The Boeing /F.A.A. case demonstrates how potentially dangerous the knowledge gap between software developers, mechanical engineers and practical users has already become.
Only highly specialised IT experts might be able to understand the complexity of crucial if unchartered interactions between different softwares installed in one piece of equipment and the mechanical parts these software programmes control.
It is more than doubtful that such experts exist at the F.A.A. or even outside the IT departments of Boeing itself.
Even more dangerous is the lack of IT literacy at top management level where the finished 'product' ultimately gets signed off!.
Maybe it is time to request that each board of directors in companies producing software heavy equipment should have an IT expert as part of the board.
8
Capitalism is a truly wonderful thing-- the only system that allows the full measure of innovation, growth, and prosperity. But it needs sufficient regulation to prevent Greed from taking it over and metastasizing like a cancer that wreaks death and destruction as it makes a few enormously rich at the expense of everyone else.
After decades of "deregulation" promoted by all the greedy corporate interests that "invest" in campaign contributions and lobbying, the American body politic now clearly suffers from Stage 4 Greed.
Greed in the pharmaceutical industry has received much of the attention, with "Pharma Bros" raising the price of old drugs to astronomical heights, diabetics dying because they can't afford the soaring price of insulin, and people suffering unknown risk from tainted blood pressure drugs as the FDA allows Big Pharma to scour the world for the cheapest sources. The entire medical-industrial complex is infested with Greed, but Big Pharma is the worst of all.
The two 737 Max disasters show that the cancer of Greed has invaded aviation as well. The FAA effectively let Boeing regulate itself, putting the Greed of marketeers' desire to sell the plane as not requiring costly training ahead of public safety.
It's increasingly clear that Greed Kills. Strong government regulation is vital to check its excesses and stop the carnage. But what will it take for our elected officials to put the country's interests ahead of donors' (and their own) Greed?
11
I disagree with Peter Goelz, the former manager of the NTSB. I want oversight ALL THE TIME.
5
There are two great lies that Americans continue to believe, even after decades of evidence to the contrary.
1) trickle down economics works
2) markets/corporations can regulate themselves.
And we can’t even blame trump for this stupidity, in the face of overwhelming evidence.
12
Yet another Obama-era policy decision that has resulted in great harm.
Wrong: read the article. It was implemented in 2005 during President Bush’s tenure.
17
These tragic airship malfunctions are just more evidence of the disasters coming from a corrupt, inept Trump and crew.
4
As an avionics engineer who works in this very industry and on embedded control systems just like MCAS.
I really wish The New York Times would be careful with the words they use.
MCAS is not a "software system".
It's not something simple like an app on a phone or the Internet.
MCAS is an example of an embedded control system.
An embedded control system comprises sensors, actuators, and software. The software receives data from sensors and gives commands to actuators based based on that data.
For instance, the human body is like this with the brain being software, eyes and ears being sensors, and hands, mouth, and feet being actuators.
I won't bother with examples of failures, but the readers are not stupid.
In the MCAS system, it may be the software to blame, but it might be the sensors or even a failed actuator.
Anyway, the Times really needs to make the distinction that MCAS is not "a software system"; it is a system in which software is one aspect of it. Saying MCAS is an "automated system" is acceptable. Saying MCAS is a "software system" is not. Please correct the article and others regarding this issue.
20
It is critically important that the FAA Inspector General's review of the 737's certification go beyond the question of the MCAS software to the reason that software was developed: a new design that significantly changed the aerodynamic profile and flying characteristics of the plane.
Boeing's expedited approval -- urgently desired because it had been beaten to market by the A320neo -- hinged on convincing the FAA there were no significant differences for pilots between this and earlier models. So, unsurprisingly, MCAS and the reason it was installed were downplayed. It is entirely likely that the root cause of this problem is the change in the plane's balance from previous models, and not the software that was designed to mimic the flying characteristics of earlier models.
Much attention has been given to whether the pilots knew how to disable MCAS. But making it easier for pilots to disable MCAS would disable the entire automated stabilizer trim function, and expose the plane and its passengers to the very aerodynamic vulnerability -- low speed stall -- that MCAS was designed to compensate for. That doesn't sound like a fix to me.
9
If there was something I needed to know to drive my car properly and safely or I would be killed, I would at least put a sticky-note on the dash.
8
Most of the previous flights have been in
USA airlines. Why have the two accidents been in non USA airline flights?
2
“People want oversight when something goes wrong,” said Peter Goelz.
No Mr. Goelz, we want oversight beforehand to make sure as little goes wrong as possible. The deregulatory zeal of the current and previous Republican administrations has brainwashed an unfortunate many into thinking that any oversight is detrimental to business, when it's negative externalities and sad events like these crashes that truly destroy lives and value.
8
@Mark Marks
The pilots were completely unaware that there was software in the plane that caused the nose to push down because they were NEVER INFORMED that this feature even existed. This brand new obviously untested software activates if just one of two sensors mounted on the aircraft's exterior says the nose is too high. They were NOT told of the existence of this software until AFTER the crash of the Lion Air plane. How is that for training? Don't blame the pilots. Blame the FAA, Boeing and Chao, who should resign immediately. Three hundred and forty six souls, children, and entire families were wiped from the face of the earth because better pilot training would have cut into Boeings bottom line. Our lives may mean nothing to them, but I owe it to those poor victims and their families to fight collusion between corporations and politicians that put innocent lives at risk anywhere in the world, and I ask Americans to join me.
11
@Carol The pilots WERE aware that there was something wrong with the automatic trim adjustment in their aircraft. They SHOULD have know how to turn that automatic adjustment off (with or without MCAS).
2
MCAS as killer app.
That used to be a mantra of the software business - Lotus, MS Office, Apple's iOS, Google Android.
But before these was HAL 8000, steady of voice and unmerciful - well, until unplugged.
Cockpit voice records from the Lion Air crash show us humans fighting a soulless computer the could not be unplugged. And losing. Then dying.
I'm sure Boeing cares about safety - as long as it doesn't interfere with the bottom line. And don't mention that bit of new software to the FAA - oh, well, it doesn't matter since our people ARE the FAA.
Perhaps we should also ground the FAA and seek a recertification of US aircraft safety practices.
Much of the historic safety culture evolved from responses to the death of Knute Rockne in an air crash caused by wing failure traced to faulty adhesives and maintenance.
Almost 90 years later this culture has deteriorated to the point it has suffered corporate takeover.
Perhaps it's time for some take-back.
3
"The 737 Max was one of the first commercial jets approved under new rules,..." I guess less government regulation isn't always a good thing.
3
I have spoken to current airline pilots who were properly trained with hours of 737 max simulators. If some knew this, every airline had an obligation of doing the same training although Boeing does not control this. The FAA relationship may be questionable but the key issue is that of unprepared pilots flying a new aircraft with new sophisticated software. Boeing seems to have underestimated the impact their new software and design would have on improperly trained pilots flying low cost airlines. In addition, they tried to sell the plane as a new version of an old model when its actually a completely different aircraft. This is a matter of poor judgment, likely fueled by financial incentives and lax oversight.
5
If the 'top FAA officials' referred to in the article who were supposedly not aware of the MCAS system were management or political administrative appointees, then it wouldn't seem surprising that they wouldn't necessarily know or be briefed on technical concerns. If the working level FAA folks at the Seattle Area Certification Office who are supposed to be kept informed by their Authorized Representative (AR) counterparts employed by Boeing didn't know, then that's a problem that needs to be addressed. If they did know and agreed to allow MCAS to be certified under a 'hazardous' safety classification with a single point of failure (the AOA sensors), then that is a much more serious problem, possibly negligence.
1
Certainly we can agree that Boeing has had a great safety record in the past. That's no longer the case with 300 lives lost. Apparently as far back as 2012 it was made clear the relationship between Boeing & the FAA was unquestionably too casual. FAA managers themselves deemed it a problem. So, where was the oversight? A symbiotic, cozy relationship between a corporation such as Boeing & the government agency assigned with overseeing aviation safety, screams of potential issues.
Lastly, this administration has been running with acting administrators everywhere. Seeing that a permanent administrator was assigned by Trump only yesterday leaves me with questions. How many other critical departments in our country getting lost in all the other chaos of this administration?
4
Why did the FAA let Boeing certify its own planes? I know the answer sounds real easy but, did the money for the inspectors who could have caught this, go to a wall in Arizona to prevent lizards from crossing into Mexico to procreate. If not now, it will happen.
4
Pilots are undervalued and our best and brightest are no longer flying because the job does not pay. These pilots are both under trained and under paid.
I am still convinced that an ex Air Force pilot like Sully, would have landed those planes safely because there was nothing mechanically wrong with them.
Just think.....when Artificial Intelligence comes online, it can reprogram itself, pilots will become obsolete.....and then the computer can crash every plane in the sky at once....
3
There really is no excuse for negligence, especially from Boeing with a proven track and safety record. However, in today's economic climate, shareholder pressures, rich executive bonuses and a fear of losing market share, complacency compromises caution when chasing billion dollar deals. No evil or malicious intent here, just overall greed. And, due to political and administrative pressures and cutbacks in the agency charged to provide oversight, it would appear the FAA have become no more than lap dog for Boeing. Come! Sit! Heel! Roll over! Play dead!
3
"As little as possible..." - -Jake Gittes, Chinatown.
Boeing wanted this iteration of the 737 to be certified without any additional pilot training versus the existing 737. They wanted the fasted pathway to $sales and shipments and that would have been slowed down by building flight simulators with this new MCAS software and then training pilots on that and other software changes. So they told the FAA it was very similar to the existing 737. Except, the two catastrophic crashes of the Max far exceed the experiences of the 767, 777 and 787...which had flight training simulators. Boeing took a shortcut and the FAA wasn’t competent enough to see the Boeing strategy.
5
The software is not the main issue here. It's a 50+ old airplane concept with huge new fan engines mounted in a different position.
It's like you put a 300 horsepower engine in a 60ies Volkswagen Beetle. You will have some issues.
My guess is that this 737 Max versions days are over.
5
Many of the FAA "Regulators" are the manufacture's Staff and Employees are involved in green lighting the plane.
What could possibly go wrong?
4
The problem seems to be one of FAA not updating their certification processes to include the testing and analysis of software. Just like in automobiles, more control and components of aircraft are becoming electronic and software related to push the boundaries and limitations of physical hardware alone.
Boeing did meet the FAA guidelines, but the problem is that the FAA hasn't kept its guidelines up with the introduction of software technology in critical operations systems. We need to bring more software engineers into the FAA certification process, not just electrical and mechanical engineers as was the case for past aircraft certifications.
Questions the FAA didn't have to ask even a couple years ago was things like
"Can the aircraft be hacked remotely?"
"Could future drones fly and attach themselves to aircraft during takeoff or landing and hijack or interfere with critical electronic and on-board computer systems?"
These are questions we thought only possible in Star Trek, but these technologies exist today. Is the FAA really ready and staffed to deal with addressing these issues when certifying aircraft?
2
Boeing is certified by the FAA with " Organizational Design Authorization" (ODA). They are heavily involved beyond "assisting" the FAA in certifying their own aircraft and determining how that is done. It seems reasonably clear, if this reporting is correct, that Boeing was not totally forthcoming with the level of changes it had made to the basic aircraft and that the FAA did not dive deeply into what should have been its business.
The FAA has always had private sector designees for some functions. Mechanic and pilot examiners who can certify maintainers and flight crews and flight surgeons who can certify fitness to flyare old examples.
ODA is a bit newer and probably arose from the very thing that may be the root cause of these accidents. Increasing complexity of newer, larger aircraft and the inordinate amount of time and money it takes the government to do the certification on their own. It is not a bad idea, just one that opens the whole process to conflicts with investor/company money, and perhaps just as important, competition with other manufacturers to get the product to market as soon as possible.
The question is what did the FAA really do to approve this aircraft modification and how much did they rely on Boeing being ODA certified. I would not want to be the head of the ACO ( FAA Aircraft Certification Office) responsible for this one.
4
It is important to note when it came to organizations like the FAA and OSHA Republicans said industry can self police themselves.
The deliberate burning down of government agencies at the hands of Republican administrations will continue to prove deadly in the coming years. We see it in other areas such coal mining and transportation.
6
the plane was approved under a democratic president.
1
Why did Brazilian regulators identify MCAS as a potential problem and require additional training materials for its pilots when no other regulatory agency in the world did? Are Brazilian regulators just more realistic about the capabilities (required training and experience) of their pilots than regulators in other developing nations, e.g., China, which basically conceded in a statement on the day it grounded the MAX planes that it did not trust its pilots to respond appropriately to an MCAS-created emergency.
7
Something is wrong with a process that worked well for decades and led to an impressive safety record.
In the case of Lion Air, pressure to make money led to flying a plane that should never have been allowed to take off.
In the case of Boeing and the FAA, pressure to be competitive led to bad management and safety decisions.
All the players need to review the approval and certification procedures and make meaningful changes.
And Boeing should scrap the Max, start over, and build a safe plane that doesn't require software to fix an unstable design.
5
"...the company races to come up with a fix to the software."
This pretty much tells it all. Money over safety. Ignorance over knowledge.
Software repair and release is a process that demands time-consuming, rigorous methodology and review and testing to complete successfully. It is extremely prone to "fix one problem, but create others".
I managed computer system development for over a decade, from hardware-affixed firmware, input/output hardware customization, operating systems and user applications.
It is hard to explain in few words, but software demands a team of creators. Each works together on some elements, but often only in their own area. Another team does other elements.
No doubt the MCAS system had a dedicated group of software engineers. But the software that interacted with their software had other creators. The best way to put it is that "there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip". Functioning correctly is more than the modules being written correctly -- it's how they pass information between them and how faults are handled when detected.
The complexity of the development, integration and testing can become mind-numbing. Excuse me, not "can become", it is mind-numbing.
Top this off with the fact that the operating system is "real time" -- it connects directly to hardware which must constantly be controlled into the exact right state. Or disaster can occur.
Rushing this is a road map to yet another disaster.
7
Government regulation is always evil. The free market will work to incentivize safety. After a few dozen crashes and a couple of thousand deaths, people will simply refuse to fly these unsafe airplanes. Problem solved. OK, do I get my ticket punched to the federalist society seminar yet?
10
You will will a keynote speaker at CPAC next year.
2
Cut regulation! Cut regulation! I’d like to know, once again, how much have Sen McConnell and Mrs Chao McConnell received in contributions and other bribes (all those other politicians too!!) to allow corporations like Boeing to self-regulate.
7
The story's missing the most important fact: that he Seattle Times had it all two days earlier http://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/
7
Let us ponder this: "... the scrutiny comes as the FAA nears its 15th month of waiting for President Donald Trump to nominate a permanent leader." ~ When you have so many critical agencies run at this time by temporary appointees from the crony good old boy network with both self-interests that come First, as well as biases against regulation and oversight and in many cases limited or negligible experience or background history in running those agencies ... well; planes are gonna fall out of the sky.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/18/air-disasters-faa-boeing-737-1279992
8
A new complex system with this level of impact should have been mandatory prerequisite training for anyone ever thinking of setting foot in the cockpit. And once it was known what caused the first crash, how does not every pilot know how to handle this situation? Where is the disconnect?
3
While Boeing may, indeed, be concerned with safety, they are also concerned with profits, Airbus and meeting delivery deadlines - all of which cause rushing safety testing results.. That the FAA allowed Boeing to certify the safety of its own aircraft may have more to do with budget cuts than FAA incompetence. Look to congress and the president for answers to the safety of the Boeing 737MAX.
4
The 'collusion' between Boeing and the FAA allowed new important software/computerized systems to be installed without any fore knowledge to the relevant governing authority, in this case the FAA. Understood. But to me this only highlights the real (and deadly) root of this problem: the compelling need to automate absolutely EVERYTHING. Boeing didn't have to build in something called the MCAS. All they would need are two (or more) reliable sensors to give the pilots indications of stall conditions and let the pilots make the adjustments themselves. Simply put, allow pilots to fly the airplane. I'd rather trust two pilots than a misunderstood slice of code.
4
The genesis of this problem was Boeing's desire to produce a new version of the 737 that did not require retraining and recertification of 737 pilots. Retraining is a costly process, and omitting that cost was seen as an important competitive sales advantage. To avoid the retraining requirement, it appears that Boeing minimized critical changes to both pilots and regulators.
7
I wonder how many people die each year as a result of the pharma industry-beholden FDA's drug "approval" process? Certainly many multiples of those killed in the two 737 Max crashes, but obviously less dramatic and thus more easily hidden. It all comes down to modern America's main cultural value, as supported by government: the abject greed of corporations and the 1%.
7
Did all the people cheerleading the reduction of regulations stop to think what the regulations were impacting?
11
The airline industry need to sit down with more mature industries try to catch up with 21th century. In healthcare in Europe all new digital modules needs to go through a rigorous process to attain CE marking approval. The airlines seems to be content checking the fuselage and kicking the tyres.
4
I’ll bet the FAA declined to comment. Because they are now nothing more but a shadow of their former self. No longer an independent regulator of the airline industry, the FAA is now populated with Boeing employees. How in the world can that conflict of interest be ignored or justified? It can’t and that’s the problem. I’m beyond tired of politicians looking us straight in the eye and telling us there’s nothing wrong with industries that ‘self-regulate.’ It’s an oxymoron and is completely opposite of what regulators are supposed to be. Will we ever learn or are we doomed to repeat these mistakes of history?
9
This is scary. It’s like the fox has been named guardian of the henhouse. I have no doubt that Boeing views safety as their top concern but it’s simply not realistic to have a Company fully review itself. They will not demand the answers of themselves that outsiders would. That’s reality. These jets should be grounded and an independent certification agency - not an extension of Boeing review this planes ok to fly.
6
There was a single point of potential failure with no redundancies to ensure the data that would potentially trigger the MCAS was in fact accurate. Therefore, when erroneous data was sent to the plane's software system by the angle of attack sensor, the software responded correctly (as according to the original design).
The problem here is not the software. The problem here was the lack of redundancy in the original hardware design.
Essentially, the hardware engineers played a little too fast and loose with their design with the reasoning that the software would be able to "handle it".
Sadly, this happens more and more as software becomes more and more thought of as a jack of all fixes even when what needs to be fixed is poor design from the start.
5
Government regulations protect the physical and economic health of workers, consumers and the general public. Deregulation allows for more profit of business at the cost of the health and safety of some people. Those who believe in deregulation need to realize what they stand for.
6
Tighter but reasonable FAA safety regulations appear to Republicans to be too much like Socialism. And you know what Trumpsters think of that terrible, left wing S word.
6
"I only hire the best people" The Stable Genius.
6
No country in their right mind would trust the US after electing trump.
9
They are not “job killing regulations “. They are “ life saving regulations “.
6
For all those castigating Boeing, the FAA, the DOA, Trump and corporations :
Stop flying. Stop Now.
The next time you board a commercial airline, you are aiding and abetting the very corruption you are ranting and railing against.
The corruption of this system will not stop until this corrupt system is replaced.
Stop encouraging corruption by funding it. You are complicit.
Stop polluting the planet with toxic contrails.
Start walking the walk.
3
Classis case of the fox guarding the chicken coop.
3
TSA Versus FAA
Who is making it safer to fly ?
Mrs Mitch Mcconnell as Secretary of
NTSB ?
What qualifications does one need really to have such a vital position in USA ?
3
I believe we join the rest of the World in our total lack of respect and trust in the FAA. The FAA was once an agency the World looked up. This is no longer the case under the present Administration.
5
@Philip W
Look at the timeline in the article. This started in the last decade.
“Racing” to come up with a software fix is never a good idea. Think “unintended” or “unforeseen” consequences.
2
I feel sorry for Mrs. Elaine McConnell. She has worked desperately during the last 2+ years to remain silently invisible and out of the public eye. Her only goal is to be a good obedient go-between for her family business & for her husband with Trump. She had zero intention of getting in the line of fire by actually trying to work for the public or by attempting to do something beneficial for this, her (adopted) country. And look what has happened to the poor girl. The limelight is now shining on her & she is being forced to pretend to take some responsibility. Bummer.
10
Boeing’s Max 8 catastrophe will probably go down as the first globally-recognised case study of death by automation.
Automation has the ability to transform life on the planet radically for the better. It will reduce the number of hours’ work needed to produce the necessities of life for the human race, in a way no previous technological revolution ever did, deliver on the promise that increased productivity brings increased leisure time.
In future we will see the rise of complex, all-embracing automated systems. Human decisions will move away from the present of practice, impossible to predict the shape it will assume.
It’s a shivering thought of the catastrophic failure of a city transport system, or energy grid, or entire health service were ever to shut the controlling humans out of the decision loop, as the MCAS system did on the doomed planes.
Though they will fail rarely, failures will be a spectacular Black Swan event. Black swan theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
• The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
• The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
• The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs.
4
The credibility of our country appears to have been sacrificed for political expediency- by both political parties
Profits first and foremost....hiding behind the guise of jobs
Regulation regulation regulation
Corporate greed demands a 180
Before permanent damage is done
4
Look, to Trump and all of his fans, no human life is worth risking a loss of money. Lives are cheap but dollars are irreplaceable to them. Yes, they have it turned around.
I have run into not a few people who really have a serious self esteem issue. They think that effective leaders are only those who kill people who challenge them and take whatever they can grab for themselves. They really don’t think that decent and generous people are strong leaders. That’s why they support Trump, he is constrained by nothing except his habitual incompetence but he projects confidence and distain for ethical leadership.
6
Ain't deregulation grand?
11
Someone at the NY Times should interview the airworthiness authorities in Brazil. They did not accept Boeing's assertions that some additional training was not required. Brazil is not a novice in these matters.
I take that back. Someone has interviewed them, USA Today of all people.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/15/737-max-8-software-scrutinized-after-2-fatal-crashes-training-regulation-boeing/3166679002/
8
@Bill 1940
The pilot of the Ethiopian airliner knew about that new system and how to deal with its malfunction, yet it still went down. There is more to this than Boeing is saying.
3
What is your reference in saying the Ethiopian airline knew the problem and the fix?
1
@one-eighty I think you mean "should have known"...
I agree that there wasn’t a nefarious plot by Boeing. Unfortunately, even as a layperson, it’s obvious that cobbeling together new technology on an old design should have raised questions. After the Lion Air, one would think it wouldn’t happen again. This doesn’t seem that complex looking at it from the outside. Changing the engine placement and the more powerful engines required a design change, not a software fix.
3
@Todd, remember back in high school the boys took stock Cameros, added headers, superchargers and fat rear drag slicks and drove them like daredevils? I guess those boys grew up.
2
Of course, with the loosened regulations (in all domains) of the present Administration the world is starting to doubt the reliability of U.S. regulatory bodies.
Countries do not trust nor believe what Trump says or does. Can't differentiate whether policies are valid.
What do we expect?
2
@JB, after Clinton deregulated the banks you’d think we’d have learned a lesson or two on the subject.
2
Not a good advertisement for the GOP penchant for "cutting regulations." While this problem seems mostly to be about Boeing not wanting to require additional training for pilots, which would add to the cost, the general enthusiasm for industry self regulation, and putting industry lobbyists or executive in charge of government agencies needs to be stopped.
7
What begs an answer here, from an engineering safety point of view looks pretty obvious, but no one seems to ask the question. Disconnecting a faulty or unpredictably running MCAS will return the aircraft to an unpredictable and potentially stalling flight state. Where is the failsafe here? The system fails to a potentially unsafe mode. Which engineering team decided this is a good approach?
5
The MCAS system is engaging when there is no problem. Disabling it returns the aircraft to a state that the pilots are well trained to handle, instead of taking control out of their hands.
World wake up!! The U.S. is no longer the leader in safe anything!! Don't waste your money investing in us, it's all a sham!!
2
Dear World,
Sorry but its your own damn fault.
You trusted chao, a trump cabinet appointee, against all common sense and logic.
She's married to mitch mcconnell and you still trusted her?
At least learn from your mistake and realize koch republicans are an amoral ruined people.
6
The FAA serves two purposes which can produce contradictory policies. It regulates the practical reality of safe and orderly commercial aviation. It promotes commercial aviation. When safety requires burdensome costs it produces a disincentive to commercial aviation. The issue of regulated industries capturing regulatory agencies is highly likely under such circumstances. It has clearly occurred in this case.
Given Trump’s ineptitude as a President representing all of the people, correcting this is on the Congress, the courts, and the voters.
2
The core problem is that Boeing "upgraded" a decade old design never designed for such large engines. Even after lengthening the landing gear by 20 cm, the engines wound up to far forward of the wings
The result : A plane with unsafe , designed in -flying characteristics,
The software was patch to correct for the aeronautical deficiency
Passenger planes need to be designed to have inherently stable flight characteristics during take off
Boeing violated that principle
The design should never have been verified
5
The hype surrounding "artificial intelligence" is all the rage these days. The presumed reason for the recent Boeing disasters (and which has indeed been the cause of some earlier passenger jet crashes) is a clear-cut example of Artificial Intelligence and should be credited accordingly.
5
Self regulation = no regulation.
Simple as that.
4
I am sure all these post-disaster developments and explanations are a great comfort to the hundreds of people who lost loved ones in the two crashes. But something is definitely smelly here, and I have no doubt whatsoever that Boeing's bottom line had a lot to do with it.
If it's true that an investigation of the Lion Air crash was delayed during the trump government shutdown, then the so-called president has blood on his tiny hands in addition to his countless other defects.
2
@Scarlett...What do mean "If it's true..."? Of course it's true. You read it right here in The New York Times.
1
Self-regulation... what could go wrong?!
"For regulators, outsourcing part of the review process was a way to stretch their resources. For American plane manufacturers like Boeing, it was critical for speeding up the regulatory process, as they try to compete with foreign rivals."
..once again, safety was compromised for the sake of sales,a.k.a profit.
4
In addition to the already stated lines of inquiry, are the safety and training records of those airlines and pilots included? If the objective is to learn what caused the crashes and fix those issues, shouldn't all relevant factors be considered?
3
Can the victims families sue the regulators who did not regulate? Whomever was in charge of the safety organization that should have at the very least listened to the pilots complaints is culpable almost as much as Boeing.
4
@georgiadem
Let's hope they can, this needs to be a "Teaching Moment" for both Boeing and especially the FAA.
This should make us look hard at any self-regulating, de-regulation or whatever they may call the loosening of eyes on critical details.
Are you listening EPA, Dept of the Interior, HHS, etc?
1
When automated flight control systems misbehave, the first action any pilot would instinctively make is to disconnect the system?
How is that MCAS continues controlling the horizontal stabilizer with the autopilot off?
7
@Gimme Shelter Auto Pilot and Auto Trim are not the same thing.
2
Elaine Chao's husband, Mitch McConnell, received $250,000 from Boeing for his senate fund. Of course, Ms. Chao wants no regulation of Boeing nor training for pilots, but just wants the money to keep flowing in.
"The F.A.A., in its approval of the plane, did not require training on the software, a sign that regulators did not see the system as critical for pilots to understand. Nor did the F.A.A. require pilots who could fly the predecessor 737 to train on a simulator in order to fly the Max. Most pilots did not know about MCAS until after the Lion Air crash."
7
Dear Former Lehman Brothers Executives,
You guys should really talk to the executives over at Boeing and to McConnell's wife and to the rest of the amoral GOP and tell them profit at all costs will eventually kill your company and your political party.
7
All the focus on what Boeing and/or the FAA did, or did not do brings me to the Feb 5 NY Times article on the Lion Air crash that indicated if the pilots had known to operate the two “stabilizer trim cutout” switches they could have taken control of the stabilizers “manually in an effort to keep the plane from pitching up or down.”
What I’m left with, if this was known to the Times for the Feb 5 article, was it known to the Ethiopia pilots, and if not, why not?
I not defending Boeing or the FAA, but when a possible solution is known, it should have been distributed to any pilot flying these planes.
3
@BobE
According to the Ethiopian authorities, the pilot did know about MCAS and how to deactivate it.
But here's the thing: the reason MCAS is there is that the MAX has critically different behavior from previous 737s in certain flight envelopes (takeoff, eg). Turning it off and relying on years of 737 experience is asking for a disaster -- that's the whole point of MCAS, to make the MAX behave like earlier 737s. If you haven't been checked on a MAX with MCAS turned off -- and a major selling point for the MAX is that the pilots did not need extensive retraining -- you're not qualified to fly it with it off. Turning MCAS off is not a viable solution -- training with it off is. But that costs money, which tempt customers to go with the A320neo.
BTW, don't confuse MCAS with the autopilot, which some US pilots mentioned having to turn off. Though maybe that's worth a look at as well.
3
This is Boeing trying to save money by avoiding training pilots. This is the FAA saying, "That is fine with us." It gives a whole new meaning to the words "Homeland Security".
5
For a much more detailed description see this article from the Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/
How can the FAA not routinely review all software? To say that officials were “unaware” shirks responsibility for good management procedures.
6
I’ve worked for corporate law firms, whose clients are world class, like Boeing. My wager is there will be minute lawyer-inserted language within Boeing’s contracts which will will let be Boeing off the hook for downplaying the significance of the revision to the aircraft. I believe Boeing’s and their attorneys’ actions are negligent homicide and someone should go to jail. I feel so terrible for the hundreds of innocent lives lost due to corporate greed. If no one goes to jail or loses his or her job and/or stock option and bonuses, it only shows what is more important to our culture than public safety.
9
Boeing should pay some kind of reparations to the families of the victims of these two flights.
New planes, new systems that do not allow pilots to override automated controls--delivered without mandatory training--are unusual and Boeing should acknowledge this by giving of their great wealth to the families of innocent victims.
I say this as one born and raised in Seattle to a father who worked at Boeing, and as one who respects Boeing and would like for the company to redeem that name.
4
The pilot of Lion Air was reading through the manual desperately trying to find out how to stop the plane from diving, while the copilot flew the plane. This leaves me wondering, is there no way to turn off the auto pilot such as there is with the cruise control on an automobile? This sounds like HAL in 2001 Space Odyssey.
5
One of the issues is the concept of "substantially similar" to a previously approved model. This is also the standard in the medical device industry. But that concept can be gamed: not as intentional negligence, but as a way of expediting an approval process when you do not think your design changes need a second look by a government agency. In this case, changing the aerodynamics of the plane should have flagged a more extensive review than the "substantially similar" template.
3
Part of the politics of coziness. In all of the government agencies: lobbyists, past executives, CEOs, employees of... are the foxes with the keys to the hen house of the public interest and now basic safety.
The fact that the FAA is Boeing, that the NTSB is an airline, that DOT is the apologist for the industry, is not shocking considering the norm of profit over safety. Companies whining about foreign competition, begging for the leg up, the pass-through, the short cut, speed, speed, speed to market. The car industry merely dooms our planet earth by their cheating. The airline/producers are not at all concerned about their product's safety. Unimportant and unprovable, and the fault of 3rd world pilots. The new tobacco industry: stonewalling, lying, cheating, hiding, making America great for industry profits. Where is the Ralph Nader of today? Character assassinated, silenced, rubbed out as in Morton Thiokol? Americans are the patsies of the world, captive rodents in a squirrel cage of profit engines, unable to demand basic rights by their own bought legislators... and now the president of greed in office.
10
@live now, you'll be a long time dead
Stop consuming products of evil corporations.
Stop now.
3
I think we begin to see more of the Trump dereliction of his duty as president in the Oval Office.
Trump had the time to fire up a twitter storms over the weekend included Senator McCain who passed away 8 months ago. He is watching Fox News to inquire about the absence of one of the favorite program Judge Jeanne Pirro. But he does not care or have the time to fill the rest {1/3} of top governmental positions.
He just nominated Mr. Dickson who is a retired Delta Air pilot on March 19 to be the head of FAA in which the position is vacant since Jan 2018. Why now ? Is it because two brand new 737 MAX 8 crashes ?
As I am typing this comment, Trump continues to have his Twitter feud with Mr. Conway. Do we really think with all the adults out there, this is the only way to run the most powerful country in the World ?
13
"..an aerospace giant with a strong safety record."
"..The 737 Max was one of the first commercial jets approved under new rules, which delegated more authority to Boeing than had been the case when most previous planes were certified. "
It seems that the previous rules and regulations had something to do with the previous 'strong safety record'
15
Well great, just fix the problem, I have a plane to catch. Undoubtedly after this one will never crash again.
3
Boeing cares just as much - or more - about safety as does the FAA and the flying public.
The suggestions that they don’t are ridiculous on their face.
Nothing is worse for their business than lost lives.
Boeing has delivered 10’s of thousands of aircraft and along with many other elements has created a remarkably safe - probably the safest- mode of transportation.
Still, even with the best enginnering and oversight and testing there is always the very small risk that a systematic problem will make it through that gauntlet.
Keep in mind the pilots in both cases could have deactivated the MCAS system and should have known how to do so.
Please stop the ridiculous comment suggesting gross incompetence or worse that Boeing intentionally sought certification of an unsafe plane.
55
@Mark Marks
Methinks greed is the root of this particular problem.
There were too many red flags.
The whole design of the 737 Max was based on ill conceived “shortcuts”.
45
@Mark Marks ~
"...the pilots in both cases could have deactivated the MCAS system and should have known how to do so."
So the question remains, why weren't the pilots sufficiently trained in the use/deactivation of the MCAS?
I agree with you that Boeing would not intentionally design an unsafe aircraft. But skimping on training has proven deadly.
87
@Mark Marks
"Keep in mind the pilots in both cases could have deactivated the MCAS system and should have known how to do so. "
How do you (de)activate something you do not know exists?
82
This is what happens when greed and corruption permeate our government.
Our “representatives” need to be investigated and prosecuted for their malfeasance.
Too many have been working against the people that they are supposed to serve to benefit themselves.
That is a crime, and it will continue as long as they can get away with it.
6
How does Chao sleep at night knowing that she sentenced 300 human beings to fiery death just because Boeing donated $1/4 million dollars to her husband's campaign?
Psst, stuff like this is the reason we still fly over.
5
These two
"The Boeing analysis “, understated the power of the new flight control system,” the Seattle Times article said. “When the planes later entered service, mcas was capable of moving the tail more than four times farther than was stated in the initial safety analysis document.” The Boeing analysis also “failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded, thereby missing the potential impact of the system repeatedly pushing the airplane’s nose downward.”
That explains why the plane was "porpoising"... the MCAS was cutting in and out of automated and manual operation every 5 seconds.
“Federal prosecutors and Department of Transportation officials are scrutinizing the development of Boeing Co.’s 737 MAX jetliners,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. “A grand jury in Washington, D.C., issued a broad subpoena dated March 11 to at least one person involved in the 737 MAX’s development, seeking related documents, including correspondence, emails and other messages,” a source told the paper.
Misrepresented functionality of the MCAS, when presented at all, tied to the existence of a grand jury issuing subpoenas looking for any criminal aspects to the development and application of the MCAS is stunning by any measure.
4
We flew coast to coast on Air Max 737 800s on the last day before they were grounded by the FAA. Not a happy flight in any way, especially since the weather was bumpy.
As we got off the plane, I asked the pilot what he thought of flying that plane, given the ban in Europe etc. He looked caught off guard and uncomfortable, and said "It flies". No enthusiasm there at all.
Frankly, the expression on his face said it all.
8
I'm quoting from the article:
“With the worldwide market shifting to Asia and the developing world, it would be detrimental to our competitiveness if foreign manufacturers are able to move improved products into the marketplace more quickly,” he said in prepared testimony for a congressional hearing.
Think about that statement and the concept of safety in the air. If foreign airplane competitors can manufacture and certify as safe commercial aircraft that compete with Boeing, why is any airline company flying Boeing planes? Why is the F.A.A. encouraging the short-cutting of the certification process to enable Boeing to sell more unsafe, or at least, poorly tested and certified planes, just so Boeing can sell more questionable planes, and make more money, to pay more lobbyists to undermine regulation? Is "buy American" more important than safety? I guess it is ...
4
Wait, so you're telling me that letting for-profit companies decide on their own whether their products are safe to test on consumers is a bad idea? No way!
In all seriousness though: this is exactly why "software engineers" aren't engineers. Real engineering has testing requirement, industry standards, and certifications. Software "engineers" often go to 6 months of unregulated, un-certified coding camps. Even those of us that go to traditional schools have no real oversight. We get to make planes that crash, x-ray machines that over-radiate, and insecure credit card storage, without any sort of consequence at all.
9
The more and more I read about the 737 MAX and it's design, the less concerned about the plane and it's design I get. I disagree with most that comment - the plane is safe. The MCAS makes all of the sense in the world given that Boeing wanted to recycle a 50 year old design to compete. Arguing that they should have done this is neither here nor there, it is not relevant. When experienced pilots are aware of the MCAS and how to handle it, they can disable it, as happened on a Lion Air flight before another of their planes crashed. Does Boeing have responsibility for either poorly communicating or not communicating the MCAS to Airlines/Pilots? Yes. Does the FAA seem to have a somewhat incestuous relationship with Boeing? Yes. Fund the FAA properly so they can do their job. Force Boeing to complete their updates, use multiple AoA sensors (as they should have) and update training. When the AoA sensor defect (that is what it is, not a mistake, a defect) is resolved, I have no hesitations about flying on a 737 MAX jet. Since many US based airlines ordered these planes with a secondary warning on the AoA sensor, I have no real concerns, there is forethought from Airlines and I have no doubt Pilots will be further trained on this given the publicity. Now, will the passenger seats be comfortable and how I can get my knees out of the set in front of me will be another issue all together.
4
At one point in my career, my office was adjacent to the corporate executive who signed off on the FAA airworthiness certificates for jet engines we were shipping to boeing.
I can tell you there was a very real division of motivation and agenda between that executive and the engineers and technicians beneath him.
There wasn't anything the mechanics, electricians, electronic technicians, and engineers wouldn't have done to put out a safe product in a responsible manner.
The executives were another matter. They'd all been to some version of an MBA program, and consistently made gambling decisions which put the entire organization and its customers at risk in the misguided interest of protecting their stock options.
They were and are heartily encouraged to gamble with the latest and greatest short term empirical data with little to no vision for the ten and twenty year readiness and health of the organization.
It's been a long time coming, but Wall Streets MBA trained corps of managers have truly killed the goose which laid the golden egg in America, and I'm not the only person to say so.
Their macro economic education is lacking and they are shortsighted in the extreme and capable of being out maneuvered on the battlefield of business in a few long term moves. And it's happening. You're watching it.
All your major corporations and institutions are at risk for the same forces and influences, and it and they are not ever going to reign in the greed.
Even when it kills.
14
Like medical devices and other products regulated by the U.S. Government, in most cases the F.A.A. doesn't do testing on the aircraft. It mandates that the manufacturer do the testing and report the results to them. If test results are fudged or fabricated, then it becomes an issue of fraud. To my knowledge, there is no evidence of fraud in the 737 MAX software validation.
There are only two reasons for poor quality in a software system: lack of knowledge or lack of attention. All of the evidence so far suggests a lack of knowledge about the cause of this problem.
2
Boing's time to market pressure has created a business opportunity for the local coffin makers. Is Boeing going to ask for their cut?
4
@observer, it should be easy to recognize Boeing’s next new aircraft as it will no doubt come with a long fuse or timing detonator strapped to it.
1
Boeing Executives had a difficult tightrope to walk here.
They had to figure out how many humans could die in one of their poorly Trump's FAA inspected deathtraps before the brand took a hit.
Apparently that number was right around 300.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall when Boeing's salespeople try to sell their next generation of poorly inspected, slashed to the bone, death traps.
Ain't GOP deregulation grand?!?!
13
Boeing claim “the 737 Max was certified in accordance with the identical F.A.A. requirements and processes that have governed certification of all previous new airplanes and derivatives.” ALL? That’s a downright lie. It’s only in recent 2-3 years that the FAA has offloaded responsibility for certification assessments to Boeing employees. This of course is almost a criminal act by the government and its hardly surprising the wife of the venal Mitch McConnel is implicated in all this. And the Republicans deride socialism! Well if a socialist administration were running the FAA and not a bunch of greedy capitalists beholden to Boeing for cash contributions to keep them in office, then over 600 human beings who died because of Boeing’s greed would still be alive today.
9
Wall Street self regulation = market crash. Commercial aviation self regulation = airplane crash. What's next Republicans?
15
The FAA failed miserably and we have ALL lost faith in it. What was once looked upon with admiration throughout the world is no longer trusted.
5
MCAS's single point of failure design (single sensor input) is certainly a problem, but most commenters are dismissive of what, to my eyes, is the most obvious and most serious problem: poor pilot training in non-western countries. While Boeing's reliance on a single mechanical sensor to have a plane decide it was about to stall seems a poor choice at best--and something that should've been flagged in a standard FMEA--the pilots who apparently were not sufficiently trained to simply switch off an obviously malfunctioning trim system (literally a single switch) are the real reason those planes crashed. The Lion Air plane is a case in point as the very same malfunctioning aircraft was saved by an off-duty pilot flipping the trim motor power switch off--as ALL 737 pilots, MAX and otherwise, are trained to do--on the plane's previous flight. It's tragic and inconceivable why two flight crews chose to fight a malfunctioning system for extended periods of time (and eventually into the ground) without thinking to simply turn it off. In an era when planes can literally fly and even land themselves we must remember that pilots are the ultimate backup safety system (as machines can and will occasionally break, even when perfectly designed).
5
It’s not that simple. Pilots were not even told the MCAS system exists. An MCAS failure does to look the same as a stabilizer trim runaway. Engaging the stabilizer trim cutout switch is standard emergency procedure for a stabilizer trim runaway; but pilots had no idea what they were dealing with in the Lion Air accident. Again, they did not even know MCAS existed. This goes for US pilots and pilots from other countries.
3
@Lime With respect, I'm afraid it is that simple. MCAS employs the stabilizer trim to adjust pitch and, while active, the trim wheels would've been spinning like mad--noisy, and obvious. While I agree that all pilots should have been informed of the new MCAS software (and the Ethiopian Air pilots were certainly aware of it), that doesn't change the fact that switching-off the trim motors was the correct and trained-for corrective action when the trim system is clearly malfunctioning.
4
Most of the comments fall into the 'fox guarding the henhouse' category. But the expertise to review these systems demands a holistic approach which very few have. I imagine that whoever designed the MCAS software, if indeed that is the problem, did it well and efficiently within whatever specs were provided. I'm sure it was tested again and again by responsible engineers at Boeing to make sure it worked as intended.
Maybe for a system with worldwide applications we need an international accrediting system: there is no reason that engineers from the US, Europe, China, Russia - wherever - could not get together and defer their home team biases. I like the old Mercedes ad: they never enforced the patent on crumple-zone technology. It can be done. When you have a system which is rife with political pressure and lobbyists then there will be people whose eyes are not solely on the safety ball.
3
@Andrew
a safety feature with a single point of failure that can bring the plane down? My guess that their design reviews and test plan might not have been thorough enough.
7
@observer. That's pretty much my point. The specs for the software are the problem, not the software itself which was probably tested to see if it functioned as designed.
Google 'FAA lobbyists.' You find a list of perhaps 200 lobbying companies who go to FAA. Why? Read the FAA mission statement and it's basically to ensure the safety of air transportation within the US. I don't know anyone who would disagree with that. There is no need for high priced lobbyists - and we all pay for them somehow - to enter the FAA doors.
2
I always thought that functional redundancy originated with aircraft manufacturers.
3
The Crash of '29. The almost-crash of '08. Mega-mergers. Hostile take-overs. Hedge funds. Monopolies. And yet it continues--corporate 'self-regulation'--which will be the death of us all.
9
Not only is the American flying public at unnecessary risk due to a too cozy relationship between government and industry, the flying public throughout the world are too. Equally at jeopardy due to this folly is one of the last great manufacturing industries in this country.
In aviation manufacturing, credibility is as important as reliability. If the world loses faith in the integrity of Boings ability to build safe aircraft, buyers will quickly switch their attention to Europe and heaven forbid, yes China!
More winning - MAGA style!
10
This loss of respect for an American foundational industry - air craft - will be devastating and hard to improve for decades to come.
This is what happens when you put greedy business schoolers in charge who put money before all else, and then have them overseen by know-nothing political appointments like Mitch McDonnell's wife and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.
It's time for America to return to electing know-hows and not know-nothings.
16
Question for Boeing - Are all 737 MAX 8 airplanes running the same version of the MCAS software? Different versions could help explain the safety record of the airplane in North America versus Africa and Asia.
The software is all the same. The difference here between the US and Indonesia/Africa would be the the airlines’ maintenance processes. In the Lion Air example, your large US airlines would have treated an Angle of Attack (AOA) Sensor failure way more seriously. That aircraft would not fly again until it was definitively repaired. That did happen with Lion Air. The AOA sensor was written up on two previous flights I believe.
4
To allow Boeing to certify and accredit their own systems/planes is for the FAA to acknowledge explicitly that it is incompetent, understaffed, too bureaucratic to perform its most basic functions, or some combination of those. Instead of fixing problems with government agencies, politicians are eager to abandon them and replace them with corporations.
9
The same Elaine Chao who testified before Congress on June 7, 2017 that the Trump administration's proposal to privatize the FAA's Air Traffic Control Organization will increase safety and reduce the "tardiness" of the implementation of technological advances?
20
This is what happens when you put industry shills in charge of entities that exist to regulate industry. The EPA is headed by fossil fuel lobbyists. Rick Perry (Texas oilman) head of the Dept of Energy? The consumer protection bureau put in place after the 2006 crash just died as trump planned. So now we begin to reap that which we sowed with trump's 'election'.
Fun fact: the EPA head has just agreed with the metals industry that since mercury occurs naturally, humans NEED mercury in our water and diets! Mercury pollution is good for us, thank you dearleader!
IN FACT, Scott Pruitt lobbied overseas for the oil and gas industry while our taxes paid him to protect us from those powerful, wealthy polluters. I don't care what you think about liberal lefty environmental issues, but I think we could ALL agree that putting foxes in charge of hens and telling us it's proven to be best for hens is, um, a lie.
Let's see. How would trump voters react if Alexandria Cortez were make chairwoman of the republican national party? How about Bernie Sanders for head of the 'religious liberty' wing of the administration? This is fun! We'll appoint an extremist vegan to head the Dept of Agriculture!
Do you see the idiocy of putting sycophants (or a president's golf caddy) in positions of power? Planes crash, people die, mercury levels rise and children suffer, YOUR city is flooded by coal sludge... If Des Moines, Iowa's water becomes undrinkable, it might alarm trumpists.
8
Self-regulation makes as much sense as self-deportation.
10
We have seen GM, Honda, Tanaka, etc all hide safety issues because of lax outside inspections. They allowed defective or inappropriate products into the market with no concern for the public and the lives of drivers. Self monitoring is a failed policy. Companies cannot be trusted. Government inspections are vital and must be restored. Boeing didn't even bother to tell pilots about the software issue!!! 357 people are dead because they were more concerned about competition!!! They betrayed the flying public and airline pilots, staff by ignoring basic safety notification. The FAA failed its duty to protect the public. Absolute disgrace. Fine all of them, put people in jail. This must never happen again!!!
11
Let us gather up some of those politicians that said everyone can self-regulate!!! Let us ask them how that theory has helped the majority of Americans; especially in finance and health care sectors. The last six (6) idiots we have had for Presidents and their staffs believe that crappy theory of self-regulation. It has created poorer health and standards-of-living for most Americans. It has made our great nation poorer and less safe in many instances. Both poorer health and lower standards-of-living have cost most Americans lots of their income. Now, the failure of the Boeing 737 Max shows what self-regulation costs: LIVES.
5
"Most pilots did not know about MCAS until after the Lion Air crash.... The decision allowed for the system to have a single point of potential failure, a rarity in aviation safety."
This is criminal negligence by Boeing executives, who should be held personally responsible for all those needless deaths.
It is criminal because the omission of redundancy was obviously to save money.
Profits before lives. A fitting slogan.
7
not to mention that we now allow the airlines to outsource major repairs of their fleets to china, which only causes limited regulation due to cuts to the FAA. what was bush 1 was thinking when he allowed the airlines to certify their own planes? this was insane, and of course, the public knew nothing of this. the public also was not informed that the Plan D of Medicare Drug Coverage was off-budget, meant it had to be borrowed. amazing what our government does when they don't tell the public.
6
FAA and safety are not compatible. I know a pilot who violated FAA regulations on carrying unsecured passengers, flew in a reckless fashion, crashed, and killed one of two unsecured passengers. There was no FAA sanction and he was back to flying in no time. The FAA exists to satisfy industry and pilots. Passengers are left to fend for themselves.
7
I do not know, but I suspect the new way of doing things exists in part because it costs the government less money. Certification staff that would otherwise have to be on the FAA payroll now are on the companies' payrolls. The conflict of interest for such staff members is blatant. The federal government appears to have made a poor choice between doing it cheap and doing it right.
Doing it "on the cheap" has a price--sometimes a fatal price.
3
There is much hysteria around this aircraft. The two accidents where probably avoidable. The reason the American Airlines didn't ground the aircraft is because American flight crews have been trained to cope with this problem after the Lion Air crash.
When the MCAS malfunctions you need to disconnect the stabilizer trim using the two switches on the lower right of the quadrant then use the manual trim wheel to help raise the nose of the airplane then continue to fly without the autopilot.
Boeing May be complicit because didn't initially provide the proper training materials but I think the aircraft is airworthy when flown by a properly trained crew. I wouldn't hesitate to fly as a passenger, as long as it flown by a non-developing country flight crew.
3
I wonder what the discourse, narrative and reactions would be if both jets and the hundreds of souls lost were from the United States. It seems as though the U.S.approach to this sad state of affairs is that of a third party finger pointing and looking for a way to get out of this whole thing. Im sure that ultimately there will be no accountability nor responsibility taken by big business and government.
4
Ah, the Republican religion of deregulation. Don’t anyone dare get in the way of my huge corporation making as vast a profit as possible.
The reason we have government regulation by agencies independent of industry is so that airplanes don’t fall out of the sky. Or companies don’t poison our air and water. Or greedy investment banks don’t crash the economy for everyone.
After a few years of GOP rule, Democrats always have to come in to restore sanity and clean up the mess. Looking forward to 2020.
5
It appears that the US is clearly a government OF the Companies, BY the Companies and FOR the Companies.
As long as you create "shareholder value" for Wall Street, and as long as you grease BOTH parties in the US government through legal bribes...I mean lobbying...then you too can reap massive business rewards.
US is a nation for companies. Europe cares more about the health and safety of it's people. Rather than politicians shouting they're "Pro-Business," I'd love for them to be "Pro-Citizens." It's really sad.
8
We wait in long lines to make sure no terrorists get on board.
And then we are seated in a plane that is not safe. Go figure.
140
@esp,
You can have a safe plane or grotesque executive bonuses but not both.
Guess which one Boeing executives picked?
29
@esp
But the CEO gets to take home US$30 million and all the politicians and officials of the FAA, DOT, etc.......got greased as is customarily. Isn't that enough? What else do you expect or want? Don't be naïve, man. The "system" clearly works! It's the American way.
14
@esp
Security theater.
5
This is the perfect example of why libertarians are so wrong in their defense of a regulatory-free world. Rather than having government regulate and certify, libertarians would have the families of these disasters sue for damages, with the expectation that Boeing would make safer planes to avoid being sued into oblivion. Cold comfort for those families.
There is a balance to be sought between strangling innovation and a free regulatory ride. Unfortunately the needle has swung too far out of the center.
9
@SPH
My libertarian friends would say, well after the crash the free market would decide to not fly Boeing planes...or something. Libertarians don't make much sense in cases of corporate malfeasance. A libertarian's ire is only directed at government.
5
Boeing needs to evaluate its design, engineering, production and QA testing (in-house). The company has its shining moments in aeronautical history (i.e. 747, 757, 767, 777) but good engineering outcome depends on quality assurance that is continual in nature. And such ongoing quality assurance through the engineering life cycle must be a key element of the manufacturer's corporate life cycle. Essential and key! Life is precious...Remember the Titanic tragedy more than a century ago! QA testing is one element that contributes to flight safety; SAFETY FIRST!
2
The sense that the FAA was understaffed or under pressure is disturbing, The Trump era essentially wants business to regulate itself, always advertising that they have their customers safety and wellbeing at heart from aircraft to large banks to food...
It's always fun to say "govt is the problem" as Reagan promoted and tell everyone that regulations ruin business.
Good sometimes to realize that sometimes there are reasons for it.
2
i don't see obama getting the blame for this in the article. If this plane was approved under trump, he would be written up all over with some other nonsense like he colluded with the chinese and/or russians in developing a faulty plane
2
Dear World,
You guys are new to Trump World.
We natives have had more experience with the old liar and his clan of ne'er-do-wells.
When he or one of his cronies, like mcconnell's wife, say something is safe, it's deadly.
If they say it's cheap it'll end up bankrupting you.
If they say they're not lying...well, you get the point.
For trump and his gang, human life always takes a back seat to profits...you know, like the christians they are.
7
Elaine who? Ah...Mitch's wife. Wait...isn't Mitch complicit in this? I hear his stock with Boeing will be affected with any bad ruling. Nothing to see here folks...
Meanwhile Boeing has egg on their faces.
Lastly, while picking flights for my trip this summer?
I am flying Airbus.
2
Shame! This is where our country has lost it’s way, profits before safety..
This is a complete failure of regulation and therfore our safety is at risk!
This is paralleled in everything this country does anymore. A government controlled by industry, the CEO called Trump and asked him not to ground the planes, he didn’t then he called him back and asked him to ground them, huh?
This is what it means to drain the swamp!!
3
Riding the AirTrain the length of Concourse D at MIA yesterday out to catch my flight, I viewed below a lineup of American Airline's Boeings: 737 to 767. All had a similar tried & true under-wing engine pylon design which is unlike the 737 Max's now blamed for the necessity of the questionable MCAS software system.
Considering Trump's corrupt endorsement of MBS re Khashoggi, who believes that his political appointees, USDOT Secretary Chao [/McConnell] and hasty new FAA head Dickson (a former Delta Air Lines executive) have not been charged with weighing Boeing's "4,600 pending orders...to bring in hundreds of billions of dollars" in the announced safety audit?
1
Next, they will let Volkswagen self-certify emissions. #BlameItOnTheSoftware
3
Sounds like corrupt FAA managers were on the take from Boeing and their "job" was to assist the manufacturer in racing the product onto the market in competition with Airbus.
If so, it would expose two appalling realities.
First, the suits at Boeing accounted company profitability more valuable than human lives.
Second, the moral derelicts who made that judgment were so stupid that they didn't foresee what effect mass-deaths would have on their bottom line anyway.
Their reckless gamble not only had no moral justification; it didn't make any sense, even from the most venal, cynical point of view.
If this proves to be the case, the men who framed and instituted these policies shouldn't just lose their jobs. They should be sent to prison for criminal conspiracy, reckless endangerment and homicide on a massive scale.
4
A single sensor should not activate a system that points the nose down. I cannot understand why this aircraft was not immediately grounded when the Lion Air crash highlighted this lack of redundant safety measures.
6
No one is ever “authorized to speak to the public” since the advent of having government officials sign non-disclosure agreements. But obvious questions needs to be asked. Since when did we start putting industry insiders in charge of regulating their own industries?? Has this administration lost all sight of what a conflict of interest is? Has the profit motive outweighed the safety and security of airline passengers?
Our government was never meant to be run like some corporate enterprise. Bring back REAL checks and balances!
5
When Ronald Reagan was elected.
1
I will not be flying this aircraft until Europe says it's OK. Right now, I trust them more than anyone in this country (US).
178
@MHV
In a similar vein, we have an organic food co op here and Europeans love to shop there. They don't trust our ordinary food supply.
19
@Ellen
Same thing in Toronto.
French, Spanish, British and other languages are often overheard at my local organic place.
15
@MHV But you will fly in Airbus aircraft who has direct investment relationship with their governments?
8
Wake me when someone is sent to jail over this blatant corruption which has sullied the reputation of the US aerospace industry, resulted in hundreds of deaths, and what will surely be billions in shareholder losses for Boeing and the airlines, not to mention the inconvenience to travelers with flight cancellations. I’m not holding my breath. No one will be held accountable. As the article states, the regulation change happened under Bush and then Trump couldn’t even be bothered to nominate anyone to run the FAA until a serious crisis hit in his 3rd year in office. What a bunch of failures.
3
The apologizers for Boeing and the FAA need to sit down with the families of dead passengers. This tragedy was preventable, and like the extra-judicial killing by Blackwater hit-men and dozens of other examples one could name, is the fruit of the 'let's privatize government programs' mantra of the money-grubbing Neo-cons. What many of these commenters forget is what I used to tell jurors at closing arguments in criminal trials: 'there are two kinds of people in this world--those who do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, and those who do the right thing because they're afraid of what will happen if they'll get caught.' Boeing's execs are clearly among the latter group, and lack the moral values necessary to let them police the safety of their own products. Sadly, this is all too common, and we cannot afford to enable more criminally negligent homicide to line the pockets of Boeing execs and shareholders.
3
People below are wondering why nothing was done after the Lion Air crash. Sadly I think racism/nationalism played a part in this. Why not blame the foreign airline which clearly would never have the training and standards of a US airline? This attitude also began after the Ethiopian Airlines crash until it became clear that the pilot was thoroughly trained (8000 hr) and that Ethiopia treasures its national airline and is quite particular about it. Then analyses of the altitude changes on both flights became common knowledge and suddenly it couldn't just be pilot error or maintenance mismanagement on the part of those ill-educated, darker skinned foreigners...
5
Boeing’s own reckless practices could kill the economic engine goose that lays the golden eggs. Confidence in the safety of those jets is the only reason why they sell.
1
Boeing is the most subsidized corporate citizen in the US. It like Google demand huge concessions to locate facilities and operations. They have been getting away with corruption for decades.
In 1979 I was on TWA Flight 841 from NY to MSP when a near fatal incident involving an aileron hydraulic system failure that cased the plan to fall 35,000 feet in 45 seconds occurred. "Hoot" Gibson, a decorated Korean War fighter pilot was piloting the Boeing 727 that malefuctioed. According to Vass Weismann & King ,attorney's representing passengers in a class action suite, the same Boeing model aircraft had experienced the same malfunction five times both before and after this one in 79. Gibson was fired from TWA and no responsibility was owned by Boeing. The model was never recalled.
The control of our government by private industry is causing the leadership failure of the United States. Citizen's United needs to be overturned and we need leaders that control private industry not vise versa.
5
In 2005, the F.A.A. delegated more authority to companies, allowing manufacturers like Boeing to select their own employees who would help with certification work.
Well, there's your problem, now isn't it.....?
"Job-killing regulations". Americans hear the puppets of the Oligarchs tell us all the time that regulation "kills jobs". Well, lack of regulations kill people.
5
Well,all I can say Is that my family will not be traveling on these planes any time soon...I guarantee it.....Summer trips to Europe are now on the strictest scrutiny of suspect plane models.
1
So how difficult would it have been to install a large green override button that disconnects the computer and returns the flying to the pilot and co pilot ?
77
@Getreal
Or even a voice-activated override.
2
@GetrealI It is impossible to disconnect the computer. The computer flies the aircraft, and has done so for several generations of aircraft.
What you can do is change the inputs and resulting commands the computer generates for the flight controls in the air, or change the software on the ground.
2
@Getreal
Without MCAS, the MAX does not fly like older 737s. Instead, as the pilot commands pitch-up, the plane's tendency to pitch up increases - a case of positive feedback. The cause, as reported by the Times, is the larger, more forward nacelle of the new engines, which provide neutral lift in 0° angle-of-attack, and increasingly positive lift as a increases.
To make it fly "normally", and reduce the need for additional pilot training, Boeing added software to make the plane behave as if this positive feedback did not exist. Turn off the software, the plane will perhaps behave in a manner not expected by the pilot, and for which she is not trained.
At least, that's what I get from various news accounts.
13
It seems to me that two items need to be in place to prevent this sort of issue. 1. A ground proximity system possible based on laser and/or radar and 2. An independent attitude system as to how level the plane is with respect to the ground.
No expert on this, but it seems to me to be common sense.
Just my 2c's worth.
3
A classic example of bloated government control. I had an faa flight checkride cancelled due to weather years ago and it required three weeks just to get it scheduled again. This agency neither has the resources nor knowledge to adequately monitor all these companies. The FAA’s main objective is promoting aviation. That is a conflict when is comes to safety.
1
Pilot, curious who you think should be in charge of oversight then? Certainly it’s obvious why we can’t trust companies to oversee themselves.
1
@Pilot
That's not an example of government control, but lack of it.
When politicians are complicit in allowing corporations to get away with lax standards, that shows the failure of government to oversee its own regulations.
1
Neither Europe nor Canada will any longer accept FAA certification when it comes. Both will henceforth rely on their own certification processes because faith in America's oversight of Boeing is completely destroyed. Meanwhile, some carriers outside the US, Air Canada for example, have also ignored Boeing's claim that all will be well within weeks and have extended groundings of all MAX aircraft until at least July. Boeing and the US government are spinning the crashes as software glitches (comparable to software problems in some early Airbus planes) but elsewhere the airworthiness of the 737 Max is very much in question.
1
I think the focus on the MCAS is somewhat misplaced. At issue, it seems to me, is why Boeing thought it necessary to equip the 737 Max8 with that system. The answer to that question is that the placement of the engines on that model exposed the plane to a higher probability of stalling. Hence, the problem is not just with the performance of MCAS, but with the fundamental design of the aircraft.
5
Boeing did not willingly sacrifice lives over profits, but undeniably created circumstances under which it happened. The thirst for instant profit seems to permeate American industry.
1
First let me applaud the depth of your coverage. It has been excellent. What I have to offer is merely a minor correction. The reference to "Special Conditions" as a marker for in depth attention is misleading. "Special Conditions" are appropriate for new or novel designs or approaches where existing regulations are inadequate or missing. This software would seem to be covered by existing regulations.
Single point failures are impermissible when the consequence is catastrophic. This sensor failure does not fall into this category since pilot intervention can resolve the issue. If pilot intervention could not resolve the issue, then it would have been classified as a single point failure.
Keep up the good work.
“People want oversight when something goes wrong,” said Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates aviation accidents. “But at the same time, they do not want these companies tied up in knots and not able to produce products for the marketplace.”
Those of us without gross conflicts of interest and massive appetites for greed know that functional capitalism requires strong regulations.
4
The MCAS software is a feature made necessary because the 737 Max, with heavier engines placed forward and higher than those of the ordinary 737, alter the flying characteristics of the plane in a dangerous way. Prior to this Max design, when a plane approached a stall during its climb out of an airport, all the pilots needed to do was to add power to the engines and lower the plane's nose. But in the case of the new physical configuration of the Max, adding power counterintuitively causes the aircraft's nose to rise, so the stall is made worse instead of better. The basic problem is that the physical configuration of the plane is so unsafe that MCAS software is a necessity.
Modern air force jets are inherently unstable, so they need to have computers just to stay in the air. That's okay because the fighter pilots are highly trained to operate the complex systems of the fighters, and they aren't risking the lives of ordinary passengers. But airlines don't want their pilots to need such stringent training.
So basically, the 737 Max physical configuration caused by enlarging the engines and moving them forward of the wings and higher constitutes a radical and unstable change to the plane. Adding such inherent danger to a passenger plane is unprecedented.
7
@D Morris: The jack-screw actuator that adjusts elevator pitch may have a response time that is too slow for this application. It was originally designed only to adjust trim.
1
@Steve Bolger I agree with you that the jack-screw actuator may have a too-slow response time to keep the aircraft trimmed in a timely fashion. Fighter jets have control surfaces that respond in milliseconds, whereas the jack-screw is so highly geared that trim response may be dangerously slow, making a Boeing software fix ineffective. After all, the MCAS is designed to function when the plane is low to the ground, and that makes a stall at such altitudes terribly dangerous, leaving just a few seconds for corrective measures to be taken. This is a hardware problem inherent in the plane's design.
1
If there is a detrimental "Deep State", it exists in the ever greater encroachment of private companies and individuals into governmental decision making in crucial areas such as transportation and pharmaceutical safety in the name of "deregulation" and "international competition". Corporate profit is king. The interests of the public are not.
3
The problem is basic. Boeing didn't want to design a more efficient plane from scratch. That would be expensive and it would require pilots to receive extensive training on the new aircraft, reducing its competitiveness. Instead, they changed the engine size to make it more efficient, which required the wings that hold the engines to be moved to a different location on the fuselage. That redesign created a problem where the nose of the plane might rise and stall the aircraft. Boeing then decided to fix a hardware design flaw with software. Therein lies the breach and the culpability. I won't fly on the 737 Max 8 or 9 when it's declared "airworthy." You shouldn't either.
5
I'm puzzled this article seems a rewrite of the investigative piece published in the Seattle Times earlier this week, without the specifics about how Boeing and the regulator were aware of the critical problem well before the last crash. And without acknowledging the ST article.
5
Let's keep in mind the fact that, like many federal agencies, the FAA is underfunded and understaffed due to congressional budget dispersal. To fit the limited funds available due to tax cuts?
3
There is a design flaw in the weight and placement of the engines on the MAX that software should not have to compensate for. Change the design to make the planes safe.
5
I still don't understand the point of changing what good or great enough. Why did Boeing choose larger engines in different parts of thenplane that inherently change the aerodynamics, necessitating MCAS in the first place. This is the problem with sheer competitiveness and the goal of make more money above all else. We lose sight of what is important. Lives
6
The audit is unnecessary because we already know what the solution will be.
Tax cuts and deregulation.
6
It's human nature to cut corners for the assurance of making a buck or speeding up the task compared to the small risk of a tragedy. That's why we need regulations. Deregulation is a very, very bad idea. The problem is that many regulations are poor and don't really address the issues at hand very well. What we need are good, well though out regulations where all parties have had their say and are in agreement.
4
Who needs tough performance review standards when Boeing is in a hurry to compete with other companies. Nah, red tape is the bane of capitalism!
De-regulate! Let the market fix itself!
We have crossed over into insane libertarianism.
This is crazy, crony capitalism.
8
Allowing Boeing to certify it's planes as safe is like letting the fox determine the security of the hen house.
If all the FAA does is follow Boeing's recommendations, then the FAA should be abolished. We don't need a government agency that does nothing.
9
And this, my dear friends, is what happens when capitalism becomes so overpowering that it manages to cut out checks and balances and eliminates regulations and safety standards. People die.
12
So this jet was approved under Obama’s presidency?
It was Obama that allowed those changes to the rules?
Where was the NYT then?
1
“But the software — powerful as it was — did not emerge as a major focus for the F.A.A. regulators who certified the Max as safe to fly in 2017, according to the people involved in the effort who were not authorized to speak publicly about the process.”
Read the article more carefully. The certification changes took place in the early 2000s, when Bush was president. Get your facts straight.
2
@Nycoolbreez
I doubt if the president of the United States is involved in day-to-day decisions about airplane design.
Fox. Hen house. Incentives for regulators and incentives for businesses are not the same.
3
In other news, a popular brand of weed killer causes cancer and baby powder contains asbestos. I'm sure no one at either company knew this. It cost a lot of money to regulate. It cost a lot less to bribe politicians not to. No wonder Republicans have long made deregulation part of their branding mantra.
10
It's amusing to read all these comments from armchair experts who just want to blame a big business for something.
Boeing has nothing to gain from accidents and they have an incredible safety record. Regarding reliability, many pilots have a saying– "If it ain't Boeing, it ain't goin'.
Is it prudent to check these planes out? Yes. But 2 accidents out of thousands of flights don't prove anything.
1
Yeah, they do. There appears to be an issue with the software. Since two planes have potentially crashed because of it, I would say that very much means something.
9
@Gofry tell that to the 300+ dead because of Boeing.
"If it is Boeing? I ain't going"
2
@Gofry
Aside from my main disagreement with you, "Boeing" does not rhyme with "goin'."
These two statements are contradictory:
1. NYT: “The 737 Max was one of the first commercial jets approved under new rules, which delegated more authority to Boeing than had been the case when most previous planes were certified.”
2. Boeing said, “the 737 Max was certified in accordance with the identical F.A.A. requirements and processes that have governed certification of all previous new airplanes and derivatives.”
Boeing is lying. The certification of the 737Max should be rescinded as it is not really a derivative model. Boeing should go back to the drawing board to build a new airworthy plane that can bear the weight of the new heavier engines, as Airbus did.
3
I knew there was a reason I didn't cancel my subscription to the NYT. Please keep up the good work. This is why we pay you. Go deeper and don't let them off the hook. Kudos.
3
Self -regulation of a for profit industry is a recipe for disaster. No entity within are government or society should be without some impartial and responsible oversight. Even those involved in oversight must be under some sort of oversight. That is the way our system of government is supposed to work. How is it that a new model aircraft was built without any corresponding simulators being manufactured and tested concurrent with the aircraft? Pilots are complaining that getting updates on an Ipad are insufficient and want actual simulator time. It is my understanding that there are no suitable simulators available ?!? How is that?
3
So the fate of hundreds of passengers and a 40 million airplane depended on whether a single sensor functioned properly. No awareness or fix made available to the flight crew for business reasons. Does anybody see a problem here?
5
Commercial airplanes are supposed to be stable in flight without control inputs from the pilot. Boeing took an old airplane design and significantly modified it. I presume that when Boeing test flew the new design they discovered that it was unstable. Rather than redesign the plane they added a software system to attempt to restore the stability of the plane.
6
Sounds like a nice cozy relationship between Boeing and the FAA. It is shocking to hear of this. The process to get a plane into the sky must never be compromised in any manner. Aviation is especially one field where every safeguard and review process must be in place and followed explicitly. Let their be multiple sets of professional, trained, certified and experienced eyes involved in every step of the process to certify the airworthiness of a plane. Maybe the FAA should consult with their European counterparts, for example, as an additional measure of security to certify a plane. If those in charge of Boeing, Airbus or the FAA object to the extra measures of security in this process then let them be the first to fly on any new aircraft.
2
Defunding the government agencies and gutting them with their foes at the helm has real life consequences. And the horrific calculus is that in some measure there are real costs, and in those unwritten and written spreadsheets people and what happens to them to some degree are expendable.
7
The FAA now take orders from the White House, Trump is succeeding in Ins plan to operate America like his little real estate office.The FAA used to be Independent. Now Trump decides after talking to the CEO of Boeing that rather plane were safe. Wonder what the ex Boeing person , acting Secretary of Defense is telling Trump about our Military.
4
This jet wasn’t approved in the last three years. This jet was approved under Obama’s FAA.
I’m not a trumper but I am a fan of truth.
NYT not really getting the whole truth out about this.
1
@Nycoolbreez
The 737 MAX received FAA certification on 8 March 2017.
Guess who was president then.
2
It is difficult to not view this miserable story as the central metaphor of our once mighty nation in decline. I am struggling with it admittedly. It feels like all of a thread with Trump’s election. Condolences to those who lost lives in the crashes. Condolences to the grieving at Boeing as well. I wish that we all will rise again.
7
Fox guarding the henhouse is not a good model for oversight/regulation.
3
From the article: “People want oversight when something goes wrong,” said Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates aviation accidents. “But at the same time, they do not want these companies tied up in knots and not able to produce products for the marketplace.”
Really, Mr. Goetz? You think I, as a consumer, am worried about an aircraft maker not being "able to produce products for the marketplace?" One wold think a managing director of the government group in charge of transportation SAFETY would know that is not my concern.
Unless, of course, I own Boeing stock. But that's a totally different issue. In that case, perhaps I'm willing to write off a little death.
7
Scandals involving the Trump administration sell papers, but they are getting a bit too easy. This inappropriate lack of oversight by the FAA appears to have been building up over years. The question now is, how will the issue be dealt with moving forward? Will a thorough, impartial investigation take place to ensure that the planes are safe or not be allowed to fly? Or will there be smoke and mirrors to ensure that Boeing profits keep rolling in? This is where the serious accountability starts.
6
Politicians Should have enforced anti trust laws years ago. Now Boeing can do what they want. They have no competition in America.
Airbus is their main rival. Will Tupolev and Embraer get more business?
2
Anyone else remember when Ford decided NOT to put a part to fix a gas tank problem that they knew would kill people but decided the $1 cost was too much? Anyone remember at all if they were punished?? IF we are truly interested in getting big companies to tow the line we have to start by fining them a percentage of the gross earning enough to hurt their stock price and that and that alone is the kryptonite to bring in line. As it is Boeing will get a fine, the end.
5
Is there some prejudice involved on the part of Boeing as to which planes receive more scrutiny when sending the product to a third world country? This is one of the biggest questions that come to mind for me.
1
I seriously doubt that they deliberately sent a lower quality product to a third world country. The proof of why you don’t do that is in front of our faces with 2 crashed planes. When you are in charge of your own oversight, you can let certain things you deem acceptable to pass.
"Regulation" has become an evil word in GOP lexicon. In this case the lack of it had tragic consequences.
9
Who would expect the Trump FAA to stand in the way of corporate profits even though thousands might die?
4
"Past performance cannot guarantee or predict future performance" is always written in the end of the sales pitch of a mutual fund or ETF introduction. So should be the airplane manufacturer. Past Boeing safety record cannot guarantee or predict future safety performance. Each new plane is a new challenge and a new game. Just because it is made by Boeing, it doesn't mean it is safe or bullet proof. FAA should know this by heart especially after those two recent crashes. Overall, I was disappointed by the most recent FAA statements which reflect the agency lack of independence.
3
Don't be surprised that the solution, from this gang of incompetents, is less regulations.
3
If Boeing attached new and bigger engines that require da shift in their position to the basic 737 frame, then the difficulties with the 737 Max might go beyond the computer to the design of the Max itself.
3
"a Boeing executive at a congressional hearing described the arrangement as effectively having an 'arm of the F.A.A. within the Boeing Company.'”
Seems more like an arm of Boeing in the FAA.
9
Oversight failed. Engineering process failed. Greed triumphed.
To this scientist, once having learned to fly, this story is unusual for aviation because a radical change of aerodynamics rather than a material, quality control, or construction defect is what killed 300 people. Can’t blame a junior engineer with not grasping the logical flaw in the MCAS ‘fix’. Can’t blame pilots for not refusing to fly something without training. We can only blame the leadership of Boeing for making a radical, unprecedented change in a passenger airplane, and suppressing the normal process for it, and for training. Pure greed.
Without being too technical, the subsystem cannot be fixed with software or adding the second sensor since ‘recovery’ from any, repeat any, glitch will leave the pilot, usually near the ground, tasked with manually, slowly, moving that stabilizer over a large angle, and simply not having enough time to do it. A reasonable ‘fix’ isn’t that difficult to see, but it isn’t software and a sensor. What it must be, though, is open to scrutiny beyond Boeing and the FAA. It has come to that.
5
In 2012, an investigation by the Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General found that F.A.A. managers had not always been supportive of efforts by agency employees to “hold Boeing accountable.” F.A.A. employees viewed their management as “having too close a relationship with Boeing officials,” according to a report from the inspector general’s office.
Here's about 500 red flags.
5
And yesterday we learned that yet another industry insider will be named to head a federal agency. This time a Delta Airlines executive is being named head of the FAA. This again essentially means that a crucial agency tasked with keeping millions of citizens safe is going to be "self regulated". What could go wrong?
6
Elaine Chao is hardly to be commended for launching an internal investigation. It is too little too late. The cozy relationship between Boeing and the FAA is nothing new, nor is the troubling policy of relying on Boeing employees for much of the certifications process. These tragedies were utterly predictable.
4
Is there any government agency or cabinet department that Trump and his administration haven't weakened or even corrupted over the last two years? This week it's the FAA, but there have been and continue to be problems and issues in almost every cabinet department with incompetence, negligence and even blatant corruption. I guess this is to be expected when a criminal enterprise takes over the American government without oversight or pushback for the last two years. I don't know how this House can possibly provide all the oversight that the Trump Administration needs. There aren't enough hours in the day.
9
The FAA will gave a difficult time restoring trust in its ability to act on behalf of the flying public, not the industry it supposedly regulates.
Allowing Boeing to certify its own planes, failing to flag a new system that can force a plane into the ground with data from a single sensor, failing to require training on how to disengage that system, and failing to ground the plane after not one but two crashes due to that system.
That's a lot of failures.
4
Inasmuch as hundreds of these planes fly hundreds of flights daily with no incidents maybe it was the negligence of the pilots which caused the two accidents in question.
1
Sue Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. She tolerated the "acting" status of an F.A.A. Administrator for more than a year because she's a Trump sycophant. People are dead. People are responsible. Chao is at the head of that line.
7
Sounds like her husband Mich McConnell. Chao decided too late . The FAA is now run by those they are supposed to monitor.
1
First crash was negligence or worse. Second crash was murder. FAA collusion with Boeing is a bipartisan policy of placing profits above everything. It's called capitalism and this its "efficiency" at work. Real safety can only come with replacing capitalism with a system driven by human needs, that is, by us.
4
"...the jet’s approval by the F.A.A., a process that relies heavily on Boeing employees to certify the safety of the plane."
Isn't this tantamount to the "fox guarding the henhouse"?
3
Boeing built a turkey. It now must replace all these aircraft with flight-worthy, completely redesigned models. Funny how lax capitalist rules can conspire to bankrupt a company.
8
A system that relies on one sensor is poor engineering. There must be more to that decision. Was it made by an engineer, a bean counter or an executive.
10
I am NOT riding on any " fix" in the future. Nor is any member of my family. Period.
Boeing should follow Airbus' lead and build a plane for fuel efficiency from the ground up. No shortcuts, no lack of pilot training, no " fixes " and no radio silence regarding changes to the FAA.
Boeing and the FAA hold the safety of the public in their hands and we are not impressed on the handling from start to finish by both on the Boeing 737 Max 8. We all deserve better. Much better.
7
The 787 is the better choice.
So, the fox has looked after the hen house since 2005 and now everybody is astonished?
Just goes to show that "America First" and attached stupidity is not an invention of Trump but goes back to way before Trump.
And you know what, not much will happen as Boeing is a national symbol of pride and pretty much untouchable.
God forbid, something like that should happen to a non US manufacturer of aircraft.
The US would already call for sanctions and a total ban of all products of this "evil manufacturer" of murderous goods.
But not so for any US manufacturer.
So even this storm is already over...
5
This ‘administration’ wants to get rid of regulations how is that working out Trumpets?
5
Like her husband, Ms. Chao places corporate profits ahead of public safety by allowing the foxes to guard their own henhouses. Not the Party of Lincoln anymore.
5
Well here we go again! The ugly head of greed found in the senior executive suite raises its head. By the way where is Boeing’s senior team in all this? Why is it taking them so long to come out and be transparent? Isn’t transparency and authenticity the new leadership monograms of the day? My guess is that they’re playing golf in Boca Raton and thinking about the fourth or fifth home they will be purchasing somewhere across the globe. How sad that they’re not able to give voice to values.
7
President Trump likes to proclaim that he is interested in keeping us safe. How does inadequate vetting of an airplane that kills people when it crashes keep us safe? When will we as a country learn that businesses 1) always put profit first; and 2) are shortsighted? We might reasonably wonder about the quality of the military hardware manufactured by Boeing.
At least Boeing will not survive this completely unscathed, regardless of whether our government does its job: Boeing's stock price has taken a nosedive and airlines around the world may now think twice before purchasing Boeing aircraft. And, since this is America, bring on the lawsuits.
5
it's the derivatives baby. derivatives are how are big pharma keeps control of drugs far after their patent expires. a derivative in both cases does not require full, or possibly any review. derivatives are the back door where industry keeps its profits flowing and grossly underfunded regulators can at least wave at the train as it leaves the station. who then is responsible for this underfunding is the real question of culpability here. can anybody spell Republicans?
2
FAA, FDA, USDA and all of these capitalised, authoritative sounding facades are the same. They are repositories for relative know nothings in the process of CV building. The occasional recognized expert may be found but they can always be outvoted by yard fowls of manufacturers and the Government. The People come last. Remember inadequate aircraft servicing, baby killing doses of mislabeled Heparin and toothpaste which was laced with inappropriate chemicals? It's all a joke to them. We The People are just colateral damage.
2
This is why the government must always be a watchdog. Companies are driven by money with such a craziness that human
safety is pushed aside. While they are not guilty of intentionally ignoring, they repress and prevent any concerns for the sake of money. Deregulation of companies which is a principle of Republicans is the root cause of this and many other tragic scenes. Oil companies are polluting our waters because of money.
Google and facebook are polluting our minds for more profits. The bigger the company the more control is needed by government.
5
After reading this article I can’t see how one doesn’t open a criminal investigation. The plane is not airworthy without the software. The software seems to be a cheep fix for a massive engineering shortcoming.
The big question is how many other plane models have implemented this low standard for airworthiness?
4
People in the US are so obsessed with ending government involvement in everything that they overlook the need for an unbiased third party to manage things like air safety. All for profit companies will do whatever they can to maximize earnings, including taking ill advised safety shortcuts, as it appears Boeing might have done.
Why Americans think that the magic of the marketplace (greed) will solve all problems is beyond me, but that is what a vote for Republicans often means. Wait until you see the quality of your air, food and water once environmental regulations are relaxed or eliminated, as the Trump administration is currently doing.
13
People would be shocked if auto sales people could put safety inspection stickers on the used cars, but to Trump who received $1 million from Boeing thought leaving safety to the company. The same principle, used in submarine manufacturing, would lead to more self-destruct subs not seen since the Thresher disaster.
3
Boeing needs a top to bottom overhaul. It is incomprehensible to me that Boeing's engineering and engineering review processes could approve a design where a single failure can spell disaster. On the face of it, the root cause of these crashes lies within Boeing's engineering management processes. The company must not be allowed to get a way with a quick technical fix to the Max 8 rather it must be required to complete a full review of its engineering management and make the necessary fixes before being allowed to release any more products onto the market.
4
Only reason FAA took so long to ground plane was because those two crash happened in underdeveloped countries , where humans are worth lot less , if those two were to happen in Europe or in America , FAA reaction would have been lot different.
10
The situation between FAA and Boeing sounds remarkably like the one between NASA and their contractors, discovered after the Shuttle Challenger disaster.
3
@Peter Auster
Or the one pending between Delta and the new chief of the FAA!
2
I noted in a radio discussion that there was a single sensor that may have failed. A single point of failure is never a good idea. Software will not compensate. The same radio discussion noted Boeing will now have two sensors. Brilliant!/s
4
"Instead, it was only lower-level F.A.A. officials involved in the certification process who were even aware of MCAS."
One sentence speaks volumes about the F.A.A.
6
“The agency has said that ... the certification of the Max ‘followed the F.A.A.’s standard certification process.”
Then air crews and the flying public should be fearful. Beyond MCAS, what other “standard” procedures are there where the FAA has left open the door for people to die?
3
Why would a self policing for profit corporation take safety threatening short-cuts in certifying their compliance with safety rules? Surely the free market restraints capitalism supplies would keep them on the up-and-up? Surely the possibility of litigation would stop such a corporation from negligence, recklessness, and fraud? For an example, the tobacco industry!
5
Look for more of these tragedies/disasters.
With Trump as corporate dictator of America, this is the first but by no means the last as history has taught us when you put no regulations on corporations.
The 300 deaths can be put directly on Boeing, FAA, Trump and others,
They should pay for the funerals and damages.
10
F.A.A. regulators certified the Max as safe to fly in 2017, on Trump's watch, and for more than a year Trump has kept in place an "acting" administrator at F.A.A., as he has kept "acting" administrators in so many other positions. My view is that Trump's idea of "American greatness" is a money-driven, greedy craziness and laziness in governance that ends up killing people.
9
This is what you get when government doesn’t work and we only focus on “competitiveness in the marketplace” and “shareholder maximization”. And when Trump only hires the “best people” you get this - planes falling out of the sky. This is the O-ring Space Shuttle moment for the airline industry : institutional failure and people are dead.
Maybe Trump should fly one of these 737 Max planes himself if he so serious about promoting Boeing business to pariah states like Saudi Arabia and world seeking dominance China. Check out the merchandise first hand. He is after all and expert in everything and the smartest person in the world. Surely he can figure it out.
4
"The system was intended as a safety feature to make the 737 Max, which included significant design changes, fly like earlier models."
This sentence underscores some confusion around how the MCAS is characterized. If it was intended to make the MAX-8 "fly like earlier models", this implies it was meant to give the pilots the sense that they were flying almost the same model in terms of its handling, like a new automobile model might try to recreate the "feel" of an earlier model.
However, its characterization as a "safety feature" implies something else-- something necessary to keep the plane in the air, like functioning steering and brakes are required for automobiles.
So, the role of the MCAS was not so much to make the MAX-8 "fly like earlier models" but to make it "fly, like earlier models."
One comma changes everything.
The extra comma changes everything.
4
The real question here is will anyone face criminal charges for knowingly keeping this plane in the air when they knew it had bad AI.
This should be a lesson for self-driving cars.
2
The basis of conceptual thinking and morality is corrupted in the USA as we see in the education scandal . Resulting in more insidious corruption in all fields as well as the later consequences of bad quality of education. Everything follows the same path : engineering, health care, justice, politics, journalism, business, etc..
1
We seem to be running an experiment in unrestrained capitalism (and pro-business/elitist budget appropriations) and this plane crash is only one of many deadly or damaging results.
People are already dying from illnesses caused by lack of proper oversight. There are many drugs, pesticides, and food additives that are outlawed in Europe, but legal here. Research shows that air pollution shortens lives. Toxic waste is not handled properly here (St. Louis). And don't forget Puerto Rico.
Our political system is also making choices that don't kill, but damage people's entire lives. Let's not forget Flint, where how many children are going to have impaired cognition because of drinking lead-tainted water? And that's still going on, not only there, but probably in a lot of other places we don't know about.
Pro-business regulation may be worse under Trump, but it has been bad under all Republicans and is not great under Democrats. Someone should make a list of all the ways in which Europeans are better protected than we are. Their businesses seem to be doing fine under more stringent regulations.
The Boeing regulatory failure/crash is just one catastrophic example of a trend that has been going on here for a long time. It's critical that we elect a Democrat who will truly fight the powers that be to re-regulate. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are our best chances for that.
3
Hmmmm, so this fiasco occurred under the watch of transportation secretary Elaine Chao, who just happens to be the wife of trump’s toady, Mitch McConnell. Trump’s USA shoots itself in the foot once again. Now that one of our leading exporters has been sidelined who will trump blame for the upward tick in our trade deficit?
3
Unfortunately this is a characteristic of government regulators world wide. The FAA has moved a lot of the certification responsibility off to manufacturers in America. In Australia ICAC let the banks run riot after assuring the public that the banks could regulate themselves with no issues.
The standard approach is for an industry sector to lobby the government on the basis that complying with government regulators slowed down certification and increased costs to the consumers.
In general government regulation and oversight is being reduced and there will be dire consequences not only for people's lives but their wellbeing, physical and financial
3
Here are a couple of questions I haven't yet seen answered.
The MCAS software was written to prevent a stall of the aircraft, presumably a problem with other 737s. I know that is an uninformed opinion, but why else would this be added?
Given that the 727 Max planes had a new configuration -- from using newer and more powerful engines than previously and possibly other changes as well -- was a new stall problem anticipated by Boeing's engineers?
How did the certifiers miss the change in flight control automation, given that every change in software for critical systems requires documentation?
2
@StephenBeard, Max8 is one of the newer designs with 2, not 4, engines. A stall in one engine could be catastrophic.
Regulation is the management of risk. Less regulation, more risk. That's the equation. The reality is regulators in most industries rely on the cooperation and assistance of the industries they regulate but the more information that creeps out it's obvious this has gone way too far in the case of the FAA who appear to be in Boeing's pocket. The tell was the immediate response when the Ethiopian Airlines crash occurred. The US was virtually the only country that hadn't grounded the planes and this was clearly a decision driven a combination of commercial considerations and economic nationalism.
9
Clearly, the fox has been allowed to take up residence in the Boeing hen house.
2
Over 300 innocent souls are dead and for what? The Republican playbook of less government oversight?
The FAA has been crippled under Republican rule and you don't need a crystal ball or have a Ph.D in economics to have predicted these tragedies.
Boeing in its zeal to roll out these planes and make billions and billions of dollars advised pilots that all they needed was one hour on an i-pad. On an i-pad!
And while any plane certification requires cooperation between the FAA and the manufacturer's engineers, the FAA has ceded much too much to Boeing.
This is a tragedy on many levels.
7
I ask again, what about the 300 souls lost to the sea and the earth for no reason other than greed and corporate gain? And where is there empathy since? Oh, that's right, the head of Boeing calling Trump to plead his case for keeping the planes flying in the USA after TWO horrendous losses of life....Shameful beyond measure...
4
"F.A.A. Approval of Boeing Jet Involved in Two Crashes Comes Under Scrutiny" - GOOD! The worldwide belief is that corporations are the kings of America, money is god and the masses are gullible. The F.A.A. involvement just gives more evidence that that this belief is justified.
2
Boeing joins Takata, Volkswagen, and Fujitsu in examples of companies who let their business needs override their engineering expertise to great harm to their customers, their countries of origin, and their company. No responsible engineer lets a single point of control exist in a risk-based design. Failure to provide a specific simulator for the modified craft and new aerodynamics is also a major factor. A decade or more of unfunded FAA staffing as Congress backs away from its responsibility of funding essential operations is also a factor. Its seems that the US has lost its mojo and its resolve to design and build responsibility.
5
Cheat to make more money is the American philosophy.
How can a company certify its own products ?
Google just got fined 1.5 B $ for illegal concurrence practice by the European Union . Search engines are designed to direct customers to Google's own business.
Will they pay ? When ? After throwing how many lawyers in the battle to deny the charge ? Apple was fined, has not paid yet .
Without saying that they also establish themselves in Europe fiscally to cheat to pay zero taxes like all other US biggest corporations .Apple, Amazon, Yahoo, Starbucks, Netflix, etc...
As long as the victims are only foreigners...
The world by now should realize stock price, not safety is the primary goal of American companies. Oh, and golden parachutes if all else fails.
4
The issue is directly connected to the "redisgning" from the 737 to the 737 MAX. The former has flown for decades without issues then the company made significant changes that required (in Boeings own opinion) an automatic digital response to correct data imput from sensors.
1
The logical result of having corporations and their lobbyists run our country.
6
This is just another piece of a larger problem. Our regulatory environs (including antitrust) needs fixing on so many levels. Any large industry--whether airlines, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Google--should not be left in charge of its own regulation. There is too much money involved and too much opportunity for the combinations of greed and graft to take hold.
The FAA needs to tighten its regulation of our airline industry...soon.
Again, how will Boeing and the FAA atone for killing more than 300 people? How will we hold them accountable? Their negligence and shoddy work are responsible for the deaths of more than 300 people.
197
@NTL All these people ever have to do, whether it's poisoning our food supply, crashing airplanes, abusing children or depriving worthy students of a place at a university, is write a check. They need to go to jail. And there needs to be public shaming and atonement. That guy at the FAA who said there should be "maximum delegation" needs to atone, be called out and publicly shamed. Same for Boeing's CEO, Chao, and all of the Boeing/FAA cozies who couldn't see past the almighty buck. Now we have a president who is about to name a former head of Delta Airlines to head the FAA, just like he puts coal mining executives and anti-environmentalists to head Interior and EPA. Hello? We no longer have a government, just one big profit machine. To be honest, I don't think the FAA and Boeing care one iota about the lives that were lost on those planes. Part of the atonement should be that Dennis Muilenburg pays a visit to each and every home of the victims, and asks for forgiveness. The uber rich and powerful operate in a parallel universe. Fine. But stop destroying the rest of us.
50
@NTL
At a minimum Boeing and the FAA were negligent under civil law
At a maximum they are both liable under criminal law.
Lock them up! Fine them up! Sue them!
12
@NTL
If anything is done at all, it'll be a large fine for civil/criminal misdeeds. Just look at BigPharma for an example. No executive is ever indicted. Imagine how the innocent victims' families - like mine - feel.
14
Between Elaine Chao in charge of transportation safety and her husband Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader, you don't have to wonder why our beloved nation is tanking.
9
Regulation will be further reduced by Donald Trump as a consequence of his budget cuts necessitated by his atrocious tax cuts. There is never enough regulation against greed.
2
Can anyone tell me one single thing this rogue's gallery of cabinet officials has done that is beneficial to our country? And no, deregulation and tax cuts don't count.
9
Wha? Another "cost saving" step by the GOP by cutting funding to the FAA because they thought that the companies getting scrutinized for safety by the FAA could do it better themselves and save us taxpayers money? And guess what...they also crowed that the government was reducing its bureaucracy too?
A capable government is necessary to protect the public from companies who would seek to fast track so-called improvements such as those in this situation. We have very capable civil servants in government yet the politicians have again failed to work for the general welfare, looking to cozy up with corporations by allowing for a "fast track" system in exchange for the money that regulated corporations can donate to campaigns. This is awful.....
5
I learned how my government conducts investigations during the Kavanaugh hearings. Start with the desired conclusion, make a few pencil markings in a report, scream outrage, let the American citizenry suffer.
I wonder if the rest of the world will accept this con game.
7
How sad. Our USA once proud safety agencies have been reduced to little LLC's doing the bidding of companies building things that can take lives by the hundreds.Whats wrong with the Pilots ? Destruction of Unions has lead to the destruction of peoples ability to speak out forcefully.
4
Safety? I doubt any major corporations are interested in the safety of their product.
What corporations are interested in is the dollar and that is all.
It would have been expensive to build a new plane, so they just changed the design of an ancient plane and added a new computer fix at the expense of the people that flew on their Indonesian and Ethiopian airplanes.
Oh, and the United States was the last country to land the planes. Boeing was lobbying both the president and the FAA to keep their planes flying.
Business as usual in the United States and more so since we have the present person occupying the White House.
6
I’m not an aeronautical engineer or a software technician. But the second I heard about the second crash and the similarities between the two crashes, I made an assessment that they had a similar cause. There should never have been a delay in grounding these aircraft. Those in the industry claiming “rush to judgement “ and the need to examine the black boxes were just the people who should not be in charge of overseeing the safety of new designs. We have ex-oil ececs running the EPA, ultra rich business people determining the nature of public schools for the middle class and politicians who are bought and sold by the NRA standing in the way of gun regulation. This is a sad and dangerous time for our nation.
7
It's interesting how Americans don't understand that manufacturers in all businesses have similar arrangements with the government regarding product requirements.
Airlines, drug manufacturers, coal and nuclear fired plants and reactors, large construction equipment...the article makes it appear like this is something unique...it's not.
Omission by the NYT. Why was this important piece of information not disclosed - to make it seem like this is so atypical - it's not!
Let's get back to the accident - the approval process for the plane should be secondary. They need to find out why the plane crashed - if they can.
The plane has new technology and engine design - the pilots flying the plane most likely did not have sufficient training and/or experience to manage the intricacies of the changes.
Tens of thousands of hours have been flown in these planes by hundreds of pilots without incident - yet there have been 2 accidents within a short period of time.
It appears to me, additional training is most likely needed to fly this plane.
Pilot error accounts for between 8 to 9 out of 10 accidents - most likely, it's what happened in Ethiopia.
What is unarguable is that, in the light of Boeing’s close relationship with the FAA and the FAA’s tardiness in grounding this plane and Boeing’s continuing reluctance to acknowledge that there could be any possibility that this is anytbing but a perfectly safe plane - the new software update is according to them just to make an already safe plane safer - I no longer fully trust either America’s regulating authority or Boeing to put my safety as a passenger above all other considerations. And I would imagine millions of other airline passengers feel the same.
Boeing will struggle for a long time to make good the very serious damage to its good name. Brand America has already been so badly tarnished under Trump that this latest misstep just seems to be par for the course these days.
1
Something went wrong in the certification process, of course. It’s a question of adequate regulation and internal controls. It might be the result of corporate greed, regulatory capture, corrupt lobbyists and dirty politicians. But given (a) Boeing’s safety record; (b) aviation safety in the US; and (c) US carrier safety, chances are we won’t find a morally and ethically compromised scheme at the bottom of this. It’s not a VW emissions scandal. We have an established certification process involving highly skilled career bureaucrats - and I mean that as a good thing - reviewing the most complicated technology built by humans, ever. And manufacturers like Boeing have no interest in selling planes that crash. This is why planes are remarkably safe, even when flying isn’t - the number one cause of aviation accidents is pilot error. In extremely complicated, high-consequence systems, mistakes are inevitable. We design controls in anticipation of mistakes. When we miss something, we investigate, identify, resolve and establish a new control. The focus is on fixing the problem, and not on finding someone - or some political ideology - to blame.
This plane crash should be the canary in the coal mine wake up for our country and this absurd, business driven drive to self or minimally regulate industries that impact our health and safety. While the 300 lives lost is tragic, there are many more people dying every year from environmental degradation, the opiate crisis and gun deaths. The system, whether its regulatory erosion or the watering down of our tort laws, is being gamed by big business, and their bought politicians, to all our detriment.
3
And their shill is the Republican Party. This group has effective reduce regulations, stacked the courts to create Citizens United, and lower taxes, especially on the rich, to create an ever growing national debt. While they may not be the sole entity, they are the soul of the entity.
4
The unasked question is how did a transport aircraft that has an uncontrollable pitch-up tendency under certain flight conditions, get certified at all?
8
An other example of the insidious corruption in the USA .On the principle of : " If it ain't broken why fix it ? ". Boeing tried to build a concurrent for the Airbus A 320, but you cannot make a modern machine on an old design. There are many other fields where you can see the difference of old fashion American design with European engineering . The Amtrak trains for exemple seem to have been designed in the 1950s compared to a French TGV that goes at 250 mph . Bordeaux to Paris in 2 hours in comfort . Like San Francisco to Los Angeles. 2 hours .
2
No worries. Boeing has Trump’s administration in its pocket.
2
why am I not surprised given how we regulate the other thing that flys fast and kills people....being of course, bullets.
4
Moving forward, Boeing is faced with two doors:
Door 1—Deny. The path taken by Zuckerberg when the news about Russian ads in facebook first resurfaced. This is easily achievable via a scapegoat. Some unwanted C-Suite or maybe a coder from Prague.
Door 2—Fess up. The most difficult path. The CEO needs to man up and do a mea culpa. Admit that profit over people was the motive. Admit that a major redesign was shelved to meet a deadline. Admit that they themselves did the regulation. This would take guts, something that is alarmingly lacking in the CEO.
In the meantime, the flying public has a choice. Don’t fly Boeing.
2
The F.A.A. deemed the Boeing MAX8 737 planes airworthy, when the rest of the world grounded them? A software glitch, and Boeing self-certified their reconfiguered workhorse jets? Elaine Chao, US Transportation Secretary (and wife of the esteemed Senator Mitch McConnell of KY) is ordering her agency to look into the problem. The software glitch of the MAX8s wasn't deemed a problem, until 2 of the jets crashed with more than 300 precious lives lost in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Something went wrong, and now it's high time to hold Boeing accountable.
4
As a pilot, I am horrified. The arrogance of Boeing to intentionally obscure a fundamentally critical operating parameter from the crew is beyond belief. Please bring back the FAA.
4
Let’s start over at the beginning. Software should not replace good design. Boeing added newer heavier, more powerful engines that both improved range and fuel efficiency. This required redesigning the wing and fuselage to accommodate the engine. The aircraft design was inherently unstable. Boeing added a software fix (MCAS) to address this design problem. This is a certification issue for all new and existing aircraft.
9
Politicians for sale or rent seldom cost more than 99 cent. Republicans always seem to want to deregulate anything that might negatively affect business profitability. Which is why business spends so much to buy politicians but a disproportionate amount to buy republicans.
3
"Top F.A.A. officials, who are briefed on significant safety issues, were not aware of the software system, according to three people with knowledge of the process." Why would they be? Boeing deemed it unnecessary to even inform pilots of the software change, until the pilots union was livid about not having been told about it prior to the Lion Air crash.
It becomes more and more apparant that Boeing tried to focus exclusively on the sales of the new 737Max, by profering it as the "same" plane, just more "inexpensoive to operate", to airlines.
Their luke warm response to make a sofware update after the first crash, -and one should note that there appears to have been no rush or urgency to confront the known deadly fault after last years deadly accident-, combined with their insistence "to make a safe plane even safer" even after the second crash, speaks volumes on what the top priority is currently for Boeing.
Expecting to make "hundreds of billions of Dollars, " by skimping 2-3 billion in the proper development of a new airplane design, just pimping up an old design on the "cheap," shows only a mercantile ruthlessness. Boeings first order of the day should be safety with profits, not insane profits at the cost of safety exclusively.
This investigation should not focus so much on the software needed to keep this plane afloat, it should investigate the fact how a passenger plane that keeps stalling could be deemed "flightworthy" and safe in the first place.
5
We must reduce air travel. It is too complex, and the climate will make it more so going forward.
1
As Boeing tries to emerge from this catastrophic lapse—
A bare minimum will be the resignation (firing) of CEO Muilenburg and his top lieutenants with oversight of the 737 Max 8. [They should also be fined and forfeit many of their $millions.]
And that's just the beginning, as civil and criminal lawsuits pour in.
4
@srwdm Yes, perhaps never before it was as fitting to say that they should get a "golden pararachut," a real one! Only to be told when jumping: " ohh, by the way, we deemed it to be unnecessary to mention that we skipped on the parachut silk. We did not want to "inudate" you with so much information prior to jumping."
The government has a very real role in our daily lives, safety being an important one. Think of all the areas we count on our government keeping us safe and now imagine what is happening with the regulation cutbacks along with Trump not filling very important positions. Transportation safety, clean water, clean air, food safety, etc.. Why did it take the United States so long to ground this plane? Was it fear from Trump or pure ineptitude?
For so long we have heard the mantra from the Republicans about cutting government, cutting taxes, and privatizing much of what the government does when the real problem for the majority are livable wages. The real beneficiaries of the tax cuts and privatization are for the very wealthy but we all pay a very steep price for a government that can't keep us safe.
3
Didn't the Trans Sec ignore the concern originally? Now she wants investigation. What's changed?
3
Boeing has every motivation to produce safe planes. Over the last 10 years, there have been zero fatal aircraft accidents in the U.S. The Boeing stock has lost $30 billion dollars since these crashes. I am sure Boeing is doing everything humanly possible to fix the problem.
The United States has an agency problem. Dwight D. Eisenhower predicted it years ago. The top tier rank is filled with mean spirited lapdogs. Some liberal some conservative. What’s new?
It was my understanding that the software mentioned was actually a “bandaid” to address aerodynamic flaws in a radically different design. I believe it is a serious oversimplification, and much too easy, to “blame the software “.
6
Oh how I wish I'd read the sports page before reading this article. To wit: "baseball ships tons of soil (to foreign countries--in this instance, Japan) to ensure that the playing surface is as safe as possible for major league players".
But we can't bother with ensuring the safety of the flying public and the crews that fly the planes?
5
Cutting corners and saving costs are not what’s needed to safeguard passengers and crews, but that appears just what happened.
So Boeing installed new larger engines on the airplane, in a different location because of the size of the engines, didn’t redesign or modify the wings and developed a new software component to adjust for the effects of these changes and yet no one at Boeing or the FAA thought that these changes required special review or special training for pilots...really?
“The new, more efficient engines on the 737 Max were larger and placed in a different location than previous generations. To compensate for the new aerodynamics, Boeing installed the software, which would force the nose of the plane down in certain circumstances. The goal was to help avoid a stall.”
And it appears that both 737 Max airplanes did stall and the pilots of both crashes were not made aware of the new software changes or trained how to deal with the problem.
4
The FAA will clear these planes to fly in a few weeks. Russian Roulette is an exciting game to play.
3
“People want oversight when something goes wrong,” said Peter Goelz, ... “But at the same time, they do not want these companies tied up in knots and not able to produce products for the marketplace.”
Excuse me. What people, specifically, are being referred to here? The passengers on these planes and the flying public or the executives at Boeing?
Goelz's observation demonstrates all that is wrong with deregulated capitalism as a means to further the singular focus of the American government on the economy at the expense of everything else--the environment, safety, health, education, inequality.
11
Years ago I can remember a review of two sports cars, one a Lotus, dealt with handling through superior chassis design, the other used electronics to mask the bad handling, at the time I wondered what would happen as the car got older and how many crashes would occur as the sensors stopped detecting a problem. It's hard to believe that no one in the FAA wondered whether masking poor handling characteristics with electronics and then not telling pilots what you had done, or even requiring the aircraft to be fitted with a 'big red button' giving full manual control as opposed to drilling down through computer menus to find the off switch whilst trying to stop the plane from falling out of the sky was really such a good idea.
8
If the FAA is an example, America’s regulatory process looks increasingly like one in a nation rampant with government corruption. Foxes watching chickens only benefits the foxes.
13
@Don Francis I trust the IRS to do their job with gusto
Don’t want gubermint around to hold their feet to the fire when it comes to regulation; but boy oh boy, having a thousand FAA employees in symbiosis with Boeing, obviously to grease them cogs for the sake of “competitiveness” sure is dandy...because clearly they’re not there to protect the public.
I wonder if Airbus has the same cozy regulatory relationship with ALL THE OTHER member states in the EU along with France, The Netherlands, Germany and Spain, the four principle countries that compromises Boeing’s chief rival? How about Bombardier in Canada? My money’s on “no”.
The above mentioned sovereign entities will not allow such tactics so the industries they regulate can get the latest widget to market at the lowest cost...at the cost of their citizens’ lives. Maybe that’s too Socialist for us American bootstrap puller-uppers.
8
Boeing effectively marking their own homework? What's wrong with this picture..?
6
The 737 max was just an intro into the future.
Imagine the oversight that there currently isn't, and won't ever be, when autonomus-driving cars are roaming the land. Nobody will ever know what's going on inside the software part of the operation.
Various industries are pushing for zero operators on cars. These are vehicles dangerous enough to take many lives in a single accident.
It's all happening in a black-box world of code, that's only as effective as the humans who wrote it. Code will offer no deposition in a trial, no admission of guilt, no compensatory damages, no prison term, and no correction of it's own.
5
An engineer at Boeing designed an automatic control system that could override the pilots based on input based on input from a single sensor, and create a feedback loop that would fly the plane into the ground.
This is sloppy design that would not have passed muster in a first year engineering course. The regulators are only part of the problem here. It should have been flagged and fixed way before the first plane was ever built.
14
This happened purely because of greed. Boeing wanted larger engines so built some dodgy software to compensate. Didn’t even bother to ensure pilots knew about it. Negligence at its worst
13
Any newly-configured plane should not require relatively elaborate steps to stop computer glitches from taking the plane down. I trust that Boeing is correct that the plane was passed in accordance with FAA norms. If so, the norms are faulty. Airline commerce was deregulated in 1978 by the Airline Deregulation Act -- but FAA's safety role was untouched. The problem here is with the agency/industry coziness, not with the structure of the law itself.
2
The 737 Max was certified in March 2017. It made its first flight in January 2016.
If so, most of the certification process happened under the Obama administration, no? Why is there no mention (or outrage) regarding that?
2
@Whatever, the article also says:
“In 2005, the F.A.A. delegated more authority to companies, allowing manufacturers like Boeing to select their own employees who would help with certification work.”
That’s the Geo W Bush administration. Where’s the outrage about that? And BTW, did this article “blame” any administration for this tragedy? Why are you politicizing it?
I see this tragic fiasco driven by good ole American greed and hunger for profits at all or almost all cost. A fact of life in any administration.
18
I am a pilot of a different aircraft. I am horrified about these crashes. But hundreds of thousands of takeoffs with this plane were accomplished successfully over a several year period. Do we really think that this potential problem would have been caught if there was a more cumbersome approval process? Perhaps the FAA should have grounded the plane after the first crash but there were a variety of maintenance issues as well. The FAA directive in October put every pilot on notice that they needed to train up on this system. Computer software is not a good idea in general for flying. All of it has hidden bugs. Perhaps they can develop computer programs that will do a better job of testing every eventuality but you can be certain something will be missed. These comments are remarkably negative and one wonders if the readership really wants to destroy the US aerospace industry. Flying has risk....but less than driving. Pilots and machines are not perfect.
1
This is Donald Trumps FAA. This is Elaine L. Chao's FAA.
I believe that a high level of scrutiny is warranted.
Ms. Chao has always been a big fan of small government and private contracting. I believe that Boeing should not have been engaged in certifying their own aircraft and having that certification rubber stamped by Elaine L. Chao's FAA.
When the "Art of the Deal" mentality is applied to areas involving consumer safety we should all be very concerned.
6
When congress guts agency funding, agencies must find alternatives to work within an insufficient budget. Several airlines certify their own airplanes under FAA supervision. If you use the number of crashes as the litmus test, it's been a success.
Delta has an excellent program. Several years ago, Aloha kept flying a 737 beyond the 75,000 takeoff and landing limit. Eventually, one came apart in flight and the log indicated it had 89,000 takeoff and landings.
@Ginny H
Cold comfort for the victims of the Boeing Max jets and the republican gutting of government oversight.
@Interested Party It's easy to blame Boeing but on 11/7 FAA issued an airworthiness directive that instructed pilots how to deal with this situation. Had the pilots read it, practiced it, and employed it like many pilots before them, 157 people might be alive.
Can we please hold George W Bush—who is sitting in Austin doing paintings—
Accountable.
Accountable for the 2005 compromise of the FAA’s independence and therefore compromise of the public safety.
[I also note that Bush was not held accountable for the Iraq War debacle. Our young new president named Obama said we “weren’t looking back”.]
4
The most shameful episodes of all in this: the moment when the BOING CEO called his personal friend, the MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE, and asked him to keep the 737 MAX8 /9 in the air when all other countries grounded them.
13
I blame this on Trumpy’s let’s let the the company’s supervise themselves ethos Disgusting!
I hear next their letting Dow write EPA’s rules and any other department they desire: USDA, FDA. No problem. Anything to increase profits. Then we can change our country’ s name to UCA- The United Corporations of America.
2
Remember the wicked queen in Snow White, looking in the mirror and asking her reflection, "Who's the fairest of them all?"? She always got the answer she wanted until she didn't.
1
The ten most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the Trump administration and I’m here to help.”
9
Boeing's cowardly CEO said that they had 'heavy hearts' - of course they were talking about the share price - not the 380+ souls wiped out due to his company's incredible greed.
Put the entire Boeing C-Suite in jail. Along with Chao and anyone at the FAA who knew about this scandal.
10
@Plennie Wingo Sorry to nitpick, but according to a great many religions, “souls” don’t get “wiped out.” Bodies do.
@Whatever & Plennie Wingo
I think "rubbed out" is an appropriate term in this case. Like erasing someone from a ledger. A simple transaction in the republican school of economic theory.
We are all numbers, either to be monetized and milked like cows, or rubbed off the ledger once we have served our purpose or killed off by republican sponsored corporate malfeasance.
...Or just another victim of a republican sponsored shooting expedition featuring assault weapons.
1
Business and Government still in bed together. Great. Now we continue to get the SAME unqualified and inexperienced incompetence from *both Sectors.
I disagree with Nancy Pelosi. We can't afford NOT to get rid of this administration post haste. Whether Trump starts a war of distraction, or just keeps killing Americans out of his *gross ignorance regarding the reality of the World around him.
He can create a *lot more Environmental Destruction in the next nineteen moths as well. "Not Worth IT?" I guess that depends upon what scale you are using for counting !
3
'The United States transportation secretary, Elaine L. Chao, on Tuesday called for her agency’s internal watchdog to open an inquiry into the process, saying that “safety is the top priority of the department.” Lawmakers in the United States are similarly pushing for a review, while Canada is looking into its approval of the plane’s American certification.'
Why does this article nowhere point out to readers that United States transportation secretary, Elaine L Chao is married to US Senator for Kentucky, US Senate Majority Leader, and unstinting Trump advocate, Republican politician Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr, aka Mitch McConnell?
Every NYT article should point out the potential conflicts of interest of the major players identified in each story.
It shouldn't have to be up to commenters, as here, to have to point these out.
9
The FAA allowing Boeing to self-certify is like the Supreme Court allowing Trump to self-adjudicate the constitutionality of his most illegal executive orders. Both destroy innocent lives.
4
That's what happens when you exchange "job-killing regulations" for people-killing sloppiness.
8
In an effort to make Boeing more competitive, American politicians may actually have dealt a severe financial blow to the company by allowing it to police itself. Foreign buyers and foreign governments will no longer trust the American certification process and are sure to demand an independent safety check.
This outcome was so predictable. Sooner or later, with Boeing under financial pressure and allowed to police itself, this was going to happen.
So sad that it had to happen after multiple crashes in which over 300 people were killed.
8
“For decades, the F.A.A. has relied on outside experts known as designees to assist in certifying that aircraft meet safety standards. In 2005, the agency created a program through which manufacturers like Boeing could choose their own employees to act on behalf of the F.A.A. to help certify new aircraft.”
Could some context be put on this? What do the Europeans do with Airbus? Same process? Who started self-certification, the Europeans or the Americans?
1
"In 2005, the F.A.A. delegated more authority to companies, allowing manufacturers like Boeing to select their own employees who would help with certification work. "
'Help with'? This implies that Boeing employees merely assisted some other authority in the certification process. Newspaper articles I've read elsewhere this week state flatly that the 2005 regulations allowed the FAA to delegate certification authority to Boeing employees.
Which is it? Did the FAA abandon its regulatory authority completely or not?
2
I remember, pre-2008, when Alan Greenspan was saying that there could be a reduction of regulatory oversight over large financial institutions, because such institutions sense of self preservation would stop them from engaging in practices that could threaten their long term existence. Later, post 2009, he admitted he was wrong.
The fact is, all businesses are run by people. And financial markets, in judging the values of businesses, focus on short term issues. Primarily profit levels. So the people running the businesses are often focused excessively on the short term bottom line, and cutting cost improves it. Their personal rewards are often geared to their ability to cut costs and boost profits.
So, in doing so, people will often cut corners, and take risks. They think the risks they take are minor and tempered by their experience and judgement. And sometimes that judgement is wrong.
There have been errors before in aviation design that have cost lives early in a product cycle. Wings breaking off Lockheed Electras. The British Comet having too weak of a fuselage. The 727 being so powerful, that application of the throttle during landing sequences could flip the plane.
I don't think we will change self certification. But we better make sure that corners are not being cut.
4
Apart from Boeing's reputation fo excellence, what is at stake are huge contracts and very large amounts of money.
Of course when this amount of money is involved you will always find the odd corner cut here and there.
As several comments have pointed out, Boeing's commitment to excellence is in most cases sufficient to make self regulation feasible.
In the case of the 737 Max the corner that was cut was too big. Boeing should have redesigned the 737into a new plane and they did not because of the time and the cost that it would have taken.
2
This is just one flaw being exposed in the work of our government. What must we do to get back to effective, honest, bipartisan governance and stop the trend towards deregulation?
7
If Boeing willingly tried to push this faulty product forward after some data geek finished a cost-benefit analysis with people’s lives on the line, then they were as misguided as their jet. Pharma can get away with this business model but the flying public has rightly come to expect 100% safety.
1
If you've read the previous articles this week ,the whole process was described.They basically changed engines on the original plane.that put the plane out of balance,especially on take off.To compensate they programmed the auto pilot to compensate .Most of the problem arises from the engineers never communicating all this important information to pilots and/or to who they sold the planes to .Very simple ,no mystery.
3
"The coming software fix by Boeing will require data from both of the plane’s angle-of-attack sensors, among other changes,..."
What if this software fix leads to the opposite problem, i.e., the plane is actually flying at an angle which would cause it to stall, yet one of the faulty angle-of-attack sensors indicates otherwise? In that case the MCAS will not activate and the plane may stall and crash. Not sure this entirely fixes the plane's safety issue.
4
The head of the FAA is Trumps personal pilot appointed by Trump to head the FAA. The pilot has no government or administrative experience but is in charge of the FAA because he is loyal to Trump. Trump touts a personal relationship with the President If Boeing. Why would anyone believe this FAA would care, require, know, or even want a new aircraft software system to be vetted?
The fox is regulating the chicken coop. Business owns US regulatory agencies. The FAA, FCC, SEC, and FDA are examples of agencies that have been gutted of agency inspectors. Instead business is asked to self regulate and report any problems. Wink. Wink.
The Trump administration is now placing only business lobbyists and business friendly folks loyal to him as heads of regulatory agencies. The world knows how little Trump and his gang are fond of transparency and expertise. Now even the Department of the Interior is run by former extraction industry leaders who are prioritizing immediate exploitation of coal and gas over sustainability and preservation.
2
This is an example of death by a thousand cuts. US credibility is all but shot abroad, and these disasters- to the world are more than a canary. They are a sign, a signal of the failure of the United States. Bombardier and EU made planes will ascend after this, as will so many other industries the US formerly led in because the world doesn’t trust us anymore. And frankly, why should they?
8
How can this happen?
A system is designed to compensate for aerodynamic flaws of an airplane. That in itself is a very challenging notion, not to say absurd. And the regulators are not even aware of it?
5
It is mind-boggling that senior FAA executives were not even aware of a critical software enhancement related to flight safety, and the fact that it contained a single-point failure. Ignoring such well-known engineering issues suggests too much trust and a complacency about software.
The FAA needs to have a separate software and flight operations division with its own certification process.
6
It seems odd to characterize the MCAS as a "safety feature."
Boeing seems to have designed an aircraft that is dangerously unstable in a low speed, flaps retracted climb -- a situation encountered on virtually all take-offs and departures. It slipped some software in to try to hide the defect from the F.A.A. -- and pilots(?).
That doesn't sound like a safety feature to me.
9
..., one will be waiting for a Boeing whistleblower to help unpack publicly, what really happened here; the time- and storyline so far seems to suggest considerable corporate and government oversight misconduct.
In the same vein, one wonders how much Boeing has benefited from the 2018 corporate tax relief, while at the same pondering how much more the FAA has been starved of resources to effectively execute their charter.
7
Boeing has extremely competent test pilots who are very familiar with Boeing products. They do many maneuvers in these planes that the plane will never see again in its life-span. Extreme changes in direction and altitude repeated and repeated. They know how to deal with problems that arise while airborne. The FAA is aware of this and is therefore confident that Boeing is competent to aiding the certification process.
Not all pilots that fly the Max have the experience or training that these test pilots have and that may be the problem.
1
The natural end-point for Republican-led efforts to let private industry regulate itself is dead people. And now, with the current administration rushing in to investigate, I suspect that rush is more to make sure it can be covered up as much as possible rather than to allow regulators to do their jobs.
12
The devolution of legitimately administrated regulation of the corporate sector started with Reagan in 1980.
It has negatively affected every economic sector including agriculture, media, pharma, health care, banking, education, firearms, energy and in the latest tragedy, transportation.
What engineers in their right minds would ever suggest installing an engine on an aircraft it was never designed to be part of?
This was not an engineering protocol. It was a business decision. It came from the boardroom with a stern message for the aeronautical and software departments: “ Make it so”.
Transparent regulation would have struck this absurd, deadly idea down the first time it was proposed.
Over 500 people have paid with their lives not to mention the thousands of family and friends whose live have eternally shattered.
Boeing’s corporate board , including it’s shareholders and the US government must be held accountable.
They must pay.
14
As someone who has written a lot of manuals for crummy software, I can attest to how the deadline culture for the software almost always forgets the end user and just thinks they can figure it out. I can imagine this is what happened here. The lack of redundancy is a super obvious mistake. Twenty-two years ago I worked for Microsoft and thought the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) was way too common and remembered going to the airport and thinking thank God these systems aren't run on Windows 95/98 or we would be dying. Well, it seems these days have arrived so sorry for the 450 plus people who had to die for that deadline. Decentralizing on Boeing's side and the lack of regulation/scrutiny is to be blamed here. Will cost them billions, but there's no other choice, so Boeing will survive and be fine, unlike the victims of crummy software!
8
It will be very interesting to see how the certification process of the new 77X will unfold now. Will other regions/countries like the EU or China want to perform their own certifications for this plane instead of simply relying on the FAA? My guess is that the 77X will be delayed now by 1-2 years at least...
2
I confess, I know nothing about aeronautical engineering or technology but shouldn't any software glitch capable of ending hundreds of lives be able to be manually overriden by a human pilot? Shouldn't an industry with a financial stake in the process have no decisive part in the process? Shouldn't the United States have been the first to ground these airplanes until critical safety questions affecting the lives of U.S. citizens were resolved?
8
This doesn’t bode well for the thought of having millions of autonomous vehicles on the nation’s roads, along with thousands of autonomous personal light aircraft making short commuting hops, all running on software designed by hundreds of companies. All with a government woefully behind the curve to oversee the safety aspects of what is to come.
14
For God sake priorities should be got right whether in politics or in business. People’s lives should be the first and last priority. Unfortunately personal interests matter most. That’s the reason why we are where we are doesn’t matter whether it’s the first world or last world.
3
Well I certainly will never step foot in a Max8 or any future approved Boeing jet as long as there is a conflict of interest in the US regulatory process itself.
14
For same reason Boeing opted to float this new alteration on an old frame will be the basis to not make any major changes a! Money —
Boeing with help of the bought out corrupt politicians including the incompetent wife of Mitch McConnell will continue fooling the world by assurances and face saving statements .
The only thing which will change the Boeing leadership’s mind will be if no one books a flight on thirds planes for just 6 months solid .
That will be enough . In the end it is all about money in corporate world .
One of the issues not really touched don here is the fact that, for many years, Boeing had no real competition. With the advent of Airbus, there is now stiff competition for sales. A320 vs 737. This is one of those times when competition his harmful as Boeing tries to come up with a better, cheaper product, things get rushed. Tis is not a perfect argument but it was a rush to get it out the door that made the 787 so problem heavy at first. As Airbus & Boeing compete for customers, products will be rushed out the door. I am still a confident Boeing rider and am awaiting the final decisions regarding the Ethiopian crash.
And the chemical inferno now burning in Texas poses absolutely no danger whatsoever.
AND the Boeings are safe!?! Gosh, I've never felt so reassured.
8
This is profoundly disappointing and disconcerting if FAA is in cahoots with Boing. In my opinion FAA does a great job of operating a highly complex system with tremendous safety results, world class I think, up until this caper. Why would they risk their vaunted reputation? Free trips? Stock? Model airplanes? Pressure from the Lord of the Flies himself? What gives?
3
Should the familiar quotation from Boeing fan should now become: “ if it is Boeing then I am not flying”?
4
When did Murphy's law get repealed?
2
It's like Hal 9000, eighteen years late.
The computer decides the pilots are wrong and eliminates them.
6
Why no discussion of the possibility of a malicious software hack?
1
There don't seem to be signs there was one, but if there was one that would't let anyone off the hook, either.
@Mary
Looks like there was no need for a malicious software hack? The MCAS was capable of destroying itself!
The Trump administration doesn't care about the victims of these two air disasters. The majority of passengers were people of color.
5
Even I, an extreme Anti-Trumpist, have to acknowledge that the crucial decisions about the air worthiness of the Max 8 and Max 9 occurred during the Obama administration and the fox-in-the-chickenhouse changes on certification methodology in the Bush years. At worst, Elaine Chao can be accused of dithering for a day or two.
3
“a process that relies heavily on Boeing employees to certify the safety of the plane”—
That is the key, and the degradation of the FAA and the compromise of its independence began in 2005, under another disastrously poor president, George W. Bush.
9
Get rid of "Job killing regulation" - Donald Trump 2016.
This is the face of getting rid of regulations. Corporations being able to cut corners in safety procedures and oversight in the name of profits.
Here in Houston, Texas ITC had chemical tanks on fire and citizens cannot get accurate information as to air quality measurements. More safety measures being cut and we get to live with the consequences.
Trump must be voted out in 2020.
10
Remember that Trump has tweeted to claim credit for how safe air travel had been. What's his excuse this time?
8
Oops. First Wall St 'opaque financial instruments', now Boeing's little software glitch... What next? Flynt MI Heavy Spring Water?
2
On a related note, the Trump administration has announced that as a major cost saving measure, the FBI will no longer be investigating or prosecuting crime in the United States. As the current level of crime has been found to be acceptable, agreements have been reached with the major crime organisations active in the US to adopt a self policing role with the FBI adopting an administrative oversight function. Representatives from the mafia, outlaw motorcycle gangs, MS13 and the Trump Organisation laud this new system as a proactive way to manage crime in a far more cost effective way. The major organisations have agreed to keep their existing share of crime and to not expand their territory or to explore new avenues of crime without consulting each other, or to expand their lobbying efforts unless the payola is equally spread amongst the major political parties. Job losses at the FBI are expected to be mitigated as most agents are expected to find new employment in the compliance departments of the various signatory organisations. Each organisation will be assigned judges to provide a judicial oversight in case of non compliance issues who will be paid directly by the organisation so as to reduce the liability of the taxpayer. This is not expected to affect the overall cost of the program as it just formalises in a more transparent way the system as it is currently configured.
11
Is the software being written by actual SOFTWARE ENGINEERS? Or electrical engineers, as is often the case for embedded systems. For those in the know, this is an important distinction and question.
3
The best thing that could happen here is for the ethiopian air crash to be an unmitigated disaster for Boeing. The deep integration of industry and government in this country has proven so lucrative for a select few that it takes a tragedy before people might begin to admit that there is something inherently wrong with a for-profit corporation acting as its own regulator.
4
No doubt Boeing should come up with an interim software fix for the autopilot system, but if it expects to keep customers, it’s going to have to remake the 737 Max autopilot system from the ground up. No more fix-it software, but new hardware and software.
2
It all seems to come back to the underlying issue - this plane has a flaw in its aerodynamic design that needs addressing via a software system. Is this normal with newer (civilian) planes? I’m asking honestly, as I’m not an aerospace engineer.
5
I don't want to blame this administration exclusively for our country's habit of having the fox guarding the hen house (banks shopped around for their preferred regulators prior to the 2008 melt down), but it really needs to stop. If not for the lives of innocent travelers but for the survival of remaining American-dominant industries.
2
5000 orders of this nightmare. We should remember: if something is too good to be true, it probably is not true.
4
I'm not worried. Many customers will not fly in a 737 Max no matter the airline. With airlines' loss in revenue, they themselves will take action to ground them. I'm not a libertarian. In fact, I'm incensed about the FAA's decision to keep these plane flying. But this is the reality.
1
This is exactly what happens when you don’t have independent regulators running the FAA anymore. Of course the engineers who built the plane would certify it to fly. The lack of notification about the MCAS system. The lack of pilot training. And maybe worst of all, a non redundant emergency system in a modern jet. Unheard of until now. It’s not even negligence, it’s downright criminal. Redundancy costs money. Training costs money. It was much cheaper to not do those things and Boeing is a corporation after all. It’s responsibility is to its shareholders. That’s why you don’t let the fox run the henhouse. Companies that are in regulated industries need to understand that independent regulators are actually in their best interest. If this example doesn’t prove it, nothing will.
19
THERE WAS A TIME:
There was a time when a country like Norway, a very poor country at the time when I grew up there, decided that they so totally trusted the US, its NATO support, even its FDA approval of drugs and medical procedures, (to the point of simply following the FDA for most of their approvals), banking regulations and so many other issues.
Maybe we should have known better; no empire lasts forever, but I have talked about this to anybody who would listen. That, of course, meant I was mostly talking to myself, since at least the early 1990s.
The US came up as a world power more quickly than any other (maybe in the entire history of the planet?), mainly due to a hungry and determined immigrant population, and an abundant riches of raw and natural materials, which was welcomed in all aspects of it.
Now, however, I even more believe in my feelings from the 1990s. The US will not recapture its standing and probably will never regain it. The Trump administration will never admit to having lost or try to regain the trust that so many countries had in us, and thus nobody will ever trust anything we say. We are all worse for it.
We deserve this. Our inability to follow and enforce the Constitution in this critical time is the kind of malfeasance that we see from a totally complicit party to the executive branch. It means we need to challenge any attempt to subvert the Constitution, but also decide what it means, including how our country has changed.
29
Boeing's "self -certification" of this plane borders on criminal negligence.
Keeping the nose up is crucial during the take-off phase.
During this phase a pilot will instinctively try to counteract a downward movement of the nose.
So it's truly mind-boggling that Boeing did not see fit to warn pilots that the new version of the 737 had software that would *automatically* push the noise down during the take-off phase to compensate for a novel stall risk arising from an overly steep take-off angle stemming from Boeing's decision to placing the high-powered engines further forward.
Was Boeing really unable to appreciate the *likelihood* that an uninformed pilot battling with the apparently defective controls was going to stall and crash since the more the pilot pulled the nose up the more the software pushed it down?
9
What can go wrong when the fox is guarding the chicken house? Perhaps grade schools, high schools and colleges may want to start teaching or bringing back tried and true practices, in other words teaching parables. Lets first begin with the meaning for "pull the wool over their eyes".
9
A few days ago I criticised both Boeing and the FAA for their roles in this crash, and a fanboy immediately protested, blaming the shutdown and claiming that the FAA carefully tests fixes.
It's now clear that the FAA did nothing of the sort; it merely rubber-stamped whatever Boeing came up with. In any case the fanboy ignored the fact that this software bug was around long before the shutdown.
As for Dan Elwell, the acting head of the FAA, this hack was a lobbyist for the Aerospace Industries Association. Did anyone expect him to put our safety above his loyalty to his once and future paymasters?
Astonishing!
8
The software was not the only problem with this plane. The software was linked to a angle of attack sensor. This made the plane vunerable to a failure of this single part, A practice that is never allowed when dual parts are possible.
4
- Flynt Water Scandal
-2008 financial crisis
-Purdue Pharma
-increase in poverty rate
-no education
-no health care
How much more do people need to understand that the US version of capitalism isn’t working for 99% of the people?
And this is just another piece in the puzzle. Now unfortunately also affecting people abroad, however FAA certifications will loose its face value. And all for the merits of profit.
I can only hope, that the next elections will bring a significant change, and the US could come up to a development level in line with other high income countries, and less with the developing world. Because otherwise the rest of the world should prepare itself to contain the spillover effects of a collapse of this country.
12
You cut taxes and want smaller government, then you have to shunt some services to the private sector. Small government means that when Texas gets a hurricane, then they do not get billions to rebuild from the federal government. Republican small taxes should mean less government tax breaks for big oil.
6
Still disappointed Southwest and American Air did not ground these jets on their own. I will be avoiding both airlines whenever possible. And I’m a former SWA A list member. Also just paid more to fly Delta vs Amer coast to coast.
6
What would possess Boeing's attempt to turn the stubby narrow-body short- haul 737 into a claustrophobic, narrow-body long- haul aircraft? Greed. Every component of the aircraft had to be re-engineered.
Boeing's determination to maintain the 2 Engine dynamic with its business model of cramming more people into tighter spaces may turn out to be a colossal failure.
6
If I understand correctly, they made changes to the airplane's design to make if more fuel efficient, and as a result the Max 8's flight characteristics changed compared to the ordinary 737s. But because thet didn't want to spend time and money in retraining pilots, they developed a piece of software that would make the Max 8 planes fly like previous 737 models, and didn't tell pilots about it. Is that the way things should work?, Is forcing a plane to fly in a certain way against its inherent mechanical characteristics by means of software acceptable to the FAA? Well, if it is, it shouldn't be, judging by the results.
13
What’s a few hundred lives compared to the substantial increase in shareholder value provided by getting a competitive product on the market sooner? Way to go, Boeing.
12
It would be interesting to find out what other industries do their own testing and approval of what they manufacture.
11
Here in NYC, architects. Look up Robert Scarano to see how well that's going.
1
The reason for the delay in grounding the MAX Boeings in the United States is because the accidents happened in the developing world. Having no red flag on a software update on increasingly automated airplanes was criminal. Not grounding these Max Boeings after the Lion Air crash and waiting for another air crash goes beyond being criminal. It was callous and evil. And then dithering for days after the Ethiopian air crash, is beyond words.
18
A "stall preventing" system that relies on readings from one and only one sensor seems like an obvious flaw in the design of this airplane. For critical systems like this, redundancy is a must. Sensors are not perfect and can sometimes give faulty readings. For a design to permit a faulty reading from a single sensor to cause a plane to crash seems like obvious malfeasance on the part of the designers.
11
Well, Trump has named an ex Delta exec as head of the FAA. So we can all sleep better at night knowing the passengers' best interests are being looked out for.
11
This is the logical conclusion of the de-regulation extravaganza. Federal oversight committees and procedures regulating key aspects of our society (medicine, pollution, air travel) were born out of need. We humans do seem so intent to relearn the same lessons the hard way over and over.
13
It is clear that the new, heavier and bigger engines were shoehorned into the 50-year-old 737 airframe for one reason only: to allow Boeing to compete against Airbus's new plane. The 737Max is not airworthy. Its certification should be rescinded. Boeing should be forced to design a new plane - like Airbus did - with higher ground clearance and safe aerodynamics.
17
And yes Ernesto, and not some software fix for the MCAS like a Tesla, or an Apple phone… Done overnight while you’re sleeping!
1
Another instance where a U.S. regulatory agency seems to be an extension of the industry it supposedly is regulating. Other examples: the FCC and EPA, particularly since they've come under Trump's control.
9
Readers of The Times might recall the disaster of the Morandi Bridge on the Italian highway that collapsed near Genoa, Italy on August 14, 2018. The Italian highway is run, largely, by the Benetton Family which also oversee the architects responsible for guaranteeing the safety of such structures. I wrote, upon learning this, that "only in Italy would the mouse be allowed to guard the cheese" in this way, with catastrophic results. How wrong I was! To think that the FAA would allow employees from Boeing to take part in certifying aircraft for flight safety and worthiness is appalling. No one can deny that air travel is remarkably safe and more so today than ever before by a wide margin. However, this entire episode smells of collusion between regulators, manufacturer and airlines seeking to cut corners at the expense of safety. Another DC-10? The bottom line is that the private sector must NEVER be allowed to regulate itself. It's true that public bureaucracies are often less efficient than private companies at getting jobs done quickly and cost-effectively but in terms of public safety, "for-profit" entities will ALWAYS put their SHAREHOLDERS before the general public and that's simply the way the world turns, ladies and gentlemen. How tragic if we come to learn that those on the Ethiopian plane died needlessly, after the warning of the Lion Air disaster went largely ignored and unsafe planes continued flying.
15
Boeing isn't the only airplane builder with angle of attack sensor issues. Airbus has had issues, too.
Think Takata automotive airbag recall. One manufacturer, millions of vehicles.
Reports are starting to surface wherein pilots flying Airbus planes reported angle of attack issues during landings. So, now, greater scrutiny is being applied to other plane crashes to see if the angle of attack sensor might have played a role in past ill fated flights.
How many manufacturers makes angle of attack sensors?
Could this be a parts issue and not just a Boeing issue?
1
@LivingWithInterest
But Airbus didn't decide that it would be reasonable not to warn pilots that the plane has software that is going to push the nose down during take-off.
Which is the one thing that is guaranteed to cause an uninformed pilot to yank the nose up.
And since the pilot hasn't been warned, he will keep fighting what he reasonably perceives to be a defective control. At least he will until the plane stalls and crashes because the software meets every upward move by the pilot with a downward move of its own.
Boeing's liability insurers must be searching frantically for an exclusion....
4
Short answer, no.
1
I'm sure a review will find that more than a few of the senior FAA employees and managers involved in the MAX certification punched their retirement tickets with the gov and now are employed by Boeing.
And that's how that works....
4
After all is said and done, I think I am going to take the bus from now on!
I’ll take an Airbus in front of me rather than have a bus run over me!
IT consultant here, retired from Hewlett-Packard, worked for a major airline on its engine health monitoring data collection and processing, still in use today.
The software quality assurance process demands independent review and testing, to ensure that familiarity with the software by its authors does not cause reviewers to overlook any part of the software. This is a principle that is understood by IT quality assurance engineers.
The FAA and Boeing should stand aside and provide all the documentation, from design documentation to coding documentation to the actual code itself, as well as what testing was performed and then allow the third party to perform independent testing, to exhaustion.
You depend on untested software to fly the plane?
Make sure you've purchase high value flight insurance.
10
Well, well, well. You stock a federal regulatory agency with individuals whose loyalty and past (or future) enrichment lie with the industry they are tasked with overseeing and the wheels come off, with the awful consequences borne by the public??!?! Who could have predicted such a calamity?
This obscenity is one of the strongest planks in the Republican platform. But hey, when you only fly in your own personal Gulfstream, who cares?
10
All I want to know is whether the FAA can be sued for negligence.
8
(The author: former B engineering systems employee)
The FAA: grossly under-manned, under-paid, lacking in leading edge tech skills. Boeing: well manned, well paid, lots of tech skills. The FAA has no options. Boeing has to brief/teach/train the FAA in what B is up to. In far too many cases, the FAA simply does not have the staff to match, let alone oversee, B.
12
Self certification is all the rage in government. It fits the agency capture trend. The corporation self certifies that they followed all the rules and then the wall falls down or the plane falls out of the sky. New York City allows self certication of Supertall buildings! What could go wrong?!
It’s all about who owns the government. It’s time to get big money out of politics now.
17
This collusion between big corporations and Government oversight agencies are going on for many years now. BP Gulf oil spill showed it do clearly and this one is no different. This failure of corporate governance and quality control of American products and/or services would seriously dent US credibility and that of its companies worldwide. No wonder the influence of Boeing's competitor, Airbus, is growing and Boeing and other US manufacturers would lose customers more.
Corporate lobbyists have penetrated far deep into the administration and law making. It would not be wrong to say that this Trump admin is the worst in that respect in recent American history. President Trump is the best cheerleaders for almost any company and even foreign Govt if they can pay him and/or his party proportionately.
7
@ NYT, Are you sure the plane has "non-rechargeable lithium batteries"? This would imply they need to be replaced often.
3
See what doesn't happen when you give the US Government free reign to run things. Your tax dollars at work. Thanks for nothing.
2
The FDA actually doesn't conduct its own independent GMO safety or Drug safety testing. The FDA instead acts more like a "rubber stamping" operation using tests run by Monsanto (and their ilk of massive monopolistic corporations) just as the giant pharmaceutical companies run their own tests. Time after time we have seen corporations lobby to weaken every major regulatory agency. Maybe they've finally gotten to the FAA too. Under Trump and the current batch of Republican politicians, they've actually turned the EPA into yet another corrupted figurehead agency, whose purpose is far removed from protecting the U.S. and global citizens.
Boeing has historically been among the most safety-conscious corporations in the world, it would not surprise me if Trump and the Republicans played a role in holding the FAA back. There is a war on whistleblowers supported by Bush, Obama and Trump alike.
Since Citizens United, the level of corruption has skyrocketed. It is clear that politicians like McConnell and Ryan and all the other Koch moochers corporatist peer groups than they do in protecting their fellow citizens.
Eisenhower was correct in his farewell warning, but it isn't just the military industrial complex. It's really more about how sick humans become once they reach a certain level of power. From Stalin to Hitler to the robber barons, the pattern is the same.
The greatest regulatory requirement for democracy is the regulation of the concentration of power.
13
According to the Seattle Times, some of the errors made in the safety review process for the safety of the MCAS system, were pointed out to the newspaper by anonymous insiders BEFORE the Ethiopian disaster and the paper asked Boeing for comment. Boeing's only response is that the paper had errors in its story. There was no indication in the story that Boeing warned users of the MAX of the inherent catastrophic danger from the system revealed by the Indonesian crash.
9
I applaud Secretary Chao's call for opening an inquiry into the process for certifying the safety of the public carriers that operate in the United States. When one considers, DOT's air, rail and other guided surface transport, highway and the variety of vehicles that operate on U.S. highways including autonomous passenger and trucks, and now autonomous drones, it is one of the most awesome responsibilities in government.
New ideas come along, from time to time, but everyone should know that the relationship between developers of these systems must be separate and independent.
It will cost to operate independent testing and certification, highly trained personnel, and specialized equipment.
These two crashes is a terrible price to pay to find out that the process relied mainly on the manufacturer is flawed.
When one considers the consequences of accidents on our railroads, airways, and highways, it would be wise to consider the establishment of independent testing at government-operated facilities for all transport modes.
I am associated with the development of a 300 mph superconducting magnetic levitated, Maglev for short, transport system for both passengers and freight and I am convinced that the U.S. should test this system, its guideway, control, and vehicles, & its definitive performance and costs.
With this done for each of the competitors for high-speed surface transport, new air carriers, and new autonomous vehicles, the public and buyers can feel safe.
3
From everything I've read, it appears the MCAS software was functioning as designed, given the readings coming in from the AOA (Angle of Attack) sensors. I have also seen multiple reports of malfunctioning AOA sensors.
Why don't I see comments pointing at the AOA sensors and suggesting investigations of them?
2
I’m sure people who don’t work in IT think software is imbued with magical and mystical qualities.
In reality, it’s often written by young inexperienced overconfident outsourced coders paid well below market rates, and the product is invariably inadequately tested and verified.
It’s another way big corporations cut corners.
8
Quite obviously an MCAS system was needed, otherwise they would not have engineered it. And it would have been optimized based on test flight data and analyses. So, I fail to see how the problem could be addressed quickly by a software fix. It would appear the problem arises as a result of reliance on a single AoA sensor which could be malfunctioning. While an external entity such as the FAA could provide a useful independent viewpoint, several recent articles in this and other news media ascribing ulterior motives to Boeing engineers is uncalled for. As an engineer myself (not in Boeing), I don’t recollect looking at my company’s stock price ever, nor being pressured by management on safety related issues while meeting deadlines. I am sure most Boeing engineers are the same way. We are not politicians.
We need to learn lessons, particularly on the limits in the interface of man-machine systems and identifying more robust ways to determining single point failure modes acting in conjunction with this interface. This will not magically come from FAA simply because they have an independent oversight function.
4
You really need to read up more on the governing factors behind Boeing’s unseemly rush to market with this flawed and unwieldy design, out of fear of losing sales and market share to a competitor product appropriately engineered before defending them. It’s a little like defending BP over the Deepwater Horizon disaster, another example of corporate greed prioritized over safety.
3
Shamefully ignorant to the reported interference. The ‘I’m an engineer myself’ argument holds NO water.
The Boeing executive who claimed the relationship between the company and the FAA was, in effect "an arm of the FAA within the Boeing Company" had it backwards. In fact, Boeing has had an arm of the company within the FAA.
3
We as computer users know that software works most of the time as expected but sometimes it does not work. To me, it is insane to let software control and fly an airplane without complete pilot override. Why did the FAA allow Boeing to certify the software instead of independent software engineers?
6
This case reflects why we should not all cheer every time our President talks about cutting regulations. Heedless cutting of red tape almost inevitably leads to disasters of this type. Perhaps we should apply a more thoughtful that "for every new regulation, cut two existing regulations."
4
I never cheered once at the ridiculous claim of too much red tape. Safety first, not profit first.
1
I would sure like to know who approved using a single sensor in the MCAS system. It is a safety of flight issue. You always use two or more so you can compare them in case of a failure and shutdown the system. MCAS is a separate system from the autopilot so you would have to know to shut MCAS down. Very hard to do with a plane at low altitude and bouncing all over the sky.
8
Conservatives and Republicans since Reagan have been desperately undoing years of regulation designed to keep people safe; at the same time they have allowed members of industry to infiltrate the regulatory bodies which they desire more than anything to weaken. All of this has been done in the name of campaign contributions and greater profit, and at the expense of human life. These two crashes are only the latest manifestation of this insidious trend, and Mr. Trump—an unashamed champion of unbridled greed, who has just appointed an airline executive the head of the FAA—is its most eager proponent.
11
In some ways the regulatory background behind this sounds a little like the British Midland Flight 92 accident in 1989. In that accident the flight crew shut down the good engine after analyzing the engine failure in the wrong engine.
The background was the aircraft's manufacturer said only minimal training was needed for the upgraded aircraft. Also there was not a simulator available for the upgraded aircraft.
Another issue is the DC-10 back in the 70's. Turkish Airlines Flight 981. In the background of that accident was a previous failure(non injury) that severely damaged an aircraft(AA 96) and another during ground testing. The FAA caught a lot of scrutiny over a "Gentlemen's Agreement" to fix the "deficiency" .
Just remember in criticizing this, this is our government. And it will only be as good as we want it.
1
De-regulation; two words that republicans love. They don't care about the humans that become collateral damage. My sympathies to the families that lost loved ones. Remember to vote.
7
If nothing else, this shows why it is essential that we have a strong, independent federal government involved in regulatory issues.
10
The families of the victims need to liquidate Boeing and take control of what's not implicated in this and run it with decency. No decency in Boeing now. Just greed and negligence.
9
Passengers need to be told that Boeing effectively certifies its own planes and the FAA is a captive agency of the Boeing Corporation.
In actual fact, Boeing is not regulated by an independent agency.
Passengers, crew, and the America public were misinformed, with inevitable tragic consequences.
Was there criminal negligence, deliberate or not?
6
Somewhere it seems to be lost that this was an entirely preventable accident. All the pilot had to do was turn off the autopilot. Wouldn't it be better to find out why the pilot failed to do the one thing that could have prevented the crash in the first place.
Why is that no one comments of the limited experience of the flight crew? The pilot had 8000 hours of flight time and the second officer had a bit over 200? Doesn't it seem strange that the pilot's back up, his co-pilot had all of 200 hours of flying experience?
Perhaps if the airline had put a co-pilot in the cockpit instead of an apprentice we wouldn't be mourning the innocent passengers and air crew.
What ever fault lies with Boeing for the design of the MCAS system they gave the pilot the ability to solve the problem and he didn't use it. Perhaps if he hadn't been effectively alone in the cockpit he would have had a chance.
3
@Rick Girard
Boeing said pilots didn't need to be trained in the MCAS system. Didn't provide simulators. Why did they not tell pilots about a brand new mechanism that can 'take over' certain controls?
2
From earlier articles it appears that pilots were in fact trying to override the automatic feature but the system kept re engaging.
2
This is going out on a limb here, but my wild prediction is no Boeing executives are going to jail.
Murder is a terrible thing when perpetrated by no-good blue-collar lowlives, but entirely understandable and forgivable by our justice system when perpetrated by powerful men in suits looking at balance sheets with lots of big numbers.
11
"the jet’s approval by the F.A.A., a process that relies heavily on Boeing employees to certify the safety of the plane."
Regulators should be completely independent period. Safety for the public should be their paramount objective. If a manufacturer like Boeing has any say in the process of approving new systems than a company's concern for minimizing costs and speeding up the process leak into the integrity of the review.
"Top F.A.A. officials, who are briefed on significant safety issues, were not aware of the software system,"
What a joke. Why even have an FAA if they are left in the dark about any component of the plane.
Buckle your seatbelts America. Because if this is the way Trump allows these agencies to be run we can expect further tragedies to occur all over the map not only in transportation but food safety, medical safety, etc.
Between Trump's big brain and corporations more tightening octopus grip on everything; public safety will be a fading memory.
We need a new Ralph Nader.
4
Its inconceivable and short sighted that Boeing, or any other manufacturer, would create a design that relied on computer software to be flown safely. Then pilots are short changed with inadequate training and info about the computer's operation. Sad.
2
@impegleg
First of all, like 90% of passengers would vomit for an entire flight that was hand flown at 38,000 feet. People who don’t ever get motion sickness would be sick as dogs. Autopilot is as much for passenger comfort in large aircraft as it is for pilot exhaustion. A good deal of aircraft technology is for customer experience. Pilots have total control over autopilot.
Second of all, the airplane still flies without the MCAS software.
@Lloyd Christmas The redesigned 737 should never have been declared air worthy. The redesign created safety and handling problems. Boeing was more interested in marketing than in designing a safe plane. Obviously the plane flies with the MCAS shut down, but just as obviously it is needed to correct the plane's inherent design fault.
Raising shareholder value is the goal of this administration--the peoples' safety, not so much.
2
It is too early to poke a finger in FAA or Boeing eye. There may be structural or organizational issues, granted, and we can fix them. Software issues are the new norm. I have confidence that no airline wants to ground its craft or buy planes that crash, in any country. I will expect a fix. But someone will surely hack our financial institutions again...the incentives there are too too great. No, Einstein is not needed. Alas, the NTSB is vitally needed to sort it out. Stay tuned, and keep your powder dry. Take the bus..or Amtrak for now.
So if Boeing now loses market or trust and it's stock cru,mbles, they will know that insisting on the continued superiority of US made products merely because they have tight relations with the White House and FAA won't keep them in the air outside the "states".
Once, before the 2nd world war, American
technology was considered junky, ineffective and untrustworthy, outside of the Western Hemisphere. US Cars hadn't, and still don't have a great following anywhere but in the US, where we still use inches, pounds and miles , instead of the SI like the rest of the planet-civilized or not.
Boeing will find out how hard it must work to recover it's "clout" with the rest of the world, or it will just glide on along on dry tanks until it crashes.
2
Relying on airplane manufacturers to provide reliable safety testing and certifications is just as effective as relying on manufacturers of prescription drugs to do the same. The American government bodies charged with protecting consumers abdicated their authority and responsibility when they handed over their watchdog obligations to the manufacturers. Unfortunately it is consumers who must reap the whirlwind.
2
All aircraft should have a big red button placed prominently on the dashboard that disconnects all software control of the aircraft and gives the pilots complete control of all flight-control surfaces. They should also be taught to fly their aircraft.
6
And WHO again is our acting Sec of Defense?
For a corporation that is the heartbeat of the military industrial cesspool, and makes huge sums of money through taxpayer-bled corporate welfare and through manufacture and deployment of weapons of mass destruction, can it be any surprise that the FAA is a fascist arm of Boeing? Are we to be shocked, shocked?
7
This looks really bad.
6
So who needs the FAA any way? Let's go full blown banana republic and skip all these darn regulations!
5
This is another good example of why government regulations are a big waste of time and money, just like Republicans have been telling us for years. We should get rid of agencies like the EPA, SEC, and the USDA. Nothing but red tape and overpaid government bureaucrats.
Yes, that's sarcasm.
8
"Most pilots did not know about MCAS until after the Lion Air crash.
The regulators also approved the software to be triggered after receiving data from[ only one so-called angle-of-attack sensor]. The decision allowed for the system to have a single point of potential failure, a rarity in aviation safety."
Will Congress investigate; subpoena Boeing's internal emails and notes before they get to the shredder?
8
This makes me physically sick. Can you imagine for a moment the absolute terror the passengers on the Ethiopian and Lion Air flights must have felt? Diving toward the ground at speed? The children whose mothers were on those flights? The chief flight attendant for the Ethiopian Airlines flight left behind 3 young children who will never see their mother again. And that’s just one story. How many more people are in the throes of grief and despair at this very moment because of these tragedies? I hope these families sue Boeing out of existence. And I hope anyone involved in certifying these planes is sent to prison.
17
United States transportation secretary, Elaine L. Chao stated “safety is the top priority of the department.”
If such is the case, then why was the United States government the last in the world to ground the Boeing 'night-mare liner'? China's CAAC (equivalent of the FAA) was the first, Singapore second, the EU, and then Canada. Canada cited 'new data'.
Ahem, the rest of the world saw the similarities between the Indonesia crash and the Ethiopia crash immediately.
In between the late-October Indonesia crash and the Ethiopia crash, Boeing promised a 'software fix.'
From all evidence, the software problem is only one of a multitude of issues, and in the safety profession, we call this "Systems Management." There is a design problem (relying on only one pitot tube to measure angle of attack); a training issue (pilots unaware of the scope of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System ); three management issues: Boeing self-inspecting on behalf of the FAA, Boeing not immediately grounding the night-mare liner after the second crash, and the FAA allowing the craft to fly after the rest of the world grounded the plane.
The whole chain of events leads to the opposite conclusion, that safety was very low priority for the FAA given the trauma of the Lion Air crash.
As for Boeing, their inability to immediately ground the night-mare liner will go down as one of the most incomprehensible, moral, and ethical blunders in business history.
16
Maybe if individuals were found criminally responsible when a company policy kills people, the company would be more diligent with safety.
20
Zuckerberg is in my view personally responsible for Christchurch. Together with the creeps that made Fortitude.
They will never be tried.
There should be some reporting on the possibility of the software being tampered with. Remember Stuxnet? It's perfectly possible that the planes were perfectly fine when they left Boeing. It is very far from inconceivable that Boeing planes would be targeted for sabotage. This is bad for Boeing, but it's going to have an effect on the US economy and prestige. Who and what comes into contact with the plane's computer? How is the software upgraded? Is there remote access to the computer? How could security be compromised? How have industrial sabotage viruses "evolved" since Stuxnet?
1
So how many beta test flights did Boeing think they could get away with?
3
The country has lost its way. Corporations are now in charge of the government. Companies govern the politicians who are supposedly representative of the people. Unreal.
13
@Chloe Hilton
Mad? Vote them out.
Had all the voters who supported Obama twice bothered to show up in 2016, we wouldn't have this nightmare in the Oval Office now.
President Obama warned voters in 2016 of what would happen with Trump in office. Obama said, "Donald Trump spent 70 years of his life only caring about himself. And now all of a sudden Trump says he wants to be YOUR champion? Come on man!"
What I find outrageous is that US was the LAST country grounding the suspicious planes following the SECOND crash of the same model of plane and in a strikingly similar manner as the first crash and the loss of 346 lives in just five months. Some people in responsible positions in the US ought to have known that to allow the Boeing 737 Max planes to fly in the first place was somewhat risky. Doing nothing and allowing the planes to continue to fly after the first crash (and after knowing the manner in which the crash took place) was reckless. Now, after the second crash and after knowing how the crash occurred, continuing to do nothing and continuing to allow the planes to fly until every other country had grounded the planes was outrageously irresponsible with total disregard for the safety of the public.
9
Indeed, more than irresponsible. Criminal.
1
We can expect more of these disasters if Trump and the Republicans continue their strategy of stripping away important safety regulations on everything from drugs to planes to clean air and water
6
Now that we understand why there was a need for an anti-stall system (to compensate for a design flaw), and why this system wasn’t being advertised to pilots, it is becoming clear that the whole affair has been a matter of patching (anti-stall) upon a patch (new engine on old 737 framework), and that Boeing was considering applying yet another patch by attempting to detect the type of nose dives generated by the anti-stall system that led to the 2 crashes.
As an engineer, system of patches is a clearest indicator that the initial design (the first patch upon a fine original 737) was flawed to begin with.
What is particularly terrifying is that the FAA let Boeing get away with it via the self-certification systems, costing several hundred lives.
11
“Boeing and the F.A.A. have had an almost symbiotic relationship,” said Michael Dreikorn, an aviation safety expert who previously worked in a safety oversight roles at the F.A.A. “The relationship is too cozy.””
Expect to hear that again in the prosecutors opening statements.
As for the civil case, the Montreal Convention which governs the claim limits in a “normal” accident would not necessarily apply here since the defective MCAS design may constitute negligence in which the jury or judge would not be limited in the award of damages.
3
This is what happens when politicians of a certain political party tell us that business should be left to regulate itself, and that government oversight should be as minimal as possible, if not completely absent.
22
I’ll know that the 737 Max is safe to fly when the CEO of Boeing takes his children on the first approved flight along with President Trump.
28
Why would the US government (US taxpayer) be at fault for crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia operated by Ethiopian and Indonesian airlines?
1
The FAA did not adequately inspect the 737 to make sure the new plane was safe. The FAA follows Boeing’s orders.
5
Because, Lloyd, aircraft safety responsibility starts AND ends at home. That's how to assure accountability of parenting when we send the wee birds out to other neighborhoods, so you know, they don't do bad things to other people. Or, the basic execution of moral principles.
2
@Phoebe
Ok so the US government is responsible for everything created by and manufactured by Americans or American companies regardless of the end user?
Arthur Andersen, the CPA firm, got too cozy with Enron, a major client. Instead of taking a neutral stance toward Enron's convoluted deals, Andersen provided consulting services that augmented some of the deals. But many of Enron's schemes were frauds, and when Enron went down, so did Andersen.
Boeing is not engaged in fraud. But The FAA did Boeing no favors by failing to keep professional distance. Had they done so, maybe the software/sensor problem might have been caught.
9
@Frank: no, it wasn’t under Obama; it was under W.
‘In 2005, the F.A.A. delegated more authority to companies, allowing manufacturers like Boeing to select their own employees who would help with certification work.’
15
Republican's have been telling us for years: remove regulations, private industry knows best, government is bad.
You do the math.
31
Multithousand passenger large ultra high speed flarecraft do not travel above clouds but rather half at most there immense wingspan which allows inertially significant mass obviating need for internal propulsion system which demoats planet and democratises safe affordable around ENTIRE world ROUND TRIP same day travel MEANING BOIING NEEDS MORE THEN A TOE IN IT TO SURVIVE. It demands a hostile takeover and will suffer one immediately upon exit from bankruptcy if it can survive that long which I doubt. Yank systems use phase snapping back air value added products to distribute uranium energy from central fission centers like Mideast is shaping up to be.
These last two ships of souls to fall from sky are tragic but mark end of absurd highflying obscenely obsolete jet era Duh.
1
I could not have said it better myself!
1
Every thing run by Federal Gov has same compromised standards of management or FDA, FAA, Postal Services and VA.God has been. Nature has been very kind to Air line travel in USA and it is nothing to do with FAA as the news about Boeing 737 MAX are unfolding !
The foxes in charge of the hen house are actually in bed with the chickens.
Capitalism at its best.
F3
9
The credibility of the FAA, and the NTSB is damaged
According to the Swiss Press, Ethiopia and Malaysia sent the black boxes to France for Analysis, not to the US, because they feared a white wash by the American, NTSB, FAA, Boeing, Trump Administration white wash.
As an engineer: The Max jet is an aeronautical inherently unstable design, that should never have been certified as a passenger plane. Too large engines, too far forward , on too small an airframe.
But expect a white wash - in the US where companies can buy politicians, and with it , those that are appointed to oversee boards.
14
This Max 8 coverage is good and accurate reporting but I wonder how many readers understand the reference to a "stall." When I was writing for newspapers about stalls in aircraft accidents we would always say "aerodynamic stall" and sometimes include a brief explanation to differentiate from engine problems...
6
This is what happens when you have a combative President who fights with each and every ally! They don't trust us and our country and they are less forgiving of mistakes!
4
And I suppose they forgot to do wind tunnel simulations with the new engines in their new mounting spots? A change in aerodynamics like that could force the planes nose up like a car doing a wheelie. Sounds like an autopilot software error.
Even if it goes back up in the air a lot of people are going to be leery of it. If it's a 737 MAX I ain't going.
7
"Safety is the top priority.." says our Transportation Secretary.
Safety LAST.. as in oversight and the last country to ground the Max.
2
But republicans keep assuring me that regulations are bad and that government is the problem. Good thing we're deregulating air and water safety as well as the financial sector, right? Wake me up when the American voter learns some common sense. Until then I'll be buying imports and flying airbus.
22
Do you really think Airbus doesn’t also have a tremendous amount of leeway in certifying the build quality and design of their jets?
So far, we know that the FAA deputized Boeing employees to certify Boeing planes. We now have at least one example why this might be a bad idea. What I am wondering is whether Boeing employees who are reviewing on behalf of the FAA were also tasked with the review of competitors's aircraft, such as planes from Airbus, Bombardier or Embraer? If yes, that would open another huge can of worms. Does anybody here know?
6
This is the price of deregulation that Trump and the GOP love so much -- let the companies take care of themselves and buyer beware. And we're supposed to fly on these planes?
14
Articles re Max handling difficulties and lack of awareness of systems routinely mention these ‘2’ crashes. It would be more accurate and certainly descriptive of the situation to mention the multiple reports of similar pillory struggles while flying the ‘Max’. The problem seems more than ‘2’.
3
The watering down of regulations, and the weakening of regulatory agencies has been going on for a long time, due to the various industries buying our politicians on both sides of the aisle. Take a look at BigPharma and the F.D.A. for one painful example. How many thousands of people die each year from the hidden (by the company, for the sake of profits) side effects of prescription drugs, taken as prescribed?
8
It is clear that the new, heavier and bigger engines were shoehorned into the 50-year-old 737 airframe for one reason only: to allow Boeing to compete against Airbus's new plane. The 737Max is not airworthy. Its certification should be rescinded. Boeing should be forced to design a new plane - like Airbus did - with higher ground clearance and safe aerodynamics.
19
Seems to me that ALL features and ALL systems on ALL models of ALL airplanes should be subject to exceptional scrutiny.
We are dealing with the civilian equivalent of NASA here. Manned flight is still rather an experimental undertaking whenever a vehicle leaves the ground.
It is not surprising that, with all the broken down entities in our lives and governmental systems today, the FAA is among the agencies that have systemic infrastructure failure and are dying.
5
The F.A.A. delegated more authority to companies, allowing manufacturers like Boeing to select their own employees who would help with certification work. I'm hoping that the IRS soon allows my firm to audit our own taxes.
16
it appears to be a software design flaw that violates basic principles. this should have been caught before test, and hence reflects poor engineering and poor system analysis.
5
You really have gotten this story wrong. Boeing's certification documentation misrepresented the parameters of the final MCAS software and thus misrepresented the hazard posed by using information from only one sensor (which was off by 20 degrees prior to the crash). The Seattle Times of Sunday, March 16th has the real story. The WSJ run the same story in skeletal form.
FAA managers, not engineers, ceded to much power to Boeing. DOJ began a criminal investigation after the first, Lion, crash. Mrs. Chao is a little late in her political move. The DOT IG was already investigating the Lion crash in cooperation with DOJ.
14
Dear foxes, Please watch the hen house and tell us how it goes. Love, your pals, the federal government
11
Nothing can bring back these lives, but if - as seems to be the case- Boeing and the FAA are demonsrated to have been negligent in these crashses, here's hoping Boeing at least is significantly financially chastened post-lawsuit to think twice about such laxity again.
9
No they must be bankrupted and disappear. Enron needs a roommate.
1
So, does the 737 Max ever fly again? Will you mindlessly step into one of these things, toss your bag above your head, throw on your headphones, adjust your neck pillow, wrestle for control of the armrest, tip your head back and release a contented sigh of relief (you made your flight) while letting Boeing carry you to your final destination?
14
@Scott It will fly again when MCAS software is redesigned, the planes successfully complete test flights, and the FAA recertifies it. Canada and the EU will do their own independent recertification. Canada, at least, no longer trusts FAA certification.
5
The MCAS system forward trim was counteracted over 30 times by the captain in the Lion Air crash but it was not turned off. With the stick shaker activated for most of that time I’m sure the pilots were overloaded. B737 training has always reviewed runaway trim procedures that require either pilot to turn off the trim cutout switches which would likely saved that airplane.
NYT said the copilot at Ethiopian had 200 hours of flight time. Flying jets safely requires training and experience because it is expected that things will fail. A pilot with 200 hours does not have a lot of experience. It is also expected that equipment failures will be properly be handled by the pilots.
Just a few things to think about. Let the FAA and NTSB spend a few months figuring out what the pilots should have done in 10 minutes before we pass judgment.
2
Less and less government oversight, and relaxing standards to maximize profits. Less compliance by industry regarding safety. This is sorta like the Deep Horizon disaster only in the air.
4
What did Boeing and FAA know and when. Could either crash have been avoided. And why was the USA the last major country in world to ground the 737-Max, insisting up until the day prior to grounding there was no “systemic” issue.
7
How many innocents need to die before we realize that deregulation and having government "get out of the way" of business are usually cynical profit-grabs by company officials? Government, please get back in the way. Your job is oversight and the protection of the safety of the citizens who voted you into office. Clearly, a single point of failure flew in the face of decades of aviation experience, and no doubt potential whistleblowers were silenced. The current trend towards deregulation in multiple critical industries, prompted by the appointment of officials with obvious serious conflicts of interest, is yet another travesty wrought by today's right wing pro laissez faire business at all costs agenda. Please folks, let's vote these parasites out of office everywhere in 2020 and return government to its proper priorities. The rich will be a little less richer, but at least people, including children, won't have to die for the sake of corporate profit. A good trade-off in my view.
23
A design flaw, and a rush to launch, brought down Challenger 33 years ago.
A design flaw, and a rush to launch, brought down a 737 MAX last year, and another this year.
353 souls sacrificed to expediency.
24
"The regulators also approved the software to be triggered after receiving data from only one so-called angle-of-attack sensor. The decision allowed for the system to have a single point of failure, a rarity in aviation safety.
Most important safety systems include redundancy. The coming software fix by Boeing will require data from both of the plane’s angle-of-attack sensors, among other changes, according to pilots and lawmakers."
This was not just an oversight, it is an unforgivable mistake. Anytime human lives are at stake, a single point of failure is not acceptable. This is sloppy and hurry up and get it done, now, software analysis and design. Program and project managers are paid to meet dates, not specifications. What happens if the plane is on autopilot when this happens? Hope someone is having trouble sleeping at night after this mistake.
16
Every step of the developement of this plane is directed by one goal. Profit. Cost cutting is more important than pilot training. There was one report from a pilot's forum that the pilot used the term criminal negelence in describing the performance of the 737 Max.
Boeing is in trouble.
12
This is what shrinking the size of government so you can drown it in a bathtub looks like.
This is what running government like a business looks like.
People want low taxes. People want small government. And now people are shocked SHOCKED! when something like this happens.
The FAA says they don’t have the resources to adequately certify aircraft. Cut cut cut. Chop chop chop. We have more complexity, more people, failing infrastructure, so let’s cut more heads and trust that everything will be okay.
Airplanes now, our food, our air, our water, our medicines, just trust the businesses because our country can’t afford to insure our safety anymore.
Tax cuts anyone?
35
Perhaps if there existed an economic environment where businesses might enter and compete with a negligent entity you might not see things like this happen. To that end I don’t think removing the profit motive would be productive; rather, monopolies (including the government) are not good things.
2
If a Trump appointment was responsible for this then I think we know the problem - he has no idea about expertise in any field not involving mindless internet trolling and exploitation.... you get what you sow Electoral College....
4
This “delegation” of safety regulation to Boeing happened under Obama.
2
@Frank
Actually it's been going on for decades, but got measurably worse in 2005, when Oba-- oh, wait, Bush was president.
Right wingers can't have it both ways, accusing Democrats of enacting "job killing regulation!" on the one hand then blaming Obama for lax enforcement by the FAA.
4
“The regulators also approved the software to be triggered after receiving data from only one so-called angle-of-attack sensor. The decision allowed for the system to have a single point of failure, a rarity in aviation safety.”
There’s the root cause.
6
@Robo There were indeed other pilots reporting on the issues with Boeing 737 Max. Amy Goodman was reporting on this a week ago, Mar 13, on Democracy Now:
"Now, AP has been doing a deep dive into the database of pilots complaining over and over again about this problem and saying they have to quickly switch to manual to prevent the plane from nosediving into the ground. And this latest news from The Wall Street Journal that while they’re talking about this glitch being fixed in the next five weeks or so, that five weeks were lost in January because of the government shutdown."
6
Does this article have it backwards?
Is it that the "new software...to prevent stalls" didn't get exceptional scrutiny.
Or that the new 737 Max aerodynamic design rendering it prone to stalling and crashing did not receive exceptional scrutiny.
The FAA and Boeing are both broken to have even considered certification of an inherently unstable airliner much less testing it on unsuspecting pilots and travelers.
9
As a now retired software developer -- doing everything from needs analysis to coding, verification, installation, with my own software house for three decades -- I am well aware of the requirements for mission-critical systems. One must look for failure points and include dealing with those in the design.
A simple and obvious backup in the MCAS design would have been using elevation above the terrain -- produced now by down-looking radar -- as an input, and so keep it from driving the craft into the ground. Airspeed indicators -- pitot tubes --can give faulty readings; relying upon their perfection is, in a word, ridiculous.
The designers and self-certifying engineers were, in my view, criminally negligent in not including that failure mode in the MCAS system.
Boeing has a backlog of some 4,300 Max 8 planes on order, at $56 million each. $240 billion. Say goodbye to those orders.
Then start funding a victim compensation plan.
13
Just checked. $240 billion is about 2 1/2 annual revenue, almost three times Boeing's net worth.
I doubt their insurer would issue a policy for more than their net worth.
Simply another in a long line of examples of how privatisation of public services is a lie. Who you’re accountable to makes a difference. If the inspectors were accountable to the people and not Boeing’s CFO, this *may* not have happened. Professionals generally go into government to serve. People generally go into industry to help other people make money, thereby making more money for themselves.
4
Software changes are not that important??? How may times have we had to reboot our daily computers?
Too bad our Senators and congresspersons don't focus more on doing their jobs than on the next level. And then, who wants to ask for an inquiry in Dept Transportation, when it is headed by the wife of the Senate Majority Leader?
5
It is well known that since the Reagan Administration from food processing, phramaceuticals, automobile manufacturing, transportation and the communication industry (yes, including the internet and social media) that under gording by well connected special interests groups here in the US and abroad there has been a seismic shift in the oversight of industry here in the US.
I strongly suspect that this latest series of tragedies involving Boeing is only the tip of the iceberg of the massive problems in the quality control of essential processes, systems and products that industry can be expected to continue to overlook, cover-up downplay or pave over, if they continue to be left to there own devices regarding the oversight and enforcement of public safety laws already on the books.
5
The scary thing is that is not an isolated instance.
Given the GOP's extreme anti-regulatory platform, this type of corrupt and ineffective "self-regulation" is happening in many other industries as well (the FDA, the financial industry, the drug industry, just to name a few).
13
It is now documented that when American pilots encountered the issue they shut it off. When the lesser reliable airlines had the same problem, they seemed at a loss on how to fix it in flight. What does that tell you?
You should know the answer: They were NOT made aware of this issue.
4
Also, Ethiopian Airlines has an exemplary record and pilots. Even FAA officials have said that.
12
@Tom LaCamera
If it were as simple as this, planes would be crashing every day due to the ignorance of 'lesser reliable' pilots and airlines. Somehow, I doubt this comment would have appeared if the airlines were called Swedish Airways, Norwegian Airlines, or Finland Express.
4
This aircraft never should have been certified in its present form.
That "The decision allowed for the system to have a single point of failure, a rarity in aviation safety" is bad, but it is beside the point. Because of the bizarre aerodynamics, caused by the engine placement, traditional stall recovery techniques do not work. The pilot has to lower the nose and retrim before adding power to recover from a stall. Normally both are done simultaneously. For this reason alone the design should be scrapped, rather than apply a band-aid fix that masks the terrible aerodynamics.
Relying on a system to mask the design flaws is a step in the wrong direction because any system can fail and if this particular one does, and the pilots are caught unawares, there will be another deep hole in the ground (or sea) with everything and everyone smashed to smithereens. Better to have a mass grave at the crash site than delude next of kin that bodies have been recovered.
No, I have not flown the Max 8, but I have over 17,000 hours of flight experience, most of that at a major airline, and over 7,000 of those hours in Boeing 737s.
34
This scandal reminds me of Volkswagen designing a software to pretend that their diesel cars were clean, except worse here, because Boeing actually puts peoples lives directly at risk with a plane that can not fly without a software fix..and the FAA was in on it. Heads will have to roll.
13
Just saw the Apollo 11 documentary movie. All I could think of was that America used to have big ideas, set our minds to making it work and accomplished great things. Now we can't even get the toilets to flush or the escalators to work at the airports. How far we have fallen in the name of greed and profits.
15
Sorry but that’s ridiculous. Boeing has led the world to incredibly high expectations of safety and have designed and built remarkably safe airliners that remain the pride of the nation.
The pilots on these two aircraft that went down apparently had forgotten the basic task of deactivating automated systems that have gone awry. Still, as Boeing has done many times over, continuous improvements will make up for even less than perfect pilots.
1
Capitalism run amok
5
@Mark Marks
Many other pilots reported having the same problem, fighting the computer for control of the plane on takeoff.
The pilots on the two doomed aircraft hadn't "forgotten" anything. Boeing deliberately didn't tell pilots about the new system. One pilot who survived a near miss called it criminally negligent.
We cheated flight many years ago and have had a good run at it. Now we're letting software be the stop-gap solution until we can get slave labor to fly these machines. That is the problem.
4TK
1
Why waste the time on an inquiry “he who has no name” was guaranteed by Boeing’s CEO Dennis Muilenberg that the planes were safe.
1
Wonder if those Boeing executives and software engineers cheated to get into college. Maybe America selling degrees to rich kids is a failed strategy. Perhaps it should be merit based.
But then would bring peace to the Middle East. Kushner’s daddy paid for his Harvard admission, and a more qualified applicant isn’t available because their spot was taken.
4
Does the FAA have the talent to understand and protect us from faulty software? Oh wait - so maybe government has some purpose and we should attract/pay talented people to be part of it, work for the public good. You know so like planes stop falling out of the sky.
2
Why is it that nobody has asked the seminal question here?
Can the MCAS system be disabled by pilot command, and is the aircraft stable enough to hand-fly without it? It's a pretty basic concept.
Not ONE piece of reportage has dealt with this...not NYT, not WSJ, and not Bloomberg. Does anyone in journalism have any technical background. anymore?
11
@jljarvis
Former journalist here. I have no technical background and would have devoted the initial stories to answering this pivotal question. There is a great deal of racism and imperialism seen in comments regarding this, including here, in this thread. The gist of the comments: why didn't those (read: poorly trained brown) pilots just shut the system off? Was it really that simple? I doubt it.
2
Apparently shutting off the system resolves the issue. This implies flying afterwards is normal.
However, why didn't they inform pilots in Indonesia and Ethiopia?
@jljarvis
The answers to your two questions:
Disabling MCAS: Yes, but how to disable it it buried in the documentation, and Boeing declared that pilots did not need additional training when it was introduced.
Stable enough to hand-fly: Yes, if the pilot is paying attention. MCAS is needed only if the plane is at stall speed and the pilot doesn't notice. Duh!
We need a scapegoat here to protect Boeing, the FAA, the DOT and the rest of the pack. How about the pilots? They should have bought along the hand out literature from Boeing and when the problems developed minutes after take off looked up the chapter on Troubleshooting.
2
thanks to George Bush the fox was watching the chicken coop. investigate who hid this control and charge with 300 counts of homaside!
2
We see again the effects of the Trump Administration's desire to have regulatory agencies run by the regulated: safety certification for a brand-new stall-prevention system is delegated to the company seeking certification, while the FAA takes a hard look at the escape slides. That system is almost certainly identical to previous Boeing aircraft. Of course the slides need certified, by why not allow Boeing to do that one, while the FAA looks at new system that "helps" the pilots fly the aircraft?
My guess is this will not change with a former Delta Airlines executive running the FAA...
I wouldn't trust the stability of a bank audited by its owners.
Why should I trust my life to the stability of an aircraft certified by its builder?
10
Whether the MCAS engaged the nose-down feature was dependent on only one informational data point. Nothing was set up as a double check, not to mention a triple check since lives were at stake. The Boeing fix supplies one more informational data point before the MCAS nose-down feature engages. Engineering-wise, two data points before a nose- down feature engages sounds tenuous. We have begun checking the brand of plane for flights we are booking. We are also avoiding SouthWest, Air Canada, United, and American Airlines. It's a shame these unknowing airlines have to pay for Boeing's scandalous rush to get these planes so quickly to market.
1
There was a time when human life, at least in the U.S., was sacred. That ship has sailed. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year in the U.S. due to inadequate or unaffordable health care. Hundreds of thousands live on the street. This is the United States of America. This is what we've become. The dollar is what matters in this country. Human lives don't ultimately matter. The FAA and every other U.S. regulatory agency knows that.
11
@dga
Is anyone old enough to remember a time when a blue chip company with a history and tradition of excellence could be TRUSTED to be honest and thorough when safety was concerned?
And when we, the public, trusted them to do that?
I can.
6
Delinquency by the FAA (because Boeing has them in their pocket), the deliquency of power companies causing wild fires in CA, manipulation by pharmaceutical companies causing the opioid crisis. I could go on and on, but the point is, it's time to break up these companies! They have too much power and care little for the people whose lives they take or destroy.
7
Trump is cozy with Boeing’s CEO, even delaying the grounding of these jets after two fatal crashes. And the FAA certification process is stacked with Boeing employees. How could anyone possibly see a conflict of interest here? Meanwhilel, more than 300 ordinary people, trusting the FAA and other air travel authorities, died.
2
"Cut spending." (In the FAA and and all federal agencies) "Do it now, and do it a lot!" (I'm a taxpayer and government is the problem, not the solution.)
"And if you can't cut spending - radically - shut the government down!"
How many lives did Trump's five-week government shutdown - publicity stunt - cost in human lives when the FAA couldn't review Boeing's software problems on the 737 Max because of that shutdown?
11
This is a multi-layered failure. The FAA did not scrutinize the MCAS properly; this probably happened in part because Boeing in the past has been a careful company. But this time commercial pressures seem to have gotten the better of them: 1. continuing to modify a 1960s airframe never intended for high-bypass fan engines; 2. attempting to avoid additional simulator and procedures training costs by including the MCAS to cover for aerodynamic differences; 3. using a system that depended on a single data source with inadequate self-diagnostics (ie. is the angle of attack data consistent with airspeed, pitch, power setting? A fly-by-wire system would compare those things and flag a physically impossible angle of attack indication). 4. Violating Boeing's own long-standing tradition of letting pilots have control of the airplane by hiding a partial autopilot in the control system without adequate documentation. Completely unacceptable. In retrospect, Boeing should have started a new airframe program long ago, in which case they could have beaten out Airbus, and built a light, fly by wire, partially composite aircraft that doesn't need a hidden autopilot to handle correctly. Instead, they cobbled something together, at a critical moment in terms of global growth in demand for small airliners, and then cut corners. I don't think the markets are yet fully appreciating what a colossal set of blunders this has been.
31
@Mr. Bill
I agree with your points except 1) and the ease of bringing out a totally new airframe. The 737 has been using high bypass engines for years, since the beginning. This engine has a larger diameter, to increase the bypass (i.e. efficiency) and because of size constraints had to be mounted more forward. The plane is stable in a manual ascent mode, albeit with a smaller attitude "envelope". To compensate for this, and to make things failsafe they put in this supplemental MCAS system. Disaster. They didn't document this properly, have aware of this, probably had a poor implementation and had it inadvertently slide by internal and external review.
As our President will say, sad.
\
2
@ralph
Boeing should never have allowed the 757 program to end. The 757 is exactly the plane that the 737Max and its proposed siblings want to be; it has the passenger capacity, flies great and is long-legged enough (pilots called it "Barbie") to allow for any huge bypass tubofan powerplant you could think of.
2
I find it shocking that software is not one of the most important elements that is tested on airplanes. I would also be willing to bet that the FAA, besides being a bit too cozy with the industry, does not have knowledgeable personnel to certify the aircraft software. The agency should have some very young software nerds, preferably those that experiment with hacking, on their staff.
3
“‘People want oversight when something goes wrong,’ said Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board...”. Well, it seems there was an oversight, and something went wrong. The idea that the equipment manufacturer would play any role in the approval process for its own product is patently absurd.
6
I’m really looking forward to the Internet of Things, when everything is hooked up to the internet - car, airplane, toaster - and no government regulation - because regulation is bad! Stifles innovation!
The implication that Boeing engineers were somehow less concerned with safety than FAA inspectors, I believe is not correct.
2
The issue is one of incentives, not competence or degree of care
1
What engineer designed a system with a single point of failure, based on data from just one sensor? What engineering process allowed this design to go into production? Where was the testing to verify the boundary conditions and behavior of this subsystem? These sound like newbie errors from inexperienced people. Maybe Boeing did one too many rounds of layoffs of experienced engineers.
9
@Seattle Artist
Newbie errors or cost cutting, 'get 'em out the door' culture dictated by management? Let's hope some engineers are brave enough to come forward and spill the beans on what happened.
9
The FAA's approach is better known as putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
8
Let's get that stable door bolted!
1
Don’t forget that the entire investigation of the first crash was put on hold due to the 5 week unnecessary government shutdown when the FAA safety inspectors were on furlough.
14
Suggest checking Boeing's donations to the McConnell 's.
9
She should resign. Crony capitalism at its worst. Would she be secretary if her husband was Mitch McConnell? For years Republicans have told us that government is the problem.
10
a new definition of insanity has been established.
we are talking about human safety---not the safety of paperclips!
8
I hope I'm wrong, but it would not surprise me if this "investigation" is really nothing but a cover-up.
2
Just a bit of political cover for someone (Mrs. Mitch McConnell) who wasn't doing her job. The government needs to perform inspections and approval not Boeing! Now over 300 people are dead. This is the price of crony capitalism and it's ugly!
8
I'd like to know the thinking behind omitting mention of when this 737 Max plane was certified as safe to fly ... until paragraph 13.
Isn't the subject of this article the launch of an investigation into the certification? So, the time it was certified is unimportant? Where do people get these ideas.
2
Where does Kobe Steel fit into all of this? https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/16/news/companies/kobe-steel-scandal-what-we-know/index.html
In the wake of both space shuttle tragedies, the public received a full reporting down to root causes, as determined by independent technical experts.
Our leadership in aerospace may again depend on such transparency and require similarly investigated reports.
5
Pure politics.
Rather than explain why they government's own failure to respond quickly to an known problem led to more deaths, rather than admit the Trump forced government shutdown delayed the deployment of a fix, rather that deal with the fact that the Trump administration was dragged into grounding the planes after just about everyone else did... now they want to find a way to blame Boeing and the Obama administration era's approval for all that followed?
I am not looking to excuse Boeing, but errors on complex systems will occur. This is not the first and will not be the last. The question is more appropriately, now, what happened once we learned of the problem.
4
in response th o FAA claims that they don't have the resources to regulate the industry one common sense solution is to pass these costs onto the industry in the form of fees in order to obtain a license to operate. in turn, the industry passes these costs onto consumers and thus represents the true cost of flying safely. this is far preferable to the true cost to be paid in human lives.
9
This isn't an autopilot issue.
MCAS is an automatic safety system which is ONLY active with the autopilot DISENGAGED - when the plane is being flown manually - and the flaps in an 'up' position.
An automatic system sure, but not 'autopilot'. Just like ABS/anti-skid on your car. Such cars aren't considered to autonomous or self driving. Just safer.
MCAS can be turned off but (as you would expect for a safety system) it's not a one-click process. So just like ABS, on my Nissan, at least.
There's a lot of unlicensed, armchair pilots on here. I'm one. A lot of nonsense being talked.
6
" In 2005, the agency created a program through which manufacturers like Boeing could choose their own employees to act on behalf of the F.A.A. to help certify new aircraft."
And who, exactly, thought this was a good idea?
It's like having the fox watch the hen house.
6
Let's be honest. The 2005 implementation of the FAA self certification program as described in this article was the logical result of a number of powerful forces affecting the agency. The constant cuts in federal budgets over the years starved the agency of the resources needed for it to properly perform itself the technical examination needed for certification. Also, Boeing as the sole US airline manufacturer provided it with inordinate lobbying power at the FAA and its boss the Congress. Another case where the regulator became controlled by the regulated business due to its ability lobby and influence the unthinking legislators.
5
Asking Boeing to certify the safety of the 737 Max is like asking Purdue Pharmaceuticals to certify the safety of OxyContin. The FAA is conflicted because its mission is to regulate the airline industry as well as to promote aviation.
13
This is why we have regulations. Because otherwise people wind up dead, maimed or without their life’s savings. The mantra of deregulation and self regulation is good for CEO pay checks and bad for teal people.
2