[HN Gopher] Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted...
___________________________________________________________________
Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud
Author : frisco
Score : 418 points
Date : 2021-10-14 22:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.justice.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.justice.gov)
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Here are the HN threads from both crashes:
|
| Oct 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18324997
|
| March 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19351835
|
| May be interesting to read with the benefit of hindsight and
| everything we've learned about the process that lead to those
| crashes.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| It's really fascinating how the first thread barely has any
| mentions of technical difficulty, while in the second thread
| nearly no one blames the pilots anymore. Benefit of hindsight,
| really.
|
| Still, it's important to remember that Boeing and the FDA
| dragged their feet for ages before grounding the plane after
| the second crash. So that's at least part of why they get so
| much flac in the second thread.
| anonygler wrote:
| Wow. They didn't go after an executive? Just a pilot? So
| blatantly corrupt.
| thuccess129 wrote:
| U.S. Justice's price for get out of jail card for all the
| executives except the designated fallguy CTP is $2.5B.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| At the end of the day we need some dummy to be hanged at the town
| square. So we can all lie to ourselves justice was served and
| everything works as should.
|
| There are entire generations of people inside that company that
| should at least sit their asses in court.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| What sort of role is "Chief Technical Pilot"?
|
| I feel like they should be going after Boeing Co and not after
| individuals, except individuals at the top of the scheme.
| dhx wrote:
| Internal Boeing e-mails between various Chief Technical Pilots
| and other Boeing staff are available at [1]. It shows that there
| was an overarching requirement for the program to to ensure that
| 737 pilots could fly the 737 MAX with minimal "Level B" training
| (e.g. no need for hours of simulator training).
|
| Per [2], MCAS was poorly designed and exhibited a failure mode
| (e.g. AOA sensor failure) that required immediate pilot action to
| avert disaster. For pilots that were aware of the MCAS failure
| mode and how to respond, simulation showed they could respond and
| avert disaster within typically 4 seconds. A delay of 10 seconds
| from a pilot to respond correctly to the failure event would be
| catastrophic.
|
| A Boeing staffer wrote to the Chief Technical Pilot now
| indicted[^][1] regarding the pilot action required in those
| critical few seconds: "I fear that skill is not
| very intuitive any more with the younger pilots and those who
| have become too reliant on automation"
|
| The Chief Technical Pilot now indicted[^] responds:
| "This is the path with least risk to Level B. We need to sell
| this as very intuitive basic pilot skill".
|
| Boeing it appears then opted for updating Non-Normal Checklists
| (NNCs) for pilots instead of:
|
| * Fixing the MCAS flaw to remove the failure mode altogether
|
| * Ensuring pilots were trained to handle an MCAS failure in a
| simulator
|
| * Otherwise ensuring that pilots were aware of the non-intuitive
| nature of MCAS and the particular failure mode requiring
| immediate <10sec response from pilots
|
| If the failure mode with MCAS did occur, pilots didn't even have
| 10 seconds to find the NNC and go through the checklist steps
| before catastrophe was set to occur. They were not aware of MCAS
| being present on the aircraft and per the Boeing staffer raising
| the concern, "that skill is not very intuitive" in relation to
| acting on the failure mode should it have occurred.
|
| [1]
| https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Compressed%20...
|
| [2] https://www.incose.org/docs/default-
| source/enchantment/21031...
|
| [^] Assumed from job titles in the e-mails, as names are
| redacted.
| jetrink wrote:
| One note: 'Yours truly' is typically used to refer to oneself,
| so it seems that you are claiming to be the indicted pilot.
| dhx wrote:
| Thanks for the correction :)
|
| More background on usage at:
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/166332/how-
| did-y...
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| This man did exactly what he was paid by Boeing to do. It would
| be great if he could speak publicly about who pressured him to
| make these decisions.
| Goety wrote:
| Is it possible to tamper with MACS remotely?
| ProAm wrote:
| The US is going after aircraft employees and yet no one went to
| jail for the great financial meltdown/crisis in 2007/2008?
| broknbottle wrote:
| I knew this whole Boeing disaster was the work a rogue chief
| technical pilot.
| civilized wrote:
| They must be stopped!
| CivBase wrote:
| How unfortunate the certification process for a safety-critical
| system simply _has to be_ designed such that one bad actor can
| cause so much damage. And I 'm sure he was motivated purely by
| spite for the FAA and potential 737 MAX passengers - not at all
| by management that prioritizes speed and cost reduction above
| all else. What a terrible, very bad individual.
|
| Oh well. At least we know that nobody else at all in Boeing was
| responsible in the slightest. Everyone else involved with the
| program were probably angels and this one bad bad man pulled
| the wool over their eyes. So sad. At least they caught the only
| bad man before he could strike again. Did I mention he's solely
| responsible for this whole thing yet?
|
| It really was unfortunate, but these things just happen you
| know? I guess we just better cross our fingers and hope real
| hard that it doesn't happen again. There's nothing more to
| learn from this.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| It is human nature to detest regulation in general but insist
| upon it after the fact of some failure. This can be easily
| illustrated with automobile speed limits. Almost everyone would
| be outraged if they were ticketed for driving 2 k/mph over the
| posted limit. It is a widely held belief that drivers traveling
| at or just below the maximum limit pose a safety risk because
| they are too slow. An officer who rigorously enforced posted
| speed limits would get run out of town. But who's to blame when
| the officer looks the other way and it results in a crash?
| verytrivial wrote:
| You cite human nature, but I disagree with most if not ALL of
| what you are saying here. Driving at or just below the speed
| limit is what the law requires. If the speed limit is wrong,
| you lobby to get the limit changed or start raising $$ from
| fines until people get the idea. What you DON'T do is let speed
| limits become optional else people running over kids near
| schools will feel like they were morally justified in doing so,
| because 'Who pays attention to those signs, right?'
|
| You are describing exactly the normalisation of deviance that
| gets people killed per the 737 Max situation. The Officer in
| your example is secondarily at fault, the driver is primarily
| at fault, but the CULTURE that allows these dangerous
| situations to arise is where the problem needs to be addressed.
| "Yes, I was speeding/falsifying records, Officer. But everyone
| else was doing it."
| [deleted]
| AllThatJazz wrote:
| Earlier this year, the feds signed an agreement that let Boeing
| executives off the hook for the 737 MAX catastrophes, which
| killed 346 people.
|
| The lead prosecutor, Erin Nealy Cox, then took a job with the
| firm that leads Boeing's criminal defense.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| The real scandal is what's legal...
| willcipriano wrote:
| "They expect one of us in the wreckage brother"
| fransje wrote:
| Haha. For fraud. Nice one. Should have been for manslaughter.
| pdonis wrote:
| While I don't have any sympathy for this pilot, I also find the
| FAA's excuses here to be less than convincing. Basically, their
| position is "Well, we trusted this Boeing employee to tell us the
| truth about the new flight controls, and he didn't." But if the
| regulators had actually done their job and independently
| evaluated the new flight controls, they wouldn't have had to take
| the word of any Boeing employees. I realize that that's the way
| the FAA does things now, but this whole debacle should be a
| warning to everyone that that method of regulation is not
| acceptable. The whole point of independent regulation is to not
| allow obvious conflicts of interest to harm the public.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Dance like nobody's watching.
|
| Email like it will one day be read aloud at a deposition.
| paulmd wrote:
| At the end of the day this is what you want, though: people
| need to realize that they are going to be held personally
| responsible if they're involved in pencilwhipping the FAA
| approval process, and tell their boss they're not going to jail
| so that Boeing can make another 1% profit this year.
|
| I'm not saying it's _just_ the test pilot who lied, or held
| sole responsibility, but yeah, he was a member of a criminal
| enterprise that resulted in people 's deaths.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I like the result. Too many people hide behind "I was just
| doing my job and helping the company." At some point you have
| to make a personal stand to not harm humanity. And
| programmers reading this, that era is definitely upon us.
|
| When we see programmers charged who implemented the twisted
| evil shit Facebook or whoever ordered them to, we will be
| making some progress on fixing the problem.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I think the other approach is to have more corporate whistle
| blower programs with teeth and upside. In a case like this,
| lots of people knew everything wasn't on the up and up. But it
| is hard to get someone to understand something when their job
| depends on not understanding it (Upton Sinclair). However, if
| the whistle blower programs came with immediate cash (after
| initial proof was obtained) with more to come and potentially
| relocation and identity change, people would be more likely to
| come forward.
|
| Fighting something like this in court plus media scrutiny will
| basically ruin someone's life and make them almost unhire-able
| in their field. Excepting someone to ruin their family's life
| for the greater good isn't likely. There won't always be a
| young single ideologue who is willing to move overseas to
| escape his own government. There are lots of major crime
| systems where someone is the spouse of the criminal and knows
| what is going on but how are they going to give up their home
| and life for their kids while also putting their life at risk
| for the sake of doing the right thing. People have shown that
| they will do the right thing if you make it easy enough and
| safe enough.
| josho wrote:
| I can't help but feel that this is all by design. Legislators
| require financing from corporations for re-election, corps
| don't want whistleblowers because it risks their bottom line.
| Therefore legislators don't improve protections.
|
| Does everything come back to campaign finance reform?
| snarf21 wrote:
| It could be a factor for sure. I don't think campaign
| finance reform will ever happen but whistle blower could.
| I've given up hope on the altruistic billionaire to do
| things the government is reluctant to.
| spfzero wrote:
| Supposedly, having a serious penalty for lying to the FAA
| should imply veracity. Same way perjury penalties should ensure
| truthful court testimony.
|
| Agree the FAA should cross-check, before a plane crashes, but
| when they catch this behavior they should, IMHO, punish it.
| dboreham wrote:
| How were they supposed to do that? They'd have had to either
| review the source code and somehow notice that it had too much
| control authority over the horizontal stabilizer, or run the
| flight control system in a simulator that reproduced the
| failure conditions found in the field. These seem _possible_
| but not exactly easy. It'd have been much easier for the Boeing
| engineers who designed the thing so badly to have had bosses
| who said "wait...what? No you can't do it like that".
| scottlamb wrote:
| > It'd have been much easier for the Boeing engineers who
| designed the thing so badly to have had bosses who said
| "wait...what? No you can't do it like that".
|
| Interesting. I never even imagine that happening anymore. I
| find the reverse so much more plausible: the bosses say to
| design it like that but the engineers have the backbone to
| say no (even at the risk of being fired and replaced).
|
| On the one hand, I see where you're coming from. Executives
| are the ones with the money and power, so they _should_ have
| the responsibility. They should go to prison when they order
| misconduct (whether that 's negligence, fraud, etc.). This
| should incentivize them to act conservatively. (Where right
| now, we reward them largely based on short-term stock
| performance, and we never punish them, and I think our
| executives are overwhelmingly sociopaths who pursue short-
| term stock performance above all else.)
|
| On the other hand, engineers are the ones who throughly
| understand the issues and have licenses with ethical
| standards attached. They're going to notice the problem. I
| believe many already aren't willing to sign off on something
| they don't believe is safe. With good enough whistleblower
| protection, they'd be likely to speak up when they see
| someone else signing off improperly.
| landemva wrote:
| FAA could have looked at how the fans were upsized and pushed
| forward to avoid dragging on the runway, and called for a new
| type certification. The FAA failed by allowing Boeing to not
| get a new type certification, which would have required
| greater scrutiny of the new airframe.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the airframe was fine. the problem was that mcas was
| implemented in a totally shitty way. If it had just replied
| on 3 sensors instead of 1, wet likely wouldn't be talking
| about it now.
| sofixa wrote:
| No, the airframe was _different_ and didn 't handle the
| same way as the old one. In order to hide that, Boeing
| implemented in a terribly negligent way MCAS. Had they
| accepted it's a different one, and had a different type
| rating, all would have been fine.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The 737 airframe reached a point where it was not
| compatible anymore with modern engines. When the 737 was
| designed, engines where a lot smaller, the nwer turbofans
| simply don't fit under the wings of a 737 anymore, so
| they had to be moved forward. That changed flight
| characteristics, Boeing used MCAS to compensate for that.
| If I remember correctly, on-board systems of 737 had
| issues with handling a second sensor for MCAS (someone
| with more knowledge please skim in). So they went with
| that config, they went, as we see in the messages from
| the chief tech pilot, to forgo major re-certification and
| thus decided to hide MCAS true nature and impact from the
| FAA. Consequently, they also hid it from EASA since FAA
| and EASA basically trusted each others certifications.
|
| Boeing, if you ask me, committed a cardinal sin in
| aerospace. They cut corners, ignored redundancy, lied to
| regulators and as a result directly caused airframe
| losses killing crew and passengers. And that after
| decades of efforts to increase safety. All that just to
| save money and maybe keep market share.
|
| Had they just done all the proper testing and development
| they did _after_ the aircraft losses upfront none of that
| would have happened.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| And also, the MAX would not exist at all, because the
| flagship customer (Southwest) had basically said, "If it
| requires pilot retraining, we won't buy it."
|
| There's plenty of blame to go around, up to and including
| the society that says it's ok to not pay a living wage to
| the working class because "infinite downward price
| pressure is good for consumers" (until they die in a
| plane crash, that is).
| amluto wrote:
| As I understand it, the source is a very careful
| implementation of a spec, and the FAA should have the spec.
|
| In any case, I strongly doubt that the buck should really
| stop at this test pilot. Someone higher up surely has some
| degree of responsibility. The test pilot did not invent MCAS.
| cs702 wrote:
| To paraphrase J. K. Galbraith, at any given time there exists
| an inventory of undiscovered regulatory fraud in the economy,
| and this inventory is part of the _bezzle_.[a] In good times
| regulators are relaxed and trusting, and their approval is
| easier to obtain. Under these circumstances the rate of
| regulatory fraud grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and
| the regulatory bezzle increases rapidly. In bad times all this
| is reversed. Actions are watched with a narrow, suspicious eye.
| Regulators assume everyone is dishonest until proven otherwise.
| Regulatory audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial
| morality is enormously improved. The regulatory bezzle shrinks.
|
| --
|
| [a] The term "bezzle" was proposed by J. K. Galbraith in _The
| Great Crash of 1929_ : "To the economist embezzlement is the
| most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of
| larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks, months or years may
| elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery.
| (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his
| gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no
| loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) At any given
| time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in
| - or more precisely not in - the country's business and banks.
| This inventory - it should perhaps be called the bezzle -
| amounts at any moment to many millions of dollars. It also
| varies in size with the business cycle. In good times people
| are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though
| money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more.
| Under these circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the
| rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly.
| In depression all this is reversed. Money is watched with a
| narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be
| dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are
| penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously
| improved. The bezzle shrinks."
| (https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1466583-the-great-
| cras...)
| desertedisland wrote:
| Well the FAA discovered the pilot lied and now the pilot is in
| serious ** with his career and reputation destroyed: I'm
| assuming he is looking at possible jail time (not a lawyer).
|
| I'd say this is a serious deterrent to pilots contemplating
| similar action in the future but I don't think the problem was
| with the FAA or this pilot. The real problem was the senior
| management at Boeing who made the conscious decision to put
| profits ahead of safety. Thus they were directly responsible
| for creating a culture of short cuts and cheating which lead to
| the ending of several hundred lives.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| This is the reality of most certification processes. There is
| no government agency that has the knowledge to evaluate planes
| on a technical level. So what they do is ensuring engineering
| care and diligence, clear responsibilities and paper trails in
| a way that risk is minimized and failures can quickly be
| located and corrected.
|
| At least that is how it is done for medical appliances, I
| assume FDA and FAA work similarly. But government just doesn't
| have the extra engineers to technically evaluate every part of
| a new plane. That would induce massive costs and the manpower
| simply doesn't exist.
|
| But if companies don't use due diligence to ensure safety,
| these agencies have the power to penalize you heavily, so you
| have to comply anyway. Sadly there is also a political
| component so agencies sometimes have to work against pressure
| from politicians that don't want to damage domestic brands.
|
| I believe this case was a clear management error for that
| matter but the FDA probably has more info.
| larrydag wrote:
| Also this feels a lot like Boeing offering up a sacrificial
| lamb. I find it hard to believe that the FAA can focus on one
| person at Boeing as the reason for the failure in reporting the
| issue. There are too many managers and engineers involved. On
| the surface this sounds a lot like the Challenger disaster
| story.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Overall though, I'm at least happy _some_ individuals are
| getting prosecuted, it sends a message that there are legal
| risks to individuals involved in this kind of thing, not just
| diluted corporate responsibility.
| jandrese wrote:
| What really needs to change is the corporate culture that
| led a person to think that they would be doing the company
| a favor by lying to the regulators. This probably goes all
| the way to the top.
|
| Also, whomever decided that a basic software safety check
| would be an optional extra with a price tag should
| definitely not be in the management chain. That's the sort
| of next quarter profit-only thinking that rots companies
| from the middle out. That is the kind of thinking that
| results in your brand new product killing 346 human beings.
| jaywalk wrote:
| The "software safety check" wasn't an optional extra. It
| didn't _exist_ at all! The optional add on was for an
| "AOA DISAGREE" warning light, which would have indicated
| that the MCAS might be relying on faulty data (if the
| pilot was even aware of MCAS in the first place) but
| wouldn't have actually stopped it from doing so.
|
| Now, the updated MCAS will only activate if both AOA
| sensors agree. Which seems like a fucking no brainer that
| should have been the case from the start, but... yeah.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Only if the people actually responsible get prosecuted;
| prosecuting the wrong person sneds the message that the
| people really responsible get away with it - so there is
| need for some care.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Even prosecuting the wrong people at least encourages
| whistle blowing. If someone thinks they might be the
| sacrificial lamb if excrement hits the fan they can
| protect themselves by being the first to report it to
| regulators
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Is Boeing offering a lamb, or the justice dept applying
| pressure to get him to cooperate and try to get higher level
| targets?
| softawre wrote:
| At least it is somebody with a big title. Chief Technical
| Pilot.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Genuinely curious; how big is that title? Are they
| essentially an overall project manager who gives the green
| light? Do they have the power to tell the executive class
| "Nope" without getting fired?
|
| Never mind. I saw Buildsjets comment that explains his
| position.
| nickff wrote:
| At some point, auditors have to trust some things that their
| subjects are saying. If the auditor has to re-evaluate every
| piece of information, they will end up re-doing the subjects'
| jobs.
| tyingq wrote:
| There's a bit of backstory here where things the auditors
| used to verify first hand devolved into from-a-distance. And
| too friendly a relationship with the businesses they were
| auditing.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| And that's how we got the VAG emissions scandal. Instead of
| trusting computer outputs, we could have done tried and true
| dyno tests and the entire thing would have been avoided.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The defeat devices were designed to detect dyno conditions
| and reduce emissions, it wasn't a case of a regulator
| trusting a computer output. They were uncovered by doing
| road tests.
| lazide wrote:
| Which a competent regulator would surely be doing
| randomly across the industry no?
|
| If all they are doing is trusting what the regulated
| folks are saying they are doing, that isn't what I would
| call effective regulation.
| nickff wrote:
| Most regulators don't verify much, (the SEC almost never
| actually looks at bank account balances,) they just look
| for inconsistencies in the information they receive.
| lazide wrote:
| The SEC isn't regulating banks generally so bank account
| balances shouldn't matter much - they are regulating
| security markets no?
|
| So looking at discrepancies between data from market
| participants IS verifying and regulating.
|
| Same as if the FDA looked at raw study data and compared
| it to equivalent studies for similar types of
| drugs/treatments, or the FAA had an engineer on staff to
| double check elements of a new design from a major
| manufacturer for plausibility
| nickff wrote:
| I meant to imply that the SEC could check companies' bank
| accounts to verify the truthfulness of balance sheets and
| income statements.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| There is such thing as too much regulation. If they had more
| funding, that would lower industrial output simply by sucking
| engineers away from productive activity. That's even if it
| doesn't negatively affect aviation with too much regulation.
| zeristor wrote:
| Given that the engines were moved forward changing the Centre
| of Mass I would expect an Aerospace Engineer to be aware and
| concerned that this is an issue that would require an automated
| intervention to correct for that, and that would need to be
| extremely robust.
|
| In hindsight that's easy for me to say, and the FAA had gone to
| relying on Boeing engineers, but as mentioned if there was huge
| pressure for Boeing to compete things could get overlooked.
| Bostonian wrote:
| Government regulation makes sense when there are externalities,
| for example a polluting factory that harms society but not the
| company. Airplane manufacturers, however, can self-regulate. If
| their planes are unsafe they will be bankrupted by the lawsuits
| of families of dead passengers, and airlines will not buy their
| planes.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| It isn't one or the other! This guy could have committed fraud
| _and_ been effectively abetted by a regulatory body that lacks
| the resources, incentives, or power to actually regulate.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > The whole point of independent regulation is to not allow
| obvious conflicts of interest to harm the public.
|
| Like all centralized systems, easy to hack over time. A better
| system would be decentralized regulatory bodies that check on
| each other's conclusions instead of a monolithic one.
|
| At this stage you absolutely should not trust any regulatory
| body, FDA included. (The FDA never replicates any trial for
| example)
| [deleted]
| KarlKemp wrote:
| At some level, you have to trust the information you get.
|
| There is also good reason to trust it, especially when it comes
| from a large company such as Boeing: it is stupid for such an
| organization to lie to you, because it risks its existence for
| the rather small payoff of avoiding delays for a single model.
|
| It's even worse for individual employees at the company: they
| risk jail time and aren't even the direct beneficiary.
|
| Example: see above
| user_7832 wrote:
| What you talk about the FAA doing thier own testing and
| validation is (unfortunately) almost impossible. Back in the
| 90s, a senior FAA official (I think a Director) had said
| something along the lines of "The FAA does not and cannot check
| everything, we just see that companies are doing their tests."
| The FAA would require several times more manpower to be able to
| actually audit or test everything, and that is assuming they
| have the technical skills (which they haven't had for highly
| complex systems and electronics for decades now).
|
| I'm afraid I'm saying a lot of things from memory from the time
| I had written a report on the Max 8 accidents and an actor
| analysis. (I'd anyone is interested I could perhaps share it.)
| Most of this stuff came from the DoT report on the accident,
| the rest from reputable news articles.
| dataflow wrote:
| It wouldn't require several times more manpower for the FAA
| to figure out there's something called MCAS that didn't exist
| before, would it? (Note that I'm talking in the current world
| we live in, not in a hypothetical world where Boeing would be
| a mortal enemy of the FAA doing everything within the stretch
| of human imagination to hide MCAS.)
| mjevans wrote:
| It would be nice if the FAA were able to bill large
| companies making planes the public is intended to fly on
| commercially for all of the hours required to process the
| 'type certification' fully and exhaustively.
|
| That process would include validating all aspects of the
| mechanical specifications and changes of parts (reused
| already OK parts from the same authorized suppliers would
| be a quick check-off), mechanical engineering, electrical
| engineering, computer software, and any changes for
| maintenance and end operators.
|
| Describing it fully like that, I believe the only benefit
| to 'type certification' should be training for the end
| users, but major overhauls should require retraining and
| that should be caught.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| From the article: >Because of his alleged deceit, the FAA
| AEG deleted all reference to MCAS from the final version of
| the 737 MAX FSB Report published in July 2017
|
| The FAA was aware that this system existed.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| AFAICT (medium certainty), the development sequence went
| thusly: (1) MCAS added to design, (2) FAA informed about
| MCAS, (3) MCAS potential control inputs and overrides
| drastically increased during development, (4) FAA not
| informed about changes, (5) FAA certifies aircraft on
| basis of (2).
|
| So it's probably most accurate to say "the FAA was aware
| of the system existing, but incorrect on the details of
| that system."
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how confident are you that there aren't
| any other novel systems that didn't exist before on a
| similar level as MCAS?
|
| Having not had a public debacle around them, how much
| effort would it take for you to personally certify that
| MCAS is the only novel system of its caliber on these
| aircraft?
| dataflow wrote:
| > Out of curiosity, how confident are you that there
| aren't any other novel systems that didn't exist before
| on a similar level as MCAS?
|
| Me? What makes you think I would have information on
| this?
|
| If I had to hazard a random guess, I would think that, if
| you're talking about the MAX 8, there have been enough
| leaks and testimonies and whistleblowers that any
| comparable system would have probably been mentioned
| somewhere. I have no idea either way, I haven't read
| everything that's gotten out. But I don't see why a
| regulator couldn't use various means to figure stuff like
| this out with reasonably high confidence.
| [deleted]
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The airplane couldn't have been built without many system
| diagrams showing MCAS, or a similarly complex component.
|
| The FAA _should have_ pulled schematics directly from
| Boeing engineering during certification. And the FAA
| _should have_ someone with enough technical expertise and
| experience look at them. And that person _should have_
| said "The submitted information by Boeing doesn't
| include full details on this subsystem."
|
| Whether or not the Boeing test pilot _highlighted_ the
| system for the FAA is a red herring. It 's the FAA's job
| to find this, regardless of whether someone points them
| at it.
|
| If the FAA doesn't have the technical staffing or
| expertise to do this, then _that 's_ the problem.
| Charging the test pilot is necessary, but not sufficient.
|
| If the FAA infrequently performs this work (certification
| of a new aircraft), then flex in retired expertise! You
| can't tell me there aren't qualified, retired candidates
| (ex-industry or ex-FAA) who would have signed up for a
| year or two review. And all the better that they don't
| have career incentives!
|
| Essentially, this is the FAA charging Boeing for not
| doing the FAA's job correctly.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > would require several times more manpower
|
| Or they could be several times more efficient. $17.5
| billion/yr can do a lot.
| axus wrote:
| Perhaps the FAA could get Airbus to contribute a review of
| the test plan when a new plane is close to release. Then
| you'd certainly see a more lively technical debate.
| rdiddly wrote:
| None of those are unfixable problems at the FAA though. It
| all just boils down to a hiring problem. (If there were a
| will to actually have a functioning government.)
| yason wrote:
| FAA could facilitate smoketesting and focus on parts they
| deem the most suspicious/experimental/new in a new airplane.
| And then outsource the actual tests to a third party.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| What could possibly go wrong?
| hef19898 wrote:
| By law, the certifiction activities done by the EASA (I
| assume the FAA is the same) cannot be done by third
| parties. It also worth noting, that the aircraft
| certification procedures worked pretty well for _decades_ ,
| up until Boeing started to lie to the FAA. Not sure how
| Boeing kept its design org approval after that.
|
| EDIT: Some required activities by the organizations to be
| certified can be outsourced to third parties, the org
| itself is still accountable.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| > Not sure how Boeing kept its design org approval after
| that
|
| That's an easy one. It's too big to fail. One way or
| another Boeing had to make it out the other end of the
| 737 Max disaster intact as an organisation. Anything else
| would have been unpalatable from the point of view of the
| American military industrial complex. I know that phrase
| is usually applied in a derogatory way but here I don't
| even disagree with the thinking.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That seems to be the answer. And I kind of get the
| reasoning. Under EASE rules, there are accountable people
| at the head of approved design and production orgs. I
| hope those people at least got their licenses revoked, if
| something similar exists under FAA rules.
| picsao wrote:
| They could sample statements sporadically and thus have some
| checks instead of none?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What manpower would be needed? How often are new aircraft
| validated? That's pretty scary that at the end of the day
| it's just a corporate shill pilot validating. What is the
| point of all the regulations if that's all that it takes?
| FlyMoreRockets wrote:
| Every single component in every single aircraft
| certificated in the USA is tracked all the way to the mine.
| A quick web search reveals around 11.3 million people work
| in the aviation industry directly. A significant portion of
| this would have to be duplicated if the FAA were to verify
| everything.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| I don't think this style of regulation is limited to FAA. FDA
| does not independently test all drugs either. They just
| review and ensure the drug companies' tests are acceptable.
| mvc wrote:
| I'm afraid this is the logical consequence of a majority of
| people falling for the lie that "government can't do things
| as efficiently as the private sector".
|
| When people vote for politicians who say
| "government is wasteful", "there's too much red tape"
|
| what did they think was going to happen?
| pgeorgi wrote:
| When politicians say "government is wasteful" or
| "government can't do things as efficiently as the private
| sector", what they're saying is that their management
| style is wasteful.
|
| Would somebody asserting that about _their_ _own_ _job_
| even make it past the interview in the private sector?
| dash2 wrote:
| Or they could be saying that centralized monopolies are
| rarely efficient. That is certainly my experience. For
| example, SpaceX undercut NASA by a factor of about 10,
| according to this FT report: https://www.ft.com/content/2
| 5e2292b-a910-41c8-9c55-09096895f...
| Randosaurus wrote:
| NASA sources their materials from the private sector. The
| private sector is notoriously "price gougey" when it
| comes to government money.
| jkfdrsak wrote:
| Government actors are responsible for acquiring material
| at normative costs. Their failure to do so is their own.
| samhw wrote:
| _Normal_ costs.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection
| [deleted]
| sdhfjgjh wrote:
| "Price gougey" implies that the prices are unethical; not
| in compliance with ethical norms; not normative.
| Randosaurus wrote:
| Exactly! And when all US companies refuse to lower their
| prices, they should start sourcing from foreign companies
| to increase competition!
|
| Oh hey look, I'm signing yet another contract with an
| arbitration clause when signing up for a cell phone
| service. Must be my fault that all of them require the
| arbitration clause...
| galangalalgol wrote:
| plane-pal aircraft coming soon to a gate near you!
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| What they're actually saying is "If you sponsor us we
| will make sure government money goes your way."
|
| Efficiency - or the lack of it - is absolutely not the
| point.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I think the worlds greatest agency couldn't evaluate a so
| complex system as the Max. They should just have said no.
|
| I believe it is foremost a complexity issue, and the
| MCAS(?) failure is just one of the many things that could
| go wrong, that actually did. Boing probably have more
| issues with the plane that is waiting to surface given
| their culture ...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Saying "no" would have been an evaluation.
|
| It's a management function. If someone comes to you and
| says "We want to rewrite everything so it runs on a
| Raspberry PI powered by a hamster wheel" you don't need
| to ask about the engineering spec of the hamster wheel.
|
| The Max MCAS was only marginally more plausible in
| overview. Details were never going to rescue it.
| 2rsf wrote:
| I don't think so, testing like you refer to is not
| scalable and even more inefficient.
|
| Letting an external auditors understand all the small
| technical details and test them independently will
| basically halt any progress. It might make this specific
| change safer but for the long run will slow down
| innovation and development of better and safer products.
|
| This has some similarity to software development- we test
| much better but prefer to move faster to achieve a better
| overall quality and be able to fix issues faster and
| better
| [deleted]
| jaycroft wrote:
| And FINRA is made up of brokers and banks but overseen by
| the SEC. The EPA doesn't directly monitor every factory.
| The NTSB sets general testing guidelines and standards and
| seems to have greatly increased auto and aviation safety,
| but they can't police everything and at least to the public
| seem to regulate after the fact.
|
| The general term, I believe, is self-regulatory-
| organization. The theory, I guess, is that the government
| sets the laws and says very generally, "no fraud", and "you
| have to write your own rules and make sure they're good",
| but offers little technical guidance otherwise. I think
| this could work well if there were very heavy penalties for
| failures to self-police, but in practice the revolving door
| between government and industry incentivizes slap on the
| wrist style punishment. It's a hard problem and I don't
| think we're doing well over the last few decades.
| zinekeller wrote:
| ... and for most of the agencies, it's not that their
| budget is small or the agency itself is incompetent: it's
| what's required by law and they can't override it unless
| Congress decides to change the laws.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| You don't want regulatory agencies creating law on their
| own though. Not only is that unconstitutional but the
| reason its unconstitutional is because you would
| inevitably end up with some busybody who is not
| accountable to the people massively over stepping their
| power and creating tyranny.
| greedo wrote:
| Regulatory agencies create "laws" all the time. When
| Congress creates legislation, they rarely spell out all
| the details and implementations. This is left to the
| agency to interpret, and they have a wide latitude in
| both interpretation and enforcement.
| salawat wrote:
| Look up Administrative law, and prepare for the pucker
| moment when you realize that what you described is
| actually exactly how it works.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> You don 't want regulatory agencies creating law on
| their own though._
|
| While I agree with this as a matter of personal opinion,
| it is not at all the actual fact in our current
| regulatory regime. Federal regulatory agencies create law
| all the time. Look at the Federal Register; every
| regulation in there has the force of law and was written
| by a regulatory agency.
|
| _> you would inevitably end up with some busybody who is
| not accountable to the people massively over stepping
| their power and creating tyranny._
|
| Which is exactly the situation now.
| zinekeller wrote:
| > Not only is that unconstitutional
|
| While I do study relevant US laws as required in my job
| (requiring familiarity with how law operates in countries
| where we operate), I am not an American, but I do
| understand certain things with regards to the US
| constitution and relevant case laws.
|
| The Congress originally meets only for a few months'
| time, usually less than 6 months. This is due to the
| reality of the time, where travel is slow and
| representatives only receive a comparable salary to most
| people. Thus, it is exactly empowered to delegate certain
| powers to the executive branch. As someone mentioned, the
| administrative law is a cornerstone law and yet it
| delegates many powers to the executive branch.
|
| In fact, said law and many, many, _many_ similar
| (federal) laws have been upheld constitutional in the
| Supreme Court. There are certain powers that only
| Congress can do, and cannot be delegated to the executive
| branch, but it is clearly laid out in the constitution
| what those are (notably spending). Now I said federal
| because in certain states, the legislature can only
| delegate in very narrow situations (usually only in cases
| where lives would be in danger or in the protection of
| properties and where a need of immediate response is
| demonstrated).
|
| So I'm confused why are you saying that is
| unconstitutional, in fact American history shows a _very_
| different answer. If you _think_ that should be not
| allowed, you 're entitled to your own opinion. However
| unless I read it incorrectly, the constitution, even
| considering the various amendments, is unfortunately not
| aligned with your opinion.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> the constitution, even considering the various
| amendments, is unfortunately not aligned with your
| opinion._
|
| Sure it is. Article I of the Constitution says that _all_
| legislative power shall be vested in Congress. That means
| anything that has the force of law--and all Federal
| regulations created by executive branch agencies under
| the current US regulatory regime have the force of law;
| you can be fined or jailed for violating them--has to be
| passed by Congress using the process described in Article
| I. So any Federal regulation that has not been passed by
| that process--i.e., every one of them--is
| unconstitutional.
|
| The fact that current US jurisprudence disagrees with
| that statement just illustrates how far current US
| jurisprudence has diverged from what the Constitution
| actually says. The status of Federal regulations is by no
| means the only example: current US jurisprudence says
| that Congress can regulate farmers growing crops for
| their own personal use because of the Commerce Clause;
| and that a city government can use the eminent domain
| power to evict people from their homes and turn the
| property over to a private development corporation (that
| ends up never developing the land anyway), and that
| counts as a "public use" under the Fifth Amendment.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Of course the FDA has to regulate 10s of 1000s of
| companies\drugs\trials. The FAA basically just oversees
| Boeing and Airbus in the large commercial jet market and
| either offers 10s of models...
| hef19898 wrote:
| The FAA oversees every flying object in the US. Not just
| new models, but also config changes to existing models,
| continued airworthiness, all the design org and
| production org certification of manufacturers (per site)
| and suppliers (again, per site). Which is quite a
| workload, especially in a world as complex as aerospace.
| Randosaurus wrote:
| The point remains.
| hef19898 wrote:
| What point? That the FAA screwed up? That Boeing
| intentionally lied? Those were nver in question.
|
| If it is the point that the FAAs job should be easy
| because the only oversee Boeing and Airbus, well that
| point is just ignorant.
| Randosaurus wrote:
| If you're unable to understand LattleLazy's point it's
| probably best to refrain from responding to them until
| you do.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The FAA oversees all portions of pilot licensing,
| airplane manufacture, airplane service, operations,
| traffic control, idiots with drones, etc, for general and
| commercial aviation in the entire country.
|
| Certifying new commercial models is but a small portion
| of what they do. By number of employees and budget I
| would bet that ATC is actually their biggest
| responsibility. That's not to say that they should just
| rubber stamp all that...
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Yeah, people are are drastically underestimating how
| enormous the testing apparatus is at a company like Boeing.
| It's thousands of employees. Expecting the FAA to duplicate
| those efforts is ridiculous.
|
| I don't know much about the FAA, but as someone who works
| in healthcare, I know the FDA conducts regular audits of
| medical device manufacturers.
|
| They roll in for a week, request access to everything and
| everywhere, then pick a handful of areas (randomly) to do a
| full deep-dive. Generally, if a company is cutting corners,
| discrepancies will exist in many areas and they'll quickly
| spot one or more of them. I assume the FAA operates
| similarly.
| refurb wrote:
| Indeed. The FDA just has a multi-step process where you
| need to define how you'll run your trials, what data you'll
| collect and whether it's enough to get approval.
|
| The FDA very carefully reviews the submissions, requires
| validation of tests and safeguards so data can't easily be
| manipulated. But the system is built on trust. If a company
| wants to manipulate, fake or exclude negative data they
| can. They'll likely get caught, but not always.
| josefx wrote:
| Similar for many other things, the report most countries
| based the safety of roundup on was written by Monsanto
| itself. Most countries only check these reports for
| completeness and obvious errors, they don't try to run the
| studies themselves. However that "error checking" of the
| report is something where the FAA fucked up, the
| information on the MCAS provided by Boeing was completely
| out of date, either the documented testing procedures where
| incomplete or the FAA did not notice that the MCAS handled
| cases far outside of its original specification.
| HPsquared wrote:
| A pair of eyeballs, a brain and a set of teeth are all a
| regulator needs, in other words.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Your comment boils down to a false dilemma fallacy between
| "FAA blindly trusts manufacturers" and "FAA conducts their
| own testing and validation." Clearly they could have been
| more actively reviewing stuff coming from Boeing, or engaging
| in some level of auditing.
|
| If the FAA had paid attention they would have seen a company
| desperate to compete modifying numerous basic characteristics
| of an airplane to the point of making it aerodynamically
| unstable, using a flight control system as a bandaid to fix
| this.
|
| Not to mention being such massively cheap assholes that they
| literally didn't install warning lights in the cockpit to
| tell the pilots when the sensor their flight computer would
| use to override control inputs, had failed.
| asah wrote:
| Actually, this is a sauce effect of the complexity of
| modern systems: regulators have no choice but to trust
| companies and regulate the results of tests, with heavy
| penalties for cheating. Consider pharmaceutical trials:
| it's impractical for the FDA to check on each patient.
| Financial audits often assume the client isn't directly
| lying to the auditor, with criminal penalties as the
| disincentive.
|
| The alternative requires raising costs and slowing progress
| and innovation, which is a nonstart in a competitive
| environment such as Boeing vs Airbus.
| verve_rat wrote:
| But in the case of aircraft we pay for that innovation
| and "progress" with dead bodies. Maybe it is time to
| rethink the cost/benefit of how we enforce these
| regulations.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| We've always paid for innovation and progress with human
| lives. It's not as though that's a new phenomenon! To
| think we can get away with pushing forward the state of
| the art without a cost in blood is safetyism.
| OneTimePetes wrote:
| It can be done, it just costs money. It can not be done
| within the liberal frame of mind, were everything that
| costs money is tax and thus theft.
|
| So why not reformulate it correctly. In my ideology, it
| is not possible to solve this problem.
|
| If that ideology would be out of the way, it could
| actually be tested pretty good via unittest running a
| simulation. So once developed those tests would actually
| be pretty cheap to run.
|
| Its just this ideologic blindspot that prevents good
| safety.
| kiklion wrote:
| > It can be done, it just costs money.
|
| Well money and time.
|
| You speak as if you think that if only the great
| billionaires accepted a little less money then we could
| have safety.
|
| How many lives are you willing to lose for a multi year
| delay to accommodate the FDA recreating every required
| test that the pharmaceutical company did? How many lives
| are currently lost because the current system doesn't
| work?
|
| Your suggestion is akin to voter id's as a requirement to
| prevent voter fraud. How many legitimate voters are going
| to be prevented from voting due to the new rules to stop
| how many prior confirmed cases of voter fraud?
|
| This isn't a lack of resources. This is society deciding
| that the resources are better used elsewhere.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _This is society* deciding that the resources are
| better used elsewhere_
|
| * Actual decisions on resource allocation made by
| regulatory agencies, which have a close partnership and
| history of employment with the industry being regulated.
|
| It's different to say "society decided" vs 'a specialized
| subset of society, with tangled incentives, decided.'
|
| At the end of the day, it's a spectrum from (no
| oversight) to (full, independent validation).
|
| Boeing didn't want MCAS highlighted as a change, Boeing
| didn't want the FAA to independently discover it, and
| Boeing got all these things. Either by action on its part
| or by design of what the FAA did and did not
| independently verify.
|
| That's a strong indicator we should shift regulatory
| posture _further_ towards (full, independent
| verification). And while it may be cost prohibitive to
| shift _all_ the way there, that 's doesn't mean we can't
| shift _closer_ to it.
| Randosaurus wrote:
| This is the only real reasonable stance in light of what
| happened with the 737 MAX.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Did society decide this distribution of resources? Or was
| it lobbying?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Our society, as presently organized, delegates that
| choice to lobbyists. That is one failing.
|
| The problem with the FAA vs Boeing is not that the system
| is designed around the (correct!) assumption that the
| public's and FAA's interests, on one hand, and Boeing's
| interests on the other are aligned. This failure cost
| Boeing enormously!
|
| What was _not_ aligned were Boeing 's interests and
| Boeing upper management interests. The pervasive failure
| of our society to force CxOs to align with the companies
| they run and with society at large is much bigger than
| just in aviation.
|
| That some pilot was indicted, but not the management he
| was responsive to, is a glaring indicator of this
| failing.
| asah wrote:
| LOL speling: sauce effect => side effect!
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The 737 Max is not aerodynamically unstable. I don't know
| where people got this idea. The purpose of MCAS is to match
| existing stick pressure progression in certain situations.
| It's not a fly-by-wire system like the F-16.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| Not just _existing_ stick pressure progression, but
| _required_ stick pressure progression. As far as I
| understand it, in that specific situation the 737 MAX
| without MCAS does not comply with the rules regarding
| aerodynamic stability. It 's not dramatic, doesn't
| manifest itself in normal flight, and could be dealt with
| by pilots quite easily as far as I understand it. But
| it's a rule, and it was important enough for Boeing to
| first put a quite gentle MCAS on the plane, and then to
| increase the effect of MCAS.
| salawat wrote:
| This is correct. It is non-compliance for control stick
| forces to slacken towards a stall on a passenger carrying
| aircraft. They put a gadget in the system to render it
| compliant.
|
| Unfortunately, they did not work as hard as they should
| have to ensure that it would not malfunction. Or to make
| sure if it did pilot's were aware and had a chance to
| develop muscle memory for it.
|
| All of that was Management's push.
| roofwellhams wrote:
| How can you be a regulator when you have no clue what are you
| doing?
| pdonis wrote:
| _> What you talk about the FAA doing thier own testing and
| validation is (unfortunately) almost impossible._
|
| No, it isn't. It's just more work than the government feels
| like doing, involving more technical skill than the
| government feels like hiring.
|
| The problem is that the government can't have it both ways.
| It can't both claim that it is regulating airlines and
| airplane manufacturers to protect public safety, and also
| claim that it can't independently check what the regulated
| entities are telling it. It has to be one or the other:
| either we get the actual independent regulation that the
| government claims to be doing, with whatever resources it
| takes, or we all admit that we are _not_ going to get that
| because the government is incapable of doing it, and we
| figure out some other way of ensuring safety.
| pithon wrote:
| I've heard people break the design/implement/test phases down
| to essentially equal parts in terms of cost. It's not a small
| task if you think about a government agency's testing
| capabilities potentially needing to be roughly 1/3 of what
| the private industry is throwing at it. I can see where they
| need to be pragmatic and adopt a stance where they're really
| just overseeing the vendor's testing and doing some spot
| checks. Not ideal, though.
| f6v wrote:
| Like, how many new major passenger planes do they have to
| test every year? 0.1 on average?
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Or, more precisely: How many new major passenger planes a
| year that are trying to imitate the same type rating as an
| older aircraft do they have to test a year?
|
| In that specific case probably the important parts to
| review are the bits that try to make the new airframe
| handle the same as the old one.
| kqr wrote:
| Let's say it is 0.1 on average, and the FAA would need 5
| years just to test. That gives you an expected wait time of
| 10 years to get something tested, and 20 years if you
| include development time. I'm sure the industry benefits
| from lower turnaround times than that.
| antihero wrote:
| I would imagine they could test multiple planes at the
| same time.
| kqr wrote:
| Sure. So you take half the staff and put them on testing
| a second plane. Then each individual plane takes 10 years
| to test instead. (Remember that you don't gain person-
| hours for free just by shuffling people around.)
|
| What would this accomplish? Instead of a total system
| time average of 10 years, you now get an average testing
| time of 10 years to which you still need to add the
| queuing time, so you're even worse off than before.
|
| (The queueing time won't be five years with two servers
| in parallel, and I can't do the exact approximations in
| my head, but it'll be at least two years. In other words,
| by testing in parallel you worsen the cycle time from 20
| years to at least 22 years.)
|
| This is a good general rule: by taking on more work in
| parallel, you'll make the turnaround time worse. This is
| why lean consultants go on about limiting work-in-
| progress.
|
| Also a call to learn some basic queuing theory! It comes
| in handy often.
| salawat wrote:
| Only if the workload doesn't shake out favorably in light
| of Amdahl's law.
|
| Most mechanical processes aren't necessarily conducive to
| parallelization. Verification and information processing
| on the other hand can do favorably in the presence of
| non-reliance on a physical system-under-test.
|
| Which subsystem vetting arguably is. If you're talking
| vetting specs.
| nrb wrote:
| ... or increase the staffing[1] to a degree where you can
| do more than the absolute bare minimum when lives are on
| the line
|
| 1: https://www.aviationtoday.com/2021/06/03/faa-asks-
| budget-inc....
|
| When there's a defined process that appears to run in
| isolation, I don't see why there should be only one queue
| in this case, considering that the task length cannot be
| easily reduced.
| lazide wrote:
| That sounds like they are knowingly incompetent? If a utility
| regulator had no one on staff who knew how utility scale
| power transmission/generation/whatever worked, that's what
| we'd call it for sure.
|
| And aerospace engineers are dirt cheap. What sort of clown
| show is the FAA running?
| tw04 wrote:
| > That sounds like they are knowingly incompetent?
|
| That sounds like they are knowingly underfunded, which they
| are.
|
| > And aerospace engineers are dirt cheap.
|
| They are? Where are all the airline startups? I assume they
| measure in the hundreds with all this dirt cheap talent
| running around.
| lazide wrote:
| Aerospace engineers have as much to do with airlines as
| software engineers have to do with data entry companies.
| Which is to say pretty much nothing.
|
| Aerospace requires lots of capital expense and is very
| 'large customer' driven and aerospace engineers play
| second (or third) fiddle to that, unlike in software.
| tester34 wrote:
| maybe this industry isn't like software where all
| equipment you need for almost all jobs is 16gb ram, nvme
| m2 disk, decent cpu laptop
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think you're deeply misunderstanding the purpose of the
| FAA and the magnitude of the problem here.
|
| Like almost every other agency (the FDA didn't do the
| vaccine trials; are they incompetent too?) they don't do
| the tests. They just police the industry.
|
| Theoretically if you set laws and regulations and dole out
| severe punishment for bad behaviour, you don't need to be
| the one running the tests.
|
| People should want their government to run on trust (if
| their culture is compatible with trust) because it's far
| cheaper and more efficient.
| landemva wrote:
| 'and dole out severe punishment for bad behaviour'
|
| When will Boeing CEO and Board of Directors get locked up
| as part of the severe punishment?
| KMag wrote:
| Presumably when it is shown beyond a reasonable doubt
| that they conspired or deliberately overlooked the fraud.
| The prosecutor has every incentive to get participants to
| roll over and follow the conspiracy as high up the ladder
| as it goes. Successfully prosecuting such a large profile
| case, particularly with defendants with very little
| public sympathy, would make his/her career.
| lazide wrote:
| Since you're not going to find any documentation of that
| because of CYA, and Boeing is the flagship US aircraft
| manufacturer with a protected (as in 'in the interest of
| national security' protected) position to offset Airbus -
| that's pretty much not going to happen.
| KMag wrote:
| I think it would be possible to ring-fence the
| individuals to be prosecuted, facilitate an orderly
| handover of power inside Boeing, and then prosecute the
| individuals without risking mortal damage to the company.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| That ring should probably extend around McDonnell
| Douglas' management from the 90s, which made their ways
| into the upper echelon of Boeing during the merger.
| Cipater wrote:
| >The prosecutor has every incentive to get participants
| to roll over and follow the conspiracy as high up the
| ladder as it goes.
|
| This is naivette.
|
| See this:
|
| https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/lead-
| boeing-...
|
| From the article:
|
| the case was settled with a deferred prosecution
| agreement -- an agreement that Columbia Law Professor
| John Coffee at the time called -- "one of the worst
| deferred prosecution agreements I have seen."
|
| Boeing did not have to plead guilty to any of the
| allegations.
|
| No Boeing executive was charged.
|
| And the Boeing deferred prosecution agreement included an
| unusual provision finding that a compliance monitor was
| not necessary because "the misconduct was neither
| pervasive across the organization, nor undertaken by a
| large number of employees, nor facilitated by senior
| mismanagement."
|
| "That is without precedent," Coffee told Corporate Crime
| Reporter earlier this year. "I have not seen that
| anywhere else and I've looked at a number of deferred
| prosecution agreements. Prosecutors themselves are not
| conducting the investigation."
|
| Boeing's lead corporate criminal defense law firm is
| Kirkland & Ellis.
|
| Erin Nealy Cox, the lead prosecutor in the Boeing case,
| left the Justice Department earlier this year.
|
| And last month she joined Kirkland & Ellis as a partner
| in its Dallas office.
| KMag wrote:
| Wow. Thanks for the background. It seems to me there
| should be a special investigator appointed to look into
| potential prossecutorial misconduct here.
| lazide wrote:
| So if the FDA is unable to find someone who can
| understand or can't interpret/understand the studies
| themselves enough to see flaws or likely fake data, they
| should just take the companies word for it that it's all
| good?
|
| Last I remember this being a topic of discussion, the
| stance was 'trust but verify' no?
|
| While it may be efficient to rubber stamp things, it is
| not doing their job. Folks scam all the time, especially
| if they know no one is looking.
|
| If they lack the competence to be able to independently
| verify, they aren't being effective regulators.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _If they lack the competence to be able to
| independently verify, they aren't being effective
| regulators._
|
| Bingo. If I use 3 managers and PMs who don't know how to
| program for a code review, then that's not a very
| effective code review.
| nuerow wrote:
| > And aerospace engineers are dirt cheap.
|
| I suspect you're letting your software world experience
| dictate your expectations of what engineering is all about,
| and what it takes to actually get work done.
|
| Software development is a rare field where the only
| relevant resource is man hours. In other fields, including
| aerospace engineering, trained meat bags tend to have a
| negligible cost to the point where replacing a whole
| engineering team might be a minor inconvenience. However,
| crashing a prototype is a project killer due to cost alone.
| lazide wrote:
| It sounds a whole lot like you're agreeing with me - but
| seem to think you're not?
| notahacker wrote:
| I believe the OP's point is that if you're not just using
| engineers to audit the tests Boeing does, then additional
| engineers are a fraction of the cost of running a full
| parallel aerospace test programme. The capex to set up
| the test infrastructure is significant even if Boeing is
| legally obliged to supply you with prototypes to destroy
| at no cost (which obviously has an impact on the amount
| of R&D Boeing is willing to do).
|
| Also, you're not hiring from a diversely employed Valley
| pool: most of the engineers with the requisite level of
| understanding to test Boeing's hardware work for Boeing
| (and to an extent its supply chain), which might mean you
| don't have to offer them much of a pay rise, but it also
| means [i] you're weakening the engineering capability of
| the firms actually designing and building the stuff by
| poaching them and [ii] their views on what's safe and
| what's an appropriate level of testing aren't fully
| independent anyway.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, that doesn't sound like it?
|
| 1) Boeing lays off thousands of aerospace engineers
| regularly (they did as part of the max disaster), and
| doesn't rehire them all back - the industry is highly
| cyclical, and Boeing is periodically shifting locations
| anyway
|
| 2) the stated concern was Boeing brass was applying undue
| influence to engineering correct? If those folks worked
| for the FAA directly after being laid off , wouldn't they
| be more than happy to stick it to Boeing brass if they
| were telling them to cut corners?
|
| 3) we're talking design overview and identifying where
| Boeing (or others) may be 'putting their finger on the
| scale' or trying to snow regulators by asserting bogus
| test results or designing tests that they can pass by not
| including important test criteria they may not pass
| right? That is certainly something an engineer who was
| previously in the industry would be aware of, or even a
| independent engineer should be capable of spotting from
| 'the outside' - and require they do.
|
| 4) at (linked in a parallel thread) a median salary of
| $118k, which is well within something the feds could
| cover, the FAA can certainly afford to hire a non-token
| amount of aerospace engineers onto their staff if they
| actually wanted too/Congress wasn't trying to kill them.
| This isn't like hiring on a FAANG staff software eng for
| 700k or whatever which would cause outrage or break the
| pay scale, and this is for something for which there are
| clear large body counts that can be pointed at.
|
| Now if we want to say Congress has been strangling the
| FAA for a long time (like the IRS and USPS) and forcing
| them to outsource to industry or whatever, hey - I could
| believe it - but that is something that should be yelled
| from the rooftops because that can be fixed, and that
| will cost us a lot in blood.
|
| I don't want more Americans dead due to corruption of a
| regulatory process, especially not my friends or family,
| and those are the stakes here.
| nuerow wrote:
| > _Eh, that doesn't sound like it?_
|
| It should, as it was what I said. I'm really not sure if
| it's possible to make a point any clearer.
|
| > _Boeing lays off thousands of aerospace engineers
| regularly (...)_
|
| Sounds in line with the classical big corp style of
| management. I'm not sure what any of that has to do with
| humans not being the critical element of providing a
| service. In fact, are you sure you're not supporting the
| point you're trying to refute?
| lazide wrote:
| You said that the FAA would be causing brain drain - in a
| field where thousands get laid off all the time?
|
| And that Boeing would surely be exerting influence on
| them so they wouldn't catch issues - after Boeing laid
| them off?
|
| And that it wouldn't matter having competent engineers at
| the FAA because catching things require expensive tests -
| that the engineers if they existed at the FAA could
| mandate Boeing pay for, since they would know they needed
| them to do them?
|
| Huh?
|
| No one is saying the FAA should be running a full
| parallel aerospace program. I'm saying if _they lack in
| house competency to call bullshit on what a player they
| are regulating is passing to them and relying on that
| player to just always do the right thing, then they are
| not effective regulators_
|
| It would be like taking Facebooks word that they are
| totally being good privacy wise, and not having anyone
| available who understands internet tracking or adtech.
| Which, is of course another failing regulator (looking at
| you FTC), but at least that doesn't get hundreds of
| people killed in giant fireballs?
| aerospace_guy wrote:
| > And aerospace engineers are dirt cheap
|
| Inaccurate, please stop sharing misinformation. Seeing this
| on HN is unfortunate.
| lazide wrote:
| Do you have any data to share? Most of my family has been
| involved in Aerospace, with my dad working for
| skunkworks, my brother working for Garmin (and a formal
| aerospace engineer).
|
| Most aerospace engineers are lucky to break 75k/yr to
| start with little to no equity, and often need to move to
| the middle of nowhere (compared to say NYC, SF, LA, etc
| for software), and get hit with periodic catastrophic
| layoffs with the regular cycles in the industry.
|
| It's pretty common that software folks are paid 2-5x with
| far less intense or zero credentialing and better work
| conditions - at the same company.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| https://online-engineering.case.edu/blog/highest-paying-
| engi...
|
| Median numbers, so masks variability. But it looks like
| AEs are generally paid decently, relative to other
| engineers.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-
| engineering/mobile/...
| lazide wrote:
| Oof, even worse than I noted. So median (and that
| includes established mid and late career aerospace
| engineers too) is $118k all in?
|
| That's roughly half of the initial comp for an entry
| level software engineer at any of the SV firms, and most
| folks will be making much more than that at said SV firms
| within a couple years.
|
| Being able to get a team of 4-5 experienced and
| credentialed aerospace engineers for the comp of a single
| 'senior' (mid-level somewhat competent but not amazing)
| software engineer sounds dirt cheap to me?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| You realize you just compared Silicon Valley software
| engineer salaries in high margin industries to all
| location aerospace engineer salaries in normal margin
| industries?
|
| If you want to baseline off SV salaries, you shouldn't be
| looking at median all-AE numbers.
| lazide wrote:
| You're the one that provided the numbers?
|
| We're on a SV startup website, where the comparison to
| cheap or not is of course going to be based on this.
|
| You provided as a counterpoint to my statement on
| aerospace eng's being cheap, data which shows median
| salary across all experience levels of the field being
| half the starting pay of a typical entry level SV
| software engineer - which typically requires no specific
| credentials, unlike Aerospace engineering.
|
| If there is a large cluster of companies who pay 4x the
| median aerospace engineer salary to Noobs, then please
| provide said data. My understanding is those don't exist.
|
| SpaceX, a high profile name and maybe the closest to a SV
| type place you'll get in the industry pays between
| $70-100k to their Aerospace engineers, based on multiple
| sites. Here happens to be a random Reddit thread about it
| in the first couple results.
|
| [https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/engineerin
| g/co...]
|
| Which is exactly the point I'm making. When a straight
| out of school software engineer has a whole section of an
| industry they can go to that will pay them 2-5x what an
| experienced aerospace engineer mid-point or even late in
| their career can make ANYWHERE (except MAYBE a one-off
| consulting gig somewhere), then aerospace engineers are
| cheap no?
| roenxi wrote:
| > ...a warning to everyone that that method of regulation is
| not acceptable.
|
| What part of the situation here is unacceptable? There were, I
| believe, 2 crashes. We accept more than that with most modes of
| transport. It isn't obvious that tightening the regulatory
| process is a net win.
| theknocker wrote:
| Years later, we're still blaming the pilot just so a bunch of
| brainwashed hipsters don't have to admit Donald Trump had a
| point about something and they were wrong. We live in a giant
| kindergarten; thanks.
| dgdosen wrote:
| I'm sure this guy knew what he was doing - but yes, he was
| probably coerced or induced by someone with more authority.
|
| There's no way the buck stops there.
| didntknowya wrote:
| well some C-level staff eventually has to take some
| responsibility, can't keep passing the buck.
| lazide wrote:
| You're generally not going to make it to C level at a Corp
| that size if you aren't good at covering your ass.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _some C-level staff eventually has to take some
| responsibility_
|
| That may be optimistic. Off the top of my head I can't
| remember any c-level execs of such a massive corporation
| having criminal charges brought against them. (except maybe
| for some type of tax/securities fraud) There's probably...
| some? My knowledge of the area certainly isn't comprehensive.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Not C-level - but at Boeing, and _convicted_ of a felony in
| the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darleen_Druyun
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Volkswagon
| dylan604 wrote:
| What happened to the Enron guys? Didn't they go to jail? I
| know one commited suicide, but the othe 2 spent some time
| at Club Fed didn't they?
| tyingq wrote:
| Ken Lay (Chairman, CEO) had a heart attack and died, not
| suicide. Jeffrey Skilling (CEO) was initially sentenced
| to 24 years, later reduced to 14, served 12. Andrew
| Fastow (CFO) was sentenced to 6 years, served 5.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Thanks for the correction.
| elliekelly wrote:
| He _is_ c-level. He's the _Chief_ Technical Pilot.
| dhx wrote:
| "Chief Technical Pilot" is not a role listed amongst the
| dozens of executive council roles and vice president roles
| at Boeing[1].
|
| What about the following executive roles listed at [1]:
|
| * Chief Aerospace Safety Officer
|
| * Chief Compliance Officer
|
| * Chief Engineer
|
| * Vice President, Total Quality, Boeing Commercial
| Airplanes
|
| * Vice President and Chief Engineer, Boeing Commercial
| Airplanes
|
| * Vice President, Manufacturing and Safety
|
| Are there more indictments on the way? It doesn't sound
| plausible that a "Chief Technical Pilot" at Boeing should
| be ultimately responsible for signing off engineering
| designs for MCAS, signing off on the System Safety Analysis
| for MCAS, signing off on manuals to be provided to pilots
| that omitted MCAS, signing off on training materials that
| omitted MCAS, ensuring quality assurance across all of the
| above, signing off on verification and validation of MCAS,
| etc. There is a large team of people signing off on these
| processes and documents. Per [2], "The chief pilot is among
| the leaders who must concur that an airplane is
| flightworthy before the company proceeds with a flight."
|
| If I'm wrong and the chief pilot for an aircraft class is
| indeed ultimately responsible for its design, engineering,
| testing, training, certification and everything else, why
| is this situation possible? Is there no independent quality
| assurance and auditing?
|
| [1] https://www.boeing.com/company/bios/
|
| [2] https://www.boeing.com/commercial/737max/737-max-
| pilots-role...
| buildsjets wrote:
| The Chief Project Engineer is the person who is
| ultimately responsible for the design, engineering,
| testing, setting training requirements, certification,
| and everything else. The CPE for the 737 MAX was Michael
| Teal. There's only room for one signature on the FAA
| application for an ammended type certificate, and it was
| his.
|
| Forkner was not the Chief Pilot. He was the the Chief
| Technical Pilot, who is the person responsible for
| developing new training information for changed systems,
| getting it certified by the FAA, and coordinating with
| airlines to deploy it to their pilots. Therefore Forkner
| was responsible for:
|
| Signing off on manuals to be provided to pilots that
| omitted MCAS. Signing off on training materials that
| omitted MCAS. Signing on on the verification and
| validation that MCAS was correctly represented in the
| flight simulators.
| dhx wrote:
| The Boeing program wanted Level B training only[1] which
| excludes flight simulator training, hence Forkner was
| trying to achieve that requirement by avoiding the need
| for pilots to undergo simulator training.
|
| Even if you were to remove Forkner entirely from the
| decision making process, pilots would have been asked to
| fly an aircraft with a 'catastrophic' hazard only reduced
| to 'hazardous' by training pilots to respond to a very
| rare event within ~4 seconds of a failure event that the
| pilots weren't even notified of because the AoA sensor
| disagreement warning feature was an optional paid
| addon[2]. If a pilot were to take 10 seconds to
| respond... too late, the aircraft would likely have been
| lost[3].
|
| Even with the best training in the world, is it
| reasonable to just expect pilots, within seconds, to be
| able to work around 100's of crap engineering and human
| machine interaction design decisions? As [3] notes, the
| lack of consideration of the pilot (as a human not a
| robot or computer) in the engineering design of the
| aircraft is glaring. Corporate Boeing wanted an aircraft
| that pilots didn't need to be retrained in, and thanks to
| unrealistic schedule expectations, they seemingly also
| didn't want to spend the time needed to remove all the
| HMI pain points that are inflicted on pilots.
|
| [1] https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Compre
| ssed%20...
|
| [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/boeing-
| sensor-73...
|
| [3] https://www.incose.org/docs/default-
| source/enchantment/21031...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Naw, that's just an honorary title. ;-) He could have gone
| higher to Master Chief.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Unless he flips on management there's not much for the
| government to go on. And then you're asking a jury to believe
| the words of someone already alleged to be dishonest.
| topspin wrote:
| "he was probably coerced or induced by someone with more
| authority"
|
| Then he should flip. Naming names will at least buy some
| sympathy points.
| loeg wrote:
| How? If there's no evidence of a conversation, it won't help
| his case.
| NortySpock wrote:
| It does point some heat at the named person, and maybe
| drags their name through the mud.
| lazide wrote:
| No one is going to give immunity or spare someone from
| prosecution if that have that person nailed hardcore, and
| the only evidence they have against the 'mastermind' is
| he said/she said that isn't going to go anywhere in
| court.
| [deleted]
| topspin wrote:
| It's not that simple.
|
| Sincere cooperation has value and is weighted by
| authorities, regardless of where it does or does not lead.
| Years served are based on such factors.
|
| Also, there are the civil suits. Standards of evidence are
| generally lower and a credible and cooperative peon has
| value to plaintiffs as they pursue the big targets.
| loeg wrote:
| How do the authorities distinguish sincere cooperation
| from fabricated deflection, in the absence of evidence?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I'm guessing it creates more probable cause for subpoenas
| and leverage in interviews and hopefully they find more
| evidence ... or not.
| topspin wrote:
| Often it's as simple minded as convincing the judge that
| decides how many years you'll serve that you're not
| irredeemable.
| e9 wrote:
| He definitely knew what he was doing and yea he was pressured,
| read his email on page 3:
| https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Compressed%20...
| tiahura wrote:
| This guy's name popped up in the Seattle Times article from
| almost Day 1 of the MCAS debacle. IIRC he left Boeing and went
| to Southwest, and proceeded to lie to them about the Max. To
| the extent there was a single person concealing information, it
| was him.
| yholio wrote:
| I guess him leaving explains why he's the only one to get the
| blame. Had he remained in the company, he could have
| blackmailed his way out, by threatening to bring down the
| whole club. By leaving, he painted a huge target on his back.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > Had he remained in the company, he could have blackmailed
| his way out, by threatening to bring down the whole club.
|
| What? No. That's not how it works unless your goal is a
| superseding indictment with additional charges.
| civilized wrote:
| Nailed for being the only guy stupid enough to write instant
| messages bragging about misleading the FAA.
|
| As a longtime corporate grunt, I can guess exactly how management
| leaned on him. He should have left and let the scumbags find
| another patsy to do their dirty work.
| caf wrote:
| I don't think Chief Technical Pilot is a corporate grunt. It
| _is_ a management position.
| ImprovedSilence wrote:
| But without a doubt there would still be (even more) pressure
| on him from his bosses in that CTP position.
| verytrivial wrote:
| Let's hope he sings like a bird.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Exactly. There's a reason when you deal with people senior
| enough in any big organization that everything is verbal...
| newsclues wrote:
| And there is a reason why lawyers exist.
| [deleted]
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Not sure I agree. Look at all these court cases producing
| juicy emails from tech giants.
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| Many of those juicy emails are from _before_ the past few
| years ' wave of tech lawsuits.
|
| At least at the entry level, I think a lot of the "don't
| say the word 'competition'" training started as a reaction
| to relatively recent legal tangles - it wouldn't be
| surprising if people at the senior level also have gotten
| more careful about how they communicate.
| lazide wrote:
| I remember getting the 'be careful how you communicate'
| training at a FAANG over a decade ago, it's well known
| CYA every place I've been at.
|
| That said, people get complacent and then wham - front
| page of the New York Times saying something dumb.
| refurb wrote:
| "Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod;
| never nod if you can wink, never wink if you can do nothing."
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| What's this from?
| stordoff wrote:
| It seems to be a quote, or a variation on a quote, from
| Martin Lomasney:
|
| > Lomasney once advised a young follower, "Don't write
| when you can talk; don't talk when you can nod your
| head."[1]
|
| The West End Museum[2] attributes the longer quote to
| him.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Lomasney
| referencing https://www.jstor.org/stable/361565
|
| [2] https://thewestendmuseum.org/the-life-legend-and-
| lessons-of-...
| jmnicolas wrote:
| It reminds me of Lenin signing lists of people to be
| executed and when asked later about it, saying that his
| signature was just to show he had read the list not to
| approve of executions.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not know if these discussions happened in WA, but WA had
| one party consent audio recording laws instead of all party
| consent, then executives would be more wary of instructing
| underlings to do something illegal.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Are there any downsides to this?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| None that I have been able to come up with. Two or more
| party consent audio recording laws only serve to provide
| people with power more protection.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Loss of institutional memory encoded in the destroyed
| records.
| dehrmann wrote:
| In a broad sense, not specifically related to not
| retaining data as a legal protection, institutional
| memory is _somewhat_ overrated because of how much low-
| value content is retained and how it was a snapshot of
| how a different world was understood.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| sure but thats like 1 in 1000
|
| but putting stuff in text/IM/email is instantly discovered
| if anything ever goes to trial and there is electronic
| discovery
| cptskippy wrote:
| Unless your corporate retention policy is only 6 months.
| I setup an archive to keep important emails around only
| to find out our retention policy had been applied to it.
|
| Once an org gets burned by discovery in a lawsuit they go
| to great lengths to ensure it will never happen again.
| lazide wrote:
| As long as they don't see who is printing out their
| emails, still possible to CYA - but it does draw a giant
| target on ones back if you're obvious about it.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| I suspect the regulatory environment in aviation is the
| strictest any developer faces.
| JshWright wrote:
| _laughes in healthcare_
| Cerium wrote:
| Not sure about your healthcare, but the healthcare
| company I work for is full of ex-aviation engineers who
| are happy to comply with our regulatory requirements.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I have something like 8 years worth of free credit
| monitoring from all of the healthcare providers who got
| breached lost my family's information.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Just to nitpick, you probably mean 'oral'
| peanutz454 wrote:
| Wow! TIL! I always use 'verbal' when I actually mean
| 'oral'.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| According to the Oxford English Dictionary:
|
| Verbal: oral, spoken rather than written.
|
| You've been using verbal correctly.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| correct
| pxx wrote:
| Remember, the "I" in "IM" stands for "incriminating".
| anitil wrote:
| And the 'e' in 'email' stands for 'evidence'
| trevmckendrick wrote:
| Source?
| civilized wrote:
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
| aerospace/explo...
|
| This source says text messages. Thought I saw instant
| messages somewhere else.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| I'd consider SMS to be a form of IM.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| The chief pilot is management.
| throw7 wrote:
| "Ohhh, those Chief Technical Pilots! God Bless'em!" - C-suite.
| matchedLoad wrote:
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/boeings-fatal-flaw/
| cher14 wrote:
| An interesting part in the documentary specifically about the
| role of the test pilot indicted starts at 26:40
| WalterBright wrote:
| "Aviation Disasters" did a much better episode on it than
| Frontline.
| buildsjets wrote:
| The Frontline episode on PBS is 50% teary-eyed emotional
| testimonials from the victim's families, interspersed with
| 25% stock footage and 25% poorly summarized, and in many
| cases technically incorrect explanation.
|
| The Smithsonian Channel Episode "Ten Steps to Disaster" is
| far more technically accurate, and also deep dives the
| technical, business, and regulatory decisions that lead to
| the disaster.
|
| https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/video/series/ten-steps-
| to...
| headco wrote:
| John Chidgey has an excellent episode of Causality covering
| the technicals in great detail.
|
| https://engineered.network/causality/episode-33-737-max/
| WalterBright wrote:
| Thanks for the reference. I'll look at it later. I was
| pretty disillusioned by Frontline. I always knew they were
| biased, but thought they made an honest attempt to present
| the facts.
|
| No more.
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Rather than acknowledge and address the massive issues caused by
| instances of regulatory capture, such as this, or realizing the
| dangers that result from systemic issues with Boeing's incentive
| structure for management, facilitated by regulatory capture, the
| Federal Government and Boeing execs are just gonna scapegoat this
| guy. Nice.
|
| He was still incredibly stupid and made horrible choices, but the
| environment he was in only facilitates and encourages behavior
| like this.
| automatwon wrote:
| I thought management's job was about creating "culture".
|
| Except when that culture is toxic
| defaultprimate wrote:
| Everything about Boeing's culture is toxic. The company is a
| shit show.
| elisbce wrote:
| This is so much bigger than just a rogue guy. So basically this
| is saying that the FAA just makes judgement and decisions based
| on documents and information coming from a chief pilot, without
| verifying or inspecting the codebase. This whole FAA process is
| flawed to the core.
| bmitc wrote:
| Always seems like some person in the middle of these companies
| and regulators that always gets hit and not someone deeper in the
| companies or regulators. Not denying or affirming this person's
| role, but it seems to be a pattern, whether it's financial
| institutions, corporations, defense contractors, etc. and their
| associated regulatory bodies.
| e9 wrote:
| If you dig deeper he was clearly aware of the issue and chose
| to cut corners even though he was of course pressured, read his
| email on page 3:
| https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Compressed%20...
| rajrkrish wrote:
| There is a term for it - Scapegoating.
| icecube123 wrote:
| Or CYA. Management is experts at "Covering Your Ass".
| ameminator wrote:
| Very dissatisfactory result - the buck should not have stopped
| with only him. This failure was on multiple people, from _both_
| Boeing and the FAA. The FAA was grossly negligent and has proven
| itself unreliable by this whole debacle. A national
| embarrassment.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Boeing were idiots selling this new model into the markets they
| did right out the gate. It was greed and bit them hard.
|
| Poor maintenance. Pilot skills in hand flying and unusual flying
| and recovery so different (overseas they don't always come
| through a normal US style GA background).
|
| If they would have looked more closely at the US, they would have
| found that this system was triggered (and resolved) I suspect
| pretty frequently by US pilots - ie, the pilots in the loop
| compensated for the design weaknesses which was the boeing
| thinking historically. US pilots have played that role on many
| planes, usually mfg then fixes the issues as well.
|
| If they are going to continue to sell internationally in the
| markets they want to they actually need to think about doing more
| automation and flight protection stuff - more computers - not
| less.
|
| This may never have been the major issue it became if they had
| focused on a major carrier like Southwest (very experienced
| crews).
|
| The whole MCAS thing was garbage, interesting they are pinning it
| on this guy. He does say internally he lied to FAA (unknowingly)
| as they weren't fully familiar with MCAS modes and edge
|
| Edit: Appears I was wrong - good maintenance in US seems to have
| been key saving thing.
|
| "Following the recent events in Indonesia and Ethiopia, U.S.
| flight data was analyzed to understand whether indicators may
| have existed that could have been addressed, and potentially
| preempted the accidents. The data showed zero incidents of
| runaway trim on Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in the U.S. system,"
| says the report from the special committee.
|
| Good job A&P folks!
| [deleted]
| evilos wrote:
| The people that really got bitten are the ones that died on
| impact :(
| WalterBright wrote:
| The flight previous to the LA crash also experienced the MCAS
| malfunction. You don't hear about that one because the crew
| used the electric trim switches to return trim to normal, then
| turned off the stab trim system with the cutoff switches.
|
| Then, they continued the flight and landed normally.
|
| The next flight on the same airplane is the one that crashed.
| The crew restored normal trim with the electric trim switches
| 25 times, but never shut off the trim system.
|
| The EA crew also restored normal trim with the trim switches,
| but then turned off the trim when the stabilizer was too far
| nose down. This is contrary to the instructions in the Boeing
| Emergency Airworthiness Directive distributed to all MAX
| pilots.
|
| This does not absolve Boeing's role in not doing a proper
| failure analysis of the MCAS system.
|
| But contrary to what Frontline said "the pilots did everything
| right" it was recoverable if the instructions for runaway trim
| were followed.
| ummonk wrote:
| The Ethiopian Airlines pilots followed the EAD to the letter.
|
| First, they attempted to adjust trim using electric
| stabilizer trim, and then upon realizing that the they were
| experiencing an uncommanded nose down stabilizer trim, they
| followed the runaway stabilizer procedure - namely, stab trim
| cutout and trim wheel grasp and hold. Afterwards, they
| attempted to adjust the stabilizer manually.
|
| There is a note in the EAD that electric stabilizer trim can
| be used to neutralize the stabilizers before doing a stab
| trim cutout, but crucially Boeing _did not_ instruct pilots
| to make sure to neutralize trim first using electric trim
| before doing the stab trim cutout.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Is this a joke?
|
| ERROR: Literally the first paragraph of the EAD is about
| controlling airspeed. [Edit: This is not correct]
|
| They hit 700(!!) MPH. They literally commanded full take
| off power to _accelerate_ the plane into the ground. You
| can add power if your pitch is high to arrest a sink rate
| (ie, during landing), but if you are pitched down, you pull
| power.
|
| There is also a 300 second limit on T/O power - I'd be
| interested if they exceeded that as well.
|
| The maintenance on this plane was terrible.
|
| This was not a situation where folks involved "did
| everything right".
|
| For those not familiar, approx 3 minutes after they did a
| stab trim cutout they put stab trim back to normal. That's
| never been in any guidance for EAD or runaway.
|
| The 4th activation of MCAS moved trim down (to 1 unit,
| should have probably been at 4.3 - 5.x or so). That
| probably doomed them.
| ummonk wrote:
| The first paragraph of the EAD is:
|
| "Disengage autopilot and control airplane pitch attitude
| with control column and main electric trim as required.
| If relaxing the column causes the trim to move, set
| stabilizer trim switches to CUTOUT. If runaway continues,
| hold the stabilizer trim wheel against rotation and trim
| the airplane manually."
| WalterBright wrote:
| The entire EAD must be read, not the first paragraph.
| Including the digressions (your phrase). It's only two
| pages.
|
| I am not a pilot. But I am an aerospace engineer who
| worked on critical flight detail designs. You've likely
| flown on my work. My father was a pilot for the AF for 20
| years. You don't get to be an old pilot if you don't pay
| attention 100% to the instructions and training. Flying
| isn't like driving a car. Humans are not natural flyers.
| You rarely get a second chance if you make a mistake
| flying.
|
| Maybe 90% of flight training is dealing with emergencies.
| If you're not dedicated to doing it right, and doing it
| 100%, every time, you've got no business being a pilot
| with hundreds of lives depending on you.
|
| P.S. I've gone flying with pilot friends many times. I
| watch them do the preflight. If they're not 100% perfect
| with it, I'm getting off.
| slownews45 wrote:
| One advantage in flying - you are pretty much told
| EXACTLY how to do many things.
|
| This is what makes me think flying will be automatable.
| There are a lot of checklists already written for almost
| everything. Ie, electrical power up, preflights, (CDU
| preflight?) before taxi before takeoff etc.
|
| Runaway trim was a memory item (!). ie, so important you
| have to have it memorized.
|
| What's interesting is that because of a jammed actuator
| motor in an earlier US situation (way back) they have
| this language about a "maximum two person effort will not
| break the cables"
|
| https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_jY4nvLmuE4/XQ_n-
| FaocOI/AAAAAAAAG...
|
| This is because you have to basically break out of a
| clutch and friction condition if a motor seized which
| aside from the MCAS crashes could require pretty large
| efforts.
|
| There is evidence of somewhat routine stab trim issues,
| at least 1x per year mistrim stuff, and more often inop
| etc. Before these crashes I don't think it was considered
| even a very serious concern because pilots would handle
| it in ordinary course of things.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > One advantage in flying - you are pretty much told
| EXACTLY how to do many things.
|
| Experience shows that will get you safely out of the vast
| majority of emergency conditions. The ones that are left
| require understanding and a brain, which is why we still
| have human pilots.
|
| Runaway stab trim is so serious a condition that the
| cutoff switches are within easy reach right there on the
| console. It doesn't really matter how many safeguards
| there are against runaway trim, the pilot needs to be
| able to just turn the thing off. It's also deliberate
| that the electric trim switches override everything but
| the cutoff switches.
|
| Pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that Boeing
| thought that it was so easy to just turn off a
| misbehaving trim system, that the pilots would just do
| that.
|
| It's sort of like one day I was working away on my
| desktop, and smoke started boiling out of the case. My
| first reaction was to pull the plug out. Fortunately,
| that stopped the fire. If it hadn't, my second reaction
| would have been to throw the box outside.
|
| My lawnmower, power tools, etc., are all designed so that
| chopping the power to them is as easy as possible. Even
| race cars have a large switch mounted on the exterior to
| shut off all power.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Boeing did not instruct pilots to make sure to neutralize
| trim first using electric trim before doing the stab trim
| cutout.
|
| Yes, they did:
|
| "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...
|
| Note also that the EA pilots had already successfully
| overridden and restored normal trim twice with the electric
| trim switches.
|
| (I added the emphasis on "before".)
| ummonk wrote:
| That's not an instruction - it's a digression. The
| wording there is "can be used".
|
| The actual instruction is to follow the AFM Runaway
| Stabilizer procedure. That's exactly what the Ethiopian
| Airlines pilots did.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > That's not an instruction - it's a digression. The
| wording there is "can be used".
|
| Why do you think Boeing wrote an EMERGENCY AIRWORTHINESS
| DIRECTIVE and the FAA _mandated_ it be sent to _all_ MAX
| pilots?
|
| If you're a pilot, it is YOUR JOB to read, understand,
| and remember every EMERGENCY AIRWORTHINESS DIRECTIVE. Not
| to parse words. If you want to parse words, get a job as
| a lawyer, not a pilot.
|
| The "can be used" is there to explain how to overcome
| aerodynamic forces that make using the manual trim wheel
| difficult.
| atdrummond wrote:
| Please don't flag replies like this; thankfully I was
| able to vouch for Walt.
|
| For some background, Walt and I are routinely brigaded
| with downvotes on 737 MAX threads. What he and I have in
| common, compared to those who engage in such behaviors,
| is that unlike those we typically are replying to, we
| both have extensive backgrounds in the aviation field,
| especially on the programming side.
|
| Back on topic, the takeaway that Walt is making and that
| seems to be missed continually in these threads, is that
| Lion Air did not lose their plane due to the MAX's MCAS
| implementation. Rather, the pilots engaged with the plane
| in a manner precisely opposite to what procedure calls
| for. Despite all of the poor calls made by Boeing here,
| if LA's pilots had simply reacted as the previous
| flight's pilots had, the plane would have made it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A clarification - my computing experience at Boeing was
| writing Fortran programs to solve design problems, not
| aviation software.
|
| However, at Boeing I spent 3 years working on the
| stabilizer trim gearbox on the 757. The 757 system is a
| newer design than the 737, in that it uses a dual drive
| system connected via a differential gear system rather
| than having the manual wheels in the cockpit.
| Nevertheless, the difference is in detail, not concept.
| Both systems have cutoff switches within easy reach of
| the pilot, for a damn good reason - to stop uncontrolled
| stabilizer trim action. While the 757 did not have MCAS,
| it _did_ have a computer autopilot that could move the
| stabilizer.
|
| I did some searching online of the MAX trim system, and
| indeed the electric trim switches override MCAS commands.
| In all three incidents the pilots did override it and
| return the trim to normal.
|
| In the first incident, after a couple times, the crew
| trimmed it to normal and then cutoff the stab trim.
| Continued the flight and landed without further incident.
|
| In the second, the pilots brought it back to normal 25
| times before the final plunge. For whatever reason, they
| never switched off the trim system.
|
| I haven't got a solid reference to the EA one, but it
| appears they restored trim twice before the final plunge.
| They then turned off the trim system in the plunge. They
| could not turn the manual trim wheels due to the
| aerodynamic forces. So they turned the trim back on, the
| MCAS came on again making things worse. Why they did not
| counter again with the electric trim I do not know. Why
| they did not turn off the trim when it was in the normal
| position I do not know. Those are excellent questions for
| the NTSB to answer.
|
| But what they didn't do was follow the directions in the
| EAD.
| ummonk wrote:
| Why are you bringing up Lion Air pilots when the
| discussion is about the Ethiopian Airlines flight?
| WalterBright wrote:
| The first LA crew was not aware of the existence of MCAS,
| nor did they have the benefit of the Emergency
| Airworthiness Directive. But they worked the problem and
| solved it and landed safely.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Yeah, it's a memory item on the 737. Pretty short too.
|
| http://www.b737.org.uk/images/runawaystab1975.jpg
|
| Not to mention I think they ran the plane at full takeoff
| power during the recovery attempt - I can't even imagine what
| they were doing in terms of speed monitoring (in a nose down
| you normally reduce power, no go to full takeoff!).
| ummonk wrote:
| The EA crew followed that memory item. It didn't work. (Had
| they reduced the throttle it probably would have helped,
| which is why the need to limit speed during runaway trim
| events has been added to the updated memory item now)
| roelschroeven wrote:
| The pre-MAX 737 has a cut-off switch that switches of the
| automatic trim system, without also switching of the
| electric trim (there's another one that switches off the
| electric trim). The 737 MAX also has two switches, but they
| both switch off the automatic trim (including MCAS) _and_
| the electric trim.
|
| So you can't switch off MCAS without also switching off
| electric trim, leaving only manual trim. But in situations
| like the Ethiopian flight, you need inhuman strength to
| control the manual trim (as Mentour Pilot demonstrates in
| this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoNOVlxJmow).
| You need electric trim to have any chance to fight MCAS,
| but you can't enable electric trim without also enabling
| MCAS. Must be horrific to be in such a situation.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The electric trim switches override MCAS. The LA crew
| overrode MCAS to restore normal trim 25 times. The EA
| crew did it twice.
| ummonk wrote:
| There was actually a test with Southwest Airlines line pilots,
| and it took them a minute to get to the stab trim cutout in
| response to this issue.
| https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/3BBE2CD5-AE41...
|
| The Ethiopian Airlines pilots did get to the stab trim cutout
| as well (probably because they had read the emergency directive
| Boeing sent out) but were unable to manually trim afterwards
| due to the forces involved - had they cut airspeed at the start
| they probably would have been able to do so, but that was not
| part of the instructions at the time. For an analysis of the
| situation they were in, see
| https://leehamnews.com/2019/04/05/bjorns-corner-et302-crash-...
| dboreham wrote:
| >Pilot skills in hand flying and unusual flying and recovery so
| different (overseas they don't always come through a normal US
| style GA background).
|
| This is repeating lies propagated by Boeing management and is
| not true. The flight control system's design was flawed. It was
| a "fly into the ground sometimes" machine.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| FAA outsourced it responsibility to Boeing - basically just a
| rubberstamp - no wonder the European and Chinese air safety folks
| wanted to do their own testing.
|
| Never happened before as the FAA used to be the gold standard for
| safety - looks they have been gutted by the govt.
| dsq wrote:
| It is important to note that Boeing settled for 2.5 billion in
| which it is agreed that "...the misconduct by its former
| employees was "neither pervasive across the organization, nor
| undertaken by a large number of employees, nor facilitated by
| senior management". (https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-
| reaches-2-5-billion-sett...).
|
| So remember, when push comes to shove, the technical lead always
| gets thrown to the wolves while management goes "we don't know
| about that technical stuff".
|
| Not to detract in any way from what he is culpable for.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Boeing got away with that, VW tried and didn't. I would prefer
| companies not getting away with these settlements.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| That might be because VW wasn't US-based, but Boeing is.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That might have played a role. Plus Boeing, as part of
| duopoly on commercial aircraft, seems to be a lot more
| important than a simple, regardless of size, car maker.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I think they did (UK).
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's possible this is the initial charge to get them in the
| door with search warrants and subpoenas and testimony because
| someone dropped a dime with some info that there were criminal
| acts not know to the government at the time, not covered by the
| settlement. I doubt the settlement was a "you're pardoned for
| ALL acts related to 737 MAX."
|
| A refresher since this happened so long ago:
|
| Airbus was eating Boeing's 737 sales for lunch. Boeing
| management wanted to put better engines on the plane to get
| those sales back. But the better engines were bigger, and that
| meant they couldn't just swap them out and call it a day. So
| they moved the engine position. Well, when you move heavy shit
| around on a plane that also happens to be the thing generating
| thrust, you change a lot of stuff about the plane - its center
| of gravity, how the plane behaves when that thrust is applied
| (think torque steer but for planes) and aerodynamics.
|
| The plane became aerodynamically unstable in certain
| conditions. Hence the need to add fly-by-wire systems and
| sensors. Except...they also cheaped out on both the number of
| sensors _and even the frigging lightbulbs to warn pilots of
| sensor error._
|
| The shit Boeing has gotten away with over the years boggles the
| mind. At one point the NSA got caught doing industrial
| espionage against Airbus for them!
| mkhpalm wrote:
| They didn't cheap out on lights. They didn't want to add a
| light to the cockpit because changing anything meant pilots
| would have to be trained on it. Airlines, specifically
| American, didn't want to incur the cost of training of a new
| plane that could compete with Airbus. So to get the sales
| Boeing promised a million dollar kickback per 737 MAX sold if
| American 737 pilots had to get training to fly it. The
| cockpit had to remain the same in every way to avoid it.
| himinlomax wrote:
| It's not unstable, stop repeating this falsehood. It does
| behave differently when high trust is applied, pitching up
| much more, and MCAS was introduced to counter/hide that.
| Earlier models did pitch up as well, all planes with engines
| under low wings do, and pilots or automatic systems have to
| deal with it.
|
| This is not an issue of instability. The plane _will_ remain
| at a level pitch /roll at a given thrust with the appropriate
| elevator trimming. An unstable plane would require constant
| input changes.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Boeing's defense of this POS system is also mind-boggling.
| "Oh, since we put inappropriate engines on an outdated
| airframe, the airplane would pitch up under heavy thrust...
| so we cobbled together this amateur-hour system to mask that
| behavior."
|
| If a pilot can't control the airplane's pitch, he's not a
| pilot. Boeing's excuses don't even begin to qualify as
| excuses.
|
| "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."
|
| I HAVEN'T POSTED IN AT LEAST AN HOUR, ASSHOLES. AND IF I'M
| NOT ELIGIBLE TO POST, WHY DID YOU LET ME PRESS THE "REPLY"
| BUTTON AND TYPE OUT A BUNCH OF VERBIAGE?
|
| HACKER NEWS = USER-HATING JAGOFFS
| foldr wrote:
| Fly by wire isn't really the right term here. Fly by wire
| means that control inputs are transmitted to actuators via an
| electrical signal (rather than by a hydraulic or mechanical
| connection). As far as I know, the 737 MAX retains
| conventional primary flight controls. Lots of airliners with
| conventional flight controls also have various forms of
| artificial stability that modify pilot inputs (such as yaw
| dampers).
| l33tman wrote:
| The trim can be controlled by an electrical motor in the
| 737, and the MCAS system in question here controls that
| motor, so you could argue its part of a FBW system (but I
| guess normally you refer to the main flight surfaces which
| are not FBW in the 737 like you say).
| foldr wrote:
| Ah yes, that is a fair point. However, in that case we
| are not talking about 'adding' a new FBW control system,
| as the system was already in place on previous models.
| Daub wrote:
| > Except...they also cheaped out on both the number of
| sensors and even the frigging lightbulbs to warn pilots of
| sensor error.
|
| I believe that the issue was more tragic than that (no
| expert)...
|
| They wanted to 'hide' the fly by wire (FBW) as for it to be
| apparent would require that the plane (effectively) be re-
| classified as a new plane, requiring expensive up-skilling of
| the pilots. The existence of the new FBW was even hidden from
| the manual!
|
| The FBW required information from the pitot tubes in order
| for it to know how fast the plane was flying. Planes have two
| such tubes, one for backup as they are prone to blockage.
| Normal practice would be to poll both tubes, and if their
| reading disagreed the pilot would be notified and assume
| blockage in one of the tubes.
|
| However, they could not do this as a pitot tube warning would
| reveal the existence of the FBW to the pilot, who would not
| have been aware of its existence. Hence they relied on one
| pitot tube input and (of course) no warning lights.
|
| This must have been a calculated risk on their behalf. They
| must have known that sooner or later it would fail.
| gonesilent wrote:
| adding a light bulb, the disagree error was only shown in
| the optional heads up display.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| There is no optional heads up display, only an optional
| warning on the already present display.
| foldr wrote:
| The warning light shows a disagreement between the two _AOA
| sensors_ , not the pitot tubes used for airspeed
| measurement (of which there are three on the 737).
| cryptica wrote:
| I was thinking this too. Seems to be a pattern since Volkswagen
| scandal; blame the rank and file employee... As if the employee
| had any incentive at all to lie about the performance of the
| plane. This is disgusting. The directors who pressured the
| employee to lie and then tried to use them as a scapegoat
| should be jailed for life.
| dsq wrote:
| I also thought of VW in this context. The idea that the
| managers only set policy and it's up to the engineers to
| figure it out, lesving management with "plausible
| deniability".
| soylentnewsorg wrote:
| I took a gig at a hospital. They got an MBA Karen with 3 years
| of experience. She learned the very basics of IT, then started
| micromanaging. As in, she'd tell you what switches to put on
| CLI commands. If you said that's wrong, or would cause data
| corruption - you're not a team player. The entire team of 18
| people were not team players - the team consisted of her alone.
|
| One time, she told me to do something very dangerous during a
| data migration. Not a best practice, and a big no-no. I'm
| seeing open files randomly spread across about 50 NAS shares
| which should according to her be offline - retired apps. It
| would take time to identify those, notify people, etc. She has
| deadlines to meet. You see, this migration that's been put off
| time and again for 2 years, needs to be finished in about a
| month, because when she was hired, she made that promise to her
| boss - without knowing anything about the apps, how much data,
| what users, etc.
|
| I talked to her over chat, saved the chat, warned her about all
| the dangers and was told to proceed. It brought down a clinic,
| resulted in some data loss, and affected patients.
|
| Next migration batch, she asks me to do it again. With a phone
| call. I ask for it in writing, she refuses. I added the phone
| call notes to the servicenow change control ticket, put risk as
| high, and said I need a note in the ticket from her telling me
| to proceed despite risk.
|
| A week later I'm on suspension for disobeying my manager. HR
| tells me they will be getting in touch with me to get the
| details of what happened. I enjoy my paid week off while HR
| investigates the complaint - they need a full week because they
| review so much. at 4pm, the day before the week is over, the HR
| rep calls me and asks be about what happened. At 9am the next
| day I'm fired.
|
| I file for unemployment and get a corp to corp contract to a
| company I'm part owner in (contract to the company, not to me).
| They dispute it, saying I was fired for my attitude, and was
| written up many times. Both false - I turn over the details -
| saved chats, emails, a phone call I recorded, etc to the UI
| officer. The next day my unemployment is approved, and I'm
| collecting unemployment weekly, while collecting dividends from
| the company I own for its c2c contract. I do however reply to
| one email per day from an indian recruiter - I pick ones with
| names I can't pronounce. They do the needful and submit me to
| one position per day with "their client." Why only indian
| recruiters? Because they are a minority and I don't
| discriminate.
|
| This is a Boeing engineer being thrown under the bus by
| management. Here's what needs to happen: the engineer is
| guilty. I was guilty too when the first time I ran the
| destructive script, despite being told to do that in writing.
| The engineer is like a nazi soldier. Both the soldier, and his
| boss, and anyone up the chain who approved or pushed for this,
| need to be on the receiving side of that courtroom.
| nuerow wrote:
| Thank you for taking the time to write such a insightful
| post. Some lessons are invaluable, and I believe this is one
| of them.
| Chyzwar wrote:
| Depending on country/state you could possibly sue for
| wrongful termination. In addition, you could send your story
| to media or contact someone higher in the food chain of the
| company.
| philjohn wrote:
| If it's in the US it's likely the OP is in a "Right to
| work" state, so can be fired for whatever reason.
|
| One family in particular funded a lot of the push to
| implement "Right to work" - the AmWay owning DeVos's.
| soylentnewsorg wrote:
| So as to not discourage people - right to work does not
| prevent you from going after a company that mistreated
| you in a civil lawsuit. If they ask you to do something
| unreasonable that was not in the job description, you can
| sue them for things like lost wages while you look for a
| new job, any relocation expenses to the new job, and to a
| harder extent emotional suffering an punitive damages.
|
| Let me give a clearer example. Your boss tells you "shoot
| that old lady or you're fired." you refuse, he fires you.
| You can sue him, you will win, it has nothing to do with
| right to work or not. In my case it was asking me things
| to endanger patients, and refusing to put the request in
| writing so there's a record of it.
|
| The issue with that is it's a civil suit, in court, and
| your law firm is now fighting a huge corporation for the
| amount equivalent to a couple of months' salary. It's not
| worth it in most cases, and they know that. But if you
| want to break even, and the huge amount of time and added
| stress of the lawsuit is worth revenge - not cash -
| absolutely do it, and punish those assholes. Except
| they're not really punished. The payout disappears in a
| database and becomes a rounding error somewhere, and the
| management responsible never gets punished. They don't
| have the stress and time waste of the lawsuit - there are
| zero consequences to them, and it's yet more loss to you.
|
| Unless you're willing to find a lawyer who'll just take
| part of the settlement if you win and guarantee you it
| won't take up a lot of your time. I contacted a bunch of
| attorneys, and that was a no-go. Contrary to popular
| belief, getting the guilty party to pay the attorney
| bills of the winner almost never happens in real life.
| Even if you get awarded those costs (doubtful) - they
| will simply refuse to pay. You can then show up and take
| their office furniture and put it on ebay.
| soylentnewsorg wrote:
| I reported them to OSHA and to the state health authority.
| This was a while ago. I got reminded of it today and posted
| the story because I had a call this week asking me to send
| in written testimony in addition to the form I filled out.
|
| Wrongful termination is a no-go. I talked to a literal slew
| of lawyers. The amount I'd be looking to recover would be
| probably the cost of court. Also chump change compared to
| my overall income, so not worth my time.
|
| Now, as far as media - no one died, no one was greatly
| impacted - probably not very interesting, and very
| technical. There was an outage for a day, records of a
| couple of hours of data (5-10 patient visits) was lost.
|
| Now, as far a "higher up the food chain" - I got a rant
| here about my 20+ years of experience in corporate america.
| The guy up the food chain took a chance (saved money on
| salaries) by hiring a manager of an 18 person team, who has
| literally had 3 years of work experience. That was a bad
| decision. He (my boss's boss) doesn't want his boss, (my
| boss's boss's boss), to see this bad decision. So he's
| going to protect her until someone dies and he throws her
| under the bus. This is just a fact of life.
|
| I've been at several hospitals over many years. All the IT
| people care greatly about patient care. The management is
| willing to have deaths on their hand to shave a day off a
| project. Management at hospitals are people who shouldn't
| be allowed near medical care. The higher up the chain you
| go, the closer you get to the money, the closer you get to
| the purpose of the hospital: pretend you're losing money
| while underpaying and overworking staff, and scamming sick
| people.
|
| Think about it: you are a supplier. Your demand curve is
| inelastic. Your customers don't know the price before they
| buy. Now, what kind of people is this type of corporation
| going to attract? The worst of the worst.
| esel2k wrote:
| I've worked in healthcareIT and the biggest diagnostics
| firm and yes: the more they speak about meaningful job
| and patient first the bigger the facade that in reality
| it is about their money and their career.
|
| I would be curious to know from your learnings where you
| think engineers/product people should head to be
| fullfilled in such environments as I am starting to be
| clueless. Thanks
| soylentnewsorg wrote:
| You have two options in my opinion. Your healthcare
| experience is worth a lot. The most money is if you jump
| on the bandwagon (for example go work for EPIC, or go
| into management at a hospital). If you need to look
| yourself in the mirror while you shave (to avoid cuts),
| my solution is to be the vendor.
|
| You can do delivery for stuff medical companies buy
| (delivery/residencies/support) and your experience on the
| customer side will add big bucks to the salary the vendor
| pays you. Hospitals use AIX, they run EPIC on it. IBM
| will pay you more if you can go to hospitals that buy
| from them and help them set up AIX for EPIC. If you do
| storage like I do, those hospitals buy EMC/IBM storage,
| and medical applications need specific layout, path and
| disk group separation, etc - if you know those, EMC/IBM
| will pay you more. Your "customer" at this point is the
| IT staff at the hospital, and they're good guys and a
| pleasure to work with.
|
| If you want even more money, again go for a vendor or a
| VAR, but do presales engineering. One downside to that,
| those toxic unethical managers are now your customer. But
| they'll pay you a lot, and you won't be asked to attempt
| killing people with a script by making an xray disappear
| from a display during surgery.
|
| Both options are good, I've done and do both. If you work
| for a VAR instead of a vendor, you get the same salary as
| the vendor, but you also get spiffs from the vendor. I
| average about $5k/month in spiffs when I do presales
| engineering. But you feel a bit like a used car salesman
| - the spiffs are bigger when you sell what the vendor is
| pushing instead of the best solution.
|
| So in short - all depends on how "straight-edge" you are,
| and how comfortable you are being around bs. the worse
| the smell, the more cash in your pocket unfortunately. I
| personally have screwed large corporations out of
| millions to end up with tens of thousands extra in my
| pocket. And that's something I don't like, but am
| comfortable with - as opposed to damaging individual
| people. If you are completely ethical, more power to you.
| Go work for VMware or Nasuni or something on the delivery
| side, tell them you know a bunch of medical applications,
| and they'll pay you more.
|
| As ballpark, the current ceilings from my personal
| experience (storage), the total income including bonus
| and spiffs are: 150k delivery engineer for a vendor, 140k
| delivery engineer for a VAR, 180k vendor presales
| engineer, 200-250k pse at a VAR (because of spiffs). In
| cali or nyc, add about 10% to those. personal fulfillment
| is on the delivery side, monetary is in presales.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I wish California was one.
| andrekandre wrote:
| Quality is made in the board room. A worker can deliver lower
| quality, but she cannot deliver quality better than the
| system allows.
|
| - W. Edwards Deming
| scns wrote:
| "The fish smells from the head" - turkish proverb
| chopin wrote:
| A German as well ("Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf her").
| [deleted]
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I believe the anglicised equivalent is "The fish rots from
| the head."
| bloqs wrote:
| I'm puzzled by the do not discriminate bit, doesn't that mean
| you do discriminate by only choosing the names you can't
| pronounce?
|
| Minutae aside, as a European I'm shocked and appalled at that
| process, but surely an employment tribunal would have been
| the next step? Seems open and shut if you have the details to
| hand and everything evidenced properly. That said I'm sure
| you probably didn't want to be there from that point
| soylentnewsorg wrote:
| I only took the gig so I could get the vaccine as soon as
| it came out. It was a huge pay cut, and a very easy job.
| Why fight to stay and keep working somewhere you don't want
| to be, when instead you could get an extra 3k/month on
| unemployment?
|
| Corporations are a useful thing, and are commonly used
| stateside to do shady things - like getting paid by a
| customer, but not officially working. Like collect
| unemployment, while collecting dividends for a contract
| your company has with a customer. What you have to do is
| keep applying for jobs. Most of the spam my linkedin gets
| is from indian recruiters. There is zero chance one of them
| can get you a job in the states. The ones that can will all
| have a name you can pronounce.
|
| It is possible to get a payout for wrongful termination.
| This will count against your unemployment claim. It will
| cost (as the estimates in my case were) 10-20k for the
| attorney. I will likely have to go to court/arbitration,
| and it takes lots and lots of time and stress. As someone
| who is a company owner, I spend about 50 hours/week on
| owning my company (not working for my company). I can get a
| max of about 20-25k for the wrongful termination... It's
| just not the right way to go.
|
| As a sidebar, I've worked and lived in France, Catalonia,
| Russia, and Japan - while living in those countries. I am
| in fact originally from Europe, but came stateside at a
| young age. Outside of Russia, the US has the crappiest
| "process" as you call it. It's a country where that process
| was put in place by corporations, to result exactly in
| this: the process is just not worth it.
|
| The "do not discriminate bit" was sarcasm. We have this
| thing in this great country, where the people who do the
| most discriminating are the ones who complain most about
| being discriminated against. What to do if you're a
| criminal or a bully? Claim you're a victim. I won't go into
| that, because by this country's standards, I'm going to be
| flagged as a racist.
| ionwake wrote:
| How come you were paid more when unemployed ?
| soylentnewsorg wrote:
| I was paid much less than my salary when I was
| unemployed. I made more per week from the salary than I
| did per month on unemployment. I assume you mean more
| than someone else you know who had UI. The benefit amount
| depends on your salary. UI is insurance paid by the
| company that fired you - in essence the company that
| fired you pays your unemployment (by paying for the
| insurance for their employees). The more people the lay
| off or fire w/o cause, the more their insurance premium.
| In addition, there was an extra benefit paid by the
| federal government due to the pandemic (unemployment is
| usually a state benefit).
|
| So the way to both stick it to the asshole ex-employer
| and make extra cash, is to double-dip. Get paid
| unemployment, while getting other income. If you own a
| company, you don't have to be employed by your company -
| you can just be an owner - like when you buy Apple stock.
| You can then pay yourself dividends instead of salary,
| and bam - you're still unemployed, while getting the same
| amount as your salary, and unemployment. You do have to
| keep looking for work, daily though. Which I did do. So,
| think of it as a legal loophole to screw the guy who
| fired you and make money off him.
| [deleted]
| KarlKemp wrote:
| "They do the needful" is Indian English. There is more
| going with the guy, considering the way he makes sure we
| know the incompetent person was a woman etc.
| speedybird wrote:
| "Do the needful" was a Britishism originally; Indians got
| it from the British. Somewhere along the line the British
| stopped using it but Indians continued.
| soylentnewsorg wrote:
| I see. So me using "she" and "he" when I talk about
| people is me making sure you know I'm talking about a
| woman.
|
| Welcome to the English language. We don't type extra text
| like "he/she" every time for zero reason. It's not a
| conspiracy theory - it's how people talk. Quite a
| conspiracy theory you got there buddy. You must think the
| entire world has "something more going on" since the
| entire world uses "she" or "he" while speaking. Or,
| perhaps you lack practice speaking to people? Tell me,
| when the basement gets very cold in the winter, do you
| venture upstairs with all that sunlight, or do you use a
| little space heater for your feet?
| [deleted]
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Well let's hope that some C-Suite got punished.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Spider Network by David Enrich is a good book to dispel you of
| such quaint notions.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| The C-suite will be punished with a bonus for dodging
| responsibility.
|
| edit: if that actually happens, Boeing is finished. They will
| be doomed to repeating the mistake of the 737 Max.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| > They will be doomed to repeating the mistake of the 737
| Max.
|
| This article _is_ about the 737 Max.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes?
|
| They're saying that if there aren't significant
| consequences for the C suite in this case, they'll pick
| cost over safety again in the future.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| I think it's worse than picking cost over safety. What
| Boeing did was knowingly push a bad position. They knew
| they were in the hole with the pilot training for the
| Max, they knew they had screwed up. Regardless of that,
| they kept pushing the line that it wasn't their fault
| right up until that became untenable. The issue here is a
| corporate culture that ignored red flags, that played
| games with the regulator and decided that they would
| gamble peoples lives and the entire company reputation
| (including all their employees) on a cost cutting,
| corrupt means of beating Airbus. The entire c-suite
| should be headed for orange jumpsuit land.
| quasse wrote:
| Unfortunately it looks like this is really a fall guy with no
| mention of where the instruction to hide this information came
| from.
|
| On the other hand, according to his Linkedin Mark Forkner
| worked for the FAA before moving to Boeing to become the chief
| technical pilot, so he should have been well aware of the
| stakes when he hid information.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's likely he thought FAA self certification [1] would allow
| Boeing to skate by, which is probably accurate if the planes
| hadn't fallen out of the sky.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-the-
| faa-al...
| ineedasername wrote:
| Which is generally why in other areas a corporation may
| have its own verification/validation processes, but bring
| in a 3rd party to audit them. It's a common accounting
| process.
|
| Although, as we saw with Arthur Anderson, that 3rd party
| isn't always so neutral. And, by virtue of getting paid by
| the company, may deliver the results wanted instead of the
| results that are accurate.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Another way to look at it is he would be knowledgable on how
| to hide information from the FAA
| weaksauce wrote:
| This _is_ the C suite guy getting the charges levied on him
| with pretty solid evidence against him. if he wants to avoid
| long term jail they will use him to cut a deal to get more
| information to find out if any of the few people that are
| above him ordered him to do it.
| rurounijones wrote:
| I think this comment points out that this may not be
| accurate https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873133
| tiahura wrote:
| Why? He was lying to them as well.
| throwanem wrote:
| > Steve Jobs told employees a short story when they were
| promoted to vice president at Apple. Jobs would tell the VP
| that if the garbage in his office was not being emptied, Jobs
| would naturally demand an explanation from the janitor.
| "Well, the lock on the door was changed,' the janitor could
| reasonably respond. "And I couldn't get a key."
|
| > The janitor's response is reasonable. It's an
| understandable excuse. The janitor can't do his job without a
| key. As a janitor, he's allowed to have excuses.
|
| > "When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs told his
| newly-minted VPs. "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO,
| reasons stop mattering."
|
| > "In other words," (Jobs continued,) "when the employee
| becomes a vice president, he or she must vacate all excuses
| for failure. A vice president is responsible for any mistakes
| that happen, and it doesn't matter what you say."
| markus_zhang wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense. When you are high enough you are
| so far away from the trenches that the only
| responsibilities are: 1) Making decisions and 2) Taking
| blames for whatever reason. That's why you get the big
| bucks.
|
| Extrapolated from that, I kinda understand why many senior
| employees do NOT want to climb the pole but instead staying
| closer to the trenches.
| mjcarden wrote:
| A quote from that excellent management training video, "A
| Bug's Life": First rule of leadership: Everything is your
| fault.
| mdoms wrote:
| I guess this was before the big brain genius man treated
| his fatal cancer with magic beans.
| vkou wrote:
| This story is almost certainly apocryphal, but is a good
| way to assign responsibility at senior levels.
| dls2016 wrote:
| Sounds like the mafia.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| It means don't throw your people under the bus by blaming
| them and when something goes wrong take responsibility.
| When it goes wrong at the VP level it means an
| organizational failure and/or your failure to understand
| what your org was doing or your failure to train/hire
| good subordinates who could handle the details for you.
| dls2016 wrote:
| I agree but it also suggests that anyone above the VP
| level who sticks around for any length of time is
| infallible (otherwise they'd be gone).
| trhway wrote:
| to calibrate our hopes we can just look at VW dieselgate
| satellite2 wrote:
| The CEO at the time, Martin Winterkor, and at least six other
| executives were indicted. Some of the executives were jailed
| but still not the CEO (I can find mentions of prosecutors
| discussing the sentence but no mention of him actually
| starting serving it).
|
| But I have muche less hope in the capacity of the US to
| seriously incriminate its poster child.
| pkaye wrote:
| The CEO Martin Winterkorn is German and Germany doesn't
| extradite their citizens outside the EU so nothing will
| happen there. According to Wikipedia, he was also charged
| in Germany but looks like he will walk free from most
| charges.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Winterkorn#United_Stat
| e...
| zardo wrote:
| Looks like they already found the designated felon
| m0zg wrote:
| FWIW, I thought they'd indict the unpaid intern in janitorial
| department. That's how such things usually go.
| agent327 wrote:
| ...one man? Out of the whole company, the massive number of
| people that must have been involved, only one man gets the blame?
| And not even an executive at that?
| [deleted]
| mberning wrote:
| Man he is taking one for the team. Hopefully there will be more
| indictments. I highly doubt there is a singular guilty party on
| this one.
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