I did.
|
| I wonder how many downvotes my post will get after they
| read your comment which essentially categorically proves my
| initial reply is completely and utterly wrong.
|
| Which goes to show how many people just skip over reading
| the article and go straight to the comment section for a
| summary/full analysis.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I upvoted you, trusting your summary in lieu of having
| read the article. I've now changed that to a downvote. I
| read the articles to maybe 1/3 of the stories whose
| comments I browse.
|
| The great thing about HN is that misinformation is
| quickly rectified. Usually.
| neonological wrote:
| Not always. I now have 10 upvotes. That likely means more
| than 10 people voted me up and didn't see that the
| following reply renders my statement completely
| incorrect.
| babesh wrote:
| It's because people get a dopamine hit from reacting
| emotionally to stories.
|
| On the other hand, reading before reacting requires
| resisting going after the dopamine hit and actually works
| the other way. You have to get sadder consuming time and
| attention to read material that may or may not be
| informative.
|
| A large percentage of Hacker News is the reaction
| (probably a majority). And if you point out that they
| haven't read the article, some people treat it as a
| personal attack because it shows them in bad light. Then
| they start arguing.
| nlbrown wrote:
| I wonder what the pilots of the Max have to say about the
| airplane? There could be greater potential for human error if
| pilots are distracted by the idea that something could fail at
| any moment.
| bathtub365 wrote:
| This isn't different than when flying any other aircraft.
| Something can already fail at any moment from the engines,
| avionics, control systems, hydraulics, and electrical systems.
| That's why pilots have emergency training and emergency
| checklists. The question is whether Boeing is providing the
| appropriate training to deal with new potential failures
| introduced by the new design.
| Zevis wrote:
| > Michael Teal, 737 MAX chief engineer, testified to Congress
| that he first learned only after the Lion Air crash that MCAS
| relied on a single sensor
|
| Uh, what. How does something like this even happen?
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Boeing's management hid the details of MCAS from FAA
| heymijo wrote:
| The article shows that safety engineers at the FAA would have
| had the requisite knowledge to see the problems with the MCAS
| system, but as OP said above, there was no "issue paper" from
| Boeing to regulators about the system.
| rualca wrote:
| > Uh, what. How does something like this even happen?
|
| By "this" do you mean "egregious lies focused on making a case
| for plausible deniability"?
| temac wrote:
| If he really is the chief engineer and that has any meaning,
| for ex if he signed off the design, should he not maybe be
| jailed for his failure to know what he signed?
| AnssiH wrote:
| I don't find it surprising. I don't always know how exactly
| every small feature is implemented in the software projects
| I've been the lead in, and an entire plane is probably much
| more complex than any of those.
| rurban wrote:
| That cannot be. It was widely reported that the complete South
| Western Airlines MAX fleet insisted on the second sensor being
| installed. And so they did. They bypassed the FAA rubber-stamp
| approval. The FAA not knowing about this is not plausible.
| Everybody knew that. It was a major criticism on the FAA
| ability to control air safety.
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