[HN Gopher] Boeing faces new US investigation into 'missed' 787 ...
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Boeing faces new US investigation into 'missed' 787 inspections
Author : mindracer
Score : 229 points
Date : 2024-05-07 11:41 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| ItsBob wrote:
| At what point do we say "This company is rotten to the core and
| needs shut down"? This article alleges that they may be
| falsifying safety stuff!
|
| It's not like they're making lollipops ffs... they're
| transporting millions of people per day in things that cannot
| afford to have issues... ever!
|
| Sure, I understand that the media has them under a spotlight
| right now but even so!
|
| On another note this quote got me laughing: "Stocker said the
| company would "celebrate" the employee who spoke up."
|
| "Yeah, Mike, just step out the back while Tony and Big Joe
| celebrate you in the alleyway here"! :)
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| Boeing is in the position of TBTF. The best can happen is a
| change of management but this doesn't solve anything. Good
| leadership does not grow like grass, and if the soil is corrupt
| none grows.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| I'm not knowledgeable in this area, is there any precedent or
| legal method for the US government unilaterally shutting down a
| large publicly traded conglomerate (purely as a hypothetical)?
|
| Not that I think they'd actually do it, I'm just curious if
| it's even possible.
|
| I imagine they could bog them down with lawsuits but Boeing has
| a deep war chest and it would take many years.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Yes, the US can nationalize a company. And it's happened
| before [1]. The current political climate means there's no
| appetite for any party to alienate actual or potential donors
| by doing something like this however. The one exception is
| banks where the FDIC can (and does) take over nonperforming
| banks all the time [2].
|
| Think of it as eminent domain but for companies.
|
| [1]: https://thenextsystem.org/history-of-nationalization-in-
| the-...
|
| [2]: https://www.fdic.gov/resources/resolutions/bank-
| failures/in-...
| brookst wrote:
| Not just Boeing, all of their shareholders, including
| institutional ones. This would essentially be an edict that
| the stock price is now $0, modulo liquidation plans. But I
| don't think you could declare the company too rotten to
| operate and also sell off its operations, so enterprise value
| would be best case. Oh, and many of its assets in the form of
| planes would presumably be instantly devalued/worthless.
|
| It's a fun hypothetical (unless you work for Boeing), but I
| don't think there's a legal precedent or a good outcome even
| if it were possible.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This would almost certainly fail legally on "taking"
| grounds.
|
| It also fails politically, since Boeing is a critical US
| defence contractor, and the US is _not_ going to cut off
| its supply of parts for military aircraft. Killing Boeing
| is a fantasy.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| A more practical approach would be to fine them a huge
| amount of money after a fair investigation and trial. Then,
| when the company is forced to declare bankruptcy or is on
| the brink of it, the US Government could buy the company
| out of bankruptcy, replacing all executive management and
| run it for a enough time to ensure that corrections have
| been implemented, then the Government could take the
| company public again and divest itself.
| ItsBob wrote:
| Not sure about the US but in the UK, the government can close
| companies down for things like not filing taxes or failing to
| pay them for example. So it wouldn't be outwith the realms of
| possibility that a company making planes that are potentially
| unsafe could have their doors closed!
|
| I'm not mega pro-government intervention but there are times
| I'd like to think my gov has my back... this is one of them!
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| shutting it fully down would likely be very difficult, but
| the FAA definitely has the authority to not certify any
| Boeing planes for a couple years and let Boeing go bankrupt
| swasheck wrote:
| you've heard how the government certifies these things
| right? they allow the company to inspect and certify.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| yes. they can stop doing that (and in fact have already
| walked back some of that)
| clarionbell wrote:
| In principle it is possible. But shutdown isn't what you
| want. Because that would cause job losses, collapse of supply
| chain and all of that horror.
|
| You need restructuring. Replace management, take control over
| the direction. Keep things running while the mess is
| resolved. It's not going to be fast, an it's not going to
| look nice. But at this point there are no other options.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| The federal government did take over GM somehow. https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reor...
| sylware wrote:
| All this Boeing thing is now really seriously dangerous, up to
| life threatening.
|
| Something seems REALLY wrong. Maybe time to ramp up the type of
| "services" to understand what is going up there...
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I sincerely hope this whole Boeing debacle will be used as wake-
| up call for other large corporations, or the general public.
|
| Most of them are not as safety-critical, but some of them are,
| thinking about Big Pharma and Chemical giants...
| ItsBob wrote:
| Not sure what you mean: there have, to-date, been no
| repercussions for Boeing! They're getting away with all kinds
| of shit here!
|
| In an ideal world, companies with a massive safety-related
| function should have Warhammer 40k gun servitors hovering over
| the execs in the event they cut corners on safety with orders
| to empty the clip!
|
| Boeing are really a gov extension these days from what I can
| see.
| clarionbell wrote:
| I vote for the servitors. Either that or an arco-flagellant
| on quick dispatch for the entire room.
|
| That aside, yes, Boeing and in EU Airbus are very much
| intertwined with government. It's inevitable when their
| products are strategically important and barriers to entry
| high. It's unfortunate, but that's how it is.
| itsanaccount wrote:
| https://www.pewpewtactical.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/01/Ma...
|
| Clips help fill internal magazines on older weapons. A
| servitor drone would have a magazine.
|
| Just being pendantic but I think you'd want "dump a mag into
| c-suite executives found guilty of corruption in safety
| critical industries." I'd also say since we don't currently
| have servitor drones we may have to do it ourselves.
|
| In an ideal world of course.
| decafninja wrote:
| In an ideal 40k world, the c-suite would already have been
| lobotomized into servitors to serve penance for tech
| heresy.
| humanlion87 wrote:
| I wouldn't say they haven't had any repercussions. The whole
| 737 Max debacle cost them an estimated $20 billion (https://w
| eb.archive.org/web/20201221001329/https://www.cnn.c...).
|
| But I do agree that overall there needs to be more
| repercussions. Unfortunately they are a "too big to fail"
| kind of company considering how critical they are to the
| aviation industry as a whole.
| is_true wrote:
| For the military boeing is too big to fail.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Accountability seems to be slower in the pharma industry, but
| it did come for Theranos and Purdue. There doesn't seem to be
| the same kind of safety issue, only horrific pricing issues and
| a complicated supply problem for certain kinds of medications.
| jtc331 wrote:
| I don't see how we can say that pharmaceuticals don't have
| serious safety issues.
|
| Consider Vioxx:
|
| > Merck withdrew the drug after disclosures that it withheld
| information about rofecoxib's risks from doctors and patients
| for over five years, allegedly resulting in between 88,000
| and 140,000 cases of serious heart disease.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| Vioxx is fine. Just improper disclosures. Many patients who
| it was right for lost out because of the withdrawal
| admissionsguy wrote:
| Noting though that barring extreme cases, a safety issue with
| a batch of drugs would be really hard to detect.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I'd hope it'd be a signal that we can't allow an industry to
| regulate itself
| isolli wrote:
| We already had a strong and clear signal from the financial
| industry in 2008...
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| I will say it's having an impact on me personally. In the tech
| world, we work in 2 week Sprints and Sprints have Stories.
| Stories are Pointed efforts rated on level of effort that need
| to be completed within a single Sprints. Developers can only be
| allotted X number of Points per Sprint. If stories aren't done,
| then you usually need to reflect on why and improve, typically
| breaking down high pointed stories into smaller ones. The
| problem with many organizations face is that instead of leaving
| a Story open and answering the why, they'll simply close the
| problem Story and open a new one with the missed worked. This
| causes problems all over the place and snowballs if not
| addressed. In my situation, we also cancelled Retros so
| concerns weren't being raised further compounding things and
| finger pointing.
|
| So what may have started as an over zealous developer with a
| well intentioned manager can become a trend leading to missed
| deadlines, cut corners and defective code making it to
| production.
|
| I started to realize that I was no different than Boeing; that
| I was Boeing and that hasn't sat right with me. So for better
| or worse, I'm going to be more vocal about things.
| maskil wrote:
| Except that people aren't dying as a result
| Gareth321 wrote:
| Yes, this is all about risk tolerance. If a component on a
| website doesn't function as expected, it rarely kills
| people. Flight engineering should have the lowest risk
| tolerance possible. This is expensive, but necessary.
| albrewer wrote:
| Joke's on you, he works on engineering software used in a
| highly safety critical industry! /s
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| Managers with spreadsheets are the cause in both cases
| though?
| masklinn wrote:
| > I sincerely hope this whole Boeing debacle will be used as
| wake-up call for other large corporations
|
| Why would it? Stock's still up from 2016, higher than Airbus
| has ever been and those who sold between 2018 and 2020 made
| absolute bank.
|
| It's not hurt any current board or C-suite member to say
| nothing of those who actually taken the strategic decisions
| leading to the current fallout, I've not seen anyone seriously
| suggesting Stonecipher should be even mildly inconvenienced.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Unless the whole management got enough punishment, it's only
| going to serve as incentive for them to keep the old way.
|
| Like, put your feets into their shoes -- wouldn't you?
|
| By saying enough punishment, I meant at least something like
| Enron -- Exec went to jail, regulation people got slashed and
| hacked, company re-structured as we cannot afford to lose it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm not a fan of industry "self-regulation."
|
| Everyone keeps calling for it (as opposed to government
| regulation), but these stories keep popping up.
|
| We need to have self-regulation _success_ stories to be
| highlighted, if we want to go that way.
| jmyeet wrote:
| It's a well known phenomenon that over time profits tend to fall
| [1]. Investors demand growth however so the consequence is
| obvious: all companies will tend to try and increase prices
| and/or cut costs to maintain profits.
|
| Raising prices tends to lower demand. It might be the case that a
| lower volume at higher margin leads to a higher gross profit but
| often it doesn't. So raising prices tends to be limited to where
| demand is ineleastic or you have or can construct a monopoly or
| enclosure of some kind.
|
| So most companies have to resort o cutting costs. This means
| suppressing wages and doing what Boeing has done in spades: using
| subcontracting to lower costs. Being is now in the FAFO phase of
| cost-cutting. Since around the time of the McDonnell-Douglas
| merger, the engineers lost and the accountants won.
|
| Once again, this Steve Jobs quote [2] is apropos.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGKsbt5wii0
| resource_waste wrote:
| >So raising prices tends to be limited to where demand is
| ineleastic or you have or can construct a monopoly or enclosure
| of some kind.
|
| United States Medical
|
| Anyway, outside of that, this typically is a good thing. $200
| flat screen tvs make it easier to live life. I remember moving
| out of my parents house and being amazed at how affordable the
| minimum products were. Yes offbrand TV with 50 hz, yes you
| $2/lb meat with 30% fat, yes your shower curtain was a pain in
| the butt to install... But making 19k/yr, I could afford it.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| > $200 flat screen tvs make it easier to live life.
|
| From what I've been reading, those cheap TV's won't last more
| than 3 years. So those poor people will end up spending more
| on TV's than if they bought an old-style expensive TV. Same
| thing with shoes, rent, cars, etc.
| resource_waste wrote:
| ? I am still using my 200 dollar tv from 2012.
|
| If you want to repeat a fiction story about boots, that's
| fine, but its still a fiction story.
| avidiax wrote:
| That's more typical of the "Black Friday special". That TV
| cuts corners that don't make sense to cut, but the
| reputational damage that a super cheap low volume TV causes
| is minimal to none.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| TV's from Hisense and TCL are fine
| constantcrying wrote:
| Total nonsense. Do you not know what is happening in the
| airline industry right now?
|
| Boeing is not facing a stagnant market, they have customers
| _even now_ begging them to give them planes as soon as
| possible. What Boeing is trying to do is fill enormous demand,
| they actually could easily grow if they had the leadership
| capacity to do so.
| jl6 wrote:
| Is this the kind of problem that is being uncovered because of
| the extra scrutiny that Boeing is currently under? To put it
| another way, is this the kind of problem that is endemic across
| industry and we're only finding out now because we are taking the
| time to look?
|
| One can only imagine the horrors lurking in industries lucky
| enough not to have had any famous failures recently.
| yareal wrote:
| Boeing used to have a safety culture and and engineering
| excellence culture. That changed over the past twenty to thirty
| years as leadership rotted the company and monetized that rot
| by choosing to skip safety and engineering in favor of profits.
| cjk2 wrote:
| I work in a different sector. If we built planes it'd be
| raining bodies.
|
| If you go looking you will find. And it's almost never pretty
| stuff. There is however a lot of paperwork filled in that says
| everything is fine.
| _ache_ wrote:
| You are inverting cause and consequence. It's because Boeing
| has had so many failures that it has come under particular
| scrutiny. Failures which, from a statistical point of view,
| suggest that there may be a cause to look for. Other companies
| do not have as many (and as basic) problems.
| nolok wrote:
| Depends what you mean by industry.
|
| If you mean the US big airliner industry, then Boeing is
| essentially it, so yes, And I presume it comes directly from
| the FAA delegating so much of their job to Boeing meaning
| Boeing had to inspect itself.
|
| The you had the bad deal grand fathered between USA and EU :
| FAA inspect Boeing planes, EASA has to accept that
| certification without checking by themselves.
|
| Airbus need to be certified by the EASA, they have much less if
| any delegated authority for that (though they do pay a lot into
| that, there is a difference between you need to pay into your
| regulator and you are your own regulator through your own
| employees). And then they need to separately be certified by
| Boeing.
|
| This means the surface area for Boeing screwing around is much,
| much larger.
|
| I don't doubt there are flaws if we looked into airbus
| assembly, but I highly doubt they would be systemic and part of
| a larger screwed process like what is being found at Boeing.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Thanks to M&A's, Boeing _is_ the industry (at least in the US).
| Then the bean counters figured out that they can outsource a
| lot of the manufacturing to '3rd parties' who pinky-promise
| they have a functional QA process.
|
| When MCAS drove 2 planes into the ground, they were able to
| proclaim "It wasn't us, it was our software vendor!." All the
| airframe problems? Well, that's Spirit Aerosystems!
|
| There should be a lot of Boeing execs in prison for
| manslaughter.
| phonon wrote:
| > When MCAS drove 2 planes into the ground, they were able to
| proclaim "It wasn't us, it was our software vendor!."
|
| They did not say that.
| doikor wrote:
| The owners/economy has demanded for things to become more
| efficient then last year every year for decades now.
|
| If no massive technological breakthrough happens at some point
| the operation is as efficient as it can be while producing safe
| products but still you have to become more efficient for next
| quarterly/yearly results to keep the shareholders happy (if you
| can't find new clients to expand to). It is at that point that
| you start cutting corners and end up in situations like this.
|
| This happens in every field but obviously in most fields the
| cost of these failures is not big enough to really matter but
| when you apply it to aviation you get planes with hundreds of
| people crashing into the ocean.
| gruez wrote:
| >This happens in every field but obviously in most fields the
| cost of these failures is not big enough to really matter but
| when you apply it to aviation you get planes with hundreds of
| people crashing into the ocean.
|
| Is that so bad? According to the IIHS there were 43k
| automotive deaths in the US in 2021. Meanwhile the last
| passenger death in a scheduled commercial flight[1] in the US
| was 4 years ago. In the past decade there has only been 2
| deaths.
|
| [1] this excludes flights like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| 2022_Mutiny_Bay_DHC-3_Otter_cr..., because they're
| essentially flying general aviation planes which are far less
| reliable than airliners that people typically associate with
| air travel. If you include them the number goes up to 27.
| 0xAFFFF wrote:
| It's not so bad _yet_ because the aviation industry comes
| from a place of extremely high safety standards, but it
| could get worse pretty fast.
| rapatel0 wrote:
| Airline
|
| ------------
|
| Total number of global flights per year: ~38.9 Million
|
| Total deaths over the last decade (3,562)
|
| -> 21.2 deaths per million trips
|
| Cars
|
| ------------
|
| Total number of driving trips per year US: 227 Billion
|
| (using your number of 43K deaths per year)
|
| -> 1.9 deaths / million trips
|
| Wow, I'm surprised but actually airline travel is less safe
| then driving.
|
| Links:
|
| - https://www.statista.com/statistics/564769/airline-
| industry-....
|
| - https://www.statista.com/statistics/263443/worldwide-air-
| tra...
| gbear605 wrote:
| Deaths per trip is a bad comparison. As you can see from
| those numbers, Americans take about 1000 car trips per
| year and many fewer plane trips (hard to get exact
| numbers based on that since it's global and planes can
| have dozens-hundreds of people).
| avar wrote:
| It makes no sense to look at number of flights for a
| comparison. You need to look at passenger miles.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| You need to look at hours invested. If I'm planning to go
| away for a week, I'm choosing whether to sit in a car for
| 12 hours or airports+airplanes for 12 hours -- these are
| the equivalent options for how to spend my time away from
| home, so between these, how much safer is one over the
| other?
|
| Said another way, compare "trips by plane" against "a set
| of car trips whose average duration matches that of trips
| by plane."
| gruez wrote:
| >[...] these are the equivalent options for how to spend
| my time away from home
|
| No they're not. If you're in San Fransisco for instance,
| a 12 hour drive maybe gets you to LA, Vegas, and maybe
| salt lake city. It can't even get you to Seattle or
| Phoenix. Meanwhile even if you factor in getting to the
| airport 3 hours before departure, 1 hour to get to the
| airport, and 1 hour to get to your final destination,
| that leaves you with 7 hours of flight time. That's
| enough for a direct flight anywhere in the lower 48
| states, and as well as many cities in Canada and Mexico.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| If I have a certain amount of time to spend and want a
| reasonable ratio of travel time to time-at-destination,
| some ratio that I prefer regardless of mode of travel,
| those are indeed the options I can choose from (e.g.,
| driving to the next state or flying across the country).
| There will be many factors leading to a decision of which
| option to select, and if I want travel safety to be a
| factor, then the safety stats need to be presented as I'm
| describing.
| samatman wrote:
| "Per trip" is an utterly meaningless way of looking at
| the data. Some car trips last ten minutes and a 10 or 12
| hour flight isn't uncommon. You know for a fact that it's
| more dangerous to drive from NYC to Miami than it is to
| drive to the grocery store and back, so why would you use
| a meaningless statistic like this?
|
| I would say the most sensible is "per passenger hour",
| followed by "per passenger mile", since in some cases one
| might be choosing between driving somewhere and flying
| there.
|
| By both of these metrics, airplanes are much safer than
| cars.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| You're calculating per trip, which is very misleading.
| Each flight two orders of magnitude more people on it.
|
| You want per person per trip to actually calculate an
| individual's risk on a single trip.
|
| Then you need to account for distance or time. If I had
| to guess, that's three to four orders of magnitude more
| time or distance per trip.
| triceratops wrote:
| Are you comparing global flights to US driving?
| cge wrote:
| In addition to the other points brought up, you're
| comparing global flight statistics with US driving
| statistics. Fatal commercial aviation accident rates are
| _heavily_ region dependent. If I recall correctly, the
| number of fatal aviation accidents on scheduled US
| commercial flights over the last decade is _zero_.
| Meanwhile, some other regions are vastly less safe: for
| example, while this was some number of years ago, I
| remember a statistic of flights in Africa accounting for
| single-digit percentages of global flights and _a
| quarter_ of passenger fatalities.
| notfromhere wrote:
| That's a sentence you can say if you don't find yourself or
| a loved one on that plane.
| LargeWu wrote:
| Not even more efficient. Just cheaper. Efficiency implies
| there's no drop in quality.
| constantcrying wrote:
| This would mean that failures should be spread evenly over an
| industry. Airbus clearly does not have the problems Boeing
| has.
|
| I also don't think you understand the current airline
| industry. Both Boeing and Airbus _desperately_ want to grow,
| they have orders lined up for decades and just need factories
| and people. The issue is _not_ a stagnant industry looking
| for cost-cutting it is a very in demand industry desperate to
| fill orders.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Is this the kind of problem that is being uncovered because
| of the extra scrutiny that Boeing is currently under?
|
| Yes.
|
| > To put it another way, is this the kind of problem that is
| endemic across industry and we're only finding out now because
| we are taking the time to look?
|
| That is a completely different matter. The increased scrutiny
| on Boeing can simply be uncovering that the wheels have been
| coming off for a while as result of the stock-chasing policy
| they've been following for 25 years.
|
| Previously it could be covered up because their primary
| regulator was too hands off but recent events have led to the
| FAA dedicating more resources to Boeing, and thus having a lot
| more opportunities to trip over malfeasance.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes, I mean obviously cargo ships are not well inspected, they
| lose power all the time and companies just hope it doesn't
| happen near anything important. The oil industry is like this,
| you've got bottom-of-the-barrel tankers
| (https://www.amazon.com/Tankship-Tromedy-Impending-
| Disasters-...), spills continuing for decades
| (https://www.propublica.org/article/chevron-will-pay-
| record-f...), leaking methane wells permanently abandoned by
| "bankrupt" companies, etc.
|
| You're definitely right that we're all paying extra attention
| to Boeing at the moment, but if you look around I think you'll
| find that there actually have been pretty recent famous
| failures in quite a few industries.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I thought ships were a little different since they can just
| follow the regulations of their flagged country and skirt a
| lot of rules.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| With the amount of overlapping vocabulary, I would've
| thought airplanes are basically just ships in the sky.
| Ports, captains, boarding, etc.
|
| Or are these used metaphorically, like virtual computer
| stuff versus physical office stuff (desktop, folder, etc.)
| where there's enough similarity to avoid making new words
| but they're operated quite differently?
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| The need to overfly a country, vs just sail round, means
| that airlines need country's permission to fly
| into/through a country. Overflight privileges cost money.
|
| In addition protectionism has meant that you generally
| have to land or take off at an airport run by the flag
| you carry.
|
| So unlike shipping, a Malaysian airline can't fly from
| the US to UK.
|
| This means that airlines _need_ to be based at their
| 'real' base of operations, they can't just register in a
| tax-shelter.
| rob74 wrote:
| Additionally, the fact that passenger airplanes carry,
| well, passengers, while cargo ships don't, means that
| airlines are automatically under more scrutiny. Further
| to what you wrote, some airlines have even been
| blacklisted by e.g. the EU because of safety reasons,
| like PIA (the flag carrier of Pakistan!) from 2020 to
| 2023.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I guess cargo tends to go more by ship and passengers
| tend to go more by plane, but all 4 combinations
| certainly exist so no need to assume 2 variables are
| being compared simultaneously.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Which is the country their rules should follow?
|
| Their flag?
|
| Their company's residency?
|
| Their production location?
|
| Guess what, all are bought and sold off for cheap on the
| market.
|
| Oh and they pay less than 1.5% taxes, usually, if they even
| pay taxes.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I agree it's a tricky problem to solve without agreements
| in place governing it. The airline industry seems to have
| settled on you follow the laws of the destination
| country. Ships in particular though do everything they
| can to abuse flagging their ships with the most lax
| working regulations.
| noir_lord wrote:
| (tongue in cheek) isn't that what boeing did with the FAA?
| jeromegv wrote:
| Ships and planes are so different in their regulations and
| safety measures, it's not even close or comparable.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Losing power in a ship that spends almost its entire life in
| the open ocean is much less risky than losing power in an
| airplane though. Its reasonable that expectations,
| regulations, and maintenance schedules differ there.
|
| I have nothing good to say for oil spills though. I was
| interning st Exxon's upstream research department when the BP
| oil spill happened in the gulf. What I heard from many people
| that had been there for a a long time amounted to no one
| being too surprised given how the industry works and how much
| is outsourced. They also (rightfully) expected the main
| concern to be PR. Exxon researchers were the ones to give BP
| the chemicals to coagulate the oil into globs and sink it
| just below the surface. They were really proud of it at the
| time, though having family on the Gulf Coast I was less
| impressed with the solution or the tar balls that washed up
| on the beach for years.
| spixy wrote:
| > is much less risky
|
| well Baltimore thinks otherwise
| _heimdall wrote:
| My point stands in the context of the GP comment I
| replied to, they were pointing out how frequently
| container ships lose power.
|
| Baltimore was a terrible scenario with power failure at
| just the wrong time, but ships do regularly lose power or
| have mechanical issues and very rarely cause Amy damage.
| If a plane loses power it falls and hits whatever is
| below.
| fcsp wrote:
| I agree with you, but I would like to point out that
| airplanes without power should glide, i.e. see gimli
| glider. I do wonder though if anyone has tried with
| recent Boeing models.
| jerf wrote:
| It is endemic across society. People confuse goals with results
| all the time, and accept that inspections are scheduled or that
| some box was checked in lieu of an "actual" inspection all the
| time. It is one of the major reasons that I am always very
| skeptical of the "just throw more regulations at it" solution
| to anything; generating _paperwork_ and generating _compliance_
| are two very different things.
|
| The fundamental error of bureaucracy is to conflate paperwork
| with reality.
|
| The shocking thing is that as cynical as that may sound, things
| do in fact generally work. This suggests that the problem is
| less on the side of reality and more on the side of the
| paperwork and the bureaucracy. You see this one instance where
| the mismatch is problematic, but honestly there's immense
| mismatch everywhere, and generally, things work, because while
| in bureaucratic theory a mismatch between paperwork and reality
| is itself intrinsically a problem, in reality, it's only a
| problem if something goes wrong, and usually it doesn't.
|
| If that doesn't make sense to you, consider that there is an
| evolutionary process in play. The particular ways in which
| mismatches cause real problems tend to get squeezed out of the
| system by the very failures they create, whereas all the
| harmless mismatches can persist. And yeah, eventually _some_ of
| those "harmless" mismatches will get upgraded to "whoops less
| harmless than we thought", but they will be the exceptions, not
| the rule, and calling in advance which they will be is a lot
| harder than meets the eye.
|
| There's kind of a variant of Gell-Mann Amnesia at work here;
| $YOU know that in the specific place you work, paperwork is a
| faint echo of reality, documentation is perpetually
| underinvested in, processes are constantly diverging from the
| paper processes, the field workers in charge of managing
| paperwork generally coevolve a particular "flavor" of
| compliance that passes initial checks but may have shall we say
| "complicated" relationships with reality... but $YOU think that
| all the other paperwork in the world is being done studiously
| by superhumans with unflagging concentration, impeccable
| ethics, and presumably, about 96 hours in their day. It seems
| to be built into the human condition somehow. Somehow, we are
| all bureaucrats at heart.
| s_dev wrote:
| A lot of people defending Boeing are simply using the Trump
| playbook. Which always goes as follows: Yes it's true -- Boeing
| may be bad -- but even Airbus is worse! It must be the entire
| industry that is doing this due to increased scrutiny on Boeing
| -- drain the airline industry swamp!
|
| McDonnell-Douglas have no involvement with Airbus and Airbus
| still maintains an immaculate safety record the past few years
| relative to Boeing. Boeing alone was never the issue -- their
| partnership with McDD however has caused these issue perhaps
| the US gov should buy out their stake with a compulsory
| purchase order for the sake of national security.
|
| Boeing is only a few disasters away from a complete loss in
| confidence in the company at this point.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| No, this is relatively new. This is the result of decades of
| the quest to "dismantle the regulatory state".
|
| The book Flying Blind is a thorough account of how Boeing
| transformed from a respectable engineering shop to a business-
| school-jock-run FAA revolving door. Unabated capitalism sort of
| doesn't work when your planes are losing pieces mid-air and
| Airbus is eating your dinner.
|
| Not surprisingly, there are solid arrows leading to GE and Jack
| Welch.
| hosh wrote:
| According to the Netflix documentary on Boeing's culture and
| engineering problems, those have been there for years.
| Falsifying quality reports had been going on regularly at
| Boeing. Quality engineers were harassed out of their positions,
| and this was all lead by the executives in charge.
|
| This was the stuff that former quality engineer and
| whistleblower was in the middle of a five day deposition when
| he died to a gunshot wound. Allegedly "self-inflicted".
|
| This stuff isn't being uncovered so much that there had been
| people loudly trying to tell this to the world for years now.
| What's changed is that with the series of very public failures
| and flight safety, it's become difficult to spin this away. In
| addition, the executives may be facing felonies -- not for
| harassing whistleblowers, but in regards to flight safety.
|
| It's galling to hear them "celebrate" the whistleblower for the
| issues reported in this article. Boeing used to have a culture
| where quality was the top concern, ahead of profits. With three
| whistleblowers dead in the past several months, the optics is
| not looking good for Boeing. Maybe this is more spin.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > With three whistleblowers dead
|
| I thought it is 2...?
| hosh wrote:
| Looks like I was wrong. The Guardian article published four
| days ago reports two, not three.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Auto manufactures issue recalls fairly regularly. To me, this
| shows how easy it is to "miss" something, or let something
| questionable pass and hope for the best while knowing there is
| a mechanism in place to bring things back. Food industry also
| has recall notices frequently. Both of these industries have
| inspections not by the manufacturing company. Boeing weaseled
| their way into self inspection and certification. _OF COURSE_
| things went bad. I can think of no examples of self policing
| working, ever. They eye of Sauron is on Boeing, but it is of
| their own making.
| lenkite wrote:
| It is the result of the McDonnell Douglas Merger. McDonnell
| Douglas' focus on affordability and shareholder value replaced
| Boeing's passion for great planes.
|
| It is kinda funny - Boeing bought the company but it was
| McDonnell Douglas executives who held the rulership of the
| merged company
|
| Boeing's Downfall: A Tale of Corporate Culture, Greed, and
| Safety Compromises https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/boeings-
| downfall-tale-corpora....
| constantcrying wrote:
| This is a Boeing specific problem. Boeing does things which no
| other company would dare doing, the failure on engineering the
| MAX is simply inexcusable. The same goes for the failure to
| correctly plug a door. These things don't happen by chance,
| they can only happen if you have a deep institutional rot in
| your organization. These things don't happen by chance, because
| the systems are designed in a way such that they can never
| happen. If they do happen the system has failed.
|
| The entire airline industry knows that if you are lax on safety
| critical issues, there will be consequences. The consequences
| over the last few years have focused on Boeing, because it
| actually is a Boeing problem.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| How am I supposed to have any confidence I won't be the next
| casualty/news headline if I travel on a Boeing plane (which
| feels like the majority of planes in America)?
| kiicia wrote:
| insert meme: that's the neat part, you don't
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I sure hope the investigation finds some fault with management
| for creating an environment where falsifying records was
| considered an option.
| yareal wrote:
| I believe it's time to nationalize Boeing, remove their
| leadership and replace them with engineers.
|
| The people who run the company should be the people who know how
| to build planes. It's in our economic and industrial and defense
| interest to have a well run, high quality aerospace manufacturer.
| tbihl wrote:
| >it's time to nationalize Boeing
|
| I seem to have lost the thread between that and
|
| > The people who run the company should be the people who know
| how to build planes. It's in our economic and industrial and
| defense interest to have a well run, high quality aerospace
| manufacturer.
|
| As a reminder, the leadership competitions in bureaucracy
| select for _loyalty to the bureaucracy_ , not the bureaucracy's
| stated mission. Exceptions are rare and fleeting.
| _ache_ wrote:
| I may suggest that the link between the two statements is
| exactly to escape from the trap you talked about. If the
| leadership is elected by the state rather than by internal
| competition, you don't end up with a group of people who are
| loyal to themselves but with a meritocratic leadership.
| 6510 wrote:
| I liked the analogy with hyenas and Saint Bernard's. The
| Saint Bernard is high-maintenance, require lots of care and
| attention. They are very loyal but need to constantly be told
| what to do. The hyena is highly opportunistic, they see and
| hear everything and need to be monitored constantly or they
| run off with your company. They over-sell everything
| specially themselves. The Saint Bernard's all need their own
| pen or they cant write, if there is one pen in the building
| all of the hyenas can write.
| _ache_ wrote:
| Yeah, but actually, that nationalize part isn't something in
| trend in USA, isn't it ?
|
| Gwynne Shotwell, engineer and COO of SpaceX maybe considered
| from the job of CEO of Boeing. It seems to me more USA-ish move
| than nationalize Boeing. Don't know witch one is the best for
| Boeing in the end.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| I'd say reversing the McDonnell Douglas merging via antitrust
| enforcement would be a more promising route given the issues
| the US government has with running anything competently.
|
| If the FAA can't hire competent independent inspectors then
| just let the competitor do the inspection and tie the bonuses
| for inspectors to finding something wrong with the
| competition's planes.
| swasheck wrote:
| really excited to be flying one these in 36 hours
| buster wrote:
| Interesting read regarding "missed inspections":
| https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/01/boeing-boeing/#mrsa
| langsoul-com wrote:
| Feels like Boeing is trying to shift the blame on the individual
| instead of their incentive and corporate culture about missed
| inspections.
|
| Its not the company, but rather x individual that falsified their
| safety report. Don't worry, we'll fire them and everyone can
| forget about this. Is the feeling I'm getting.
| ActionHank wrote:
| They remember that VW "it was a lone developer" play.
| agilob wrote:
| who was charged and went to prison
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Also, that one bank employee (Kareem Serageldin) that went
| to jail over the financial crisis.
|
| Don't worry guys, we got him.
| tgv wrote:
| An utter disgrace.
| ruph123 wrote:
| Then they would have forgotten that former Volkswagen CEO
| Martin Winterkorn was indicted on fraud and conspiracy
| charges.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| That was 4 years ago, and the case has not gone to trial.
| banannaise wrote:
| It was all the fault of this one guy not doing his job. Also,
| it's just a coincidence that we fired his peers who _were_
| doing their jobs, and that the one who went to the feds was
| found dead in his car recently.
| TheCleric wrote:
| Exactly this. Could it be we told the safety inspector to do X
| inspections a day (which would be literally impossible) or be
| reprimanded? Nope, it's the person's fault for falsifying the
| inspection. No need to do a root cause analysis.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Stocker said the company would "celebrate" the employee who
| spoke up.
|
| My advice to this employee: run.
| proee wrote:
| How many organizations of similar size bamboozle regulators?
|
| When a fast food restaurant is responsible for an ecoli outbreak,
| regulars are quick to point out broken processes in the
| organization that need fixed.
|
| It's a bit of reactionary theater, where both sides are playing a
| game to show that they are not the source of the problem. If you
| are the regulator, there is plenty of motivation to show the
| world you are doing your job by pointing to missteps in a
| process. If you are the offender, there is plenty of motivation
| to concede to "some" failures in process, cut your losses, and
| show that you are improving.
|
| Everyone, if you could just submit your TPS reports on time that
| would be great.
| avgDev wrote:
| Regulators are generally blinder when it comes to huge
| organizations. Boeing is a huge DOD contractor. They have a
| direct line to people at the top of the US govt., just like
| other huge organizations.
|
| It is a big fish, and it is hard to fry.
|
| US govt. discussed shut downs during COVID with largest
| organizations in the US before they even occurred. Some knew
| they were coming before anything was announced.
|
| It isn't some kind of conspiracy either, most governments will
| "care" more about the biggest contractors and businesses in
| their nation.
| interdrift wrote:
| Always remember that one guy testifying that he saw employees
| jumping with their feet on airplane parts to insert them in
| somewhere. LOL.
| croes wrote:
| If companies are people in the US after how many crimes does a
| company get a life sentence or death penalty?
| belter wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40278391
| ziofill wrote:
| For a split second I thought how ironic there were 787 missed
| inspections.
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