Although the MCAS system was terribly flawed, the real problem was managements insistence that the redesigned airplane not require extra pilot training. That insistence permeated the entire process and is the root cause of the problems with the plane.
All planes have their unique flying characteristics, which the pilots understand and deal with constantly and reliably. The pilots keep us safe because they know the planes and they know how to fly them properly within their design limitations.
Claiming that the MAX did not have its own unique flying characteristics removed the plane's most important safety factor, a well trained pilot with a thorough knowledge of the plane he is flying.
50
@one-eighty- Again, greed won out in America. The wealthy in this country will destroy all of us with their feeding frenzy for dollars. You can't take it with you and that won't change so take a breath and when you have more than enough- stop and go sit on a beach someplace and enjoy yourself.
23
Let’s use facts and data, rather than the evil manufacturer and evil airline narrative: there has not been a scheduled-airline crash in the U.S. in more than a decade. In those 10 years, U.S. airlines have flown almost 10 billion passengers with just 1 fatality. What other human endeavor can match that record?
Since most people are not good at understanding probabilities with very large numbers, it works like this: if you flew one flight a day every day of the year, it would be more than 100,000 years before you had a 50-50 chance of dying in a plane crash on a scheduled U.S. airline.
I have spent my entire working life, 50 years, in and close to the airline industry. We are singularly committed to bringing people together safely, and we are really good at delivering on that commitment.
21
A criminal organization which must disappear. Airbus can take over control.
8
Complacency in a cockpit or in the automobile will be a huge problem for those who are pushing for AI (Artificial Intelligence) You cannot sit in the seat of a vehicle and be focused on what is happening in real time when a computer is doing it for you. Simply put, you get bored, your mind wanders. A pilot or driver can feel and sense nuances with a machine that computers will never match.
6
A good, but weak and incomplete article. The Internet was loaded with copies of a software engineer's diagnosis of what went wrong, and the writer of this article should have read it first. Key points:
"Some people are calling the 737MAX tragedies a #software failure. Here's my response: It's not a software problem. It was an
Economic problem that the 737 engines used too much fuel, so they decided to install more efficient engines with bigger fans and make the 737MAX.
Airframe problem. They wanted to use the 737 airframe for economic reasons, but needed more ground clearance with bigger engines.The 737 design can't be practically modified to have taller main landing gear. The solution was to mount them higher & more forward.
Aerodynamic problem. The airframe with the engines mounted differently did not have adequately stable handling at high AoA to be certifiable. Boeing decided to create the MCAS system to electronically correct for the aircraft's handling deficiencies. ..." And there's much more, illustrating how incredibly weak this reportage was.
32
If this aircraft ever flies again, people should boycott it
That is an appropriate action
24
Too bad the FAA is in cahoots with Boeing and allows self-certification. Greed is out of control and our government has turned into a useless entity that can't be trusted to do its job of keeping our citizens safe.
21
Why is scary here is that this is more the norm as far as the aviation industry goes than the aberration. Sure planes are safe and pilots well trained. But what about the rest of the ecosystem in today’s corporate tech world. The customer or end user does the beta testing. Yes even in the aviation industry. Certainly in the auto industry and without doubt in every other product rushed out the so it can be the latest the most state of the art and cutting edge. But it is being tested by you and me. Were the ones providing crucial feedback.
5
Boeing is updating the software, but now how can we trust them?
17
The terms “maxed out” and “to the max” will now have a fixed negative connotation and I will think twice before I ever use it again.
8
We've seen this movie before. An aggressive business plan pushes a complex project involving very sophisticated technology including software, and very smart but not necessarily wise top managers become "creative" and show how all of this can be accomplished in record time.
Then ribbons are cut, politicians and executives beam together on the spotlit tarmac, and profits start rolling in.
Then, oops! a glitch and a disaster. And not a God-wrought one, one easily traced to bad and obvious decision-making of the kind so often made by otherwise capable people who must be energized by optimism to accomplish their difficult, time-pressured project, and who don't realize they have suspended the pessimism that must also be operative to avoid errors.
I have a few questions: (1) How many high-level engineers are within the close executive ranks running these programs?; (2) how many of these have a strong quality background?; (3) what is their influence level, compared to financial and marketing executives?; (4) analogous question for the board of directors?; (5) does the FAA have the technical expertise it needs to perform its evaluation function, and does the long evaluation cycle for these aircraft allow for such expertise to be put in place in anticipation of the timely need? (These don't have to be young engineers, and could be drawn from exceedingly able retired technical managers. I am mindful of the role Richard Feinman played in analyzing the Challenger disaster. )
15
When did it start to go without saying that bigger is better, bigger, richer, louder, more famous (for what?) more successful (at what?), more powerful?
Once upon a time, gaming the system was cheating, then it was sleazy, now it's admirable. When, why and how did this happen?
When did volume trump quality?
Just wondering.
6
Other comments point out that a better approach would have been to use the 757 as the platform for bigger, more efficient engines. It would be useful to hear more from someone who is familiar with the engineering issues. Assuming that would have been a better approach, and Boeing would have and should have recognized that this was so, what does it mean that it chose to use the 737 instead with the haphazard and dangerous work-arounds that have come to light? This might bolster the argument that Boeing has become a company that is directed by marketing, profitability, share price and executive compensation. Consider as part of this argument that it would have had to revive the closed 757 production line at additional cost as compared to using the 737 line that was still in full swing and that there is a clear marketing advantage to choosing to avoid the stigma of building upon the "out of date" and discontinued 757. Boeing instead chose to build upon the 737 and to promote it as "new and improved." Arguably, Boeing chose the 737 in part because its marketing effort would be energized by the luster that Boeing had already heaped upon the 737 as the highest-selling commercial jetliner in history with an epically long production history that dates to the mid-1960s. And, of course, because it was the cheaper course of action provided, of course, that it didn't kill hundreds of passengers and crew because of Boeing's choice to exalt marketability and profits over safety.
11
I'm an admittedly nervous flyer.
Now that I've read this article I will continue to prioritize travel on JetBlue, and will continue to eschew American and United.
The service on JetBlue is less miserly than on the "legacy" carriers, and the absence of any Boeing aircraft is now an extra added bit of reassurance.
13
This is premature - a newspaper article stimulated by the need for news when the actual facts are still unknown and slow in coming. What is astonishing is the safety of (largely) Boeing planes over the many years it has been producing aircraft. If the company is wrecked by news reports that are slightly oblique to the actual facts, then shame on the news.
And if this turns out to be a technical glitch in the software or in sensor equipment it will still be a tragedy, not merely because of the deaths of so many innocent people, but also because of the damage to an American manufacturer of amazing machines.
3
Coverup of fact that defective software which was known for months is evil and must be dealt was as if it were homicide.
But it won't be . Just as with Wall Street banksters there will be no accounting. For Money is our God. We print that fact on our currency..."In God We Trust". "God"
meaning "money".
10
I have been reading all I can about this. Led me to read about France 447 Airbus crash over the Atlantic. This was due to pitot sensors being iced over. Airbus was aware this was a known issue and the planes flew anyhow. Also saw a cockpit re-en action and the Boeing cockpits seem much better. Just most depressing that companies will risk our lives for profit. The way of the world right?
5
After two crashes, Boeing still has not yet accepted responsibility.
FAA is at fault for allowing Boeing to police itself on the safety of its new plane. Congress needs to step in to change FAA's system that allows private industry alone to declare the safety of airplanes flown and/or manufactured in the U.S.
8
Nor should it “accept responsibility” unless it is shown to be at fault.
Previous pilots *on both planes* dealt correctly with the fault by disabling auto trim.
It appears that the pilots on the planes that crashed did not.
Pilot error.
1
Now I’m really worried the more I learn about the technology that runs our lives and also can end them just as easily. Likewise what if my car’s cruise control were to not disengage either when I put my foot on the brake? Please don’t try to introduce technology to my walking shoes! But what are the chances of that not happening. It’s a new helpless hopeless feeling each day now. Why can’t we go home again?
4
"AI" really stands for "artificial idiocy."
2
Growing up as an immigrant, my parents have instilled in me a sense of pride for being American. Observing relatively lengthy road construction projects than those we were familiar with in Korea, my parents taught me about the idea of American craftsmanship. To my parents, America meant integrity. It’s just sad how Boeing compromised that principle.
11
Next time someone says lets deregulate or turn over a government program to private industry. Remember Boeing as an example of private industry and their bottom line management.
18
If only the Insurance Industry had a say over the activities of the commercial world, rather than over the healthcare world, these repeated commercial risks would likely never be considered. Just imagine shifting Insurance actuarial purview to the corporate arena, and letting broader risk assessments that are made by outside impartial parties, be a requirement for airworthiness before FAA approval. Just a thought...
8
The corporate environment in which the decisions were made at Boeing were the same ones that existed at BP before the Taconda Well explosion. In order to save a pitiful amount of money relative to the company's size, it eventually cost them more than $20B in fines, reparations, legal fees and cleanup costs.
The sort of short-term thinking that dominates America's business culture is what is going to sink this country.
15
No doubt there were ethical Boeing employees (engineers down to mechanics) working on this profit-driven rush job who tried to warn management. They were fired, re-assigned, blown off, threatened, suppressed, what have you. I have zero doubt. It's the way of the corporation. Heck, it's the way of the world.
18
" ... James F. Albaugh, the chief executive of Boeing’s commercial airplanes division, told employees that Airbus would probably go over budget creating a plane that carriers didn’t really want."
Must be nice to get paid millions no matter how many huge mistakes you make.
16
The key mistake was the arrogance of the CEO in 2010, misjudging the threat from Airbus and failing to respond in a timely fashion. That led to the pressure to turn the 737Max into a more competitive plane and the pressure to convince purchasers that pilots wouldn't need special training. Also, of course, the idiocy and greed of selling a second sensor, an essential safety feature as an extra that airlines could choose not to buy. Compound that with having the company be its own regulator and the FAA serving as a rubber stamp and you have a good reason to buy and fly on Airbus.
22
What's ironic for Boeing, is that in the race to beat Airbus, Boeing just handed Airbus the franchise. Avarice, greed, big-company arrogance, lack of concern for people's safety, all good solid American business values.
I will not set foot in one of these planes, nor will I fly a carrier flying them. I'll pay extra on booking to be sure that the seat is not one of these aircraft. Boeing says it's fixing the software, but now how can you trust them?
8
@Rob. the article mentioned that Boeing would now install the Warning Light that was previously an extra in all New planes. What about the ones already out there?
Will an investigation identify anyone in Boeing who spoke up about engineering failings?
3
For the sake of its customers' safety, Boeing should go under.
4
Cheap. Fast. Good.
Choose one.
If your employer tries to choose two, find another job.
2
There is no one happy but only extreme sadness in this tragic saga of Boeing 737 Max - except for Airbus!
2
So Boeing knew during (even before) the design phase that a bigger plane with bigger engines would cause changes in the aerodynamic performance of he aircraft and their solution to addressing it was not only to write some code, but to not train or even tell the pilots about it? Especially since, for years, Boeing has kvetched about not taking away the actual flying of the plane from actual pilots.
They should have fixed this from the get-go. Now 346 people are dead and Boeing is in real danger. Their stupid, short-sighted actions may cause their worst fears to come true--Airbus may knock them out of the passenger aircraft industry. That isn't good for anyone.
One more thought--the FAA blew it by allowing them to certify themselves and we blew it by letting the Tea Party/Libertarian folks attempt to privatize a function that belongs in government. There is no earthly reason the FAA should have been so understaffed that they couldn't do this. How many passenger aircraft manufacturers are there? How many new planes need to be certified on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis? Ya'll don't get any notice that this is happening?
I suspect that the loss of 346 lives is just a cost of doing business to the Tea Party Libertarians, huh?
9
Boring needs to be fined and these planes shut down. Airlines should cancel all Max orders. And airlines should be required to display what type of plane passengers will be flying on at time of booking. Avoid Southwest and Amer Air for now.
4
Are there really just two companies in the world competing to sell commercial passenger aircraft?
1
Boeing's first response was for its CEO to call Trump to express his sense of denial that anything was wrong. I could just imagine their directors, ashen faced and panicked about their profits, imploring their CEO to "DO SOMETHING!!". Once again we see profits over lives. I live in Northern California where PG&E has slithered frst behind state legislation protecting them and second behind the bankruptcy laws to insulate them from their abandonment of safety concerns in favor of short term profits - with dozens of lives lost and hundreds of homes destroyed. When I was in high school I used to think that the era of irresponsible corporate giants was over after government regulation set in, beginning with the Sherman Anti-Trust act. The lack moral conscience has not changed one bit. So are we better off with free form capitalism with no regulation - "to create jobs" as our president says - with these criminals in expensive suits sit in their corporate towers unmolested by the law. There is a widening class divide in America, not a shrinking one. They should be pilloried like the excutives at Volswagen.
9
@styleman
The facile sarcasm from Ronald Reagan's "I'm from the government, I'm here to help you" can only be amusing to the Tea Party and their beholders who would, as Grover Norquist suggested, make government so small "we can drown it in a bathtub."
1
The articles are very informative and thought provoking and also most of them are quite analytical.Indeed,theNYT is a worthwhile news paper and a good guide for anyone who wants to critically keep a tab on the movements all around the world
7
If bigger engines were found to alter the aerodynamics of the plane, the solution MUST have been sought in hardware, not software. Redesign wings and control surfaces if needed, alter the plane's length or weight distribution, some combination of all of the above, or perhaps additional design characteristics as well. What Boeing's decision means is that they came up with a design that is inherently unstable and decided and a cheap "software patch". I can see marketing and software people making this decision, and true engineers being overruled. Boeing will pay a heavy price, and deservedly so. It is time for regulators worldwide to mandate as little software as possible in commercial liners.
As I often tell my friends, I wish we were still flying slow and noisy Super Constellations and Britannias or perhaps 707's (remember that barrel roll?) and L-1011's.
8
The fact that Boeing expected airlines to purchase additional safety features is indicative of how out of control capitalism is, and brings to mind other moral failings of life and death matters, such as the cost of insulin for diabetics, as drug companies seek to maximize profits. Corporate greed in the 24/7 cycle is literally killing people.
12
Perfect storm scenario. Boeing made a questionable decision by focusing on the new 737s similarities instead of differences in order to not mandate training . It also made certain features optional, when in fact they were essential. Low cost airlines also made a poor decision by not mandating available training. A close friend of mine works for a foreign airline that mandated simulator training for the MAX.
4
Some low cost carriers especially from Asia and Africa need technical advise how to order and operate a fleet of airplanes. In fact many rely on that.
Obviously they can not trust Boeing anymore for that guidance and sharing of expertise .
1
I thought airplanes as opposed to helicopters were stable; i.e. they would glide if everything failed.
Is there something wrong with the basic plane that it does not do this? Is new software or sensors really the answer?
@Areader
The controlling software drove it into the ground
2
@Areader
It has been reported recently that the new engines and their location of placement do in fact provide stable flight characteristics when under low angle of attack flight characteristics.
However, at higher angles of attack (I don't think the specific trigger angle has been stated, and I'm sure it varies depending on conditions) the new engine nacels create positive lift in addition to whatever lift the pilots are applying with the controls. It is this additional lift at incremental angles of attack that destabilize the aircraft into possible stall conditions. It has also been reported that the MAX is more prone to stalls under aggressive banking. This is why MCAS was implemented, and it is also a MAJOR difference in flight characteristics from prior generation 737s.
In my view the simple fact that Boeing needed to deploy the MCAS system to protect the aircraft from stalls at higher angles of attack completely undermines their position during design and during certification that the plane is the same as prior 737s and hence requires no new training, or pilot awareness of new systems like MCAS.
Boeing blew it here, and peoples lives have been lost.
7
@Chuck: Good explanation but has any information come from the black box as yet? Everyone seems to be going on reporter's info.
This shows Boeing was greedy and worse not prepared to compete, just sit back on its aged laurels. Its caught up to them. They're making an old plane design faster and I bet they wish they'd actually taken the time and built a new plane, tested it, trained the pilots and had a new flagship. Instead, this feels like a used model offered optional upgrades on the cheap, just stacking more people into these jets. Go, Go Go indeed. Boeing may have went.
4
I think the comments from pilots and aeronautical engineers that the plane might be fundamentally unsafe due to the instability introduced by mounting the new engines on the ancient airframe have been underplayed in the US media. Relying on software that operates without pilots' knowledge or input to correct for dangerous and erratic flight behaviour does not, to this layperson, seem appropriate -- indeed, even vaguely ethical or sane. The questioning of what went on here needs to be more intense. Coddling Boeing as an American icon is not the right response; look what a half century of doing that has done to GM, Ford and Chrysler, all competing for making the worst motor vehicles in the world. Mostly US protectionism just costs money and creates annoyance; in Boeing's case it can kill people.
13
So true.
2
@Cephalus
I agree with you Cephalus.
In addition, there has simply been too much use of a meme about "3rd world pilots being poorly trained, yada yada as well... even by some professed pilots in their comments here at the Times. Egyptian Air has a very strong reputation in the world for it's pilot training, proficiency, and flight operations management... yet some people are cherry picking and applying the "3rd world inferior pilot" meme to the pilots.
Which is not a claim by me that pilot response to what caused the crash was error free and blameless, rather a challenge to others to stop with the "3rd world pilot" meme as a presumed excuse in order to shield Boeings reputation in these discussions.
Any aircraft should be designed for straight and level flight, meaning that climbing, diving or turning should require action by the pilot to overcome this condition, something Boeing ignored when putting the new engines on the reconfigured 737. Cutting corners to save a few bucks is something the corporate types do, not the engineer.
10
This another example of Profits over People. Tobacco industry for years and years tried to convince the world cigarettes were safe. My father died of lung cancer and to his dying day believed the 2 pack a day cig habit wasn't the cause of his cancer. The tobacco industry made lots of money off people like my Dad.
Drug addictions are killing people at a record rate, the disastrous opioids the cause. Driven by Greed, pharmaceutical companies have coerced doctors, hospitals and patients with promises of lowering pain knowing full well the addictive nature of these drugs.
And now we have Boeing jumping on the who-cares-if-people-die bandwagon, since profits are more important to them than people's lives.
Greed is at the heart of this problem of companies putting profits ahead of people. Greed is as powerfully addictive as nicotine or opium.
We need to have oversight of those who may get addicted to greed, corporate executives whose moral and rational judgement can be as easily clouded as the addict who smokes cigarettes or shoots drugs in their veins.
9
This is what happens when you don't have good regulation: accidents. It's happened with chemical plant explosions in Texas.
Competition is supposed to be a good thing. But it also leads to cutting corners and bad products.
The cozy relationship between the FAA and Boeing must end. We can't have Boeing certifying their own planes.
As for the Max, every time it takes off there will be a question in everyone's mind whether it's safe. My hope is enough airlines cancel their orders so Boeing is forced to scrap the current design and start from scratch.
9
Of course Boeing would say that safety was not compromised. I suggest that recent events show otherwise.
Obviously they intended to beat the competition and profit from optional equipment sales.
Kinda what happens when you deal with a car salesman bent on selling you pin stripes for your car.
9
@Truth Is True.
I agree.
In fact, a company like Boeing would be strongly inhibited by it's legal staff to say anything to any one or any entity that might somehow convey an acceptance or responsibility. Admission of fault and liability simply has to be pried out of corporations by force of law and the courts these days.
And yet.. we have readers who take Boeing at their word and insist Boeing is not to blame here and instead blame pilots.
2
this is so incredibly frustrating to understand. Boeing HAS 2 AOA sensors but doesn't put in a "disagree" warning when they conflict? or an actual AOA readout??? what is this, the Ford pinto all over again with the decision to save "1.17"???
it's great Boeing offered it as safety "extras"... but how many time does it take people to learn the true cost of that miniscule savings... how's the reputational damage? not just to Boeing but to the United States' reputation as a leader in aerospace?
and then there is the technical implementation... they only hooked up the software to 1 of the 2 sensors? they introduced a single point failure when one did not exist! I would also like to understand the logic they used... if an AOA sensor "fails" or gives erroneous readings, does the logic immediately assume a stall is "immanent" or does it look at AOA/airspeed trends so that when a jump in the AOA reading occurs the response is not immediate....
all in all, I am sure that the incredibly talented folks at Boeing are devastated, but this is just an incomprehensible miss on their part....
19
@Robert Surely a "disagree" situation on AOA sensors should mean that MCAS has to be deactivated. But that would require informing the pilots that MCAS (which they are not really supposed to even need to know exists) was no longer operating and hence what to do about that - i.e. training would be needed.
3
@Phililppe
Exactly!
Readers should take note that Boeing has now declared that the AOA Disagree indicator will not longer be a "priced option" but rather mandatory with the release of the coming MCAS software update. Which is a huge WOW to me.... it was optional and not required before.. but now it is mandatory? Boeing hypocrisy in action in my view.
4
@Robert
They didnt miss it
They we overruled
2
Air travel was safer BECAUSE safety was considered paramount. Now Boeing has taken a leaf from the automotive’s industry modus operandi. Offer additional safety as an option, and argue in court when loss of life incidents occur. Just pay the billion dollar fine and move over. Much like Toyota or GM or VW.
16
More fuel efficient engines are bigger and cause the nose to point up risking a stall. The fix was an automatic sensor controlled software fix to point the nose back down. When the software got bad or conflicting data from the sensors it did not back off its push-the-nose-down programing. Pilots in the two crashes did not know or understand what was happening. They did not know how to respond. The possible malfunction of the software was either unrealized or thought to be so minimal as to be exempted from requiring retraining on the modified jet.
Retraining is expensive to the airlines. Not requiring it is a selling feature for Boeing. It also spelled disaster for two planes full of people.
24
@mzmecz
The fix isca kludge and would never be failsafe
These tragic crashes highlight several important lessons. In the debate of capitalism vs socialism tragedies like this highlight the need for effective regulation even in a free-market system. There is the human tendency towards Greed. Oversight and regulation can mute/curb those tendencies. Someone once said (I can't recall who) that if you want to understand human nature read Karl Marx rather than Sigmund Freud. The wish to make money and accumulate wealth may overpower other human needs - and override common sense. Remember, how decades ago Ford Motor Company made the calculation that it was cheaper to pay the claims for the exploding gas tanks on the Ford Pinto than to do a massive recall to prevent those gas tanks from exploding on impact. - A second lesson for corporate America from the Max 737 tragedies is the sharp contrast detailed in this article between how Airbus embraced the paradigm shift to the digital age in engineering and Boeing did not. Change is difficult for all of us - sometimes refusal to embrace change can have disastrous consequences.
17
Installing a software fix to correct for a problem with aerodynamics is the sort of thing the military does. Of course their pilots have ejection seats. Civilian aircraft should be built to be inherently safe. Boeing let protecting the bottom line cloud their vision. Now between the decline of their stock prices, loss of customer confidence, and loss of sales, they're in a deep hole that they may or may not work their way out of.
GM once let the bean counters rule the roost, and they paid a tremendous price.
19
@Lee Elliott
Lets,hope they go bust before they kill more people
It's a shame to read that this terrible tragedy may have been caused, at its root, by the greed of Boeing executives. If corporate malfeasance is the cause, here's hoping that the individuals involved will be indicted.
Unfortunately, the issue of profit over lives shows up in many industries - not the least in Big Pharma. More than 100,000 Americans die each year from prescription drugs taken as prescribed. In addition, 70,000 Americans die from drug overdoses - such as the opioids. It would be a real public service if the NYT could put a focus on these issues - particularly the former, which tends to fly under the radar.
10
Call me a luddite, but it is inconceivable to me that the flying dynamics of a multi ton airplane with 200 passengers flying 500 mph at 35,000 feet above the earth through turbulence, clouds and storms, set off balance by enlarged and forwarded powerful jet engines could be brought back to trim by the 1s and 0s of a software program. Steel, wind and thrust power with offset streamline vs. software? And you don't tell the pilots about it? And a gizmo that might make it work better is an extra cost option?
18
When any organization deems itself superior to others, it is failing.
I saw this first-hand when I worked in an application-software group at DEC in New Hampshire. Where is DEC now?
8
@angbob
I worked for DEC for 20 years. While it was going up, which was from inception until the early 90s, it was a great place to work. They had great products and they paid their employees well. But they missed the PC revolution and couldn't recover. They never had a chip on their shoulder attitude in any group I was in. It was a big company with over 100k employees. It's too bad you had a bad experience. I, and many others, did not. We still think it was a wonderful place to work.
2
And then I read about how all these car and non-car companies are "rushing" to develop driverless vehicles, and I just shake my head.
13
@Jim Kondek
Who will certify driver-less or computer-assisted cars? Someone appointed by Trump, to head an agency compromised by the very industry it was created to regulate, determined to hasten the destruction of the 'administrative state?' When the leader is shown not to ever have had a close relationship with the truth, who in government can be believed? Do you want to bet your life on whether you have been told the truth?
In their rush to the market, Boeing engineers made a big mistake in their Failure Mode and Effects Analysis: not giving the process the time needed to look out at all the systems interactions especially the ones involved in the aircraft’s changes in order to weed out potential serious problems. Boeing’s engineering should not have signed on it. This catastrophe of letting business take engineering decisions undelines a permeating trend in all the industries. I hope at the very least some people will lose their engineering licenses. And perhaps go to jail as well.
8
I wouldn't punish the engineers.. I would hold some executives criminally liable though....
3
@Robert
I agree Robert. It's is quite rare for an engineer to try to force their management to sign off and release something that has material technical or reliability issues.
In converse.. it is management, largely driven by performance incentives to comply with corporate schedules and deadlines, that can and will over-ride or ignore engineering professionals when something is not working right or in this case poses possible life threatening safety issues.
1986.
The loss of Challenger.
Same kind of human failing.
It will never change.
6
@angbob The O-rings were made by Morton Thiokol. They were not supposed to be used on very cold weather. Bur Ronald Reagan insisted that the launch take place.
2
@nhhiker you may be technically correct on this point, but it does not change the fact that NASA (with all it's multiple safety and performance redundancies in design and procedure) allowed an O-ring that is sensitive to cold to 1) be installed to begin with, and 2) allowed a flight to proceed under cold conditions that would impare a critical parts ability to do it's job (in this case seal hot gasses within the engine).
Morton Thiokol being allowed to submit an O-ring design that has cold weather sensitivity, along with NASA signing off on doing so and then launching in cold weather are the root causes in the example you sighted. Not unlike the apparent collusion between Boeing and FAA with respect to treating the 737 MAX as "the exact same" as prior 737 models.
The common point in both your example and the Boeing 737 MAX is people died due to other peoples bad decisions and lack of attention to details in terms of safety under "corner case" conditions.
This story might as well be about American business overall - pursuit of the quick buck at the expense of quality, safety and the well-being of the public, and a cozy relationship with regulators that prevents real oversight.
Who would want to ride in an airplane in which software must be included to overcome basic design flaws and safety features are “options”? Not me.
17
CEO Dennis A. Muilenburg, who trained and worked as an engineer, should have known better than to have the plane schedule pushed too quickly and he should have known not to make safety features (which in retrospect would have prevented both crashes) as option both carriers with the crashed plane did not buy, even though one of those options cost $80,000 on a $120 million plane.
He might have known better if Boeing HQ were in Seattle where it had been instead of moved to Chicago. Had the HQ been in Seattle, he could circulated with the engineering staff and heard their concerns and perhaps allowed some extra time to create the plane.
Of course, other issues are the underfunding of the FAA since 2005 under the Bush Administration but continued under 8 years of Obama and 2 years of Trump. This caused a conflict of interest by delegating to airline manufacturers regulatory work once done by the FAA.
Now Boeing appears to be losing sales.
1. Boeing needs new leadership -- a leadership who will "walk the factory floor" and be involved with his/her engineers.
2. The HQ must be moved back to Seattle where the CEO and other executives can be more directly engaged in the engineering and production of these planes.
3. President Trump and Congress must again ensure that FAA has total funding to perform its regulatory processes adequately.
4. Boeing must stop the practice of making safety equipment as paid for options. All safety equipment must be made mandatory.
11
"Airbus had pulled ahead of Boeing by 2005. 'Boeing has struggled with the development work needed to take the company into the 21st century'" 2005 is also the year when the FAA changed the way planes are certified essentially ceding responsibility to plane manufacturers to basically certify their own planes. The question journalists need to answer is whether it is mere coincidence that the year Airbus pulled ahead of Boeing is the same year the FAA changed its policy regarding certification. According to a previous NYT report: "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. And the 737 Max, which started going through certification process in 2012, was one of the first passenger jets to be approved under this new program." Was this change in the certification process part of a back room deal between the Bush administration and Boeing?
4
@sweetriot
Yes
Who is regulating the regulators? It seems to me that can only be the press. We should have more access to information about the entire chain of command that approves aircraft with "optional safety features", along with their potential conflicts of interest and how they actually spend their days while being paid to protect the public.
6
Let's hope that the GOP mantra – "Job-Killing Government Regulations" – is taken out of service along with the 737 MAX, permanently.
Free-market Capitalism has a structural imbalance that favors profit above all else. We NEED highly qualified Federal Regulators to save lives, and save Capitalism from itself.
Indeed, if the FAA had caught this before it became a problem, Boeing would have benefitted tremendously in the long-run. The 737 MAX is dead, whether Boeing and the FAA recognize this or not, because none of the traveling public will ever want to board a MAX again. The very existence of Boeing itself may be in jeopardy.
Boeing is the biggest exporter in the US; so much for reducing the trade deficit. And Boeing is likely to take huge losses and end up laying off thousands of well-paid, skilled workers – with a ripple effect that could easily tip the US economy into a recession.
"Job-Killing" indeed!
15
It is dead. Nobody I know will fly it. An inherently flawed design.
2
Rush to get the product out to customers
is not unusual. Big mistake, out of greed,
was not to offer safety devices as
standard rather as options sold at
high price for maximum profit as
reported in NYT the other day. Also,
there should have been pilot override
of MCAS if it malfunctioned. Unerplaying
the pilot training to save cost to the
airlines as the selling point seems to be
a mistake in retrospect.
1
It seems to me they must have known sometimes one would want to turn off the main system, but why make that optional. Make more for money may be one reason, but is also could be they were just too sure that it would never be needed. They may have thought nothing could go wrong so why drive up the cost for the poorer companies.
I do wonder though what happens if the turn off feature fails. It really is time to solve the basis problem with the main software guidance system.
3
@Areader
The airframe design is at fault
Software cant fix it
It can only hide it
Rule #1- Keep it simple and work witin physical laws
A fact that 'managers' dont consider
This is not the 1st time this has happened and it wont be the last
7
Boeing was in an insane effort to hold onto to their dominant market position. Sometimes one just has to doff their cap and acknowledge that the other guy had won a round. Not Boeing, in their can do madness they cut corners and hid shortcomings. I guess the CEO won't get such a big bonus this year.
6
@c harris Or, workers will lose their jobs and the CEO will walk away, unfazed, smelling like a rose.
5
@c harris
Why would'tthe CEO get a bonus. C harris is just not cynical enough to enjoy the deaths caused by bad engineering and management arrogance and greed.
@c harris you understand nothing about the market dynamics of a duopoly.
Let's remember a crucial detail. The faulty MCAS could be overridden. Alas! this capability was deemed a 'safety feature' and sold for more money that Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines could not afford. All the American carriers that bought the Max also bought the 'safety feature' ergo no crashes here in the USA. Deeming something a 'feature' to be sold for more money is not a decision that Engineering departments make, it's Management, Sales and Marketing. Say a few Huzzahs to Milton Friedman, the Kellog School, Wharton, Yale, Harvard and Princeton and the rest of the Austrian Economics temples of luster along with your prayers and thoughts to the dead. The Hayekian acolytes from these business and economic departments stream directly to the Sales, Marketing and Management ranks of most of our 'Jawb Creators', our shining but now becoming sepulchers of the Global industry. The 'Free Market' truly works! Whodis GE? Whodis Boeing?
18
The free market will work and Boeing will declare bankruptcy. Then the federal government will step in and rescue the company.
2
I'm neither a pilot nor an expert, so freely admit that I could be wrong. But my understanding from all the reading I've been doing is that the MCAS can be turned off in every Max configuration--that's not a safety feature that costs extra. The problem (one problem, that is) is that the way to turn it off is different from the prior way to take manual control of trim from automated systems, and this difference was not called out, or any pilot training mandated on it. The safety features that cost extra were two different signals, including a cockpit light, warning that MCAS is on.
The Sunday night before the Ethiopian crash I sat on the tarmac in a new Max 8 for an hour while the pilots were "on the phone with our mechanics because we have a light on in the cockpit, and we're trying to find a fix so we can get out of here." I'm sure glad I didn't know what was coming a few days later.
6
@Paul Art I think the MCAS can be turned off but the pilot has to realize what is happening in order do to this. That takes training, which Boeing didn't want because they wanted the customers to think they were getting a brand new bargain. A lot of people, not the least of whom are the dead, are paying dearly for this.
1
An earlier article revealed that planes have hundreds of options that are a huge profit center for Boeing and others. Safety is also optional, it seems. Time to revive the old advertising slogan: “See the USA in your Chevrolet (Hundai / Mini / Jaguar / Whatever).
4
Note to Boeing: Haste makes waste.
6
The problems were literally published on the FAA website as if this morning ...
https://www.faa.gov/about/history/deldes_background/
“Each time the program expanded, regulatory notification provided justification for the expansion by saying service to the public by designees will be faster than service provided by FAA. Overall, government costs will be reduced. Amendment 8 to 14 CFR part 183 suggests that, ‘... safety will be enhanced because FAA personnel relieved from tasks accomplished by Designated Airworthiness Representatives will be able to redirect their efforts to other areas affecting safety.’ The delegation system continues to grow in numbers of designees.
Page last modified: May 05, 2016 2:38:04 PM EDT”
4
8th January 1989 . . . . I was living in Loughborough, about 5 miles from East Midlands Airport (EMA). Flight 92 came down on the M1 motorway, 47 dead, 74 serious injuries. Aircraft Boeing 737-400; cause - pilot error following engine fan fracture due to design flaw.
Cause of pilot error - confusion over whether left or right engine had been damaged, as the 737-400 variant was different from the previous 737 model that the pilots had flown (1000 hours); they had only 76 hours between them on the 400 variant. They were not made aware of the modifications which impacted upon their decision to shut down the wrong engine thus causing the disaster. At that time there was no 737-400 simulator available in UK. The failed engine component was subject to a modification that was not subject to in-flight testing as it was not mandatory as the modification was only an upgrade.
History repeats itself . . . . . . we only learn if we are prepared study history and apply its lessons, plus ça change.
Full story of above on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster
16
All this purely in the name of profit; this is murder. This is evil!!! I don’t envy these CEOs on Judgement Day.
4
The problem here is that Boeing represents a significant share of the US economy. In some sense, they’re like the banks- too big too fail.
Mark my words, in one way or another, all of us citizens are going to wind up bailing out Boeing because a few Boeing big wigs decided to cut corners.
This rhymes with what happened with the big banks in 2097-2008. And GM before that.
10
....years ago a 747 pilot confided to the media that if you actually went page by page through the "instruction manual" to start the plane you'd never even get to push back. Can you imagine what these panicked pilots must have experienced in mid air as they consulted the Max 8 "instructions"!
9
So Boeing engineered an inherently unstable plane. It's like redesigning a bicycle as a unicyle and then adding gyros and software, so the average cyclist can ride it without going to acrobat school.
8
If ain’t Boeing, I’m not going. If it’s a max, I’m not a pax...
4
What goes unsaid in all the NYT coverage is that it is possible to disable the system that pushes the nose down. In fact, according to Bloomberg News, a deadheading pilot was able to talk a Lion Air crew through the procedure when they encountered trouble on the same doomed plane a day before the fatal crash. Yes, design is critical, but the most important safety feature in today's modern passenger jets is the experience and competence of the pilot and co-pilot.
5
You left out training.
1
@JB, glad you posted. Yes, why didn't NYT? With engines so far forward, is weight & balance "off" the W&B chart? How many steps, how fast to disengage & fly manually? This licensed private pilot feels something is "odd". (You’re on the Tollway. Remember the 7 steps to disengage cruise control & brake, FAST!)
@JB Yeah, but every pilot didn't know that and Boeing didn't really want to train them if it was on their own dime.
1
There are too many amateur wannabe engineers on this comment board offering "analysis" and solutions to this problem, without solid rational reasoning.
.
Maybe there was an error in the Boeing desing and maybe there wasn't - and mabye there was some other cause for the crashes.
.
The planes are grounded now. Why don't we wait for the investigation to reach a conclusion and report same.
.
Meanwhile, all you would be engineers - find something else to do.
3
@HH
Except one problem is obvious--selling a plane without safety features required--features that then caused at least one crash and probably both.
4
To anyone paying any attention to this story, the cause is obvious and now hundreds are dead, with billions of dollars and thousands of job losses now inevitable. We are supposed to wait for a report from the FAA which we now know is a bought and paid for subsidiary of Boeing for a definitive answer? It’s their fault! Don’t expect them to admit it!
2
@HH
People have every right to decide for themselves whether to get on a certain plane or not, as well as whether they “feel” a corporation puts profit over their life, when it comes to which plane to fly on.
Logic is the same. Whether you’re an engineer or not, your life counts!
1
CEO of Boring needs to resign.
7
We hope that Boeing will not turn into Elizabeth Holmes of aviation.
1
Oh right, provide an airline product that doesn’t require much in the line of simulator training....
Now, doesn’t just make us feel safe? Oh, never mind we’re just the consumer, and we may have a family member or two that are airline employees.
Greed! Greed! Greed!
3
Can you spell 2007 eco. crash all over again?
The deregulation de facto criminals back then were Newt, Slick Willie and the admitted war criminal Bush 2.
Today we have the ego maniac, pathological liar, ego maniac (and those are some of the nicer things I can say about him) Trump.
Similar bunch, similar outcome, the only question is when and how bad.
This is the first horror story tragedy...
More to come.
4
@Paul why did you omit Jimmy Carter who signed the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 as pushed by Senator Ted Kennedy? Know your history.
2
An old story: complacency and panic. Detroit 2.0.
A question: Was the MCAS system installed in the plane before or after, they test flew the plane?
1
An investigation should be done to see if the Trump Shutdown caused any delay in the safety software update. Wouldn't be surprised if Trump's folly killed these people--but Trump is a sociopath, so he doesn't care.
1
@Daniel I can't stand Trump but he isn't responsible for Boeing's engineering failures or even the mess at the FAA.
How many Airbus crashes in the time since release.
1
Good & cheap won't be fast.
Fast & good won't be cheap.
Cheap & fast won't be good.
It seemed that Boeing picked the last one and this decision years ago may have cost the lives of innocent people in our days. I hope regulators will do a better job to double and triple check a possible "software update" before these failed products will ever be used again. However, passengers around the world will make their own decision based on their confidence in a plane, and airlines know that. It's likely that the greed of few managers a couple of years ago will probably cost thousands of jobs now.
6
I understand that a mistake was made and people died. But I don't understand how the point has been reached that some people appear to think, that because of that mistake, Boeing is some kind if evil empire. We have all flown hundreds of time on Boeing aircraft and we will in the future. A modern aircraft is the most complex undertaking of mankind - millions of parts, millions of lines of code, thousands of interfaces. I've worked in the industry and I can tell you that the FAA is extremely understaffed. The ratio of FAA people to engineers, working on a project like this, is thousands of engineers to one FAA person.
7
@DILLON Boeing is not an evil empire and I don't believe they want people to die using their product, but they blew it and they're still blowing it if they think that writing code is the answer to everything that is wrong with the Max.
I realize that there are too many of 737Max planes around just to scrap them now, but they need to learn a lesson that frankly, I fear they won't. Agree with you abut the FAA.
Boeing was/is a runaway train.
1
With almost 600 comments, this may be redundant with others. If so, I apologize. Why no discussion of Qantas Flight 72 in 2008? This A330 dived and climbed much like the accident Max planes did. Fortunately, it was "at altitude" when it did this, and the pilots were able to bring it for a safe, albeit emergency, landing. According to the Smithsonian Channel's series "Air Disasters" (S12Ep7), Title: Free Fall, after exhaustive investigation a specific cause for this event was never determined, and Airbus basically added corrective software to prevent it from happening again. Sounds much like the Max, huh?
6
@Stevie I just read the Wikipedia entry, and assuming it's accurate (Wikipedia being what it is), it does sound like essentially the same problem: a false stall warning that caused the plane to suddenly pitch down. Thanks for the reference; I didn't know about that flight.
2
@Stevie This article said that Boeing's James Albaugh speculated that Airbus would have engineering trouble with the redesigned A320 for the same reasons they eventually had trouble with the redesigned 737Max.
Prediction: Once the 737 Max returns to the air, the mono-focus on disabling MCAS as the fix to diving behavior will lead to an event because the pilots incorrectly disabled the system.
Come on. Have we not learned anything from SAMSUNG’s Galaxy Note battery fiasco? This is practically the same mistake all over again! Greedy humans.
1
@Wayne
Oh yes! Car companies want to be like VW?!
1
I would not have any problem flying on a US owned and operated 737 Max 8 today. Boeing is a great company and our US Pilots are some of the best in the world.
Now I will not say the same for a 737 Max 8 owned by a third country airline!
I am also confident that two years after the 737 Max 8 starts fling again, not a single person commenting on this article would refuse to fly on this plane!
3
@The Critic I worked in the travel business from 1988-1990 and I was shocked at the number of people who specified that they would not fly in a DC10.
once again, profits triumph over people
1
Blood drips if not pods from Boeing's hands. There no meaningful remorse. To allow a second plane to go down knowing what they knew: intentional murder. The company deserves no trust. Their decision to now include one of two critical sensors standard a joke. Murders belong in jail for life not producing more killings g machine. That China cared more than the FAA PIVOT. The message: Amerika no longer puts the poor public first. And Boeing's gets away with killing, killing and next: more killing?
1
I am not socialist nor am I against Boeing but this is a classic example of why unleashed capitalism is as dangerous as communism !
4
Corporate greed run amok. The Boeing executives who authorized this reckless behavior,and then tried to cover it up, should be tried, and if convicted, imprisoned for a long, long time.
3
Boeing's error will cost hundreds of billions. Congress needs to intercede quickly. This arrogant and ridiculous design made no sense other than pulling a fast one on airlines and passengers. The senior executives have to resign. They might need to go to prison for their indifference to safety.
A computer program is no substitute for correcting a design flaw. No amount of engineering can redeem the flaw. Pilots might learn to compensate for the flaw the way pilots eventually learned to compensate for the design failure of the Boeing 727, a plane that dropped severely on approach because of its design. However, this airplane is not a new DC 3 which had a brilliant engineer who oversaw its development from being to end.
An easy buck solution to the market has poisoned a major player in world airplane manufacture. I hope Airbus eats our lunch. The lack of ethical conduct at Boeing is malignant.
6
@Ted Morgan You're living in a dream world if you think today's congress is going to intercede with a big business like Boeing. Follow the yellow brick road from Trump to Chao to McConnell.
Here's a dumb question: Don't all planes have minimally computerized airspeed indicators (pitot static), attitude indicators gyro), altimeters (pitot static), vertical speed indicators (pitot static), heading indicators (gyro), and turn coordinators (gyro)? If so, can't a pilot check these instruments against what the plane's computer brains are indicating? That is, can't a pilot determine from these instruments an imminent stall or other unsafe/unstable flight characteristics? If there is disagreement isn't there a simple "kill" switch to shut down all or parts of the computer brain?
All of which is to ask whether or not a pilot can fly a plane the old fashioned way. Is this possible or not possible? Also, can't experienced pilots sense, at least to some degree, whether a plane is flying "in appropriate character" by the seat of their pants? Yeah, I know there's stuff like vertigo and yes I get that flying has never been safer. But it seems to me the most fundamental redundancy to a computer brain is the human brain--so can pilots fly planes today using gyro and pitot controlled instruments and their own brains, especially as a check against the computer brain, or is that no longer possible?
1
@Chip Steiner The plane had all the subsystems you describe and the pilots knew that the nose was being pushed down. They just did not know what to do about it. The solution was straightforward and several other pilots found it....turn off the flight control system and fly the plane manually. Two things have surprised me: (1) That special training was needed to teach pilots what was taught in the very first flying lessons, know your systems. and (2) That Boeing engineers did not consider what would happen if the only stall warning sensor output being feed to the MCAS failed. It's what shows up in a FMCA study and Boeing apparently nixed the study to speed development.
@TommyB Thanks for explaining this. Doesn't it make sense with "two" pilots (a real one and a computer) that the former knows how to very quickly disarm the latter when something is going wrong contrary to all the other instruments--especially those instruments by which human pilots have been flying airplanes for a century? Sure, they can get broken too but at least one can check them against what one sees out the window, hears from the engines and wind, feels how the plane is behaving to get a read on reality. My computer has been telling me things aren't right between it and the cloud yet it offers nothing in the way of a fix. That's OK down here on Terra Firma but it's not OK in an airplane.
In my 25 years working in new product development and commercialization for a DJ30 industrial, I saw this sort of management stupidity over and over again, and the result was always a flawed product...though happily, none of our flawed products killed their users. The actions of Boeing management during development of the 737 Max tragically illustrate the fact that the human capacity for self-deception knows no bounds! Or, as Richard Feynman so aptly put it in his minority report on the actions of NASA that led to the Challenger crash, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations [or profits], for nature cannot be fooled."
10
I wonder how much money Boeing spent on lobbying efforts to keep their planes in the sky despite the loss of hundreds of lives due to a catastrophic design defect. Gotta keep that stock price up at all costs, right? Their executives had the moral compass of a tree stump. If you want a diagnosis of what ails America, look no further.
Nothing will change until white collar criminals are treated like blue collar criminals.
6
Arpey crashed first. He lost his job when US Airways bought American and took its name.
1
Great reporting -- I'd call it 'public service' journalism, NYT. We're learning a whole lot more about the inner workings of the situation, not to mention the engineering, from you than from Boeing's or the FAA's public information departments.
3
What if, instead of win-or-lose cut-throat competition for the jackpot, we evolved to recognition for excellence and integrity? Remember the days before mass media and advertising and Goliath conglomerates, when you'd drive or read or eat or attend something because of its quality? Like Nobels, Pulitzers, MacArthurs, Oscars etc - only with no monetary value, maybe simply a framed certificate - these tokens of recognition could be awarded in all domains - manufacture, education, sports, ecology, health, arts, entertainment, philanthropy, agriculture - etc etc.....
Oh - but what about capitalism, free enterprise, individual rights?
Well, what if it were possible to reconcile.....?
Just wondering.
1
I’ve got a new saying. If it’s Boeing I’m not going.
2
Boeing should have stuck to its tried-and-true policy of giving the human pilots more control, rather than relying exclusively on computer-driven controls. This was an excellent example of fine news reporting, absent the opinions of the writer or writers. I only wish the Times would bring this to their reporting on politics.
1
"[T]he new software in the Max, known as MCAS . . . would automatically push the nose down if it sensed the plane pointing up at a dangerous angle. The goal was to avoid a stall. Because the system was supposed to work in the background, Boeing believed it didn’t need to brief pilots on it, and regulators agreed."
This conclusion is nothing short of insane. As my late uncle's memoirs (he commanded a PBY Catalina in WWII at the ripe old age of 21) emphasized, a stall is the most dreaded phenomenon a pilot can face--especially during ascent after take-off, where the elevation can make recovery in time to avoid a crash difficult and sometimes impossible. A pilot therefore must be intimately familiar with the stall characteristics of his or her aircraft, or never allowed to fly solo--let alone with hundreds of lives in his or her hands.
Not alerting pilots to this fundamental change--and training them on its extensively--is nothing short of reckless indifference to human life. And the motivation revealed by this story was greed and hubris. The DOJ should be investigating the possibility of criminally negligent homicide charges against the execs and regulators who made this decision.
1
Are they any huge American corporations that are honest to the consumers and its citizens? Genuinely asking?
Honest to god I do not understand this American society!
Dollars are clearly more important than the lives of people.
I'm utterly disgusted and angry!
4
To demonstrate MAGA --- Trump, Pence, Pompeo
including their underlings Bolton and Miller plus the Head of FAA and Boeing's Chairman --- will fly on the Boeing 737 Max 8 plane with the so-called "new + improved" software patch. They will fly on the plane exclusively for the next 2 years. To show their confidence in Boeing. But Boeing "new + improved" software patch, may turn out to be like some of Microsoft's infamous Windows Update software patches. In which case, US may have a new president soon.
2
@ricohflex the plane in question was green lighted and approved during the Obama Administration. This is an issue which, however, transcends mere politics.
2
When a company decides to build on the cheap - no matter what portion of it is on the cheap - things like this happen.
A company I worked for in Chicago back in the '70's did exactly that, and they are no longer in business.
That having been said, when "cheap" presides over "safety", then that is criminal.
3
"Montreal Convention known as the Civil Aviation Organization (CAO). This treaty stipulates that if an airline is found at fault for an accident, each affected passenger is to get a minimum value equal to approximately $170,000 per passenger. there have been limitations placed on victims for what they can recover from an airline under the international treaties and laws. If it can be proven that an airline did not take all required precautions for a flight; there will be no limit to what a victim can recover." The bottom line for Boeing and others culpable parties will be the economic consequence vs. the corporate sales benefits. Anything less than a complete loss of ALL income from defective and deceptive behavior would risk rewarding and repeating the risk/reward benefit faced by airline manufacturers and airlines.
2
Reminds me of the Challenger tragedy, among others. I'm so sick of how money has so many by the you-know-whats now. Our culture is so unhealthy right now, and this shows, dangerous.
2
America has devolved into a sick society where the pursuit of profits trumps safety and protection of human life. Countless examples too numerous to detail here, where drug costs have been inflated and Americans die because they can’t afford them. Now we see a greedy aircraft company that saw its monopoly and its profits being slowly eroded by, heavens, a British and French company, and they cut a zillion corners to put it in the air faster. It’s interesting to compare this with the development of the Spitfire when England saw war coming fast. They took the time to research and test the plane rather than rush it into production. Pilots loved the finished product as the plane flew so beautifully, outpaced the competition and helped save the country. And I’m not aware of any that crashed because of poor design. Drugs and planes have something in common: designed well and sold afordably they are safe and beneficial to humankind, but if they are designed poorly and uneconomic they are a disaster for humankind. This is Capitalist America. The socialist countries of England and France produce better airplanes and have drug costs that citizens can afford without bankrupting themselves. Which system is better?: greedy capitalism that kills people in the pursuit of tha almighty dollar or the socialism that Trump and his GOP sycophant cronies deride? When considering Democrats vs Republicans in 2020 Americans should think long and hard about the kind of country they want.
3
Last year Boeing tried to take down Bombardier's A220 by suing the aircraft maker for receiving unfair government subsides. This action failed in the courts, but left a taste in the mouth of Canadians who know a sleazy work around when they see it. Now this story of the 737 Max is being told, all is put into perspective. These giant corps and their bottom lines! Those visionaries who built such businesses into world beaters took a longer view.
After studying the behavior of the plane before the Lion Air crash, why wasn’t Boeing the first to call for the grounding of the Max series?
2
Corporations need a legislated corporate social responsibility instead of a lone fiscal responsibility. Greed is the downfall of many American institutions and now will be the downfall of Boeing.
Boeing needs to be sued in the World Court and lose business to the best airplane builder. They no longer are the best, only the greediest. Seems as though socialist Europe does things better. Health care, autos, airplanes, trains, greenhouse gas emissions, longevity, happiness scale, etc.]
Are we going to elect another Greedy Old Predator in 2020?
3
Despite constant examples of Corporate Failure, the (R)s, in their eternal efforts to privatize (profitize) every aspect of their society, continue to tout the "efficiencies" of The Bigs - Aircraft builders, Airlines, Pharma, Insurance, Banking, Ag, Auto, Tech, blah and blah.
Our economic system of Predatory Socialistic Capitalism is destroying our society and our citizenry. Time for less Socialism for the pluto-corporatocracy and more for the Citizens!
3
Zero personal responsibility taken by the decision makers at Boeing. If corporations are people, according to the non-critical thinking members of our Supreme Court, does Boeing deserve the death penalty for killing hundreds of innocent people?
1
I had been out of town for an extended period so yesterday I met my son and daughter for coffee and some hanging out and catching up time. Someone they recently went to high school with was on that Ethiopian plane.
When the crash happened I was angry at Boeing for the greed and the denials and their attempted arm twisting of the US government to keep the plane in the air. I fly a lot as do my associates so I care.
After my daughter told me of knowing someone who died all I feel now is that Boeing needs to be sued back to something resembling a decent corporation. Oxymoron?
3
This article is a case study in how to take a well regarded 100 year old high flying company and T rash it into the dirt in < a year. Hubris and greed in full flower.
Boeing-FAA CEOs will teach that when u are going down with no elevator and both wings on fire, bail out, particularly when MCAS is fully operational.
Then you have a chance to live and fight another day.
1
this is the result of 'Government By Corporation'.
profits first, people last.
Boeing should be charged with criminal neglect.
2
To the layman the fatal crashes of the two 737 Max8 clearly indicates that planes are man made, and Boeing just won't admit they erred in several areas of their responsibility. Boeing's world image took a major nose dive, sorry no pun meant, and Boeing needs to be reminded that planes should be flown by men, not by software. Every instrument, computer, analog, digital, AI input, sensors out the gazoo are there for ONE single purpose: to provide input to the pilot, the man responsible for the safety of every human body on that plane.Could the press please start printing and reminding Boeing, please?
1
A major story in this emerging scandal, interestingly remains unreported.
One of the world's leading business school professors, Dr Theodore Piepenbrock of MIT/Oxford/London School of Economics spent the best part of a decade working as a consultant to Boeing's most senior leaders (CEO, VPs, GMs, etc.), teaching them his award-winning theory on "The Evolution of Business Ecosystems", which Boeing gave the code name "Red vs Blue". His PhD on "RvB" was one of the largest and most downloaded dissertations in the history of MIT.
"RvB" predicted years ago that the 787 Dreamliner would be the biggest financial disaster in Boeing's history, with interim losses exceeding $50 billion, which many reputable newspapers (e.g. WSJ, The Economist, Seattle Times, etc.) have since verified.
"RvB" also predicted years ago that the 737NG replacement could not be both economically and physically viable. In fact, Dr Piepenbrock has stated over the years that Boeing airplanes could systematically begin to fall from the sky before 2020. He ultimately terminated his contract with Boeing due to his ethics concerns. Although a number of journalists at major newspapers are aware of this story, interestingly it remains unreported.
As an aside, Dr Piepenbrock is also known for being stalked by an obsessed female LSE employee whom he fired after she exposed herself to him, which resulted in the largest lawsuits in the history of Higher Education against the LSE, which will be heard in 2020.
4
"The chief executive of American (Gerard Arpey) called Boeing’s leader, W. James McNerney Jr., to say a deal (with Airbus) was close. If Boeing wanted the business, it would need to move aggressively.."
Does it make any sense at all for market forces to apply to the aircraft market in the same way as it would, say, for smartphones?
1
“Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive, took home just over $30 million last year, a $6 million increase from the year before,”
The above quote is from a Washington post article. I wonder how much of Mullenburg’s pay was the result of him delivering the MAX. Also it’s just not right that Trump delayed grounding the plane because Mullenburg said it was Ok.
So, was at a dinner last night attended by a Southwest Captain and his wife. Naturally discussion turned towards the entire 737Max matters. Naturally, the safety
Captain tells me, that it’s an absolutely great airplane, very easy to fly with only slight differences between the other 737 variants in the Southwest fleet. One variant, the 800, I think he said, requires a less aggressive pitch on rotation because of a tendency to tail strike but that was about it.
In fact, he tells me up front, the flight instrument panels are almost identical. He also tells me that the disconnect of the system involves just pushing a button on the control wheel or flipping the switches on the center panel.
So, he attributes the problems to more poorly trained pilots coupled with an inappropriate reliance on automation as; says that the first rule when the airplane isn’t doing something correctly is to assume control of the airplane. He envisioned that, like the Air Asia disaster in San Francisco where the airplane was flown into the ground as the pilots thought auto systems were on instead of off, the pilots involved became engrossed in the issue and just didn’t react appropriately. Of course, the Lion Air plane had a maintenance issue with the one defective vane also.
To keep his skills sharp, Captain tells me he routinely “hand flies” airplane in all phases of flight, just doesn’t take off and immediately flip the autopilot on.
I think I have accurately reflected his comments, FYI
1
As many have pointed out:
1. It’s a new aircraft
2. It has a different center of gravity
3. It has optional safety sensors
4. It has software that sometimes takes over the controls and doesn’t tell the pilot
5. And pilots don’t need any new training or simulation experience.
6. And the FAA and Boeing allowed this.
What can go wrong?
5
Perhaps it is time to rethink using old fashioned technology in the flight controls. My cell phone can measure it's orientation relative to gravity to a fraction of a degree, and GPS can measure 3D velocities to incredible accuracy. A simple program on my android phone should be able to determine the angle attack just as well as a single vane covered with ice. And by the way - if it is that important why are there not three sensors - not two?
When you write new software, testing is part of the process, every single line of software must be tested, then you use simulation to test the whole, including user interactions and fault tolerance.
How would this have been implemented for the Max? Put the new software in a simulation, with real pilots, fly it, and intentionally throw in adverse conditions like bad weather, mechanical failures and bad input from disconnected and faulty sensors.
The whole of the software world operates this way, new websites with new webservers on new hardware is tested this way. Put the software in a "sandbox", write an emulator that floods the server with requests and hacker attacks and sales, throw in real people to test the user experience and see what happens.
2
That Boeing is updating the MCAS software indicates that it has identified at least a possible problem with it. But we don't know yet if that's the problem that was encountered in the crashes.
If the software change has resulted from a subsequent design review due to the crash, and has identified yet another flaw but does not address the real cause of the crash, it further complicates system analysis.
Also, if a faulty sensor was involved, it should require the installation of a redundant system for it as well. But we don't know if the sensor was the problem.
Although Boeing avoided cost in the 737 Max design, systems undergo a failure modes, effects and criticality analysis (FMECA). It's true that Boeing could leverage previous FMECAs from the previous design, but if a faulty sensor could destabilize the new MCAS system, it should have undergone a new FMECA. So the question arises, did Boeing avoid that analysis, or, did regulators deem the analysis unnecessary, or did the FMECA produce a false negative?
At any rate, the crashes lead to emotional responses from some passengers that are like the feelings that produced the design decision for the 737 Max. Both have to be verified and validated before a rational design change can be effected. We have to know the cause(s) of the crashes.
2
Sounds like all Boeing's goals squeezed out the most important--human safety.
5
When complex systems and technology intersect with pressure for profits things can go terribly wrong. And they did.
7
A small point - a key feature of the 737, the fuselage diameter and shape was actually set for the 707-200 in 1957 - this is a 70 year old design feature/element and one of the reasons that Boeing narrow bodies are less comfortable than the wider Airbus. Similarly, a decision was made then about undercarriage height that Boeing has pretty well stuck to for 60-70 years on narrow bodies except for the 757.
4
It's clear the plane is structurally unsound. Regulators need to send a clear message cost cutting doesn't trade off with safety.
4
We should insist that all planes have MULTIPLE back-up safety systems. One per safety problem is insufficient!
How often do we hear of software having bugs? ALL THE TIME!
So, first aerodynamics must be PROVEN. With multiple mechanical backups.
Next, software enters in. But software itself mustn’t be the sole safety source.
I’m not an engineer. But it’s only logical - to me, a person who values my life and yours too - that any plane must be airworthy to start with. Not airworthy ONLY when software is added - to fix a tippy plane.
11
I have always been reluctant to fly airlines from third world countries. The 737 Max saga has shown, to me at least, why one should steel clear of carriers from the third world.
3
@RandyJ
The fact that two planes went down in the Third World is not the source of the problem!
Many pilots had experienced these problems. And complained! And these were brand new planes!
Ethiopia, it’s been widely reported, has a superb air training academy - for pilots and other personnel. Ethiopia has a high level of education.
Focus on the engineering. Whether software or aerodynamics. Not where the plane is doing its flying.
20
@RandyJ
I admit sometimes having second thoughts about flying other countries' airlines. But in this case, the "third world" countries stopped flying the planes before the US did. Ours stopped only after US airspace was closed to the Max. American carriers insisted the planes were safe....
11
@TheraP: Actually, no. There was the thought that American pilots might have been more adept at dealing with the flaw in the control software, so @RandyJ does have a point.
There are two issues: airplane mechanical failure and the response to it. Widely reporting a superb quality of Ethiopian air training academy offers a possible piece of evidence that has to be validated.
Nevertheless, all commercial aircraft in the world still have extraordinary flight records.
It seems appropriate, at this time of reckoning for Boeing, for the public to also ask for quantification of just how much Boeing was competetively disadvantaged worldwide by the cost of paying for high cost US private healthcare insurance for its employees. In America, where we pay exorbitant costs for for-profit healthcare at the hands of an amoral and inefficient unregulated insurance industry, it seems like we need to clean up our Corporate acts in more than one area. Virtually unregulated capitalism is the vampire elephant in the room here.
22
@GMR
An insightful assessment!!!
2
"Despite the intense atmosphere, current and former employees said, they felt during the project that Boeing’s internal quality checks ensured the aircraft was safe."
Felt? Feeling is different from knowing. And so with their best gut feeling, they self-certified the aircraft to the equally negligent FAA hoping for the best with their fingers crossed.
12
A need for an extensive, complicated software program to make a plan airworthy (flyable, is that a word?) begs the question as to whether to basic design of the plane was faulty. Is this the core of the problem? In a rush to bring a plane to the competitive market did Boeing engineers accept a marginal design as flight worthy? The larger engines on the same airframe seem to have been the source of instability on takeoff.
9
It's no surprise that Boeing replaced the previous MBA-educated CEO with no direct experience in the aircraft industry with an aeronautics engineer who had worked for Boeing for over 30 years. Boeing, at the time of its decisions resulting in the 737 Max, apparently prioritized profits over the engineering excellence upon which its previous market share was based. Now, it's going to be a long way back.
13
@Philip Wheelock
And let us now review the trajectory of the stock price...
Competition does not work without competent and effective regulation. Especially in aviation where safety is more important than profits.
14
Been in aviation 44 years as a pilot & engineer.
What your article reports is no surprise as I'm well acquainted with aggressive tactics of airlines & aircraft manufacturers. The need to be competitive & profitable never slips their mind. The obsession is so overwhelming the idea of a safe product (manufacturers) or to be on time (airlines) is ignored totally.
The flying public (& innocent on the ground) pays for the insatiable greed. I will not elaborate any further but leave it to your imagination!
15
@Richard Yhip
What about the "greed" of the flying public? How many people buy tickets based on price only? And how many of these will ignore carrier, aircraft, airport connections, etc. in order to save $50?
Where do you think the cost-cutting pressure at airlines and plane manufacturers comes from?
2
@Bob Krantz This sounds like a blame the victim mentality. Airline passengers have absolutely no control over safety at any level. When a passenger purchases tickets, regardless of price, connections or airline, they have a right to believe that their trip is not compromised because they flew through Detroit rather than Chicano so that they could save money. And since when does frugality morph into greed? If a person who is struggling to pay their rent seeks the lowest airfare from a multi-billion dollar airline why should their safety be marginalized?
2
Muilenburg and other Boeing executives should be required to spend 100 hours studying airplane design safety.
3
Overheard at the retirement community:
Two old ladies (in their 80’s or 90’s). One says to the Other: “I’m never getting on one of those planes. Ever!” The other responds: “I think Boeing is going to go bankrupt.”
That a plane could be considered safe to sell if its center of gravity as changed ... and it’s going to be in the air when problem happen?
I’m sorry. To this consumer it is horrifying that a plan would be top-heavy or front-heavy. And they’re dependent on software to compensate?
Software fails!
A plane should be aerodynamically safe to begin with!
The deaths of these people were entirely preventable!
Boeing’s design decisions will likely become a cautionary tale for every manufacturer that needs to design for safety.
If safety is not the bottom line (and unbelieveably Boeing still repeats that as their mantra!), and instead “go, go go” WAS the bottom line, I honestly don’t see how Boeing will EVER recover.
When you’ve lost old ladies, this is not a good sign! They have children and grandchildren and sometimes great-grandchildren. They pass along their Wisdom. And care about their friends and families.
My dad was an engineer. He knew that multiple systems were needed to ensure that if one failed, there was another there to back you up. And maybe even a third. (He worked with missles, to ensure they hit their target. He did that for the Apollo, moon landing.)
I’ll never trust Boeing. It’s my life!
13
@TheraP thrust vector of bigger engine moved CG appropriately, I believe.
["Airbus, by comparison, tended to embrace technology, putting computers in control. Pilots who preferred the American manufacturer even had a saying: “If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.”]
The fly-by-wire technology is what the A320 has used since it was commercially introduced in 1988 which was preceded in use by the Concorde in 1970. In the fact, the digital flight controls on the Concorde were such that the plane could be flown remotely from the ground, if necessary. It's first use in the US was in the F-16 fighter introduced in 1978.
Fly-by-wire doesn't simply "embrace technology" as another means to maintain altitude and direction as conventional autopilots do, but also continually optimizes the plane's flight profile which results in significant fuel savings greater than if hand flown by pilots. That was a major reason why Airbus was so successful.
And it's not the only place you find it. The throttle foot pedal, brake pedal and even steering wheel in many cars today only provide electrical inputs to a computer that actually controls and optimizes their functions. Millions of people are driving-by-wire and don't realize it.
Boeing, like so many companies that formerly dominated their fields, are slow to respond to new technology and when they need to suffer the consequences of trying to catch up.
7
If corporations are people (thanks to our Supreme Court), then why can't someone in this company go to jail for the deaths of so many people?
13
It is clear that Boeing rushed this design into production in order to maximize sales and profits. Their caviler attitude towards safety sensitive software and pilot training makes me wonder what else they have scrimped on. I will not fly on the 737 Max until it has a well established safety performance record. That could take years. As for the Boeing 737 Max? Boeing has successfully produced the aircraft version of the Chevrolet Corvair.
10
@Mathew
"We could mitigate in design by checking for agreement from multiple input sensors" That is the critical point. In such situations of vital importance to safety triple redundancy is essential. Software decides which of two sensor readings are most in agreement and acts on those. If a third sensor is much different an alarm should be raised.
4
@irdac close, but not exactly. Software decides that sensor inputs are inconsistent and not trustworthy, then tells (well-trained) pilot to take over. Analyzing and reacting to conflicting indicators is a basic flight skill taught to every pilot.
1
@Fern
I was covering the general situation for critical measurements. The last sentence covers your requirement to alert the pilot.
Incidentally the air conditioning in the National Gallery London has had triple redundancy for at least 25 years with the software acting as noted in my comment without failure of the control system.
The automotive industry should take heed. Any safety features ie. lane change warning etc, should be standard and NOT optional at extra cost.
7
Compromising safety s not a rational decision at least in the long term if not always.
6
This article finally identifies the root cause. The MAX is essentially a new aircraft, particularly in its response to applying full power while climbing and to failures of the control system. The decision by the FAA to allow pilots to fly it with no transition training was a fatal flaw. This drove the decision to use the electronic display to simply duplicate the appearance of mechanical flight instruments. Equally important, the aircraft actually has two angle of attack sensors, and on US airlines the angle of attack sensed by each is displayed in the cockpit. If the sensor fails, or more likely was not working when the aircraft departed, this would be obvious to the pilots. But this display, called an angle of attack indicator, even though it was just a picture on the electronic display, was an extra cost option, probably quite expensive, and was not installed on either of the aircraft that crashed. This made it impossible for the pilots to tell that the sensor wasn't working. Without the angle of attack indicator they were flying blind.
14
@Dan Woodard MD
Yes. The second angle of attack sensor was already present and used for other systems. How much would it have cost Boeing (I would think the cost neglible) to put both on the primary flight display, so the pilots would see a discrepancy, as standard, instead of charging extra for the feature?
Without:
http://www.b737.org.uk/images/fltinsts_max-pfd-web.jpg
With:
https://theaircurrent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/737-max-pfd-aoa-display.jpg
Not the only problem with the plane, but unbelievable nickel and diming.
“The bigger engines altered the aerodynamics of the plane, making it more likely to pitch up in some circumstances.”
A bad design can’t be fixed with software. The planes should all be grounded and redesigned or scrapped. Boeing probably shouldn’t survive this debacle.
19
@Carmine The use of the larger engines wasn't a bad design; allmost all new airliners have new and more powerful engines. The mistake was not to provide the pilots with the training to fly what was essentially a different aircraft.
19
@Carmine, Software should augment a well-designed plane, not compensate for a poorly designed one.
13
Boeing shouldn’t survive? What an over the top assessment.
8
I worked in software quality assurance for a long time and I can tell you now that the profit motive is far too often at odds with product quality (because of unrealistic sales promises, ridiculous deadlines, lack of capital investment in proper testing/training facilities and personnel, incompetent management, et al.).
Many people who work in quality assurance have been sounding the warning for years that the corporations want to turn things - cars, security, medicine, our homes, ourselves - over to software designed with quality firmly subordinated to expediency and profit.
These profit-based decisions have now unjustifiably cost hundreds of people their lives because a room of Boeing executives decided to brand their new plane as an old one (sorry - substantial engine and software redesign don’t get a free pass here in reality). This is why we need a strong firewall between business and government and strong regulation of corporations to encourage humane behavior and outcomes. The current sociopathy of pursuing profit above people is tearing our societies apart and literally killing innocents.
36
@Philippe Egalité, It sounds like the monitoring and approval process has also been co-opted by those looking for profit over safety with Boeing playing a lead role in approving their own designs.
5
@Jono Yes, I agree with your assessment completely - that's why I suggest that we need both a "firewall" separating business and government and strong regulations. Without the former, the latter won't be more than smoke and mirrors.
1
@Philippe Egalité
Completely agree.
The FAA is currently headless (in the real sense of the word 'headless').
The FAA needs to be headed by an Admiral Rickover type (nuclear submarines). A man who was overwhelmingly qualified to follow any and all technical issues, obsessed with safe design, with absolute integrity and independence, and a man who absolutely never suffered fools.
1
Has socialist Europe eclipsed capitalist America? Does providing job security with a solid safety net produce a better outcome than a winner-take-all and devil-take-the-hindmost consciousness? I think it’s about time Americans take a deep look at our future and realize capitalism should stay in the 20th century.
40
@Capt Planet, And Boeing sounds like American car companies, thinking the American public is pro-petroleum just like our paid for politicians. In actuality, the vast majority of the public wants action on climate change. European and other foreign companies have taken advantage for decades.
14
“There was so much opportunity to make big jumps, but the training differences held us back.”
And there it is. The evidence that not only can rampant, unchecked capitalism kill people indiscriminately, it can also thwart the very innovations it is religiously touted to produce.
28
Using software to compensate for a fundamentally bad design (not failsafe) is never acceptable:
Jury rigging newer larger engines on an old fuselage not designed to handle them, with trim adjustment software (MCAS) to correct stall situations. Bad, very bad.
This was done to short circuit the normal process. Safety did NOT come first, was NOT the highest priority.
I will never fly on a 737 MAX, never.
33
@oldBassGuy pilots will learn how to fly them safety. There are plenty of aircraft that are notoriously challenging including ones built by Lear and the Mitsubishi MU-2.
But I agree with your fundamental premise, especially in the case of a large commercial airliner. They could have done much better, but market forces determined that it was not to be. It's how capitalism works.
@Fern
Thanks for the reply.
To be clear, it is not technology that I fear, it is the decision makers (I have over 420 days submerged as a reactor operator aboard a nuclear submarine).
Now that the cat is out of the bag as it were, that alone will reduce the odds of more crashes such as Lion and Ethiopia.
Boeing and FAA deliberately short circuited the approval process.
What are the other as yet unknown or undisclosed serious issues are there now that it is no longer possible to trust Boeing and the FAA.
It would seem Boeing will absorb these losses and move on. Imagine that several hundred people suing Boeing for wrongful death which Boeing will 100% deny was their fault and settle out of court. And they will go about their business as if nothing ever happened. The cost of doing business, as it were. Trump went on this tirade about lowering the cost of building military jets, but on this he will view Boeing as a fine company that is doing everything they can to fix the problem. Too big to fail , I guess.
14
I do find it interesting the plane crashes occurred at airlines where pilot certification is not as stringent as US pilot training. Does anyone think US pilots never encountered the same conditions? Is it possible the major reason for the crashes is pilot error, as is true in more than 90% of crashes?
I’m not making Boeing totally blameless but statistically speaking the plane in question has flown for countless hours with no major incident, none by US pilots (the most highly trained) and to blame Boeing as the sole reason is simply turning a blind eye to the most likely causes, pilot certification and pilot error.
7
@ArtM
I tend to disagree.
I'm not saying that these pilots are as good as the best trained pilots, but they are trained pilots who have the responsibility for hundreds of people. They are not going to jeopardize all these lives.
If Boeing deliberately made things invisible, so that pilots didn't need to be retrained, then you can be sure poorer countries will opt for this. Also by making the safety indicator & switch [an expensive] optional. I would call this willful neglect, to prevent retraining (expensive) and re-certification (even more expensive).
Essentially these pilots, which might have less training than pilots in USA & EU already, were left in the blind of the real changes in the handling of the plane. If this is the case, then I can hardly blame them for losing control.
This in stark contrast to Boeing's own statement: “Safety is our highest priority as we design, build and support our airplanes.” - so why make a safety indicator "optional"?
That doesn't make sense, now does it?
6
@ArtM
Boeing made the Max 8 to be sold world wide. Even assuming that the better trained pilots could have prevented the crashes, Boeing remains responsible for not providing the simulators and instructions appropriate for all the airlines that bought the planes. The company was well aware of the standards of pilot training around the world.
1
As I wrote, I’m not saying Boeing is blameless.
What I am saying is pilot error has been in the past and likely will be this case the ultimate cause of the two crashes. I think you are and many others are minimizing the pilot training aspect.
Bottom line for me, the pilots did not know what to do in this situation and should have. The 737 may not have displayed an indicator but it is the pilot’s training that ultimately determines how they meet a challenge. Sadly, they were not equipped to deal with the situation. The plane did not tell them and the consequences disastrous. Pilots are trained in this country to deal with these emergency situations and think for themselves. That is not necessarily true elsewhere and people died. Boeing is likely culpable but so are the pilots, more so on my opinion.
Of course,when there are competing suppliers a of a product which gives a similar service decision is,partly, made based on how to secure as much of the market share as possible.In hindsight some concerned engineers have said that there were algorithms or some other design mechanism that should have been incorporated that helps in rectifying the short comings of the 737 Max.Also, the pilots have to know who else is at work on the plane so that they will be aware of an interference underway, this seems to be addressed in this very thorough reporting.Also,it looks, what is at work in the construction of the 737 Max is a cutting edge knowledge at the interface of Physical science and Engineering,meaning there is some daring move that has to be taken that lives room to some chance of uncertainty.Even in building the most potent Weap it is a repeated simulation test that is being done not through causing a real Armageddon.Both in the Weap case and churning out a new brand of plane one necessary step is doing enough # of simulation tests and see if sufficiently high probability of safety and reliability success guarantee is attained.Is it ever possible to 1st secure a 100% success guarantee before releasing a new line of product?.The main thing is in coming up with a rectification around which a consensus can be reached.TMD.
America used to focus on constant improvement, not constant increases in profit. As technology and society changes faster than ever, it is not possible to sit on advances made decades ago and expect to remain at the top of the heap.
7
@Jemima Hickman
Just a theory:
I think this shift happened together with the shift to anonymity. Until the '80s a lot of companies were owned by families, who had a long-term interest in their companies (Like Unilever now, f.i.). Even if it was only in minority, these families had some form of long-term influence.
These families stepped out, gradually; took the money and started to become capital investment firms, or something. Only the most greedy & unscrupulous ones remained, like the owners of Walmart.
By shifting the long-term vision into the short-term capital gains, this kind of responsibility disappeared. Instead you got a 3-month profitability response by management, to show stakeholders they made a good investment. That's when profit became more important than quality & innovation.
And it didn't help that production moved to cheap countries like China, Bangladesh & Vietnam, of course. It really pressured their competitive position and everything became anonymous; the end product had nothing to do with the origins of the company anymore.
1
We are living in a time where corporations matter and people do not. Profit is the goal and quality of life (for the rest of us) has been discarded on the scrap heap of history. Corporations police themselves and tell our Government what to do. It started small, with the pharmaceutical industry tweaking patents to keep medication prices high. We first realized it when a life saving epi pen went to hundreds of dollars, followed by the opioid overdose medication called Narcan. Now they simply raised the cost of a medication as necessary to sustaining life as water, to hundreds of dollars. That medication is, of course, Humulin, without which people with Diabetes type 1 will die. They don't care.
Now Boeing builds a plane that has a known software glitch that will cause the plane to CRASH. They devised a patch, a couple of bits of software and some training. Any person would make the patch a necessary part of the plane, but the old, white men in charge of Boeing decided to charge extra for the patch. Hundreds of people died. They DON'T care.
It is time to get rid of the people who keep making "us" the problem ~ the old established corporate heads and their minions in the Republican and Democratic parties, while we still can. We must do it by 2020, if it isn't already too late.
34
@Ken Sayers
Already for years I can see a shift from national politics to multinationals. Kind of historical shift: We moved from local communities to duchies to kingdoms to democratically ruled nations. And now we are shifting towards multinational-ruled regions, larger than nations.
It starts all very autocratically, just like kingdoms. Maybe, in 50 or 100 years from now, when multinationals will rule the earth, they will become democratic [by revolution?], letting people vote their board of directors, or something. But I don't trust that it will be in the best of interest of the global population...
4
The 737-Max planes sitting idle are more than the sum nuts and bolts. Each plane is the product of a complex system involving hardware, software, training, human institutions--FAA and capitalism--and human beings.
The system is now being unraveled much as an onion. We are peeling and onion here, layer after layer and finding that that many defects, technical, institutional led to the two crashes. The layers are seemingly separate, but they are interconnected in complex ways. Each day we learn something new and it isn't pretty.
The last words of the pilot requesting divine intervention near the end show the magnitude of this failure. The pilot his crew, and passengers had been let down by many others involved in this system. It never should have come to this and did so do to the many failures and flaws built in this system.
15
Competition is good for the consumers, and Boeing seems to have been on track to develop an entirely new generation of 737 (or a successor). It was quite disheartening to read that engineers did have better designs for the cockpit but had to put "no new simulator training" as the primary goal. If Boeing had followed the natural course of evolution, its customers might have had a better aircraft in the end, although not as quickly as the Max. American Air indeed ended up buying Airbus 320 Neo, so the rush to Max didn't serve the purpose of staving off competition. On the whole, Max looks like a short-sighted decision. Whether the rush resulted in an overall bad design and what other problems might occur due to a less aggressive MCAS modifications is to be seen. But Max seems tainted beyond recovery.
5
@Bala Actually, no new simulator training needed would be a good thing. Pilots could use their already well developed knowledge of how to fly older versions to more safely fly the new plane.
The problem was that the software change did require additional simulator training, but they mistakenly believed it didn't.
I only read the headline as I'm pressed for time this morning. But the race for profit is making our lives on this planet unsafe, and it can be prevented with regulations with real teeth. We have to take back the regulatory mechanism from the people we intend to regulate. It is madness to continue down this path.
If congress can't get their act together and police these corporations, then we need a new congress who will. At this point we don't have representatives--we have lobbyists.
And this administration is in hock to the lobbyists. We need a new executive in Washington who will represent us against the profiteers, not the other way around.
24
@betty durso
Or an educated buying public should vote with their $ or Euros or Yen, or DM or whatever.
I used to prefer Boeing to AB any day. Now, I take more valium.
The backdrop for the Max 8 crashes is a widely held perception that America can no longer be trusted. The pursuit of corporate profits and management bonuses has combined with the efforts of the Republican right to undermine and diminish the role of government in all ways possible. The unions are in it it too, demanding more, and why not, look at all the money management gets. Added to this is the Trump presidency, America first, make America great again, empower his base, demand more, the stock market and corporate profits as a barometer to measure the success of US society, shutdown the government, the FAA included, to get what you want. The ceo of Boeing, a buddy of Trump, and his predecessors, lobbying and pushing for deregulation and less role for the FAA, fast track the development of aircraft, reduce costs so everyone can make more money.
So now we have the spectre of two new aircraft, right out of the box, out of control, their inadequately trained pllots fighting desperately to restore level flight as they go nose down and fly straight into the land or sea at hundreds of miles per hour in a crash with such force that nothing was left but small pieces. Ethiopia refused to send the black box from its aircraft to the US for evaluation, sent it to France instead. Indonesia wants out of its Max 8 purchase committments.
All things considered, would you fly on a Max 8?
Boeing is in big trouble, BP or Volkswagon level trouble, and so is the US.
35
" ... they felt during the project that Boeing’s internal quality checks ensured the aircraft was safe."
It is not possible for human beings to think otherwise - we would feel responsible for passenger deaths and that would lead to severe mental trauma.
It is not possible for rushed work to be properly tested for safety in all necessary areas. Human beings lose concentration in a predictable way.
4
Boeing provided trauma counseling to the engineers. It seems that the engineers were doing their jobs, but Management was rushing them. So Boeing is setting the stage to blame the engineers.
20
As they should, yes, the engineers are to blame. When you write new software, testing is part of the process, every single line of software must be tested, then you use simulation to test the whole, including user interactions and fault tolerance.
How would this have been implemented for the Max? Put the new software in a simulation, with real pilots, fly it, and intentionally throw in adverse conditions like bad weather, mechanical failures and bad input from disconnected and faulty sensors.
The Boeing Max 8 is fundamentally flawed.
The original 1967 air frame will never be stable in flight with the heavier engines Boeing has specified for install on Max 8. PLUS, the 1967 air frame was designed well before Americans became fat. So, the overall loading of the air frame is just way beyond what is possible with the new Max 8 engines. Boeing management knows all this.
Boeing management, at least now, understands this fact. In an example of spectacular bad judgment Boeing is attempting to fix a poor hardware design in software with MCAS.
MCAS cannot make a fundamentally unstable plane, which is more likely to stall, fundamentally stable.
Only a good design that balances all weights can do that. A new airframe + engine design.
Boeing management is trying to lie its way out of the fact that the Boeing Max 8 is a poor hardware design by pointing to software. Everyone is writing about MCAS. But, MCAS is a symptom of a bad airplane design, not a solution.
I have seen attempts to use software to bolster bad hardware designs before in other areas of engineering where the hardware is fundamentally flawed. Management wants to try to backstop bad judgement and bad design with software (often outsourced to folks who do not understand the fundamentals).
But, backstopping hardware flaws with software is not a solution, it is a sign of a dead product or engineering project.
28
@Michael. You nailed it. You can't defy the Laws of Physics by installing a piece of software.
2
Reading this comprehensive article, I am left very uneasy about flying both the AirbusNeo and the Max8, since both models cut corners and decided to place big and different engines on old frames, to cut costs. I wish the NYT report mentioned if the AirbusNeo also uses risky software patches to mitigate this mess. I wish regulators and FAA would ban mounting new and different engines on old frames.
8
@Alexgri Which Regulators do you mean? Boeing was its own regulator - the result is predictable!
7
@Alexgri I haven't seen any article mentioning that Airbus 320neo uses an equivalent of MCAS. The problem for Boeing is a shorter aircraft with not enough ground clearance for larger engines. This doesn't seem to be a problem for A320. On the other hand, the Pratt and Whitney engines on 320 Neo have had their issues (failures during flight) leading to the grounding of these planes in some countries.
4
if the excuse is that Boeing is trying to beat Airbus, should it have made "optional safety" feature as standard equipment? And train all the pilots who fly these planes.
You open any business school textbook and you will see how Unix and Apple computers have made inroad by providing hefty discounts to schools and academia. Call it B-school 101. Surely, Boeing executives, and Airbus executives for that matter, understand that. So, making a safety feature optional doesn't seem to be an attempt to beat Airbus but to extract maximum profit from a captive market
19
So Boeing hasn't learnt a thing. They're rushing the changes to a faulty airliner, "working round the clock" to beat Airbus, avoid compensation and not one thought in the article for the hundreds of dead passengers. Time to stop and meditate on what's making the business click. There's money, competition, safety, pride, disaster, employees, and a whole lot of other things that need to be thought about.
8
"His internal assembly designs for the Max, he said, still include omissions today, like not specifying which tools to use to install a certain wire, a situation that could lead to a faulty connection. Normally such blueprints include intricate instructions."
That is, imagine control surfaces not working because of a faulty wire connection and the redundancy is not there because they tried to keep costs down. Soon more and more airlines will realise that will be more costly to keep a fleet of MAXes that their clients will avoid than the fuel efficiency they provide.
For me, this is one more reason (I wonder how many others may be) that will keep me away from the Max even after they fix the MCAS and the people responsible for that mess are in jail.
12
Presenting the readings of multiple gauges on a large flat-screen display not only would require more pilots’ re-training but would also create a “bigger” single point of failure. This large display would look cool but the engineers made a good decision not going with it.
1
Having worked in aerospace over the last 50 years what Boeing did is the norm for the industry. A makeshift design for a real problem followed by a rushed jury rigged fix. I have steel rods and a back fusion because of short cuts my employer took which led to my crash from a known problem. This was over 30 years ago. And just as the commenters say an American pilot could have handled the Max 8 problems, one of my fellow pilots said he could have flown home after my failure. We will never know, but we do know management will do anything to avoid a grounding and a delay in production.
17
When I read about Boeing's decisions to rush the design and testing processes in order to keep costs to a minimum, chills ran down my spin.
Who here is old enough to remember the Ford Pinto case? Before the new Pinto model was released for mass production tests showed that a rear-end collision could result in the gas tank blowing up, thereby incinerating the occupants of the car. Ford ran the numbers and determined that the financial cost of paying wrongful death damages was less than the cost of fixing the gas tank problem, so it did nothing to fix the problem.
In one of the inevitable wrongful cases that ensued, the plaintiff's attorneys discovered documents about the test and Ford's decision. I can't remember if the court found criminal liability (that would only be fair), but it was one of the first mega-punitive damages cases in modern legal history.
Will history repeat itself? Should it matter that - if Boeing takes a really big hit on this - many thousands of jobs might be lost? What about all the retirement and pension plans that have large holdings of Boeing stock? Should these retirees also feel the hurt, and if so, then why ... or why not?
4
@Francis
Also, don’t forget the Ford/Firestone tire recall. See below:
From Wikipedia
The Firestone and Ford tire controversy was a period of unusually high failures of P235/75R15 ATX, ATX II, and Wilderness AT tires installed on the Ford Explorer and other related vehicles.
The tire failures are linked to 271 fatalities and over eight hundred injuries in the United States with more injuries and fatalities occurring internationally,[1][2] it led Bridgestone/Firestone and Ford Motor Company to recall and replace 23 million tires, it cut the market value of Bridgestone/Firestone in half,[3] Firestone closed the Decatur, Illinois factory where the tires were manufactured, several executives in Bridgestone and Ford resigned or were fired, it led Congress to pass the TREAD Act,[4] and it brought an end to the nearly 100 year corporate relationship between Ford Motor Company and Firestone.
It is estimated that these tire failures and rollovers cost Bridgestone/Firestone $1.67 billion[75] and Ford Motor Company $530 million. Bridgestone's market price dropped by 50% and the resulting restructuring cost Bridgestone $2 billion. In 2001, Ford recorded a loss of $5.5 billion.[62]
5
What amazes me most is the continuing foot dragging by Boeing. After the first crash they endlessly delayed the software update. After the second crash they fought in Washington against a grounding in the US. They promise to make only one optional safety feature standard.
Any crisis manager would advice them to overcompensate in adding safety in order to restore their seriously damaged image. Instead they do the opposite...
12
Since Boeing was dealing with a problem that Airbus must have been facing earlier when designing its 320neo (i.e. how to mitigate the plane’s tendency to stall as a result of heavier engines), the question is now how Airbus solved this problem. Also by a software patch?
8
Transportation is different - sales exec's make decisions based on profits - engineers make decisions based on safety. Where is the FAA in this process? Clearly FAA oversight could have kept the profit motive from killing the safety motive.
8
I am sure American authorities will be as swift and just as they were in their (justified) prosecution of Volkswagen.
9
Boeing knowingly (and therefore deliberately) designed a single point of failure into the MAX, namely, the AOA sensors, only one of which is active at any time. And Boeing charged extra for a warning light that showed when a disagreement existed between the two AOA sensors. But Boeing did NOT program the MCAS software to look at both sensors and assess if they disagreed, but relied always on a single sensor, and did so with such absolute certainty that the MCAS software would rather nosedive a plane into the ground rather than let the pilots fly the plane, even after the pilots exerted 100 pound of force on the yoke to pull the plane up. This is the worst of engineering and safety.
12
@Safe upon the solid rock
Good summary of the key issues. A single sensor failure shouldn't bring down a plane. Especially because it triggered a failure by a new software system, the MCAS, the pilots weren't even notified about.
Apparently, Boeing decided it didn't have to notify pilots of the MCAS because the checklist for a runaway tail stabilizer (?) failure would turn off the MCAS anyway. But from my reading, the behavior of the failed MCAS didn't match the behavior of a runaway stabilizer, so it isn't surprising that a pilot wouldn't have run through that checklist.
Boeing really messed up here in designing the MCAS to run off of one sensor's input, in not notifying a pilot of a disagreement between the two sensors, and in failing to train pilots on handling MCAS failures.
6
I have read about the upgrades that were offered but nowhere have I read how much the upgrades cost. Would these upgrades if they were purchased have definitely saved these two planes that crashed? Why were other planes of this model without the upgrades flying without problems before they were all grounded? it looks like the ball was dropped by everyone in this. What cannot go without note is that the black box was taken to France to be examined. Our place as leader of the world has so been tarnished that I feel few trusted us to examine the black box. Boeing is presently making the upgrades free. Talk about closing the barn door after the horse is out?
10
@Steven McCain
Closing the barn door after the horse is out? It's a way of saying, oops we goofed. The goal was to catch up to the only competitor Boeing has ever faced and they cheated the airlines and the flying public to get there. Cheating is not OK -this one produced deaths. The fact that the obviously very necessary upgrades and the possible training they would require has now been made free of charge, is that Boeing is hoping to avoid the punishment they deserve - a class action criminal negligence lawsuit.
10
@Pauline Hartwig
//off-topic, but this is exactly why I try to buy as little Intel as possible. They cheated, bribed & blackmailed AMD out of the market, some 15 years ago, when AMD was the better deal.
AMD didn't really recover until about 2 years ago (Ryzen & Epyc) and Intel stalled CPU development for all those years, reaping the profits of their practices, only recently giving decent competition to AMD again. Over those years AMD had to sell everything and become a "design studio" to survive [of course; AMD made a lot of bad decisions as well, but Intel's blackmail of companies like HP & Dell triggered a huge revenue loss for AMD].
2
@Steven McCain More importantly, why weren't these safety upgrades part of the whole package, it has been said that they were prohibitively expensive and seem to be basically just lights on the dashboard to let you know the system is engaged. Why weren't these pilots trained with this new system? Incidentally off topic but nothing has so much tarnished our place as leader of the world as our latest "president".
This article completely misses the fact that Boeing offered two critical safety systems as "upgrades". There are two sensors for angles of attack. The safety upgrades is simply the option to use both sensors and if they don't agree then alert the pilots to turn off the autopilot.
Neither of the airlines whose planes crashed purchased the upgrades, because Boeing presented them as not essential - since it was the same 737.
The engineers built the safety features. The business side destroyed those safety features with greed and perverted logic.
25
@Craig H. My understanding is that the MCAS only uses one input, even with the upgrade. The upgrade just tells you the sensors disagree, and thus one of them is probably bad. But since pilots didn't know about the MCAS system, they wouldn't understand the ramifications of a bad sensor.
IOW, engineering the MCAS system to use only one sensor was a poor decision, and one, frankly, that's very puzzling.
6
This is what happens when companies put a higher priority on profits than they do on safety I'm afraid.
The aircraft is fundamentally flawed it seemed. The engine is too large, the frame not suited for this design, and too close to the ground. Boeing then relied on a "band aid" solution with software to try to correct the inevitable flaw of the aircraft being unstable and tending to get pushed to the ground. It seems the stall correcting MCAS may very be a key culprit in the 2 crashes thus far.
I should also like to note that the company has become obsessed with union busting more than safety. The whole decision to open up in South Carolina was to break the unions. Similarly, Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago due to tax breaks, not any other reason. It seems like the company wants to extract as many concessions from the workers and taxpayers as possible, while contributing as little it can get away with to the community.
This corporate culture (driven I suspect by MBAs), of focusing on the profits at the expense of everything else has been awful. It has led to the destruction of the American middle class and has responsible for a number of disasters, such as the BP oil spill a few years ago.
Ultimately, true blame must lie with the senior management and shareholders, whose greed has led to the deaths now of several hundred people. However, this incident sheds a light on the failings on American corporate culture as a whole and the insane profit focus.
44
@Chris
There are self-correcting mechanisms that should come into play at this point. Do you think the culture at BP has changed since the Gulf oil disaster? How about the culture at VW since the emissions scandal? What about the culture at Wells Fargo since its marketing scandal? It could be argued Wall street has not reformed after the financial crisis, but then perhaps that is because the blame was not focused narrowly enough to force reform.
It is too soon to predict how this may affect Boeing culture in the long term. The cost in terms of the worldwide flying public's rejection of the aircraft and the cancellation of orders has yet to be quantified. It could be very big of course, but as Trump says, "we will have to see what happens".
4
It’s bad enough that one plane crashed. But doing seemingly very little to analyze the problem and fix it in a timely manner is INEXCUSABLE. Profits first, then people.
10
Just another case where managers who have an mba and understand only financial engineering run a company that requires solving complex technical problems - they only look at the $.
VW and BMW have a corporate culture of automotive engineering even at the highest management levels. Compare gm and ford to them and the usa auto industry problems are obvious!!
GE management cost-cutting culture is destroying american tech industry. GE self destruct was so sad to watch. I saw how ge r&d had to scrimp on software even compared to start-ups. Now they are trying to re-invent themselves as a tech company. Very difficult to do. So glad I dumped the stock in time.
An mba without a technical degree should never rise to more than head bookkeeper in a company.
Notice how lately tsmc with their massive r&d and technical management has passed intel. They’re not better- they have better management.
8
@Wayne You *do* know that VW's engineering-led management led them to build a cheat device for NOx emissions that led to a massive pollution problem, major fines, and if memory serves, some criminal charges as well? Someone in my office got essentially a *free car* from VW. The only thing that saved VW from this level of bad press was that the additional deaths from the pollution, while real, were statistically distributed such that no single death could be attributed to the additional pollution.
Not that I'm defending GM, whose engineers chose to save less than a dollar on a key mechanism that shut off cars while driving at highway speeds.
2
@PghMike4
A technical/engineering background does not guarantee good ethics. Engineers can be motivated by greed, they can cut corners and cheat, just like MBAs or anyone with any other educational background can. Many engineers have an MBA.
This article's title suggests recklessness by Boeing.
Nobody wants to blame the operator or any other victims, but not every large American corporation is overdue for a reckoning.
Especially not in the aerospace industry. Peoples' opinions can be gamed; gravity's opinion, not so much.
7
The operation was successful, but the patient died is my reflections on “culture of Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX, FAA managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself and to speedily approve the resulting analysis”.
Historians will record the l'affaire Max 8 is the important point of unravelling of Reagan-Thatcher laissez-faire capitalism which swore by the dictum that “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem".
Max 8 tragedy clearly indicates dreadful fallout, when the Reagan economic philosophy is enforced in to action.
20
Now that trust has been broken by Boeing, how can it be restored? I won't feel comfortable getting on a 737 Max again, ever. Even after the software patches, and the "optional" safety features (which seems like an oxymoron to me, given that it's a PLANE) are on every plane.
According to Boeing, the plane was safe all along. According to them, the MAX never needed to be grounded. And then, just like that, we're supposed to believe them when they tell us NOW it really is safe...? That doesn't make sense. Trust doesn't work like that.
Boeing has done irreparable damage with their greed.
39
@Alexandra O: "Boeing has done irreparable damage with their greed" very well said!
“Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly.”
One of the most valuable assets we can have in life is to be trustworthy. It is worth gold whether in business or friendships or family. When you can trust a person it creates a bond of loyalty that runs deep. And when someone can trust you it gives you that same bond of loyalty back. It is more valuable than any amount of money or power because trust doesn’t have to ebb and flow likes other things in life. Trust can be permanent if you do the right things and do things the right way.
It takes time and effort to build trust. It takes going the extra mile to show that you are someone who can be counted on. And unfortunately it can be broken in a split second of doing something to let down just as Boeing managed to do, driven by unconscionable corporate greed.
“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.” Trust must be treated with kid gloves. It must be given the attention it deserves without missing a single beat.
9
@Alexandra O
The old saying which I've heard many times was "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going.." That old saw has now been rendered moot by recent events.
I am a retired airline pilot who has never been in the cockpit of a 737. However, one fact stood out in all I've been reading about the 737 Max. Additional safety features for this aircraft were "optional" to potential customers like airlines who flew passengers. How could this be?
4
It’s amazing to me the number of people expressing fear of automation that all of the sudden want to fly on an Airbus. Look at Quantas flight 72, and at least three other incidents with the A330 where a computer fault put the planes into a nosedive. The issues were never identified and were never resolved. Several other Airbus designs have had machine-over-man issues with fatalities (Air France 447 comes to mind). Yet somehow the Times didn’t decide to destroy Airbus.
12
@Mike Fear of automation? What has automation got to do with a DUMB business decision to sell critical safety features as an "upgrade"? Was that decision worth it? Have you ever heard of improvement through self-reflection?
@Mike It wasn't the NYTimes that rushed an airplane to market while cheating on certifications and pilot training causing the death of more than 300 people. It was Boeing. If you want fake news, tune into Fox.
It's not only Boing. Southwest, an airline I fly most of the time failed to respond to the 2 crashes and stop flying the Max immediately, even though their CEO Gary Kelly says safety is first priority. That was a huge mistake and one the airline will have difficulty living down. If he had pulled their planes immediately SW would have received a huge benefit of trust. Now they're just another greedy corporation.
12
Maybe i'm wrong but with a backlog of 5000 planes it really makes sense to go to a new design. To continue to make 5000 of a 1960's design is poor planning and corporate short sighted greed with no vision toward the future. Boeing is loosing it.
13
@Allan
Give a more quantitative for saying poor planning.
.
Maybe there was an error planning - but you have not demonstrated it.
I think we are over designing the automation in airplanes. We have pilots who are well trained to fly the plane by hand.They need automation to take over some of routine tasks of keeping the plane straight and level and on course on long flights.The automation should be used to check for faults in the systems and if the airplane is flying in a dangerous manner and warn the pilots to take corrective action.
Boeing added MCAS on top of a pitch control that was in use for twenty years and this confused the pilots who did not know the system was there.
AirFrance 447 is a good example of this. The plane was flying fine, the autopilot lost air speed input and then did not know how to fly the plane and reduced power to the engines without notifying the pilots and leaving them very confused. If the autopilot had just told the pilots I cannot fly the plane without changing anything, you fly the plane. Perhaps the accident would never have happened.
11
All US corporations are established fiscally in Europe , not in USA , In Ireland to cheat and pay zero taxes while invading the market and destroying the EU economy.
8
Imagine that an automobile company willingly designed a car with a steering system that had a natural tendency to let the car drift to the left, into oncoming traffic.
Imagine that the company, rather than address the problem with the steering system itself, simply added a computer that looked for lane lines and would steer to the right if it sensed drifting.
But... what if?
What if the lanes aren't marked clearly enough for the sensors? What if the driver was intentionally drifting to avoid an obstacle? What if road construction caused a change to the traffic pattern? And what if the computer simply fails to do its job correctly?
After all, it's not difficult for any of us to imagine the problems we've had with computers crashing or rebooting when we're doing the most menial of everyday tasks.
So the biggest question is this: Why in the world would we trust a computer program to "fix" a design problem that never should have existed in the first place?
Once brought to light, the public would never let the car with the left-drift problem on the road again without a physical design fix, not a software patch.
The groundings of the 737 Max should be permanent. It's a flawed design that places hundreds of lives in danger with every flight, not to mention those who could be at risk if the plane crashes in a densely populated area.
Sorry, Boeing. Back to the drawing board. And this time, do it the correct way, not the easy way or the fast way.
119
@Jeff
"Once brought to light, the public would never let the car with the left-drift problem on the road again without a physical design fix, not a software patch."
The public wouldn't, but the government would. The public are the milk-cows, had you forgotten?
7
@Jeff
This is an extraordinarily helpful explanation of what is going on. It ought to be distributed as widely as possible.
6
Yes, the free market and competition always brings out the best, at least in the short term for the company. Risk taking does not belong in the airliner manufacturing industry.
15
NASA now has to consider revoking it’s $4.7 billion large space vehicle contract with Boeing because of extreme delays and cost overruns.
As in the ‘vaporware’ for the MCAS system, Boeing seems out of control, doing the impulsive bad contractor thing of lowballing bids to get a contract and cash flow then pushing unveted systems out the door or simply being unable to perform .
20
“Safety is our highest priority” - that actually may be the problem. In business, “Priorities” tend to change, usually driven by market conditions. By offering “additional” safety features as options, and minimizing pilot training, they were giving carriers options to lower costs, potentially at the expense of providing a safer plane. Instead of saying safety is a priority, Boeing should look at safety as a core value, something that will never change or be compromised no matter what market conditions exist. If they did that, they probably would understand that “additional” safety features should never be optional.
It will be a long time before I will book a flight on one of these planes.
32
This is eerily reminiscent of the actions of Douglas when they designed the DC-10. The Lockheed L-1011 was already under way (a trip-jet with similar layout to B-727) but Douglas skipped the hard work needed to mount the center engine in the fuselage, and just stuck it up in the tail. The result was that rudder control was less-than-good.
Likewise, hydraulic lines were placed near the front of the wing (easier) rather than buried in the middle where they're better protected. So when an AA DC-10 lost an engine on take-off (due to improper maintenance), it severed the hydraulics there and the plane flipped into the ground.
Haste causes bad decisions, and sometimes other people pay with their lives.
41
@Peter
Thank you Peter!
I was criticised on a previous thread because I said I had refused to fly a DC-10. The L-1011 never had an intrinsic failure such as those on the DC-10.
I will never fly a 'Max' whatever modifications Boeing make.
8
I've worked in engineering and maintenance for 45 years, and this do it quick and cheap attitude is prevalent in more industries than just airplanes.
38
I got to thinking that what I actually feel other than being terribly sad for those who lost their lives is betrayed. Boeing has been a part of my life as a frequent traveler since forever. It has never occured to me not to to trust them, until now.
38
Unfortunately, due to poor corporate and executive decisions, many employee's jobs will eventually be at risk. Perhaps those on the ground should have been consulted first as to the feasibility of the exec's push to safely, get the job done. Again labor bares the brunt of senior management's zeal.
18
From the article: "Although the project had been hectic, current and former employees said they had finished it feeling confident in the safety of the plane."
The problem was not the speed with which the aircraft was developed. The problem was that the basic design was flawed. If you take an existing aircraft and put on larger engines, in a more forward position, you end up with a design that is not optimal. In this case, an aircraft whose nose tended to pull up. Engineers refer to this sort of design as a 'kludge'. It's not a complementary term.
My guess is that the engineers would have preferred a clean design, and that they were overruled by the bean-counters.
How could anyone feel confident about an aircraft whose flight characteristics needed to be corrected by software? Just a terrible design practice.
44
@ShenBowen: Maybe it's not optimal, but it might be. If the original engine placement was poor then bigger and further-forward could be better.
It might be sub-optimal but isn't necessarily so.
As for flight characteristics being determined by software - well, every advanced fighter does this. F-22 and F-35 just cannot be flown "directly" (i.e. without software to map the pilot's control inputs to actual positioning of the control surfaces).
6
@Peter: Peter, that doesn't make sense to me. The original 737 was designed from scratch. It is possible to create an optimal design when you are designing everything from scratch. If you handed a fuselage, and wings, but handed a larger engine, the chance of coming up with an optimal design is much lower. That's engineering 101.
The software that maps instruments to control surfaces is not the same thing. It is not 'correcting' for defects in the airframe (ie. a tendency for the nose to pull up). It's like a hydraulic system. I don't see a problem with that as long as redundancy is provided.
1
The 737max is not a fighter jet at the bleeding edge of technology. You can't compare a jet made to go into battle with a plane made to haul people millions of miles a year.
1
Retired old pilot. 24000 hours. 9500 Boeing ( 727,737,757,767). 9500 hours Airbus ( 319,320,321). Gimme an Airbus any day. It's safe,it's capable,it's comfortable, it's sophisticated. I didn't buy them, I only flew them. I only hope God never requires me to fly a 737 again!
115
I'm curious - why the preference? Easier? Consistent? I realize it's just your opinion but I'm interested to hear why if you'll indulge.
2
@Ken Hi retired old pilot. Would you be willing for a novice to pick your very experienced old brain about aviation safety? Can be anonymous or on the record. All for the greater good.
Governmental Oversight & Regulation can & does save lives!
This is one of the consequences of Conservative amorality when it comes to their "Libertarian" & "hands-off" philosophy to the fundamental necessity of highly competent governmental officials, in conjunction with their counterparts in the private sector, providing lifesaving oversight & demands for accountability from private industry, particularly when the products & services of Corporations impact Public Safety.
Conservatives have put the Foxes in charge of almost all of the Henhouses. This is cynical & criminal. But lives of innocent people do not seem to be on the moral compass of Conservative thought when the rightwing hormones of Profit and Deregulation scream out loud that governmental regulations are always evil.
What is evil is this Conservative mindset & mantra.
It is time to connect all-of-the-dots to show how destructive unregulated, uncontrolled, unaccountable amoral & yes, immoral, business practitioners have been on our planet.
The next time you hear a Conservative attack Government for its necessary & proper role to provide safety regulations over Big Business, remind him or her that ethics & morality do not stop at the water's edge of Commerce. In fact, if we are to practice morality in our personal lives, we had better ensure that bad actors in Corporations are forced to face civil & criminal consequences for their preference of Profits over People's Lives when it comes to their decisions.
50
There is one major factor in the 737Max not mentioned in this article.
It is my understanding that on other commercial aircraft the plane responds to the pilot's decisions by automatically turning off computerized control when the pilot pulls back on the control mechanism, the yoke. In the Max crashes to date, indications are that the pilots were trying frantically to regain control, essentially fighting with the computerized system to let them do what they are supposed to do, fly safely.
The introduction of "fly by wire"* and computerized systems has been controversial from the start. Airbus was once showing off a new airliner, the A320, at an air show in France in 1988. The pilots were doing a fly by above the runway but failed to power up in time to avoid crashing into some trees. This was one of the first "fly by wire" aircraft in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEH7OpnA-I4
We should not be so fast to rush to judgement. Modern aircraft are incredibly complex and it is obvious that mistakes were made in this case, but assigning blame really needs to wait. After the Lion Air crash, the simplest solution would have been to ensure that all pilots knew how to turn off the MCAS system, unless, that is, the software was so flawed that it wouldn't have allowed it.
*"fly-by-wire" essentially means that when the pilots move the controls, they are not directly moving the control surfaces of the aircraft. They are sending messages that those surfaces need to move.
11
@Doug Terry: the Airbus crash you mention wasn't a fly-by-wire issue nor a computer-control problem. The pilots - for some reason - forgot just how long it takes for a jet engine to make a major power increase. Their flight above the runway was fairly low speed and the engines were close to idle. Getting power takes five or six seconds and they didn't give themselves that long. On the video you can hear the engine pitch really ramp up only a second or two before the plane was in the trees.
8
@Peter
I didn't say it was a fly-by-wire issue. What I said is that it was one of the first, if not the first, commercial airliner to have a fly-by-wire system and that putting them in was controversial from the start. Without reading the full report on the crash, I personally don't feel assured that fly-by-wire was not a contributing factor but, in any case, I didn't say that it was. It was widely believe in the aviation field at the time that the system might have contributed.
3
@Peter
Regardless of the exact cause of the air show crash in France, it remains a curious fact that the first, or one of the first, fly-by-wire commercial aircraft crashed while it was being introduced to the aviation community.
3
Are the sensors distraction by shiny objects...
What drove the need for this MCAS function/feature in the first place...
Bluntly, what was the margin before airflow was disrupted to the point of losing aerodynamic lift a/o stability...
This disruption occurs beyond some operating points, for all aircraft...
And – what combination of test flights, wind tunnel tests, aerodynamic flow simulation, and dumbed-down abstracted control loop tweaks determined this...
6
You could not get me to ride in a Ford Pinto or a Boeing 737 Pinto.
13
A great many of the comments here are attacking Boeing, the airframe (737 MAX), and the FAA for the two crashes caused by failure to disclose a feature (automated stall prevention via a control called MCAS) that could, if it became active inappropriately, could, after a significant period of time without correction, put the aircraft into an uncontrollable state.
Boeing made some mistakes--but none of them suggest putting lives over profits. Everyone at Boeing knows that losing an aircraft because of a design or construction weakness can and will impact sales in a significant way for a very long time, and possibly put everyone's job (and freedom, if disregard for life can be proven) at risk.
Boeing did not account for consequences to the MCAS anti-stall caused by a failed sensor. (The plane will not fly again until this is fixed.) Boeing should have included fault analysis during the design of the MCAS. (They did design a gradual control response that gives the aircrews time to detect and resolve such problems--had the crews been trained on it.)
Boeing's disclosure of the MCAS was not complete until AFTER the Lion Air crash, but was just before the Ethiopian Air crash including an FAA directive that is VERY attention getting. Failure to disclose the MCAS system and training for it likely caused both crashes. With nothing but knowledge, pilots have had no trouble dealing with the bad MCAS control actions.
The 737 MAX crashes were not from cost savings attempts.
7
@Mark Johnson
"Boeing made some mistakes--but none of them suggest putting lives over profits."
You are correct. It wasn't profit ahead of lives.
No one thought about LIVES at all.
The CEO and senior management thought ONLY about profits.
And everyone else thought about keeping their jobs.
NOT ONE person in this story thought about lives at risk
Ask yourself this. If you knew that a hospital was operating the way Boeing did when American said deliver new planes -- would you go there for surgery?
24
@Mark Johnson
"Boeing did not account for consequences to the MCAS anti-stall caused by a failed sensor."
Seriously? How did the FAA certify the airplane if they didn't account for failure modes of a critical flight control system?
6
@Mark Johnson
The crashes were *definitely* from cost savings attempts.
Using one input in the MCAS system when there were two sensors was a cost savings attempt.
Not providing an indication that the two sensors disagreed, and thus that a bad input was going into the MCAS was a cost savings attempt, and indeed, the 'disagree' indicator was an extra cost option that should have been provided for free.
Not describing the existence of the MCAS and not requiring training in handling MCAS failures was a cost savings attempt, since the goal was to reduce the cost of buying a 737 MAX by reducing training cost.
2
This statement is wrong: “Boeing faced an unthinkable defection in the spring of 2011. American Airlines, an exclusive Boeing customer for more than a decade....” American, like most major carriers, has operated a diverse fleet for decades, including offerings from both Airbus and Embraer.
7
The 737 MAX is actually too low to the ground, considering the size of its engines. This, in turn, forced the engines to be too forward, with too much of a torque.
The A320Neo has longer legs, so the situation is not as bad, the engines were not positioned as badly. I wrote a whole essay about the difference and the financial approach of Boeing, consecutive to its move to Chicago, which emphasized profits over safety.
19
@Patrice Ayme: Boeing did the short-undercarriage thing once before, with the 707. They couldn't up-engine it as Douglas did with the DC-8. So instead they designed a new plane, the 747.
2
Peter you are wrong, the Air force version of the 707 has been re engined with CFM engines. Slightly narrower fuselage than the 707 otherwise identical.
1
Show of hands. Who will ever feel safe riding on this airplane in the future?
14
@Craig Willison I'll actually feel safe on this model because any weak spots will have been engineered out.
4
They cut corners. They didn't disclose the need for additional pilot training. Hundreds died as a result.
Shame on them.
23
Necessary information, needed in the name of the number of NYT readers who, even educated and serious in their own fields are not competent or knowledgeable in every thing. Here we are witnessing that technology go away from Science (Physics) and join the financials gameplay embracing the dubious doctrine which propels the course to win at any cost regardless of the means. The loss of stature, reputation and prominence by Boeing will be incredibly damaging. European Airbus and Chinese Comac will be the logic beneficiaries.
11
@José Ramón Herrera, I'm curious to hear what if any "cut corners" Boeing openly admits to. They seem to be doing their best to avoid blame at this stage.
3
@joe, Seoul, Physics commanded that the new powerful engines Boeing developed would need an entire new craft design, 7 to 10 years work.
5
This reminds me of my favorite play, "All My Sons". Arthur Miller was prescient.
7
It certainly is useful to know that the old tried and true American method of just stuffing wiring in and waiting to find out until afterwards if it all connected and worked or not was at work in the construction of the the Max.
Tim, "The Tool Man" Taylor must have been the lead electrical engineer on this Project. "More Power."
8
Sounds like the American vs Japanese car story all over again. Arrogance and greed were the main drivers in the story. Americans slide into the third world will be driven by those two things. And since we could as a country have chosen a better path, we will deserve it.
18
@Vicki Ralls Indeed, from what I've been reading so far, this is sad and most likely avoidable given the advanced nature of the airline technology. Business has to go side by side with ethics
6
Boeing's actions - its putting profits over safety in designing and producing an AIRPLANE (!) - are beyond despicable.
This is criminal negligence and depraved indifference to human life. It's time these corporate criminals are held to account for their crimes - including homicide - for the deaths of hundreds of people!
And by that I mean not only enormous fines, but prison!
There also should be serious consequences for the two airlines that decided to save money by not purchasing the "optional" safety features.
15
I wonder if any of these planes has ever stalled? Did the MCAS system every engage for the right reason?
6
And we now have a Boeing exec in charge of the defense department. Scary.
26
Anyone involved in the PDLC/SDLC knows full well the only motivation is getting it to market and who cares about the flaws. It’s sad how
people judge risk, especially multi billion dollar companies.
8
Let me get this right. Boeing upgraded the 737 with larger engines. Because of their size, they needed to move the engines forward on the wings. This placement now created a higher probability for the plane to stall. To fix the stall MCAS was added to automatically nose dive in order to counter the stall condition. Later a second sensor was added to “improve” the reliability of MCAS.
I have one question. Did these same engineers also design the Mousetrap board game?
17
“If it’s Boeing, I’m not going.”
14
Capitalism kills.
12
As reported several times it appears that a failure of the angle sensor caused both planes to crash. It has also been reported that there are two of these angle sensors installed on this plane. It is difficult for me to believe Boeing would not program the software to monitor both sensors and take action when the input from these sensors vary by a large degree. For a long time industries far less critical than aeronautics have been using this sort of software configuration for critical components. I also can not believe the FAA could let this sort of design flaw to pass their oversight.
19
@Steve I also cannot believe that they'd put so much faith and dependance on a single (or two) sensors, and moreover, not build in a backup system if/when sensors fail.
13
In pilot training the emphasis is on instrument cross check and conflict resolution with redundant information. The pilot should know how to disable the computer autopilot several ways and hand fly the plane. You can’t take the pilot out of the loop. Aviation 101: aviate, navigate, communicate.
7
@Steve - I believe that is role of the features that Boeing decided to make "optional".
3
The decision to cram a larger engine onto the 737 was a kludge that caused the pitching problem. Fixing the problem with MCAS was another kludge. They should have revived the 757 platform with a shorter fuselage. That would have provided plenty of room for larger engines. It would have required all the work and training involved in a new model. But the 737 Max will never be right. A software fix won't solve the problem.
28
@Steve: No, the 757 was great for its time but that time has passed (even for The Donald, who loves it).
What's needed now is a new replacement based on the engineering in the 787, not the 757. And Boeing should have started that planning along with but a bit behind the 787 development.
3
Engineers and line workers did not make the MAX unsafe. The MARKETING decision to make using multiple sensor inputs an extra while claiming no need for simulator hours did the fatal deed.
8
Nope- engineers had to stand up to marketing...and they didn’t.
22
@Michael Trobe
I agree here. I often tell my graduate students that they must lead up and speak out, because leaders, even when well-intentioned, don't know everything and are often not trained the same way as those they lead. Leading up is an important skill, even if it means risking your job. But if leading up risks your job, you are working in the wrong company or under a bad leader. Any leader who is unwilling to hear genuine feedback, no matter how negative, is a poor leader. Any company that tolerates such leaders is a terrible company that is likely doomed to make errors, such as by rushing a poorly designed plane to market. And here, the poor design is due to requirements imposed on the engineers by the bean counters. But the engineers needed to speak up.
14
@Todd Johnson
The bean counter was a Yale DKE and Harvard Business School graduate. He was a pupil of Jack Welsh at GE. He understood marketing and finance. McNerney is now retired but he left Boeing a disaster as he cashed out. This would be a good case for HBS to study. By neglecting its core strengths and focusing on marketing and finance GE imploded as well. I sold my Boeing stock. China has stated one of its goals is to enter the wide body jet market. This may be their opportunity. GE appliances are made in China.
4
On the other hand this kind of accelerated approach had also produced some of the greatest planes in the past, albeit mostly for military planes. The core issue is really the B737 airframe is way too old and Boeing should have committed on a new design but Wall Street wouldn't approve.
7
I stopped flying on one airline after a tlcketed passenger was dragged off the plane, and subsequent incidents on the same carrier.
As a consumer, I have the power of the pocketbook and I will use it in the future by not flying on Max jets, until it is proven beyond a doubt that they are safe. Does anyone believe safety was or is Boeing's priority?
15
@DesertFlowerLV
Delta isn't flying this model at least not yet. Southwest, AA and United have deployed this plane to their fleets. I'm worried that a 'patch' will be rolled out without enough QA testing or training. Having worked in system design and software development I've come to believe bad design can never really be overcome.
10
Is this so-called "fix" being done in the same hurry-up, slipshod way as the plane itself?
21
Great article. My only problem is however, why did all this come out just now? There was almost full media silence about the 737 Max and Boeing for several days after the Ethiopian crash.
Only when the entire global 737 Max fleet was grounded, did the first cracks appear. Now the trickle turned into a flood.
Who was the press protecting and why?
22
@waldo On Sunday, March 17th, the Seattle Times had a comprehensive article exposing all the facts. They had engineering sources as you might expect from a Seattle paper. But, they are rather quiet now. I think the rest of the media found themselves receiving stories from Boeing and the federal government. Then a trickle of real information began and more and more engineers began to speak. IMO. they didn't want the pilots blamed. The media now had some authoritative information. Note that it was in this period that Canada announced they would no longer accept FAA certifications. Wise choice. One other thought, I think that American media has had trouble believing that Boeing could be this dumb and perfidious. We all fly on Boeing aircraft!
14
This is an eerie reminder of the Challenger disaster: pressure to launch despite freezing conditions that embrittled the solid rocket boosters O-rings; desperate calls from manufacturer engineers who understood the risks, disregarded by senior decision-makers; the inevitable tragedy, totally predicable in retrospect.
I'll never forget the press conference scene of Dr. Richard Feinman dipping the O-ring material into his glass of ice water, snapping it and saying "I think I found your problem."
28
corporate selfhood as defined by the SCOTUS and well received by Republican politicians works for them but not for us. Wake up people before we the people becomes we the corporations.
12
How could Boeing produce an MCAS software update so fast that is just few weeks after the 2nd crash of Boeing 737 MAX 8? Not unless Boeing already knew that there is a problem after the Lion's crash and started updating the software some time ago. I hope independent investigation will shed some lights on the safety issue of Boeing. If Boeing knew the safety issue existed and not reported to FAA, they should be severely punished.
33
@Usok
There was another article here in the NYT - the software fix was started after the first crash. And they would have had it out already, except that the government shutdown meant the FAA review was halted.
6
The MCAS software upgrade was offered with a high price attached and only as optional. Lion Air didn’t have it.
2
@José Ramón Herrera: I don't believe that the FIX was an optional extra.
Some things were but the "MCAS software upgrade" fix was not.
1
It gets better - those "fuel efficient" engines? Yeah, not so much - if you prowl around the NASA/ASRS system you'll find things like:
From ACN: 1583028:
"After that, I called Dispatch and we had a conference call with Maintenance. The Maintenance Controller said they were noting that several MAX 8 aircraft are not fuel efficient. He said they think the Boeing-recommended engine cleaning cycle is not frequent enough. I was told during this call that when the LEAP engines are dirty they lose all of their efficiency. If this is the case, shouldn't the fuel bias on these aircraft be adjusted accordingly? From now on, I am going to plan on an extra 400 pounds per hour of fuel on each MAX 8 I fly on a leg longer than two and a half hours."
33
Corporate greed again, Boeing recommended.
Two items stood out: Replicating analog dials instead of installing a digital layout with more user friendly layout and easier to read, more comprehensive data, and, architectural drawings omitting such basics as what tools to use. Where was the risk analysis? Where was the configuration management? Omitting the tools on the blueprints likely violates Boeing’s own protocols. Taking a 1990s designed airframe and putting 2012 engines on it. And purposely and repeatedly installing old layouts to make everything identical to preclude the need for familiarization training. There are so many flaws in logic, and program management, and common sense. Boeing deserves to pay both criminally and civilly for each of those lives. And, we all reap what “no gubmit” sows when ignoring or underfunding government regulation becomes the norm under super capitalism.
64
@NYC Native Not 1990s design, the core airframe of the 737 was designed in 1963, but uses a basic fuselage design from 1957 (the 707-200.)
3
This is turning into a lesson on how to destroy a reputation in one easy step. Bad micro decisions and shortcuts all the way to the goal line.
45
@Dan Barthel All the way to the bank.
1
Could this be a problem of maintenance failure?
In both crashes, the parts were replaced.
Did someone check to make sure the replaced parts were correctly installed and the system functioned correctly?
3
@Ray We don't already know this Boeing propaganda. We do know about the fraudulent certification documents, avoidance of requirements for training and simulator time, charging for options which are required to make MCAS safe. Boeing makes a second cargo bay fire extinguishing system optional and yet Japan requires it. See a greedy pattern here? And Boeing puts safety first? Are they still installing ill-fitting reinforcing ribs in the fuselage?
3
Still hoping for your Boeing stock to hold? Still looking to blame a little guy? So Singaporean. Kudos.
Maybe a lesson to American companies. Spend more of the tax cut dollars on research, development, and long-term strategy rather than buy back stocks.
65
“A multiyear process could hardly be considered rushed.”
This statement is misleading. If the normal process takes 10 years and one manages to complete it in 5, then yes, a multiyear project can be considered rushed.
And for some reason I feel personally insulted by that statement.
82
@Mdargan I thought the exact same thing.
10
My thoughts exactly! It appears that Boeing is still cocky and in denial about its own culpability. They put out a statement rife with the arrogant assumption that NYT readers wouldn't take into account industry norms mentioned in the article for length of development, and instead would just believe 5 years sounds good. Unbelievable.
That's what operating in a bubble surrounded by terrified sycophants clinging to their jobs will produce. Airbus employees must be shaking their heads in disbelief. How Boeing figured they could finagle a way to create a workaround to compete with Airbus A320 in half the time is beyond me.
5
Boeing filed a complaint with Trump's agencies that the Bombardier C Series was an unfair competitor even though Boeing had no product in that size category. The government added an over 200% duty on the import of the Bombardier planes, forcing Bombardier to give away half the project to Airbus. A court found that Boeing's complaint was baseless and removed the duty. Boeing played dirty and wiped out a competitor politically. Safety is certainly not their main concern.
136
@Harpo In the end it might be smarter for airlines to use the C series instead of the 737 Max. Justice?
6
@Harpo
Smells a lot like the refueling competition fiasco. Airbus wins so....change the rules so Boeing wins.
5
Paraphrasing Boeing’s Mr. Albaugh, Airbus installing larger engines on their old A-320 will cause challenging aerodynamic issues and make it tend to pitch up in certain flight regimes. This issue will ripple throughout the design process costing millions and enormous amounts of time.
Then Boeing turns around and is forced into the same scenario due to self imposed time constraints. Their new plane demonstrates similar aerodynamic pitch issues but somehow manages to talk their way around it with the Federal Agency certifying the aircraft by using a software patch.
If nothing else this should be the prime driver of a general rethinking of how lobbyists money is allowed to influence decisions made by the government we elect. This unholy intertwining of money and government now has blood dripping, no running from its hands. Change MUST occur.
Boeing has a much newer single aisle aircraft, the 757. If the info I’m seeing is correct the 757-200 seats a very similar amount of passengers as the 737 Max9. The 757 is much newer technology and is large enough to hang the larger more fuel efficient engines from the wings.
I’m thinking Boeing wanted to be able to talk up their continuous run of 737 production which began in the 1960’s.
10
@Michijim... 757 was out of production for over seven years before Boeing launched the 737 Max. It was badly beaten in the market by the newer A321 and Boeing's response was the 737-900ER. 757's assembly line had been converted to building 737s to meet demand and no longer existed. 757 is a larger and heavier aircraft than the 737/A321 for roughly the same number of passengers, which puts it at a disadvantage except in those rare cases where an airline needs the 757's extra range or high-and-hot airfield performance. It would need a modern fuel-efficient engine to compete with 737-9 and A321. No such engine exists. (That is partly why Boeing went with Max instead of a clean-sheet design in 2011.)
7
@Michijimairframe is newer but plane ceased production some time ago, so avionics etc not necessarily more advanced. It is a more powerful plane with better flight characteristics for long haul flights
1
@BThorn
But the leap engine was redesigned from the engine used in the 737 NG aircraft specifically for the 737.
reminds me when I used to teach Project Management
'there's never enough time and money to do it property the first time - but somehow there's always time and money to try to fix it after a disaster occurs'
53
Granted the 737 is a boring plane, but it has always been one I felt confident flying. Not anymore, not this thing. And Boeing still refuses to provide carriers with both the discrepancy indicators and the vane gauge gratis.
So much for "safety is our number one priority".
No it's not. Profit is your number one priority. That's what has created this mess.
When you are flying people at hundreds of miles an hour, you can not have profit as your singular motivator. This is why.
43
@Jack I went down to my local GM dealer for a new car. They said they had two great safety features, but both were optional. I wanted to keep cost down so I took neither. Car runs just fine. But is has no brakes.
12
"Airbus had pulled ahead of Boeing by 2005. “Boeing has struggled with the development work needed to take the company into the 21st century,” Tim Clark, president of Emirates, the Dubai airline, said that year. Airbus, he said, “has been braver, more brazen.”
It helps tremendously when the risk capital a company employs to develop new designs is backed financially by the National Exchequers of major European countries, namely Germany, France, GB and Spain. It enables write-offs to occur at taxpayers expense, such as the commercial fiasco like Concord(e) and the A-380, to name just two.
5
@Ron Howell If government/taxpayer funding is what it takes to ensure there is ample time to develop and test aircraft for maximum safety, then this is the preferred model. When the only system that is possible is the shrink-the-government-have-the-profit-driven-private-sector do it, corners will be cut.
18
@Anon
Be prepared too spend at least double or triple for your next air trip, if you believe control of airline activity is the preferred model.
Boeing will survive this calamity. It will take time and repulsion of the bean counters, no doubt. But it has happened before, to all aircraft manufacturers.
@Ron Howell This is kind of a short sighted and biased analysis of governments subsidies that Boeing never missed to trigger year over year. Boeing has been a major key player in the military aircraft development benefiting from billions of dollars of support from US government on military projects for decades, all of this subsidies researches trickledown to their civil aircrafts division allowing cutting drastically their costs on researches made initially for military equipments that could be implemented on their civilian programs. Airbus was initially designed as a strictly commercial aviation European entity. They surely did complained too about this economic fact and compensated it with government subsidies to adresse the lack of government fundings Boeing could take advantage of.
Later, Airbus shifted to a military avionic production but which is no way still comparable to Boeing’s. No one finds it awkward that a military program is highly financially supported by government funds to insure national defense.
Concorde might have been a commercial fiasco, mostly resulting from the 1974 oil price crise (and the US ban) but it paved the way from its related researches to the launch of the Airbus A300 and the success of the company afterwards.
As for Concorde A380 might look as a commercial fiasco from wrongly betting on larger capacities over multiple flights to smaller hubs. Here again the success of Airbus new products definitely benefited however from the A380 research
4
As an electrical engineer who has designed life-critical devices and aeronautical vehicles, I have a message for any engineers involved in the design: It's not your fault. It's the fault of the Boeing Senior Management and primary stockholders of the company who rushed the design and made you work twice as fast as you normally would -- if you didn't, you'd be fired.
In the engineering world, it's well known that complex products can be delivered (a) quickly (b) cheaply and (c) working -- you can only have two of the three. To do it right means costly, and at a deliberate pace, which results in a working product. Boeing chose quick and cheaper which guarantees not completely working. Consequences can be severe for airplanes that don't work completely. Boeing's passengers paid for this mistake with their lives.
It will be interested to see how many people in Boeing's senior management take full responsibility. So far we have a statement from the CEO promoting Boeing's commitment to safety, but it's a heavily guarded statement obviously vetted by lawyers in order to not admit responsibility that would open them to lawsuits. Really morally distasteful food here.
69
@Kip Leitner
Several people here have mentioned compromised safety in US cars due to cost cutting. I wonder also about medical devices... US products used to stand for quality and innovation, but that reputation will be jeopardized as examples of products unsafe at any cost pile up.
9
@Kip Leitner
McNerney made the decision and he was a Yale DKE like Bush Jr. and Harvard Business School graduate. He focused on what he was taught. He was no aerospace engineer.
1
Let's think about what it means that Boeing marketed hundreds of commercial passenger aircraft with an optional system intended to mitigate possible inadequacy of the MCAS system and its pilot interface.
If something is a feature that promotes safety in any situation to which the aircraft is subject, it should never be an option at added cost. It should be on every aircraft and its cost baked into the price of the aircraft. If it's not a feature that promotes safety in any situation to which the aircraft is subject, it should never be offered as such. Marketing legerdemain has no place where commercial aircraft are concerned. If a manufacturer cannot successfully market an aircraft that includes in its base price all systems necessary for safety operation in normal and abnormal regimes, it should fail in the marketplace, assuming that its competitors can undersell it with a better, safer product.
It adds little of value to assert that optional safety features would have done nothing, in all likelihood, to avoid these two crashes. The better point is that Boeing seems to readily admit that it made available as an option a feature that it either regarded or sold as an enhancement to safety. The ethical and moral dimensions of this are astonishing. What else is lurking out there on this hastily revised machine? Keep in mind that the cost of the option we're talking about was a few thousand dollars on a plane that cost somewhere in the neighborhood of USD120 million.
37
@Pete Optional safety mechanism is an oxymoron.
1
I worked for American Airlines as a aircraft mechanic on the flight line for years. In our union contract our job description was “To maintain aircraft in a airworthy condition”.
That’s what management said when the FAA was around. When the feds were gone they told us our job was to move people by any means necessary, most of us would refuse to sign off safety of flight issues no matter how hard management pushed. Usually a supervisor would override us and sign off the maintenance item.
AA hated it when the FAA came by and handed every aircraft mechanic a business card with a 800 number on it, to report any illegal flights made by the company, totally anonymously. When calling you got a machine and stated the aircraft N number, the flight number and where it left from, nothing else.
They were violated for each and every flight made by that unairworthy aircraft.
The airlines changed big time in the late 70s when the airplane people were replaced by the bankers and not for the better.
Realize this, aircraft maintenance is looked upon as a liability to any airline, we generated no direct profits rather we cost them money. The first thing a financially challenged airline does is defer maintenance, the feds realized this during the Eastern, Pan Am, Braniff bankruptcies and started focusing on failing airlines maintenance practices more closely.
Today there is little FAA oversight as most work is being done by the lowest bidder, often overseas.
46
@Paulie very true. After President Carter deregulated the U.S. airline industry in 1978 under pressure by Senator Ted Kennedy, airlines cut ticket prices and maintenance was trimmed to the bone. The consumer votes with their pocket book and chooses the lowest available price. Something has got to give.
9
Pauli I appreciate your comments and expertise. At all levels of government the intertwining of lobbyists money and our government must be scrutinized. The entire process by which the 737 Max was conceived, built, and certified is undoubtedly laden with lobbyists money.
Americans need to understand that all that lobbying money is a hidden tax on them. Lobbyist money IS baked into the cost of each aircraft produced.
I fully agree the maintenance of American flagged aircraft must be done in facilities under FAA jurisdiction.
I hope, futilely, the investigators of these crashes will take a long look at the lobbying money spent to facilitate the approval process of this aircraft.
16
This seems so similar to the space shuttle Challenger--you'd think the lesson NOT to rush would have lasted a little longer. We read an excellent book about it in business school (I can't recall which of several it was, though) but I guess memories are short.
6
Which is why the Ethiopian airline sent it to France. Unfortunately for Airbus--turns out pilot competence and training was the problem--the airline's responsibility.
4
@Alice's Restaurant So, the faulty sensor - with no backup - played no part whatsoever?
@al
Played a role, but pilot competence is far more significant. Day before jump-seat pilot solved the problem almost immediately. Want to blame Boeing go for it. But US carriers cycled through 40,000+ events and 6 million passenger miles without incident. Ball's in your court.
2
@Alice's Restaurant There is no such conclusion except in Boeing's image maker's mind. The Ethiopian Airlines' pilots had all the training offered by Boeing. They received the 15 minute iPad Boeing instructions on MCAS. Keep trying to blame the pilots and the airlines. For a few years that strategy worked for Airbus in A320 crashes. There were software issues and parameters kept from the pilots by Airbus years ago. Are the pilots allowed to command the airplane or not?
It boggles the mind why Boeing would 'refresh' the 737 and not bring a revised 757 back into production. The 757 was decades more modern and already equipped to handle large diameter super efficient engines. Oddly, the 737 9 MAX has an seating plan almost identical to the 757-200. It seems so risky to have reformed 1960s technology rather than 1980s technology.
4
@David... No modern engine in the class needed for a 757 upgrade (40,000-45,000 lbs. thrust) is available, and 757's market segment isn't big enough to justify one. (Airlines switched to the cheaper A321 and 737-900 in large numbers.) Boeing is still having trouble getting the engine manufacturers to invest in such an engine for its NMA (New Midsize Aircraft, likely to become the 797) which will be a 757-767-class aircraft. Rolls Royce just withdrew from the competition.
1
Unmentioned in this piece is that Boeing was allowed to pursue its reckless course by an FAA that permitted Boeing to approve some of its own changes. The company couldn't have steamrolled past regulatory safeguards without a watchdog unwilling or unable to do its job.
16
No doubt paved by a road made of lobbyists money. And not to a government agency so much as I mean money to every congressperson and Senator who sit on committees overseeing aviation, or having a Boeing plant in the district/state. Money to their PACs, re-election funds, etc....
This money is a hidden tax on every single person flying on one of their aircraft or being taxed for Boeing built pentagon projects. It’s baked into the coast of the plane, unlike a couple of well publicized safety features on the planes which crashed.
4
@G
Remember whose administration is guarding the hen house. Any catastrophy is possible in this day and time with a bunch of incompetents in charge. We get what some voted for!!
3
@Steve
I agree about the current administration but the FAA's 737 Max failure occurred on Obama's watch. I'd like to think the root cause was the Republican-imposed sequestration funding cuts but I don't know for sure.
3
Boeing has not even apologized to the victims. Their "we're making a safe jet even safer" lie is disgusting, arrogant, and demonstrates how deeply dead Boeing is now. They need to admit their staggering negligence, announce a 180 including required MCAS pilot training (not hiding MCAS in the footnotes), open admission of why MCAS is necessary (they have introduced a dangerous stall imbalance with the bigger engine), and rather than another rushed software patch, a years long moratorium within which flight systems development and pilot training is integrated worldwide. As is, Boeing executives can fly their families around in these planes because no one else will ever.
37
@ssamalin
Reminds me of trump.
So at a cost of $120 million per aircraft, give or take, safety features are extra.
29
What I don't understand: when Airbus went from the 320 to the 320neo, fitting it with bigger, efficient engines, why didn't they face similar issues of changed aerodynamics and a tendency of to pitch up, or at least not to an extent that forced them to seek a patch?
6
@Ricardo Different original aircraft, different aerodynamic profiles before and after. Worth asking Airbus about their A320 and A320neo aerodynamics, and Airbus likely has a ready response. But comparing them to the 737 and MAX is comparing apples to oranges.
3
@Ricardo
One factor in answer to your question: the 737 is a very old aircraft design. It goes all the way back to the time when major airports did not have the covered walkways that roll out to the side of the aircraft to permit entrance and exit. The early design of the 737 decades ago featured a stairway built into the door so that when the door was open, it unfolded and passengers walked down it to the tarmac. So, it was built closer to the ground that present day aircraft. When Boeing put the bigger engines on it, they needed to be moved to a different position which changed the flying characteristics somewhat. Boeing believed they could compensate by installing the computerized system, MCAS, that would pitch the aircraft forward a bit if a stall was induced by a too steep climbing angle.
At this point, we don't know if Airbus had similar problems with the 320neo. Since they have been more reliant traditionally on computerized control systems, perhaps they built something better or perhaps their pilots know more about how to re-take control from the computers.
7
@Ricardo... 737 has very low clearance to the ground. A320, with taller landing gear, has higher clearance. More room to hang a larger engine under the wing. Boeing had to elevate the position of the engine higher and forward to fit, which changed balance and airflow over the wing.
3
A flying Ford Pinto. Safety should not be an option.
26
@Andy Andy, I had a brand new Ford Pinto Hatchback for many, many several years and had no problems with it. Other than normal wear and tear during daily operation over these years, I was able to get every last dime I had put into it to buy it until it reached a natural state of diminishing returns for me.
Most of the problems with any motor vehicle are caused by their drivers and improper driving. The Hatchback model did everything I needed it to do, and I lugged a LOT of various stuff over all those years.
I loved my little Pinto and felt then and feel to this day that I got all my money out of it.
Respectfully. Reggie
4
Loved my baby blue '72 Pinto too. Did get the new gas tank in the recall, about 1979.
1
Modifying a system that works as specified is risky. Ever aspect of an existing and well working system is exactly right for the design requirements and specifications. Big changes are more surely introduced with fully newly designed and developed ones than by changing old ones. Testing on modified old systems requires testing that presumes that it has never been tested before. That testing must focus not on assuring that it meets specifications but to find where it does not. This was not done in this case or the problem introduced by the software fix would not have been addressed with such complacently.
7
Thank you Congress for making this all possible by underfunding the FAA
32
I’m not convinced there is a hard technical fault with this aircraft or even a serious training lapse. Rather, we have an issue with foreign pilots who aren’t getting the amount of prior flying experience needed to safely fly airliners or other larger commercial aircraft. In both cases, the first officers had less experience than most of the US’s hobbyist private pilots. This fault has happened in the US fleet, and crews did what one does in all models of the 737 — doable the automatic trim via the pedestal switches. The lack of experience withi foreign crews — and possibly language too are probably the root cause.
9
Domestic pilots seems to be better prepared, but the aircraft is both inherently unstable and lacking in easy fixes-seems to require a convoluted path to rectify and in some planes, there aren’t even some of the safety controls that should’ve been standard features. That’s ASIDE from the fact that they only allowed one sensor to transmit data, something they’ll now change-clearly some tech issues coupled with poor training and info even domestically.
8
@Will Durham
Indeed. I saw one quote from a professional airline pilot that went generally to this point: it is ridiculous that they had to jury rig the aircraft so much just to make it fly.
Pilots assume the ultimate responsibility for the safety of the aircraft, the passengers and themselves. There can be no buck passing and they are justifiably disturbed to be put in the pilot's seat of an aircraft and not given enough knowledge or training to ALWAYS keep it under control. It conflicts with the fundamental value and integrity of what they do.
4
@JTFJ2. I vehemently disagree with you. I've flown in most Latin American and European countries, usually in older planes and was thoroughly impressed with the way the pilots, especially in Central American maneuvered those planes. Very impressive.
3
I originally thought this was just a good faith mistake that wasn’t caught because we’ve gotten too loose with our regulations. Even with the self regulation aspect, I believed this was more an issue with objectivity in judging your own project than outright negligence.
I was completely wrong.
This is the same “move fast and break things” mentality that produces buggy, low quality products in the tech industry at large. We need more than just tighter regulation in the certification process. This isn’t just a failure of safety testing, it’s a failure of Boeing’s design and development practices as well and those practices need to be changed. Their mistake is such a basic and obvious thing to mess up that I suspect there’s a single point of failure in their development process. Do they not practice code review? Design review? Were the engineers just so overworked that they tried to follow good review practices and still failed to spot it? We need to know why this happened so we can figure out what is needed to prevent such disasters going forward.
23
@Eric
This happened because Boeing management was caught with its pants down. It complacently and incorrectly forecast no business threat on the horizon. When the threat materialized, management panicked. Panicked people do stupid things, like ordering subordinates to bail them out with magical technical solutions.
Boeing management also had an ace in the hole: the company's outsized and, as it turned out, fatal influence over the FAA. The technical solution of the 737 Max was known to be imperfect but Boeing was able to fudge crucial FAA evaluations so as to hide any need to inform customers of the imperfections. That was, indeed, a primary business objective since Boeing management was desperate to keep the cost of additional training and documentation at a minimum.
Boeing engineers do not deserve blame here. The failures were managerial and regulatory.
6
@G My concern is the engineering process, not the engineers. I don't blame them for mistakes made when they're being overworked by management and I don't think they necessarily have full control over the process they use. The process they used does matter though and we shouldn't neglect the importance of it. The management push explains why corners were cut but it doesn't tell us which corners were cut. The latter is very important in terms of informing what additional regulations are required to prevent this from happening again in the future.
2
@Eric
It appears the basic design is flawed and jury rigged.
1
Boeing began a series of voluntary and involuntary layoffs and job off-shoring as soon as Max was on its way. They lost a great deal of knowledge but are enjoying the benefits of cheaper labor
21
In my opinion, there should be no such thing as 'optional' safety features. If it's available, the FAA should insist the aircraft manufacture must include any and all such features on each and every aircraft they sell, to both domestic and international airlines. The FAA needs to return to being a regulatory agency, whose goal is the safety of the flying public. Their reputation, and the reputation of our country as leading the world in aviation safety, is at stake. The cozy relationship between the FAA and private companies needs to end.
The true tragedy, of course is the number of lives that were lost. But if these accidents prove to be related, and the cause is traced back to poor decision making on the part of Boeing in order to put profits first - our country, and the FAA will take a huge hit. Reputations that may take years to recover, if ever.
41
@Sue GM refused to install an upgraded ignition switch on certain models since doing so would have added LESS THAN $2 per vehicle. Under certain conditions, these switches malfunctioned and drivers lost control of their cars and crashed. Many lives were lost. Profitability, and shareholder interest comes first. It's our system that breeds this sort of management decision.
3
The narrative of Boeing and Airbus told in this report sounds a bit familiar.
I remember some time long ago some other foreign company tried to sell something fuel efficient to Americans, and American manufacturers scoffed.
Oh, right, that was at the time those tiny fuel efficient automobiles by Toyota, Honda and others.
I can see how with vast stretches of highways in this country the CEO's of American automobile companies living in mid-country could be complacent. But for an airplane manufacturing company, how would being "fuel effecient" not seem to be a selling point - since burning fuel is one of the major expenses flying a plane?
What is it in the DNA of American companies that burning less fossil fuels is just not anything one would consider.
And considering how close we are now (re - "we have until 2030 to get our act together" warning by those who understand the consequences of overloading our atmosphere with carbon) to the potential death knell of human civilization, once again we see a pattern of how we got where we are.
More than a decade ago, Boeing had the chance to step up and make fuel efficiency something to brag about - and do something about.
As I see it, this Boeing saga has a whole other side to it besides the hubris (or arrogance) of neglect of basic flight safety.
34
In its "go go go" mode, Boeing sacrificed design, engineering, and regulatory safeguards, making an economic decision that put the flying public at risk. The punitive damage judgments that will come in the next couple years will sink the company.
16
@Brewster Millions What kind of fine would be needed to put Boeing in a shaky position?
1
@Luke
Discontinue all Federal grants and contracts for a two years.
2
There is reason to be cautious in thinking that improvements to MCAS will fix the problem.
The initial MCAS design was to swivel the horizontal tail a modest 0.6 degrees. After flight testing this was increased to “full authority” 2.5 degrees. Is it possible this was insufficient to prevent a high speed stall. The close coupling of the jet engine to the foreword part of the backswept wing apparently produced greatly more than anticipated lift.
The flight trajectory of both planes, reported in the newspapers, could be interpreted as taking off in a semi-stalled condition. They entered a full stall and crashed when attempting a turn back to the airport.
9
You’re welcome back on the plane after the MCAS is fixed; not me. They also blew the sensor issue, relying on one, created a need to hit corrective switches to address issues, and left off a couple of crucial safety features unless they were paid for. AND the manual AND training were putrid.
10
@L D Fraley
The crashes happened because the MCAS operated during normal flight because of its single sensor dependency. Once started, the "stall" never cleared (because it as not a stall, but rather, a failed sensor). In a series of 10 second bursts, the horizontal stabilizer was increased to its max nose down limit.
In addition, the flight controls were artificially made harder to pull back to compensate for the stabilizer nose down, eventually exceeding what a pilot could generate. (The MCAS was convinced by the failed Angle of Attach sensor showing a stall that the pilot was doing the wrong thing: "climbing out of a stall", so it made this much harder/impossible to do.)
I believe the reason the Lion Air observer 2 days before the crash was able to diagnose "horizontal stabilizer runaway" and disable it, inadvertantly disabling the MCAS--and its resistance to the "pull up" on the stick, was because the observer was not feeling the apparent aircraft resistance to pulling on the yoke. The increased yoke resistance likely convinced pilots, along with the intermittent stabilizer movement, that the aircraft was in an utterly unknown state, confounding their efforts to find a fix without knowledge or training.
4
@Will Durham
There is no evidence the MCAS has actually protected anyone from the extra "nose-up" from the engines. Clearly an alert pilot or auto-pilot would normally simply compensate for the nose up pressure from the engines with the yoke, or, eventually, a small stabilizer adjustment.
The MCAS only works when the auto-pilot is not working as it works only when "near a stall" and this also automatically disables the auto-pilot and starts the stick-shaker stall warnings (heard in the cockpit recordings of the crashes).
When the Angle of Attack sensor fails in"stall-indication" mode, the MCAS will activate, add down-force, and make it harder for the pilot to pull-up by adding resistance to pulling the yoke back. The only escape (after an increasingly desperate battle as the yoke becomes stiffer and nose-down is added to the stabilizer), is to disable the jackscrew to the horizontal stabilizer (which conveniently, apparently) also turns off the MCAS.
What is amazing is not that two aircraft were lost but that:
1. Some crews found the solution, even without knowledge of the MCAS.
2. Nobody in Boeing ever said: "What happens if the MCAS reads an Angle of Attack sensor that has failed in a full-stall condition." (An AoA sensor should logically show "stall" on a parked aircraft, so one that is stuck will show "stall" normally.) or "What pilot anywhere in the world pulls back on the yoke when there is a legitimate near stall with a stick shaker on."
2
In time, I guess, the 737 Max 8 will prove to be an excellent aircraft.
A bit like the DC-10 which - when its fatal flaw (and M-D's evasive denials of it) were resolved - lives on in derivatives like the MD-11, doing sterling work in the cargo aviation sector for companies like Fedex and Lufthansa. It just doesn't carry passengers. Ever.
Reputational hit like this is never recoverable. In the 21st century, we just don't accept aircraft with fatal flaws.
25
A parallel doesn’t necessarily suggest that the problems are as easily solvable, as the plane’s inherently unstable with those engines on that smaller chassis. AND..who is gonna get back on those MAXes, unless they’re just freight carriers from now on, which makes sense.
9
If you've installed software that automatically corrects for a stall based on sensor data, you would think that a top priority would be to make absolutely sure the data coming in from the sensors had built-in redundancy and was fail-safe, knowing that false readings at the wrong time could create a disaster. Yet they only had data coming from one sensor, and they made warning lights about incorrect data into an optional upgrade for the sake of profit. That seems like a glaring and unconscionable neglect of a very obvious design flaw.
80
Yes, and the inexusable sensor issue was only one of the issues. Disturbing lack of oversight on this plane; I’ll never want to fly it new software or not.
15
@John
The redundancy is there. MCAS can "see" both sensors.
The MCAS just picks one and uses it uncritically.
(This should make you even angrier.)
2
Isn't this similar to the problems that developed many years ago when the DC 10 was rushed into service for competitive reasons?
10
@Stanley Kiszkiel The cargo door on the DC 10 was designed without the industry standard "tapered plug" design that physically prevents an aircraft door from opening during flight. The design purpose was to save weight in the structure around the door. The design flaw was slack in the door-locking mechanism that showed a false "green" door-closed indication to ground personnel when the cargo door was not fully closed and latched. Another design "innovation" was that control lines to the tail control surfaces were routed under the cabin floor just above the cargo door instead of safer routing in the cabin ceiling. When the door was improperly latched, the increasing pressure on the inside of the door during climb out blew the door out, causing a violent decompression that collapsed the cabin floor near the cargo door and jammed the control lines to the tail elevator horizontal stabilizers and rudder. The first cargo door failure was during ground tests prior to certification. Tragically, the root cause was not identified at that time. The second incident was a Canadian flight midair. The pilot had simulator training in the loss of tail control. He managed to safely control and land the plane by dithering the engine throttles. Again, root cause was not identified. The third cargo door failure was the Turkish Air flight in 1974 out of Paris. The pilots did not have that particular simulator training (!) and they lost control of the aircraft, killing all aboard.
5
In other words Boeing put modern V8 engines in model T's and had to use computer programs to keep the cars from popping wheelies and didn't tell anyone, and the program only had one malfunctioning sensor which activated the program which then forced the car to try to dig holes in the ground? I wouldn't mind owning a T bucket with a hemi engine in it but I'm not going to have 150 friends go along for the ride.
49
The competitive pressure to develop the 737 MAX is nothing new. All aircraft manufactures approach each aircraft in the same manner. Obviously a deadly mistake was made - not the first in the industry nor will it be the last. Both Boeing and the FAA are very very serious about safety. The Certification of the aircraft is a major cost of developing every part of every modern airplane. Boeing will come up with an appropriate and safe fix for this and eventually move on. Remember that we have all flown on Boeing aircraft hundreds of times and we will again.
4
We used to drive Packards, and DeSoto’s, etc
This the the complacency that dooms otherwise good companies
And if you can’t win with superior technology and workmanship, and management, you can always play your political cards
And mouth statements about customer safety.
10
@DILLON
'A deadly mistake'? Appears rather to be a whole series of poor and greedy decisions, likely resulting from financial people overruling engineers, IT and most likely QA as well.
The 'Challenger' crash comes to mind, where again, engineers were overruled.
10
@DILLON
"Both Boeing and the FAA are very very serious about safety."
You haven't heard the whole story. The Seattle Times has the currently definitive piece on how co-option by Boeing of an enfeebled or complicit FAA allowed the company to sidestep regulatory safeguards that otherwise would have denied the 737 Max certification and/or mandated extensive further testing and training.
Neither Boeing management nor the FAA was serious about safety in this case. We can only hope this same mad pursuit of business advantage at the expense of safety has not occurred with other aircraft.
4
Analogies are slippery beasts but:
If a car manufacturer put a larger engine in one of its' cars, which it knew would change the balance and handling significantly, it would need to redo safety tests.
Apparently this is not the case for Boeing aircraft according to the FAA.
If subsequently 1 in 180 of the cars crashed in an accident killing all on board, possibly due to the engine change, one would expect it to be taken off the market, and the manufacturer would likely face serious compensation claims.
22
@Steve Bright
The problem with this logic is that Boeing did rerun all of the safety tests--with both the MCAS and the Angle-of-attack sensors working. The MCAS will work as designed in this case, passing certification just fine.
Certification of an aircraft requires meeting many tests with one engine out. But not all tests. A non-functioning engine may prevent takeoff in a 2 engine aircraft.
A "stuck at stall" Angle-of-Attack sensor can probably be ignored (if redundant) for certification on aircraft without MCAS. Even MCAS works fine on one working AoA sensor exactly 1/2 of the time. Was this test ever run? How many times? Lose any aircraft? Was the failed AoA in "stall detected" vertical position that is the normal failure case?
If there were multiple flights with only a single functional AoA during certification, it would suggest that someone rigged the tests.
4
It's not just the MCAS software. Airbus put three angle of attack sensors in th 320, because one or even two do not provide sufficient redundancy (if the two sensors disagree, which one is right? You need a tie-breaker).
Boeing's corner-cutting on this component will likely prove to be expensively short-sighted, and the reputational damage severe.
81
@Fazal Majid You have identified a critical design flaw. As you point out, in a "fault tolerant" system, a mission-critical component like the sensor would have "triple redundancy" -- three sensors -- so that the system can "vote out" a defective sensor without loss of function. A step down would be a "fault aware" system with two sensors, where a disagreement between sensors could be signaled to the crew with a clear recommendation to disable the MCAS. I just cannot understand how a single sensor was allowed in a safety system like MCAS, which is intended to mitigate a catastrophic loss of the aircraft. These design concepts are not my bright ideas; they have been around for 50 years. I first saw them in the DARPA fault tolerant computing project at Berkeley in 1970.
20
Airbus edged out Boeing in 2003. Granted that was one of the worst years for the aviation industry, still: "Airbus announced it delivered 305 planes ... ahead of its 300-aircraft target. Boeing delivered 281 commercial aircraft in 2003."
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Given that fact, Airbus must have been competitive, or growing competitive a few years beforehand - these developments don't happen overnight. And if Boeing did not take such a developing competitive threat seriously at the time (in 2004, 2005), then that was one some oversight (and/or executive culture).
14
This is a classic case of putting Profits over People. The 737 MAX is a 'stranded cost' for Boeing. It will never be the same as airlines will cancel their orders and existing planes will be panned by the public. The best thing Boeing could do, for the safety of the flying public, is develop a new efficient, modern airliner that would replace the 737. I am not holding my breath...
31
@Dersh the issue is sunk costs. Most companies don't want to recognize them, let alone kill a project. The best thing they could do is kill the Max as being DOA. And start properly from scratch, hopefully learning from these mistakes. Will it happen? My thoughts are no. Sad as not killing the project may sink the whole company, versus take a steep short term hit by killing the project.
4
In the 1990's there were some problems with rudder controls on earlier model 737s. United Airlines 585 crashed in 1991, and USAir crashed in 1994. It wasn't until 1996, when the pilots of Eastwinds Airlines 517 managed to overcome loss of rudder control that investigators from the NTSB were able to talk to the pilots, access the flight recorders and test the problematic Rudder Power Control Unit servo valve that the cause of the earlier two crashes was determined.
10
Boeing's behavior regarding the design and construction of the SuperMax aircraft can be seen as a complete failure of their management system, including:
1. Commitment of management and staff to the quality, safety and integrity of their product;
2. Control of the "change management" process, which is intended to ensure modifications to a product are evaluated for risk exposure and personnel are adequately trained in the changes that are being contemplated;
3. Integrity of their product, including an understanding of failure modes, effects and frequencies;
4. Authorizations by regulatory agencies; and
5. Internal audit of design and production systems.
These issues represent an overall rot in the company. Unless and until the root causes of this catastrophic failure are determined we cannot know how far the rot extends or the extent of the measures needed to correct it.
BP suffered a similar systemic failure in the Macondo blowout, which cost 11 lives, caused extensive environmental damage and cost that company more than $60 billion. Boeing can expect to suffer something similar due to loss of trust in its products.
29
@RMH It certainly is not a complete failure. A modern aircraft has millions of parts, lines of code and hundreds of interfaced systems. This error - obliviously deadly in this case - is an error in one part of one system. For all the other millions of parts, lines of code and systems the management system worked correctly and efficiently.
3
@RMH
The most plausible explanation is corruption from the military side of the company, f.k.a. McDonnell-Douglas. MD aircraft like the DC10 were also notorious for their poor reliability, as was the infamous Lockheed TriStar.
Clearly, one of the major factors involved in the two crashes was economics. Not Boeing's but the airline's. They did not buy all the features they could, and did not do proper maintenance on the planes. The Lion Air plane had no business being in the air. It had repeated maintenance problems over several days, and the only basis for taking off was their finances. The cause of the Ethiopian Airlines flight is not known, despite the public's desire to thing otherwise. However, it was known as a discount airline. We should wait until the facts are known before blaming Boeing for something that may not be true.
2
@Richard Mclaughlin Do you work for Boeing or a related company? There is no ambiguity in the two aircraft's behaviors prior to crashing. First Boing apologists focused on blaming the pilots - before the evidence is in. Now one want to blame a well-run airline with an excellent record. The MCAS certification process was defrauded by Boeing's documentation which represented an MCAS failure as "hazardous". In fact, it should have been rated as "catastrophic". A catastrophic rating requires redundancy. It would have required the system's using BOTH AOA sensors and comparing their readouts. Logic would have required MCAS to check that the AOA sensors were reading near zero on taxing. The Boing documentation said MCAS attitude corrections were 0.6 degrees. But Boeing changed the correction to 2.5 degrees! And. those corrections were cumulative. No, the planes were grounded owing to the similarity between the crashes. It had nothing to do with the airlines. In addition, safety features should not be extra cost options. To Boeing, the installation cost was trivial so the options, if selected were very profitable. Not so profitable for the passengers. US airlines, with the exception of United, decided that the options were required and ordered them for their aircraft. That underscores their significant role in safety.
19
@rcrogers6 United Airlines is a cesspool. I may get on an improved Boeing Max. I will never fly United under any circumstances. United has just proven what counts for it. Profits not safety.
A designed in flaw the potentially catastrophic effects of which are to be mitigated by software. What part of that holds up? What could possibly go wrong? Let's see the sensors could provide erroneous data. The software could have a bug; been known to happen. All this because Boeing executives, for years, milked the 737 and procrastinated, for years, investing in a new plane. Then the phone rings and they find out they're about to lose a huge deal because the old plane is seen as obsolete. Surprise. So, slam into gear, take the path of least resistance, refurb the old plane and shrug off the designed in flaw.
30
Capitalism at its finest. Who cares if a few hundred souls end up in the middle of the ocean, when millions of dollars are at stake? This story is like an onion, and each time a new layer is peeled bag I am gagging even harder. Disgusting.
46
Why isn't there any in depth exposure of the total dereliction of both Boeing and the FAA with the Boeing 737 NG (next generation.) This is absolutely breathtaking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWxxtzBTxGU
16
The least I could say is it’s shocking. This was one industry in which I had total confidence in terms of safety. Now it’s exposed. Don’t know what is going wrong with our country from President, Congress, gun lobbyist, white supramist, demogougry, dietspect for law and order. Looks like sky is falling.
29
@Eraven Don't worry, the early Airbus A320 had a software scandal. Since it had to do with V1 and takeoff and landing with a tailwind; many fewer people died. But Airbus didn't feel the pilots needed to know of software parameters that overrode their judgement and barred them from using reverse thrust and spoilers when they wanted to. Bad AI and bad judgement. Regulators tried to stick pilots with the blame for Airbus errors.
1
@rcrogers6 -
Oh, so it's OK because others do it? What next: we're surrounded by banana republics so we should function like one as well? My God
1
Profits before People
8
This is what happens when you have an MBA CEO (James McNerney, when the decision to make the 737 Max was made) who is looking to book profits immediately, when development of a new plane takes a decade or more and would be a drag on profit during the CEOs tenure. Just look at his biography on Boeing's website https://www.boeing.com/history/pioneers/w-james-mcnerney-jr.page It's all about profit, efficiency, and productivity, rather than innovation and investment in the future.
45
@RSSF He just made $30 million last year. Not much compared to what Boeing will have to pay the families of those killed and the sales lost.
3
@rcrogers6 He's getting $3.9 million a year in pension from Boeing, and even he dies, his heirs will get that for the next 15 years.
2
So quickly, this story is now trite, has been written multiple times and multiple places, and these authors have not provided any new information or perspective.
3
There's never enough time to do it right the first time, but there's always time to do it a second time, a third time . . .
an old tweaker adage
4
Boeing should have kept their HQ in Seattle, an engineering town.
14
@Green man
I don't see how the headquarters location would have improved bad management.
Really! Is there at least one smart person in their management? I am sure the technical staff is extremely smart, but what was their management thinking when they skimped on the Max 8 training material they gave the airlines? I am looking at a microwave manual - 100 pages. A calculator manual - 600 pages! Were they trying to save paper on product millions of times worth more? Were they being penny-wise and pound-foolish, like the auto manufacturers, who tried to save 50 c on each vehicle and paid out untold millions later? Absolutely unbelievable and illogical! They should take a cue from Microsoft whose technical manuals are out of this world! I guess they will learn now, but it is too late for some. I ain't taking no trips on Max 8's till this issue is fixed :-(
17
@Lance Boeing’s management types were thinking of profit, and their year-end bonuses. When a company says that safety is its main concern, that’s a lie, because profit is its main concern. Companies get created in an attempt to create a profit. That’s Capitalism 101. The sad saga of the 737 Max also demonstrates the truth of the adage that haste makes waste. Nearly 350 people died due to haste and the pursuit of profit. Sad.
13
Shameful decision to place commercial interests first
8
After reading a batch of these comments, this former jet fighter pilot is mighty happy that his Mustang convertible responds to all commands from the "pilot" so any accidents will be my fault. I shall avoid riding in airplanes of any sort unless forced to do so by a higher authority. Read: wife.
14
This is what happens when giant corporations are driven by only one goal: maximize short-term shareholder value. In the end they shoot themselves in the foot because, regardless of its protests otherwise, they ignore other critical values like safety. How do we incorporate safety into corporate governance? We could pass the Accountable Capitalism Act, Senator Warren's bill, which would require corporations to “recognize their obligations to employees, customers and the community," instead of just enriching shareholders. We want Boeing in business; we care about its workers and its customers; but the current cutthroat corporate culture has failed them all.
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/15/17683022/elizabeth-warren-accountable-capitalism-corporations
24
The recent air disasters warrant a special prosecutor much more then the political theater we have become used to watching
6
This story is way overblown. The MCAS system software is under investigation, not an entire airplane. They need to redesign MCAS and add redundant sensors as standard equipment. But that doesn’t mean the whole plane is a problem because it was built rapidly. Please stop telling fallacies to get readers’ attention and fears stoked!
2
@Marc Phreat
The MCAS Sytem is most often mentioned but dont forget the root causes of the problem 1) The bigger engines where in danger to stall the plane in certain situations so they created a software fix to solve an aerodynamical problem that was caused by the forward placement of bigger engines on a very old airframe design 2) In addition to that the implementaton of the software fix was faulty by reequiring only the data of one sensor (I read that in critical areas usually the data from 2 out of 3 sensors need to agree 3) a light indicating that MCAS was online and an angle of attack readout where extra options the airlines needed to pay for 4) Despite all of this the FAA certified this as a plane that was related enough to require minimal training 5) the flight manuals were so bad that a (US) pilot called them "almost criminally negligent"
That does not sound overblown to me...
18
@Marc Phreat Marc, I agree that the evidence, including a superb NY Times analysis of the Lion Air crash, points to the MCAS system as the heart of the failure. But there are issues beyond MCAS the need to be addressed: Since MCAS was so important, why did it receive input from only one sensor? Why were all pilots not trained to disconnect MCAS when it failed? And most importantly, are all licensed pilots truly capable of flying without computerized assistance in an emergency? Boeing's culture and decisions bear on all of these questions, so this article is appropriate.
7
@Marc Phreat Read the detailed stories about all of the corners Boeing cut in developing the 737 Max. They've violated the public's trust and in doing so can expect customers to question safety more broadly for this aircraft. It's been a crisis in the making since the bad business decision in 2011 to retrofit a nearly 50 year old aircraft instead of following their original plan to build a new one. Feel bad for the passengers that died and the employees who were forced by management to cut corners. Boeing deserves to be held accountable (along with the FAA), not given sympathy. They prioritized profit and winning at any cost over safety, period!
8
A cardinal rule of designing risk related software is to ask up front the risk of harm introduced by a new feature, identify mitigations, and finally, decide if the feature is worthwhile in the presence of the risks it introduces.
For the 737 Max the feature is new engines on an old airframe with trim adjustment software (MCAS) to correct potential stall situations. The harm is that the plane crashes if MCAS adjusts trim to dive, and pilots cannot recover.
This can happen if faulty inputs cause MCAS to activate incorrectly, and pilots are unaware of MCAS and act against it, with no idea how to turn it off.
We could mitigate in design by checking for agreement from multiple input sensors before activating MCAS, provide a clear indication to pilots that MCAS had activated, with an easy and obvious way to turn it off. The training mitigation would probably be even more important: train pilots on the presence of MCAS and how to turn it off.
One could also argue that the potential harm of a plane crash is so catastrophic, that even in the presence of these mitigations, the new feature is not worth the risk.
Incredibly, Boeing implemented the risky new feature with none of the obvious mitigations.
To which I say, Boeing, I have no confidence in you. Your promised software patch is as suspect as the original design process that led to the Max. I will not fly on any new Boeing plane until you figure out how your basic risk assessment procedures failed.
381
@Mathew
There is a second point of failure with MCAS and that is if it does not work.
Older 737s would intrinsically pitch nose down in stall which would cause the plane to gain enough speed for the wing begin producing lift.
Pilots with experience in older 737s were trained to sense an impending stall (controls mushy, wing buffet and stall warning horns) and always scan the airspeed indicator which is marked with a red arc for stall speed. If they did stall, they could recover if they had enough altitude.
Not so with the newer 737Max. The 737Max will not pitch nose down in stall, making the stall unrecoverable.
37
@Mathew "The harm is that the plane crashes if MCAS adjusts trim to dive, and pilots cannot recover."
Yes they can. Not that anyone is really concerned with the facts. Trim upset recovery in the 737MAX is the same as it has been in every other 737 since the late 1960s: grasp yoke, disengage autopilot, hit stab trim cutout switches, trim manually. It's simple.
Both of these accidents will come with heaping doses of pilot error. Not that anyone cares about the facts.
6
@JSH Do you have sources for any of this? I'm not a 737 pilot, so I cannot refute your claims about the stall characteristics of different 737 variants from personal knowledge.
But one obvious error in your post is your claim that the red arc indicates stall speed. As an initial matter, there is no single stall speed. It is axiomatic that an airplane can stall at any speed.
Every airspeed indicator I've ever heard of uses the red arc to denote Vne. The fact that you are willing to make stuff up about the airspeed indicator suggests you've taken liberties with your other asserted facts (some of which make no sense).
Cite your sources, please.
7
This finally reveals the culpability of the carriers like American. “We don’t want to have to spend to train our pilots, but give us an essentially new aircraft.”
8
@Gordon
You could also fault Boeing for not having a competitive product ready when American Airlines' CEO called. Was it really Mr. McNerney's fault that Boeing's CEO overpromised in a panic?
If I could write a bunch of swear words now, I would vent everyone in the book,but that must be nothing compared to the family members of loved ones who died in those two crashes.
8
Current American business methods have besmirched the place via our current MBA-driven models infesting everything.
Important--potentially fatality-causing--business decisions should never be made by chart boys, bean counters, flashlight holders, special assignment specialists (usually absent--away on special assignment), umbrella holders, power point rangers, yes men, or MBA holders, when introduced to their new crew, say (with a straight face) "I don't really have to know what you are doing---I am just here to 'manage your process'." (Far too many of us have heard this precise speech.)
Please read what Chris Kraft (NASA) and Kelly Johnson (Skunk Works) said about chart boys running things in their aviation world(s).
11
Regarding the optional "Safety Options": Which of the other carriers, especially the American carriers, PURCHASED the optional, additional cost, Safety features (e.g., redundant AoA sensors & mismatch AoA sensor warning lights)???
3
“Mr. Albaugh boasted that carriers were already paying more for Boeing’s single-aisle jet than the Airbus version. He didn’t see the need to strike now — Boeing could wait until the end of the decade to produce a new plane from scratch, the executive said.”
“Boeing was just completely arrogant in dismissing the viability of the A320,” said Scott Hamilton,”
These two quotes from the article really get to the heart of the matter for me. Reminds me of the old routine by Lily Tomlin playing the phone operator and her famous line, “we are the phone company, we are omnipotent.” In this case it was Boeing thinking itself omnipotent and instead of just making customers extremely frustrated like the phone company, it is costing lives.
14
As an engineer, I find it appalling that the MCAS system used data from only one AoA sensor when there are two of them. Further, there is no indication in any report that the MCAS performs a quick pairwise cross-check of the AoA data during all wheels on ground and at full throttle during the takeoff phase. During this sustained on-ground takeoff phase the AoA sensors will be active and should read close to Zero degrees. If there is significant disagreement between the AoA sensors, the MCAS should have thrown a pilot warning and cut itself out automatically. This simple and basic engineering logic could have saved 350 innocent lives. Now, after all this drama and wasted lives, Boeing is offering the AoA disagree light (previously an option - what a poor business decision) as the new standard, but still will not provide the AoA indicators as standard. When will they learn? The Boeing and FAA leadership have a lot of explaining to do. How cozy were the senior people, were concerned FAA staff retaliated against, how did the MCAS get certified by the FAA without testing with faulty sensor data, how did Boeing get away without broadly and clearly advertising the MCAS function and intervention to pilots when the MCAS is really unique to the 737 Max in the entire Boeing fleet. Numerous questions the public needs answers to, and I really hope there are Congressional Hearings, so no company ever again thinks of putting responding to competitive pressure ahead of human safety.
37
@RVS Exactly. Both "Options" MUST BE RETROFITTED for free. The FAA must require their installation prior to recertification for carrying passengers.
7
Providing an MCAS indication light to the pilots would also require additional training so pilots would know what to do when it lit up. Boeing management probably said no to making it standard because of the training requirement. I cannot understand why Boeing engineering did not use two AoA sensors and check for disagreement first before moving flight control surfaces.
7
People old enough will remember the DC-10. McDonnell-Douglas was in competition with Lockheed to build a wide body tri-jet. The customer? American Airlines. McDonnell-Douglas’ motto formthe project was “Roll First”, referring to the “rolling out” ceremony of the first prototype from the hangar. The plane was rushed, and it suffered design faults with hydraulic systems design and cargo doors that resulted in incidents and crashes, most infamously AA Flight 191 in Chicago in 1979 (but also Turkish Airlines in 1974, and United Airlines Flight 232 in 1989). The DC-10 was grounded worldwide. The first modern jet to be so. Then Boeing bought the financially struggling McDonnell-Douglas and “merged” with them. However, the the industry joke was that “McDonnell-Douglass” bought Boeing with Boeing’s money” because inexplicably, McDonnell-Douglas executives were put more in charge. The whole culture of Boeing changed. McDonnell-Douglas executives felt it was the job of the company to SELL planes, not manufacture them. They could outsource everything, and do things cheaper and faster. The result was another grounded aircraft: The Boeing 787. Only the second time a jet had been grounded worldwide in history. Now comes the 737-Max, also grounded worldwide just a few years later. Boeing has now had two of it’s models grounded for safety reasons since the DC-10, but the connection goes all the way back to McDonnell-Douglas and the DC-10. It’s all related folks.
71
@Kevin It was McDonnell-Douglas' decision to drive Guinness Peat Aviation - the world's largest aircraft leasing company into bankruptcy that was the final nail in its coffin, by refusing to delay delivery dates during the First Gulf War (when commercial aviation went into a brief recession) while Boeing and Airbus did. The problem was that the only way airlines would buy the MD-11 and MD-80 was on a lease, because they didn't trust McDonnell-Douglas' stability and loathed it's management. So what did McDonnell (the man) do, kill his biggest airliner customer.
McDonnell was very disliked and arrogant person by the way - it was his decision to rename all the Douglas products MD from DC - his initials, wiping out those of the deceased Donald Douglas, who he was pathologically jealous of - though later McDonnell-Douglas claimed it was a portmanteau of both names.
3
When I worked at Boeing on design/analysis of its planes, and elsewhere on Boeing projects 2004-2015, we all knew that Airbus planes were higher tech (fly by wire, software), but we felt pride that at Boeing the first rule was safety, simplicity, ruggedness, durability.
In aping its competitor and that too in a hurry Boeing made a fatal mistake. You can never win at someone else's game, and haste makes waste.
In essence the loss of Max'es shows the vulnerability of AI, so the "success" of Airbus notwithstanding, Boeing should compete on its real strength - engineering. But patience and perseverance is lacking in the corporate world, especially in America.
32
“Safety is our highest priority as we design, build and support our airplanes," [Boeing said].
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And Facebook values your privacy. And Wells Fargo puts customers first. And Rice Krispies boosts your immune system. And . . .
30
@Ed
I would add 'clean diesel' and 'clean coal' to this list...
5
Sounds like a pretty chaotic company.
The results speak for themselves.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ll do all I can to avoid getting on a Boeing in the future.
8
Thank you for this article! The scenario depicts an overall lack of vision and leadership at the highest level in Boeing, apparently for years. Decisions along the way to focus on short term profit, politics and pressure instead of excellence and quality.
Another recent example of poor and destructive corporate leadership - PG&E in California, whose decisions to postpone unsafe equipment caused thousands of fires.
I sincerely hope taxpayers aren't expected to bail out these corporations. Shareholders should fire the board of directors and claw back executive bonuses.
16
Go go go?
Welcome to the world of aviation.
Sloppy drawings to be revised at a later date?
Welcome to the world of aviation.
The real issue is lack of independent oversight.
8
Boeing should've seen the need for more efficient engines a long time before it did, and not needed to push engineers. It's sad that it's come to this.
9
This article sums it up well. Boeing had become complacent as the largest jetliner manufacturer in the world. They mocked Airbus as a joke. But the joke was on Boeing. Airbus makes an excellent plane in the A320. I fly in one every week. This wasn’t a vacuum cleaner that they were rushing to produce. It was a jet airliner that would carry 150 people or more. Shame on Boeing for such arrogance and sloppy business practices.
44
Sadly, it sounds as though Boeing focused on profits over innovation and safety. Not the only ones.
5
Having been in the design industry most of my adult life (not aviation design), this story of a hurried "redo" made me feel sick. I've seen these kinds of truncated design exercises too many times in my life. Take the time to make it right which, in this case, means safe.
17
It is time for Boeing to learn that competition produces better products and good business. It is time for Boeing to pay for their arrogance and complacency. It is time for airlines and their customers to file a class action suit against Boeing for criminal negligence. It is time to investigate the same criminal negligence of the FAA.
10
We've been losing ground to the European ever since they've completely recovered from WWII. We still think we are king of the commercial mountain and no one can beat us at anything. We need to wake up and realize that our time at the top of the mountain was when the whole industrialized world was recovering from war...we now have competition and they are winning. I lived in Seattle when Boeing was the largest employer in the area. Not sure where they rank now in that metro area, at least behind Amazon and Microsoft.
11
@blopez, and isn’t it ironic today that the liberty that enabled their eventual recovery largely came in part from all those bombs dropped by Boeing B-17s on Nazi Germany? Talk about cruel.
3
@John Doe
Their recovery is based purely on the USA's incredible largesse after the war.
After all, we're Americans and thus good guys!
We're also stupid.
1
I came to a very sobering realization recently after talking to my financial advisor regarding retirement. My IRA’s are in good shape assuming the stock market does. Now when I read about big Fortune 500’s like Boeing and their emphasis on profits and dividends, suddenly my altruism gets a little stuck in my throat.
5
So, when was the last time Boeing actually designed a new aircraft from scratch without the process turning into a debacle? One has to go back to 1989 and the Boeing 777. Over the past 30 years they seem to have lost the ability to design airplanes in an efficient and effective manner.
What a sad and tragic turn of events. The great Boeing of old is gone. The real question is whether anyone can bring it back, or is our future going to be watching the Europeans compete against the Asians. It happened in high-end cars and it looks like it might happen in commercial aircraft as well.
17
@MJB
The Boeing 787 is a completely new design and build, first flight in 2009, with certification for commercial flight in 2011
A very successful aircraft, other then the FAA grounding a number of years back for battery fire issues. That said.. we have no idea what lurks under the more self-certify safety model that Boeing has adopted with the FAA.
Brand new aircraft designs are rare now days for both Boeing and Airbus... with them more often making incremental design changes (stretched airframes, new engine designs, new avionics, etc) through the life of an aircraft family.
@Chuck The 787 is another Boeing debacle that was rushed. And Boeing is the only company to have it’s jets grounded worldwide since the DC-10. Boeing went down hill after the 777 when they “merged” with McDonnell-Douglas and adopted MD’s shoddy corporate culture. Boeing has had now TWO planes grounded for safety issues in a matter of a few years. Number of sales means nothing when it comes to solid egineering and safety. Nothing at all. Especially when the airlines are complicit in the circumstances that cause situations like these.
10
@Chuck
The 787 program was a disaster that cost Boeing $10 billion to $20 billion in excess development costs. It was years behind schedule. Only a DoD contractor could see that as a success.
2
Boeing are now producing automobiles.
Brakes are an optional extra.
9
"Great car, Mr. Madden! Before we complete the paperwork, might I suggest you consider the brakes-on-all-four-wheels option. No pressure. Just a thought."
9
"The competitive pressure to build the jet — which permeated the entire design and development — now threatens the reputation and profits of Boeing..." What? Threatens Boeing's reputation and profits? No. What the competitive pressure did was threaten lives, and some 350 people will never again have to worry about money or their reputations because they flew a 737 MAX and are dead. Please, some perspective here.
32
I expect after the Deepwater Horizon spill BP put out a statement saying safety was the highest priority.
I’m glad i don’t work in a corporate PR department. Imagine being paid to lie for a living. How to these corporations caught red handed playing dangerous games with safety manage to release these communiques with a straight face?
23
Charging for safety features is our American way of maximizing shareholder returns, even if it means a few lives. We do it with automobiles and tractor trailers. Why not airplanes? When we dominated steelmaking we lost a few in the foundry. To be expected. Similarly, "go go" or design-build design is how we short circuit the inspection and review stages that are costly and slows down delivery, even if it gives rise to some mistakes and less than fully tested software. That is how Microsoft maximized its return on Windows; put it out barely stable and pump out the upgrades as first to market gets better market share. For Boeing safety is an add on money maker that improves its margins. This is how US companies create profits and shareholder returns are MAXIMIZED. This is good old capitalism that made us great and will make us great again, if you get out of the way.
11
@Fred P, it's time this "good old capitalism" that puts profits first above everything, even human lives, is punished as CRIMINAL negligent homicide.
What made American great in manufacturing once upon a time, was pride in the quality and safety of what we produced. Now it's all greed, greed, greed - and lies.
We're not #1 in anything anymore - except for gun violence, incarceration rates, and addiction.
3
The fix is a software update? Are you kidding me? Is this an iPad or complicated machine that's responsible for hundreds of lives? Call me old fashioned but I'm hesitant to trust me safety to an update.
30
@M
Hopefully the update won't reboot the control system in mid-flight operation like a Microsoft Windows update would on your desktop.
5
The PROBLEM was bad software.
(The MCAS Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System can operate inappropriately when one of two Angle of Attack sensors fails.)
The fix for bad software is a software update.
You will be thrilled to discover that it is software that determines if the Russians have launched a missile-attack. Getting this one wrong puts 100's of millions of lives at stake and we have been living with this one for more than 50 years and counting.
There are actually 2 fixes, both now planned, with either sufficient, by itself to avoid recurrence.
Fix 1: an FAA directive describing the problem, how to detect it, and how to recover from it. (Already complete) This also requires every airline and pilot to learn about the directive and understand it (and maybe practice it on a simulator). Pilots who had already been trained on this information have seen the MCAS failure and responded and corrected for its inappropriate control actions as explained in the directive without aircraft damage, or even disturbing the passengers.
Fix 2: The software update that reduces/prevents false alarms and control actions by enhancing the MCAS algorithm (and also reduces the aggressiveness of the MCAS control actions).
So: software problem.
Quick fix: documentation and training
Long-term fix: Quick fix plus software update.
Boeing is really McDonnell Douglas in disguise. The management philosophies of Boeing of old would not have taken the path taken in developing the Max.
27
@Doug
The legacy of Harry Stonecipher lives on. When he became CEO after his predecessor was forced to resign, Boeing changed.
Of course, Harry himself was forced to resign shortly after for reasons related to his personal behavior.
Did I mention the CFO went to jail around the same time for violating rules in government contracting?
12
The DC-10 reborn?
6
"In Renton, Wash., where the 737 Max is produced in a 1.1-million-square-foot plant, the mere possibility that Boeing engineering contributed to the crashes has cast a pall over the factory. After the Lion Air crash, Boeing offered trauma counseling to engineers who had worked on the plane."
But they did not offer the rational corrective (remember, engineers!) to get to the bottom of how to avoid a repetition of the disaster; a deep dive into the engineering of what might be necessary to counteract the pilots' training competency given the new weight distribution of the Max...
14
The Max project engineers would have known from the first concept drawings that static stability would be affected in parts of the operation, however. for some accuracy, the matter is not that the aircraft is unstable, it is that in a part of its envelope, the aircraft would have a reduced static stability, and would need a correcting force on the pitch control to meet the specific standards of certification. At all times the aircraft without the trim bias force that MCAS provides would be able to be safely flown, it would not however meet the specific certification criteria. The B737 had a similar trim bias already, and many aircraft have aerodynamic or system cures for similar issues. The problem is that the event of a sensor failure giving a false stall warning can occur at the same time as the MCAS fault, due to the same sensor defect, and the crew are challenged to recognise the simple response to the fault.
The aircraft is not inherently unsafe, the crew knowledge and training to deal with the compound effect of a single sensor fault is lacking. The airlines would have accepted a modest training overhead for the efficiency benefits the aircraft offers.
Boeing will introduce software changes that will minimise the impact of the sensor error, and hopefully will give more clear guidance in alert to the crew.
It may be fashionable to bash Boeing, but in the end they are capable of providing a competent product. The process and QA however is of concern
11
@Peter
Nice explanation.
2
Thanks for the cogent summary. Very rare to see anyone knowing the actual reason for MCAS in the 737 MAX...a region of lowered stability (not instability) at high but prestall angles of attack. The media (including this article) have instead all wrongly settled on the MAX being strongly flawed aerodynamically and pitching up spontaneously into stalls. Describing MCAS as an antistall system is partially right (it decreases the chance of a pilot pulling through to one when working correctly) but mostly wrong.
I had a 45 year career that spanned engineering, legal analysis, economic analysis, and management auditing. Any attempts to compress a time schedule, in any field I am familiar with, comes at the expense of accuracy. Things that should be re-checked thoroughly may be re-checked hastily, if at all.
Incomplete electrical installation drawings, without details of what tools to use? An accident waiting to happen.
I like flying on the older Boeing airplanes, the 757 for example. And the pilots love them too. But going forward, if the choice is a MAX or an Airbus or Embraer, its the Airbus or Embraer for me. Especially the Embraer, which only has two seats on each side of the aisle.
77
I wonder how the Boeing executives and FAA sleep at night? Ooop's I forgot they don't have a conscience.
20
The two 737s that crashed didn't include *optional* safety features. An option should be something like an enhanced lighting package, not something that keeps a plane from crashing--and killing all aboard. Shame on you, Boeing!
125
@Karen
The "optional" safety features would have done nothing, in all likelihood, to avoid the two crashes.
The pilots have two Angle of Attack sensor read-outs, one on the pilot side and the other on the co-pilot side, each connected to the angle-of-attack sensor on their side of the airplane. If these differ, pilots could use the good one. (This is unchanged from earlier 737 models.)
The new MCAS system has a design fault, only looking at one Angle of Attack sensor (at random, but fixed for a flight), and did no "reasonableness check" on its reading before activating a "stall-prevention" protocol if indicated.
Pilots were not told about the MCAS system, what it did, and how to recognize when it works (needed or not), and what to do when that happened. A"near-stall-recovery" MCAS action generated from the bad sensor was unexpected, surprising, and if allowed to continue for some time, could become dangerous.
Once pilots know how to recognize an MCAS response (and it is very distinctive), it is easy for them to either accept the response, or disable the MCAS (using a procedure they already understand, know, and have been trained on for years).
6
@Mark Johnson
Not so. How many pilots fly along regularly checking that all the gauges on their side of the cockpit read identically to those on the other side?
One of the 'optional' safety features was a simple warning light to advise pilots when the angle-of-attack sensor readings did not match - which would have immediately directed any competent pilot to use their experience and intuition, irrespective of whether or not they'd had training on the MCAS system, to identify what the problem was; as was the case with other near misses.
6
@Karen
Interestingly enough... Boeing is now making the AOA disagree indicator mandatory, not optional, with the coming MCAS software update.
How's that for corporate mea culpa? Better late then never I guess /eyeroll@Boeing
Now.. if they will also make the MCAS disable mechanisms and procedure familiar and intuitive to 737 pilots.... maybe that puts things adequately back in pilots control. Time will tell.
Telling pilots the 737 MAX flies the exact same as prior 737's when in fact it does not.... that's criminal in my view. If gives experienced 737 pilots a false sense of security.
11
Who knew that the CEO, COO and CFO of Boeing were all bent on maximizing the profitable return of their shareholders by any means necessary including sacrificing crew and passenger safety?
Paying death claims as a cost of doing businesses and managing risks aka insurance leads to more stock options and bigger bonuses.
MAGA!
46
I'd like to know what Boeing's CEO salary and bonuses were in the years that the 737 max was developed. Just a hunch but I'd bet it was a lot. We're the engineering teams given bonuses? Greed, egos, lax regulations all amount to passengers as collateral damage. I've lost trust in Boeing.
26
And, I'd like to know about the IT staffing - offshore and or H1B visa workers have affected a lot.
8
The whole American airline industry could use some humble pie:
- Boeing, it hid automated intervention mechanisms from pilots and reacted slowly and insufficiently after the Lion Air crash
- Arrogant American pilots who post on forums that it must be the poor training of African pilots and that they would have done better
- The FAA, which only reacted after the rest of the world did and made it look toothless
- American based airlines which continued to fly the MAX all the way until Trump announced its grounding
104
@Liz Unfortunately pilot training was a factor. We know that was the case in the first crash. In the second the problem had already been published and should have been studied by the pilots. The copilot had only 200 hours experience. That might represent as few as 25 takeoffs and landings. The software and engineering concepts were terrible but I guess a lot of pilots figured out how to work around it worldwide over the last two years.
1
This is probably the end of the 737 Max series.
It's a engineering concept flaw which creates the problem. Too big of engines on a too small of a plane. Actually the fuselage sits to low to the ground and that can not be changed unless you build an entirely new plane. As a reminder the 737 concept is over 50 years old and was specifically designed to be low to the ground.
The software fix is just there to cover up the overall flaw.
Now the problem is, that if airline customers won't fly this plane, no airline will buy the plane either.
Sorry Boeing, this was the wrong management decision in 2011. Now back to the drawing board.
58
@Two in Memphis
While I could agree with the point that this "should" be the end of the 737 MAX in it's current state (and technically it is), I don't actually think the configuration is a failure that cannot be resolved. That said.. I personally will not fly on one until there is an established track record of flying without "design induced" crashes. I consider the loss of these two aircraft to be "design induced". Luckily, there are sufficient levels of safety even in the 737 MAX to ensure that in most cases MCAS =/= disaster in flight. However... there is no margin for error in commercial airline flight in my view and Boeings shortcuts here removed some very much needed margin of safety for both pilots and passengers.
One very likely outcome though is FAA takes back more control over safety and certification practices and rely less on the airlines to "self-police". A blind watchdog is no watchdog at all.
Overall though... FAAs reputation with the world is tarnished by this who debacle and it will take years to recover. We see one very fatal series of events in play with the 737 MAX right now.... and it begs the question as to what other debacles are lingering just under the certification practices of the FAA with respect to all aircraft currently flying, and in particular newer ones.
19
@Two in Memphis
Wouldn't redesigning the landing gear to be taller than it is now be one solution? I realize wing design and the lift it is required to handle could be compromized during take-off with a change of ground clearance, while landing with full flaps before touchdown may be compromised because of a change in life.
New landing gear? New wing shapes?
@Chuck
You and others fail to take into account that this design flaw was the result of a flawed process, in which Engineering quality, oversight, and ethics were given a backseat at Boeing to marketing decisions. Chances are extremely high that one or more equally catastrophic flaws will emerge.
3
It says a lot about the precarious fragility of capitalism that, AA a single customer, could hold a 150,000-employee corporation hostage to not only AA's bottom line, but to their profitability. In retrospect, Boeing would be better off today, had they asked AA to please close the door on their way out.
Of course, they kept AA on board; now they will lose both AA and the Max.
19
@JS
I guess I don't understand your point here. Where exactly did AA tell Boeing to make then a new 737 to compete with the Airbus offering????? They did not. They did however do something I do feel is unethical --> they put a purchasing position with Boeings competition and then told Boeing they had little time to react to stop AA from going Airbus. That's pretty normal practice of large corporations to pit one supplier against another.... but when passenger safety is at stake.. I do think corporations need to be more restrained.
The real issue here though is not what AA did in giving Boeing a heads-up... but rather the cavalier and panicky way Boeing appears to have reacted.
10
@Chuck
It has been covered by other media that AA did in fact, hold Boeing over the barrel. They literally told Boeing, come up with a plane or our business all goes to Airbus. It is a shame, because if Boeing had developed a new plane, it would have a long life and none of these problems. Shortly after this huge order of planes by AA, AA announced Chapter 11. Fact, Boeing is badly managed and it shows!
2
This is what happens when profit count above all else. Boeing was struggling with cost control. Remember this was in 2011, just after gas had spiked to $4 a gallon, we were starting the Great Recession, and the banks had gotten TARP and the automobile industry had just been rescued. The economy was cratering and so Boeing took the easy way out. How were they ever to admit they had made engineering design failures, and that hundreds of defective planes were flying, without losing their reputation and customer base?
So, they just kept quiet. Hoping that nothing would go wrong. They have killed almost 400 people due to their greed and incompetence. Regardless of any pilot error, the true blame falls on engineers for adding oversized engines on a plane body that wasn't aerodynamically sound with them. Then moving them into place which caused the plane to have the tendency to fly nose up, and stall. Thus, leading to the decision to allow the autopilot system to override the pilots and force the nose down, over and over again. Until the pilots couldn't fix the problem and the plane hurtled to the ground.
The fact that there haven't been multiple more crashes wherever these planes have flown, is a testament to the skill and ability of the pilots forced to deal with them. I will never willingly board a 737 Max 8 or 9.
295
@AnnieT So could Boeing produce 737s with the smaller engines? But, would there be a market for them? Airbuses are wonderful! I have always had enormous trust in Boeing, but now they have made a huge mistake; people rightly are not going to trust the Max. And I agree with this writer: it came from trying to make a profit at the expense of common sense, and now the really hard decision is to cut their losses and go back to the drawing board and try a new plane and develop it properly. The regulators should have been more independent and they should be penalized as well.
16
@AnnieT
“How were they ever to ADMIT they had made engineering design failures, and that hundreds of defective planes were flying...”
No. The way you phrase your comment makes it sound as if the Boeing engineers made a mistake, KNEW they made a mistake, and yet decided to do nothing.
Well, whether as part of an original design or as an upgrade, marrying hardware (MAX engine, angle of attack sensor) with software (MCAS) does not on the face of it constitute a mistake.
The two fatal incidents seem to stem from (1) falsely detecting a stall condition when none existed, and (2) not providing the pilot with an indication of the problem along with an easy way to disengage MCAS.
If so, it is likely that using multiple sensors along with MCAS improvements will result in a reliable anti-stall package. For example, if multiple sensors all report excessive angle of attack, provide audible cockpit warning with appropriate message – perhaps “anti-stall started”.
Then MCAS should provide multiple mechanisms by which it can be disengaged, e.g., “if pilot pulls up on yoke with a force greater than X pounds for longer than Y seconds, then disengage MCAS”.
It’s an engineering problem, not a moral one. (IMHO). They made a good-faith effort to provide a reliable product and reasonably believed that they had done so.
QUESTION: How to improve the certification process to detect when a combination hardware/software system is not sufficiently robust.
11
@George Roberts C. Yes, the Boeing engineers knew they made a mistake. The knowledge came when the MCAS system was reconfigured to allow 2.5 degrees maximum deflection because .6 degrees movement in the original design didn't work. At that point they knew this plane was much more unstable than they had projected. That's when they should have thrown in the towel and resdeigned the aircraft. But they didn't. And the system killed almost 400 people. There was nothing moral or in good faith about the decisions taken.
14
Boeing does not own all the blame on this. It appears that airlines were quite happy to NOT question the claim that additional training was not needed. Whoever was buying these planes which had significant engine changes, software changes, etc., are likely to have turned a blind eye to this. If the late Trevor Kletz was still around, he might very well add this case to his wonderful "What Went Wrong" series of process safety management books.
What sort of analysis do buyers of aircraft do? What training do they have? Are airlines going to make any changes in their decision making processes?
9
I'm an engineer and after reading this article there is no way I'm flying this airplaine. Safety is ensured in large part by a solid development process. Clearly, it was not the case here and it's not a software update that will solve the problem.
103
Correct, any possible software fix cannot cure this. Adding, comparing the second sensor cannot cure this thing. If the pilot’s only recourse is to shut the electrics to the tail and adjust manually with the trim wheel, there will never be enough time before impact.
8
I can’t imagine that the MCAS system didn’t “talk” to other systems or instruments. Wouldn’t airspeed, ground proximity, altitude and all the other data available have been taken into account before it would trim the airplane into the ground?
11
@D Beck
Thank you for an extremely important comment .
Will someone with expertise on the 737 Max MCAS system please answer the following questions.
To what extent, if any, did the version of the MCAS on the now grounded 737 Max planes, and on the two 737 Max planes that crashed, also read airspeed or altitude information, or both, from other sensors on the plane, in addition to reading angle of attack information from an angle of attack sensor on the plane, and if so, to that extent, if any, was there redundancy in any of these other sensors?
Same question for other data, if any, that the MCAS read or was "talked to" about, and as to whether there was redundancy in any of the other sensors providing this other data.
6
Hundreds of people died for greed. I guess that's something not new by any means, but it really hurts when they throw in our faces how little human life is valued.
17
What does it take to get fired at Boeing? You now have two commercial air crashes, numerous examples of life threatening bottom line decisions, and evidence of attempted cover up of their tragedy and the CEO is still sitting in the corner office.
37
@Amanda Jones. The CEO is buds with Individual 1, a person who also puts profit over.everything including safety. Remember the decision to NOT include sprinklers in his tawdry tower? And who now is actively seeking complete DE REGULATION in every industry, depite the sure loss of lives ahead?
This is why the Boeing Co knows they are golden. Their insurance co's will "cover" the dead people, and they will continue to direct their massiv3 profits towards candidates who will look the other way. Welcome to the Anti-Safety Administration! Don't breath, don't turn on the sink taps, don't drive, don't fly.
3
Sometimes media outlets, in their rush to beat competitors, release stories without proper vetting.
4
@Art Layton And how many people die in tragic accidents before the news media can print a correction?
3
@Art Layton
Curious minds would love for you to elaborate...
2
Although there's no justification for the reliance on the single sensor and the failure to inform flight crews of the change, I so far haven't seen any news reports pointing out that Airbus has a history of exactly the same sort of flight control failures with its A330 widebody jets. In an effort to avoid a stall, the plane's computers were abruptly forcing the nose down, leading to loss of control by the flight crew. In 2008, this nearly caused the crash of a Qantas flight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72.
Ironically, the Smithsonian Channel just last week featured Flight 72 in its Canadian-produced "Air Disasters" series. I'd be surprised if when developing the Max, Boeing wasn't aware of Airbus' experience.
4
@Alan
The Quantas Flight 72 issue was a Northrop-Grumman ADIRU problem of incorrectly responding to a defective inertial reference due to a software bug.
1
I’m a little disappointed reading the article behind the headline. It doesn’t appear to me that something unsavory happened here, whereas the title suggests so. A determined response to vigorous competition is what I would expect from any company - and those interviewed say that they did not feel they were pushed to compromise on safety in any way. I would have expected a less suggestive title from you, NYT!
1
@Martin
I'm sure family and friends of the hundreds killed would beg to differ.
6
Unspeakable corporate greed on many levels. Boeing deserves to go bankrupt.
9
@Jacquie
I do not believe that anyone at any level at Boeing would consciously decide to prioritize profit over safety. Distrust of Boeing airplanes is the absolute worst thing that can happen to the corporation and the individuals who constitute the company. To believe that individuals at any point thought or suspected the process followed in certifying the Max 8 would kill people but make money defies logic. Boeing is a long way from perfect but no one should expect some type of smoking gun where there was a warning or concerns raised but they were overridden in the name of profits or stock price.
2
this is what happens when the MBA's in marketing take over engineering decisions....every time.
82
Reading how Boeing cut corners to get this plane to market and to dupe airlines into rolling over their 737 pilots into it, I wonder how many more skeletons there are in the MAX’s cupboard. I won’t be a guinea pig and hence I won’t be flying them for a very long time.
10
Nice going Boeing. One more crash, and you may as well close your doors for good. American capitalism at it's best...
8
"Incredulity" is the word that kept popping into mind when reading this sordid matter.
How is is possible that one of the most famous and beloved airplane companies on the planet for decades could become so stupid, callous, oblivious, mercenary, and down right terrible?
The executives involved in this debacle should be booted, and if the plane's design is found to be at fault for the crashes and deaths, prosecuted (or persecuted, depending on your point of view).
Boeing - through its odious and thoughtless behavior - needs to be held responsible.
12
@Bob
The Volkswagen 'clean diesel' and various Wells Fargo debacles also raise the question - what were they thinking?
3
Come on, we're better than this.
Aren't we?
108
@joan
I used to think so but we've reduced ourselves to greed.
25
@joan
Apparently not.
7
Pay me now, or pay me later
Complacency breeds incompetence
4
I remember when following the development problems of the 787 that Boeing employees were lamenting the merger with
McDonnell-Douglas.
Somehow MD execs ended up running the merged company and their profit first mentality badly hurt quality control at Boeing.
I wondered how true this was !
7
The Boeing CEO at the time was W. James McNerney Jr. a former General Electric executive who lost out to Jeff Immelt in the GE succession race for CEO to replace Jack Welch. So another GE trained executive who destroys a company by cutting costs today that have a huge affect down the road. Another former GE star Bob Nardelli almost bankrupted Home Depot. The legendary GE CEO Jack Welch has done so much damage to corporate America besides almost bankrupting GE.
392
@Jack
Jack, you are reminding me of the star power that high-profile CEOs were getting in the 1990s. "Lives of the Rich & Famous" was a popular TV that idolized the titans of greed.
As I mentioned in a earlier posting, I think we can go back to the appointment of Alan Greenspan whose self-described libertarian philosophy of economics turned the so-called free market into a free-for-all of greed in nearly every sector of our economy, thanks to his obsession with deregulation.
Gordon Geko's "Greed is good" statement rings loudly now as America implodes thanks to the greedlings in industry and Wall Street.
46
@David Ohman
As I recall it was Greenspan who engineered the mortgage crisis when Bush wanted to make it possible for every American to own a home, regardless of employment or credit history. Brokers/bankers started writing mortgages for anyone who could walk into a bank and ask for one; they collected their commissions and walked away. L.A. has whole abandoned neighborhoods of foreclosed homes. People were living in their cars. The foreclosing banks didn't want to take back the homes, or negotiate new mortgages, they just wanted to get rid of the mortgages. Minuchin was an active part of that mess. He was known as the Foreclosure King. Why am I not surprised to see him as one of Trump's "best people"?
15
@Jack Thanks for that observations/for those observations. Jack the Leprechaun Welch did more to harm this culture than anyone south of Donald Trump.
11
This haste brings to mind the Challenger tragedy. After the launch had been postponed a few times, Morton Thiokol engineers expressed concerns about the effect of cold weather on the o-rings.
A NASA official overrode these objections, saying "My God, Thiokol," he said. "When do you want me to launch — next April?"
315
The same goes for the Columbia disaster.
NASA and contractor management and engineers knew for decades that certain layered External Tank manually applied thermal foam was being shed from the External Fuel Tank. In fact two flights before Columbia’s final flight a piece of foam in the same location, the port forward bipod strut, where the shuttle’s nose is bolted to the ET, fell off and made a large gouge in the aft left Solid Rocket Booster casing which is 1/2 inch thick steel. What would happen if the shed foam do to the wing leading edge carbon, carbon panels, which have no real structure behind them, unlike the aluminum skin of the shuttle’s body covered with both nomex felt pads and the heat tiles glued on top of the shuttle’s airframe.
17
@Debbie. And it's likely that there's a trail of communications between Boeing's executives tracing each shortcut that they knowingly took in just the same fashion.
There was a decision not to make the landing gear taller to accommodate the larger engines
There was a decision not to add a third and fourth Angle of Attack sensor once they were known to be safety critical. Without these, the software could not take a vote between three inputs to cope properly with a single failure.
There was a decision to design the MCAS software to use the 2 sensors alternately rather than constantly comparing their inputs before using any Angle of Attack data.
There was a decision to SELL AS AN EXTRA the warning mechanism to alert if the two sensors disagreed.
And there was a decision to exclude the entire safety critical MCAS mechanism from the training.
Overall, that's quite a few decisions which appear to be negligent and which will have involved discussions and probably emails between a significant number of engineers and managers.
19
@Debbie
And Columbia, when the pressure was on to get ISS built. Standard procedure called for delaying launch if foam was seen failing. These rules were overridden to stay on schedule.
Read The Caine Mutiny. It demonstrates how peace time allows poor leaders to float to top. No heat to refine the steel. Same principal for fat corporations and NASA.
Incompetence breeds sycophants.
9
Boeing Max 8 and 9, and Airbus 320 use a software fix to address a faulty design of planes that were rushed to save $ in gas. I will not be flying these planes even with the software update.
10
Number of A320neo that have crashed? Zero.
4
Seems like an obvious specification that, "if the plane has just taken off and is climbing steeply to altitude, then no matter what do NOT point the nose of the plane at the all-too-nearby ground." But MCAS did just that. It appears that MCAS was added as an afterthought and has not been integrated carefully and fully with what the airplane is currently DOING.
Boeing has historically not used formal mathematical methods to verify rigorously its flight-control software systems. The following aerospace organizations DO use formal methods to verify flight-control software: Airbus, European Space Agency, NASA, Bombardier, Embraer, Cessna, Gulftream, Sikorsky, Dassault and Thales (source: Boulanger "Formal Methods" eye.eu 2012). Formal verification almost certainly would have caught the contradiction of pointing at the ground when the ground is only seconds below.
No matter what else was or wasn't done right, Boeing should be using formal methods on it flight-control software. The FAA has begun to mandate formal methods in DO-178C. The FAA should mandate full use NOW, period.
27
The 1962 novel "Fail-Safe" by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler (adapted into the 1964 film of the same name directed by Sidney Lumet) is a still-relevant cautionary tale about misplaced faith in sophisticated technology and the possible ramifications therefrom, perfectly enunciated in this exchange:
KNAPP: "The more complex an electronic system gets, the more accident-prone it is. Sooner or later, it breaks down... A transistor blows, a condenser burns out. Sometimes they just get tired, like people..."
GROETESCHELE: "But Mr. Knapp overlooks one thing. The machines are supervised by humans. Even if the machine fails, the human being can always correct the mistake."
KNAPP: "I wish you were right. The fact is the machines work so fast; they are so intricate; the mistakes they make are so subtle that very often a human being can't know if a machine is lying or telling the truth."
Over the intervening decades, the speed and intricacies of machines — not to mention the subtleties of the mistakes they make — have been magnified by many orders of magnitude.
19
@AJ North
Consider the many instances that we have all experienced where a software patch causes other features to stop working, work incorrectly, etc. Many patches have to be rolled back, or fixed shortly after rollout.
1
When there are two players in a business I am surprised that Boeing would be dismissive of Airbus' new products. I have seen that in business, never at this scale, but that is how companies disappear. Our largest manuf and exporter...POOF!
7
"The bigger engines altered the aerodynamics of the plane, making it more likely to pitch up in some circumstances."
The article should be more specific about this. I have read that the original 737 was designed with wings that were not very far above the ground, because of the small engines mounted under the wings at the time.
The need for larger engines, as the plane grew in size, meant that the engines would not fit in the space under the wings and above the ground. Boeing therefore mounted them higher up, closer to the wings. Further, since the diameter of the engines is largest at the front and tapered to the rear, they also mounted the engines farther forward, putting the smaller part of the engines directly under the wings.
This created an unbalanced aircraft by moving the center of gravity to a point never intended for this plane. This made stalls (nose pointing too far upward) more likely. The sensors were supposed to detect that situation and the new software was supposed to correct it.
Creating an unbalanced aircraft and then using a system to save it when it gets into trouble as a result of being unbalanced seems like a bad idea. This plane was never supposed to have engines that large. Boeing should have developed an all-new plane.
76
The 737 Max can be compared to a VW beetle that has a 300 hp engine with an updated suspension. Hardly anybody would buy a car like this. Boeing should have made some little updates to an already successful series and develop a new model for the future. It was a bad business decision: putting short term profits over safety and the long term financial health of the company. Imbalanced at any flight.
14
@JustInsideBeltway
Minor correction needed here. The reason the original 737 was built low to the ground was for ease of access and egress near the ground because, those jetway tunnels that telescoped out to the plane's doors had not been invented yet. I remember when the boarding stairs were rolled out to the aircraft then, passenger would walk out to the plane for boarding.
This was not about fitting the airplane to the engines. It was about making passenger convenience in boarding.
5
Systemic quality issues, as this case is showing many signs of, are almost always issues of poor leadership, poor management, and poor oversight. I’m sure that many of the engineers on this program feel a heavy burden, as you quote Mr. Renzelman. The burden and responsibility should be most heavily borne by those who created the environment that lead to a poor strategic situation for Boeing that set the stage for unrealistic constraints on the design, leading to poor design choices, poor choices not caught and cured before the first plane ever rolled out.
25
@fafield . Management holds responsibility for cutting corners on pilot simulator training to curtail costs but in the end that error cost the company a great deal more because of pilots being unaware of changes.
5
Let's say that, yes, Boeing rushed the development for business reasons. Assuming everything was true, where was the FAA in all this?!! Boeing's job is to make planes, to push the limits, and beat their competition. That's what a business does, fine. But it was FAA's job to be the cop here and to drop the hammer on Boeing if they stepped over the lines.
Let's not make this partisan issue, either. This sorry tale has its origins deep in President Obama's tenure and speaks to a broader malaise of our views on government regulatory bodies as a national culture. We may have won some elections here and there but the Republicans have won our minds for the past three decades.
7
@"Archie" Wankere
Seems like the FAA's job #1 is protect the US aerospace industry, judging from events of the last few months.
4
@"Archie" Wankere
These competitive issues began long before Obama. Take a look at who trump is behind
2
@"Archie" Wankere
What is the cost of a poor reputation? Boeing needs to clear out its management structure. So does Wells Fargo, which has endured too many scandals to enumerate.
1
What still puzzles me about this flying death trap called model 737 Max B is the thousands of successful flights that didn’t crash. I’m not an aeronautical engineer so I can’t possibly understand out how that could be if it’s as flawed as everyone now says it is. We seem to live in an era now where assigning blame when something goes wrong is more important than fixing what did.
7
@John Doe simple, say 1/1000 chance the AOA sensor will feed in incorrect data to the computer and mcas goes haywire, and 1/100 chance that the pilots panic and do not turn it off by using its switch and instead choose to fight the mcas with their manual controls. You get 1 accident out of 100k flights just for this reason, which will get found out eventually since there are so many of these planes inheavy usage. But catastrophic failure due to just one piece of equipment with 0.00001 probability is unacceptably high.
2
@john doe. We do not know how many times pilots successfully overcame this situation. In fact, the flight just before the Indonesian crash had the problem, and the pilot managed, possibly because he caught the stabilizer angle error early and had time to correct. Plus, the MCAS is off when autopilot is on, which is nearly all the time.
This tragedy hopefully will serve as a prime example in management, engineering and economic schools: competition is a great tool to improve a product but only with sufficient oversight. Companies will cut corners and hope for the best. And next time a politician touts that regulation and red tape stifles competition, I hope voters will remember that only in a regulated market economy everyone can sufficiently rely on the safety of products. Safety costs money but cutting corners costs lives.
18
This whole thing just shows how that Boeing is losing money but they won't admit to it. The KC-46 is another rushed project which is now costing the company billions of dollars and the TX trainer is another great example of how they rushing aircraft into service and trying to do projects on the cheap.
The 787 is still losing money and that rushed into service and badly designed. Not so long a ago there was a huge back log of unfinished 737's as they didn't have workers to complete them. Just more examples of Boeing trying to do things on the cheap.
16
Perhaps it’s time for Boeing to move its corporate HQ back to Seattle, time for the senior leadership to get far more cozy with the situation on the “ground,” time for them to actually get their hands dirty and accept their responsibility for creating the conditions that will lead this company to success. While many of the commenters are rightfully disgusted with Boeing, they are the single largest source of export sales in the U.S. economy, a position we need them to earn & hold.
5
First they were too arrogant to acknowledge competition nipping at the heels. Then they were reacting to the Airbus market threat, by rushing through a design meant to meet absolute lowest and cheapest thresholds for testing, training and safety. Does not sound like a a company that cares at all about innovation or safety or pilots or the passengers - only the $ from the sales.
29
@Ash
I am wondering if simply designing taller landing gear to give the new engines more ground clearance could have been part of the solution.
1
"Although the project had been hectic, current and former employees said they had finished it feeling confident in the safety of the plane."
...
"Despite the intense atmosphere, current and former employees said, they felt during the project that Boeing’s internal quality checks ensured the aircraft was safe."
And the point of this piece is ...?
Boeing has some 5,000 orders for this plane -- clearly the airline industry loves it. And NO US PILOTS OF THE 737 MAX HAS CRASHED THEIR AIRPLANE, DESPITE HAVING TO ON OCCASION SWITCH OFF THE AUTOTRIM SOFTWARE.
5
And your point is that Boeing tipped off the domestic pilots about the changes, but not the foreign pilots because that would have raised costs and their employers would have gone with Airbus? If your product costs more to operate due to safety issues, shouldn’t you have a duty-of-care to tell the buyer?
21
@Norman Rogers
This is a very new plane. The airline industry may love it, but not necessarily because of a relatively untested safety record...let's see how much they love it after 10 or more years in service.
3
"Because the system was supposed to work in the background, Boeing believed it didn’t need to brief pilots on it, and regulators agreed. Pilots weren’t required to train in simulators."
I'm one of those people who thinks that regulation is necessary, so I'm very interested to learn why that layer failed here. ("...and regulators agreed.") My guess is not that regulation is actually pointless but rather that certain forces in government have neutered the regulatory regime.
42
I heard a term for this last week .” Regulatory Capture “
6
@Jonathan
In my earlier post, I noted — and it relates to your last sentence — when Alan Greenspan was appointed by Reagan to be the new Fed Chairman, his self-described libertarian philosophy of economics demanded that he deregulate neary every industry throughout the nation.
He referred to deregulation as "unleashing the creativity of the free market." What he created was a free-for-all of greed with shareholder value worth more than the country itself.
So when the needs for public safety slip through the cracks of the regulators, we should not be surprised.
9
@David Ohman
Greenspan is responsible for the failure of mortgages across the country. He supported the Bush plan for everyone to be able to receive a mortgage, regardless of employment and credit history. Failed mortgages brought down Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac after they were forced to issue flawed mortgages. Brokers who signed off on mortgages guaranteed to fail were never held accountable. Taxpayers initially bailed out banks. The mortgages were bundled and sold to banks overseas. The Bank of England was eventually saved by American intervention. The foreclosures affected the bundled securities which included the sure to fail mortgages. Taxpayers were eventually paid back; however the original decisions made by Greenspan and Bush were the cause of the mortgage scandal. Small bank failures were collateral damage. Now we have another government driven mess with the failure of the FAA to its real job.
1
Boeing has a long road ahead of itself rebranding as an engineering driven company rather than as a Wall Street driven one. Good luck with that.
42
For most of its' history, Boeing put safety first. From conversations with friends who worked there, I learned that this changed in the 1990s. A safety engineer who felt that some design changes were not consistent with standards was no longer invited to the planning meetings. So when the competitive threat from Airbus appeared, many of these engineers had be sidelined or reassigned. It is terribly unfortunate that this icon of American manufacturing has come to this, but they really deserve severe consequences for their gross negligence. Buying back all the Maxes at full
price would be a good start.
75
After reading all the reports, it seems that Boeing built a kinda-sorta 737 but with major changes. It was aerodynamically unstable because of the larger engines.
Then some brilliant programmer stood up and said "We can fix it in software".
The rest is history.
also, the paragraph:
"The push for automation was a philosophical shift for Boeing, which for decades wanted to keep pilots in control of the planes as much as possible. Airbus, by comparison, tended to embrace technology, putting computers in control. Pilots who preferred the American manufacturer even had a saying: “If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.”"
The saying has more to do with Boeing being union that safety. The 757 and later planes were fly-by-wire, which put the computer squarely in control.
7
@Steve
Boeing has built some FBW airliners (777, 787) and some that aren't (707/720, 737, 747, 757, 767).
The Boeing 757 has three fully independent hydraulic systems. The three systems are "Left," "Center," and "Right."
The left system is powered by an engine-driven pump (EDP) on the #1 engine, an alternating circuit motor pump (ACMP) located in the wheel well, and a power transfer unit (PTU) powered by the right hydraulic system.
The center system is powered by two ACMPs located just aft of the wheel well in the wing to body fairings, the center system can also be powered by a ram air turbine in an emergency.
The right system is powered by an EDP on the right-hand engine and an ACMP located in the wheel well. Any one hydraulic system can fully control the aircraft, and further, any one pump on any one hydraulic system can fully control the aircraft. A long way from fly-by-wire.
1
So, how did Airbus deal with its redesign challenge when they decided to use larger and heavier engines in their updated A 320 line (the A320 neo) ? Did they use a new design and had to go through the lengthy review process for a new design, or did they go the Boeing route using regulatory shortcuts (it's the same plane, except for.....) ?
Even with all the checkpoints in place at Boeing, the quoted shoddy blueprints and missing documentation on assembly for the MAX sound scary to me. I wonder if 737 MAX pilots were aware that their plane was such a rush job.
24
@Pete in Downtown
I have been reviewing photos of both the A320 and the 737 and it appears that the A320 is taller landing gear, perhaps to accomodate the telescoping jetway used for access and egress of passenger at the terminal.
The 737 was designed low to the ground to make the access and egress easier for passengers at a time when we had to walk out to the airplane using stairs that were rolled up to the aircraft doors. There were no telescoping jetways at the time. Bigger airplaned meant taller stairs at the time.
2
This whole tragic affair is a reminder of all we need to know about libertarian and conservative reduce regulation ideologies.
Remember the Boeing Max 8.
54
I am still not clear why the 2 planes crashed.
If it was a faulty sensor, then a sensor fault would have been recorded, and the pilots would switch to manual. If no sensor falut was recorded, and the sensor was misfiring, then once the pilots realized the plane was losing control without knowing why, they would switch off auto pilot and fly plane manually using other indicators.
If it was a faulty MCAS software that caused nose to dive, then the pilots should know to disable the MCAS and fly the plane manually.
The key I guess is knowing whether these planes can be switched to manual easily and whether the pilots remember how to fly manually.
3
@SP MCAS is designed to automatically reduce the pitch in manual flight without pilot input. The system is constantly fed data from two synchronized wing-like Angle of Attack (AOA) sensors, located on the plane’s nose. If the AOA sensors detects the plane is pitching too high, the MCAS automatically adjusts the tail’s stabilizer — the horizontal part of the aircraft’s tail — to level out the plane. However, if the AOA sensors feed faulty or contradictory data to the MCAS, the system can force the aircraft into a dive.
MCAS only operates when the aircraft is operated in manual mode. To deactivate MCAS one of the following is required: (1.) engaging autopilot; (2.) engaging the flaps (3.) following the procedure for fighting runaway trim.
2
@SP
The pilots did not use the established procedure when you have a run away trim ...turn off the power to the motors that operate the trim and set them manually using the wheels ... you can do this on a Boeing plane.
You are correct -- whatever caused the problem the solution was to turn off the power to the motors.
The third pilot in the Lion Air plane the day before the crash -- did just that. The two pilots flying that plane did not know how to do it or did not understand what was happening.
It's pilot training -- and that plane should never have been allowed to fly the next day. The EA pilots did not have the benefit of a trained third with them.
The LA plane seems to be a system error -- the plane was fine .. but the system thought otherwise.
1
@SP MCAS was required because newer heavier, more powerful engines that both improved range and fuel efficiency were added while not redesigning the wing and fuselage to accommodate the engine.
I want to know how many will be willing to get back on those revised Maxes, once they’re “new n improved”? How soon will they realize they’ll have to create the new plane they should’ve made?
15
@Will Durham. Exactly how I feel about it. I habe told my family and employees not to fly a max8 or9 even after the software changes have been implemented. I am an engineer and can tell you without any doubt that you cannot, should not fix design errors with software tweaks.
42
@Will Durham I for one will never fly a Max
2
@Will Durham My guess is that Boeing won't make a new plane. Instead, they'll change the name of the Max 8 and 9s to something new, so when people look up the flight, they won't know that it's the same plane. They said in the article that they are in the process of making thousands more right now.
Airbus has a similar system .. and it actually caused a similar event.
We forget the crash of the new A320 at LFGB? It's first passenger flight (chartered). I guess we do?
The reporting around this situation has been so poor is unbelievable.
Planes have systems and procedures to avert disasters when they enters dangerous parameters. Powerful planes have issues that less powerful planes don't .. they also have the ability to get you out of situations that less powerful ones can't.
The question here is did the plane enter a parameter it should not have or did the system "think" it did ... it seems the latter.
5
@GT
No. That crash (AF 296) was clearly pilot error. The investigation found the plane worked perfectly but that the pilots were negligent. 3 passengers died and the pilot went to jail.
@GT
Officially. the 1988 Mulhouse-Habsheim A320-111 accident was down to pilot error.
The flight crew absolutely maintain not only that the accident was CAUSED by the aircraft's automatic 'alpha-protection' stall protection system but that Airbus and France's BEA transportation safety investigators colluded to falsify flight data recorder evidence in order to protect the manufacturer's reputation.
This conspiracy theory continues to do the rounds and hasn't gone away. Makes you think....
"Facing tight deadlines and strict budgets, managers quickly pulled workers from other departments when someone left the Max project."
So Boeing wanted a cheap hack job based on a old model.
I guess they didn't know the rule: Faster, Cheaper, Better, pick 2.
They wanted something fast, so that's an older model reworked, okay but then the development is not going to be cheap.
8
From previous NYT reports it seems that the real issue was to charge extra money to install a security devise allowing the pilots to take full control of the plane rather than the computerized systems. Also Boeing was too cheap to carefully instruct pilots, especially from third world countries (Indonesia, Ethiopia) - charging extra money then was strictly making a quick buck, totally unrelated to time deadlines and technical issues. Again, the issue was the Boeing finance department looking for quick profits and not the engineers working their tail off and meeting deadlines.
The other equally relevant issue is the poor management and supervision of places like Indonesia and Ethiopia - when that plane landed safely in Jakarta after a very close call just a quick phone call to the next crew would have save lives in both countries.
5
@rudolf-
You've got the 1st sentence completely wrong. The issue all along has been : new oversized engines did not pair up well w/ an outdated airframe of earlier 737ng derivative.
Aerodynamically, the unit paired 737 (max) required new software to have the equivalent look & feel operationally of its earlier issue _and this is crucial rudy_ in order to satisfy the FAA required standard of "essentially same" for obtaining expedited approval. "EXPEDITED APPROVAL".
The MCAS stall prevention was designed for high altitude flight safety issues, then modified as an afterthought.
Seattle Times Investigative Report: (3.16.19)
"Flawed Design, Failed Oversight"
is an excellent overview of myriad problems 737(max), in places almost too painful to read.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/
7
@rudolf
Boeing could have made the safety feature standard and raised the price, or it could make it an option and let the airline choose. It's the airlines that made the decision to save a few bucks.
@SquareState
Giving the customer the option to pay more for safety features is a BAD idea. It give the customer the impression that the "safety features" aren't *really* that critical. Would you pay an extra few hundred dollars to add an optional "seatbelt and airbag package" when you buy a car?
1
After reading all the comments, most of them negative as they relate to Boeing and their so-called safety-first slogan, the issue that stands out most and really says it all is: Boeing made safety features as extra-cost options. There must be consequences for over 300 people losing their lives because of corporate greed and the drive to make a profit at all costs. With hindsight being 20/20 it's a miracle it wasn't worse and only 2 planes crashed out of thousands of flights. Boeing must be made to pay dearly for this incompetence, not only punish them, but to serve as a deterrence for others tempted to do the same; putting greed ahead on people’s lives.
21
@biglatka
Boeinh most definitely must be held accountable. It is outrageous!
5
@biglatka
We're talking TWO safety option upgrades. One is a fault warning light, the other is a more complicated fault warning display gage. They both do the same job and many airlines (American ones included) think only the first one is desirable/necessary.
What's hard to understand is how Boeing decided that BOTH forms of warning system should be 'options'. Whilst there is some significant cost associated to either form of 'AoA sensor disagree' alert, Boeing are now being canned (not entirely truthfully) for having 'killed' a lot of passengers to save the cost of a '25c lightbulb'.
2
Boeing changes the engines on an airframe that changes the aerodynamic characteristics, and engineers a mickymouse fix. Then instead of at least putting two of these systems on the plane in case one of them fails, and the anomaly between them gives a warning, they cut costs, and worse yet do not include training on how to disengage the MCAS.
So basically the plane is unstable in certain circumstances, but the self certification given to the manufactures in 2014 allows them to say the plane is safe. They knew about the attack angle problem, and would have had to modify the airframe but just had to get these to the market.
That is close to criminal as far as I am concerned.
184
@David Underwood
Exactly right, Bravo!!!
9
Dear sir fr. Citrus Heights: Exactly! you said it just as it is; rush to production and skip the redundant systems that are usually mandatory and essentially hardwired into the design of an air frame (of a modern aircraft), then throw in some bug fixes to compensate
Sounds like a Chevrolet design: putting analog pictures of a digital system (for it’s gauges, to give it the intuitive ‘feel’ of a previous model)
ps I both despise, but admire General motors for making excellent diesel engine packages, used in locomotives all around the world, then, For its automotive division (separate from it’s diesel) chev re-designs a new truck (engine compartment) to fit the Subaru Diesel V8 engine,and throw some aftermarket fuel evaporative measures on… Calling it the new, totally redesigned Chevy Duramax truck, and using the gravely voiced “Tough truck” to sell it to Stupid Americans who will buy anything that sounds truck tough and “ totally redesigned“ btw, That powerful Subaru Diesel V8 is turbo charged AND intercooled, so there is a lot more air ducting required in that enlarged engine compartment, to fit a gasoline Regularly aspirated engine there would be all kinds of extra space so they fill it up with all kinds of plastic engine covers and blah blah to make it look tough truck like, for the people who can’t afford the diesel package. Although this engine compartment has nothing to do with aerodynamics as the 737 max 8’s retrofitted engines do.
2
@David Underwood
I worked in the flight test department at Douglas in Long Beach on the Series 63 DC8s and the first DC9s.
Any pilot that's ever flown knows about 'weight and balance'. Weight is the total weight of the aircraft. Balance is a little more obscure but basically, if you put too much weight forward (or to the rear) the wings will fail to lift the aircraft. Such a condition is called a stall, and at low altitudes, is fatal, because the plane stops flying. The newer engines reduced the margins for the aircraft's balance. How does Boeing think they can 'fix' this out of balance condition with a software patch when the balance is a physical property of the airplane?
76
@Cal Pagevery good point. I am of an age when not every flight you took would be completly full. Innumerable times some passengers had to move forward or back to a different seat prior to takeoff to “balance the weight”
9
@Cal Page, the same way I suppose as we feel we can correct the environmental imbalance we’ve created for ourselves on this planet without any sacrifice simply through green technology. Boeing engineers are hardly unique when it comes to looking for shortcuts.
2
@Cal Page --->
AI is the dead man still standing w/ Fatal arrogance & inept design management.
1
Let's get this straight. The main design driver for a new plane was to keep the flight controls as similar to the previous model so as to keep down the costs of pilot training. What a missed opportunity for advancement of aviation.
15
@Harris Silver
Had to do primarily w/ achieving FAA expedited approval status on an expedited basis for 737(max) as 3rd gen derivative to remain competitive & in the hunt for market share (sales) up against competition from Airbus A320.
2
The 737 is the world’s best selling plane across all models. But of course it’s been in production a lot longer than the Airbus 32X family of aircraft. The fact that AA used their buying power to negotiate with Boeing didn’t change the fact that they still ended up ordering hundreds of Airbus aircraft (in addition to the MAX). How far behind Airbus was Boeing lagging with the 737? From a customer (airline) perspective, what’s the more economical aircraft to fly? As someone who flies every week for work, from a passenger perspective (which airlines don’t really care about despite what they might say), the MAX was pretty much DOA. Potential safety issues aside, Boeing had to sell an economical configuration that crammed as many seats in as possible with lavatories that are barely wider than an economy class seat. When given the choice, I would always avoid booking a flight on a MAX for the unbearable seating configuration.
20
In almost every human activity, but especially in Aviation, in and outside the cockpit, humility is the mother of the Chinaware Shop. An attribute that Boeing, throughout its history, an tragically especially recently, has often had great difficulties to internalize. The reaction of the top brass, to the A320 neo, as the article accurately describes, is vintage Boeing. Transpose this attitude to the construction of airplanes and you run the risk of missing the elephant in the room leading to disasters (human and commercial!), like the one of the Max 8. Boeings management, especially in the last decade and in this particular case, has in no way exhibited the depth required for the job.
8
I do worry about wiring mistakes in this new max planes as well. My experience in dealing with the wiring in the design on the planning IT system is that you make it such that you get it right with diagrams and plans outlined in explicit detail.
7
@Mark NOVAK
Wiring mistakes?
Airbus certainly can't be 'holier than thou' on that!
The massive A380 is assembled in several different European countries - wings in the UK, tail/vertical stabiliser in Spain and the rest in France and Germany. In 2004, it transpired that due to poor configuration and change control management, the UK and France only, upgraded to backwards incompatible wiring layout software - leaving the others still using the older system.
Every single A380 had to be re-wired, some 300 miles of wire each.
Not exactly a resounding validation of the virtue of a competitive free market system in determining what is best for us. Boeing sounds more like the victim than the culprit. Perhaps we should all know more about Airbus’s technical gimmicks that keep its airplanes up in the air too before we blindly go jumping into them instead.
2
@John Doe
And here is an odd comparison in cockpit control. The Boeing aircraft, across each model, uses the conventional "yoke" which looks a bit like a modified steering wheel. There are two yokes of course, one for the captain and one for the co-pilot. Those yokes are connected to each other so that either pilot has equal, and identical, control of the aircraft.
The Airbus, as I understand, did away with the yoke and instead, uses a joy-stick for each pilot. These joy-sticks are located nearest the airframe. Thus, the captain has a joy-stick to be used by the left hand, while the co-pilot's joy-stick is located for use by his right hand. But here's the weird thing about that, as I am told, those joy sticks are not conjoined, as it were. They do not function in synchrony to each other.
Therefore, let's say the pilot suffers a stroke releasing his grip on the joy stick. The co-pilot must than engage his joy stick. Now, during auto-pilot use during at-altitude cruise, this emergency is less of a problem for the other pilot.
If there is an Airbus pilot reading this and I am wrong, please advise.
Had an engineer protested at fitting a too large engine to a too small plane, they would have had to gamble with their family’s livelihood. There is no protection in place for whistle blowers. They can’t ring up the FAA if the FAA is staffed with company insiders.
Company and Industry interests
are taking over the regulatory function of our government regulatory agencies at alarming speed and two plane crashes with all on board killed is the quick result. The FAA was in on it.
What is happening over at the EPA will just kill people and destroy the environment more slowly. What is happening over at the Department of Defense and at the Pentagon will just kill foreigners more efficiently.
21
@BBB
A great point. Our government has, for year, been a revolving door for special interests. When a president sees industry profits more important than public safety, such as appointing coal industry executive to run the EPA, or pharma' sales executives get to run the FDA, etc, this is nothing less than letting those proverbial foxes guard the hen house.
When those shills, who were working for special interests, leave those jobs, they get their old jobs back as a reward for getting what the company wanted.
I hope the folks Down Under are too smart for that scam.
3
Boeing brought this upon themselves, and needlessly took a lot of lives with their two accidents. Moreover, they dragged their feet in remediating the defect, which was supposed to be done by the end of April.
Boeing deserves whatever big bucks products liability brings, since it had no hesitation taking all of the lives in two of its planes, due to its remediation delays.
Explain that to the families who lost family members.
After all, the Supremes majority deemed corporations people for undisclosed political donations?
Ditto mandatory arbitration for almost everything else.
It's about time for the our country to start demanding more of big biz, where money trumps human beings' lives and their livelihood.
13
It seems Boeing's traditional instincts of keeping the pilot in control during takeoff to cruise altitude has been the right one. With a few friends who've flown as commercial pilots, one is a retired 747 captain while the other received his captain rating last year in the A320, the desire for the pilot to maintain control vs. handing it off to technology before reaching cruise altitude remains strong.
Using auto-pilot technology during cruise is pretty standard. Today, much of the airport approach technology is also technology-riven though the pilot can easily take over.
This is an ongoing investigation so I won't speculate on anything. But so far, it looks like a lack of pilot training was a major factor in the two crashes.
6
Reminds me of what nearly destroyed US auto manufacturers--& why they had to be bailed out. When customers started buying smaller, more fuel efficient Japanese cars, companies like GM ignored the trend and kept producing gas-guzzling behemoths, then tried to catch up with inferior vehicles. When will American companies get over the idea that, just because they are American, the world must think their products are the best and beat a path to their doors? Instead of sitting on their laurels and expecting
American taxpayers to bail them out when that doesn't work, they must realizethe competition is truly global and innovate.
56
@Maureen Hawkins
I was a victim of GM in 1977. They sold me a Chevy Impala with an 8 cylinder engine and a Chevette transmission. It was a super lemon. I never bought an American car again.
5
Well, it would have been too expensive to invest in a new model - too long-sighted - too prudent - too not greedy.
22
This points out the terrible consequences over reliance on automation and computers. Relying on ONE sensor that can essentially take control of the airplane (when the autopilot is off), and not giving the pilots training in exactly how to defeat this system may be criminally negligent, but I'm not a lawyer. Sadly I doubt the race to have computers control more and more of our transportation, with less and less input from humans, is going to slow down at all.
8
@Mike I believe that all other auto-control functions of the autopilot disengage when the pilot yanks (not gently moves) the control column back. That is rapid resumption of manual control. That is ... all features except MCAS which requires a switch.
When the fit hits the shan there isn't time to hunt for a switch. Short iPad videos and white papers are no substitute for training. This was a significant difference and the certification should have held that pilot training would be required. Disconnecting MCAS as part of the existing system would have been cheap and not involved re-certification for pilots.
So where was the certification authority? The FAA? Umm, no. Boeing policed themselves.
Like that has worked out so many times before.
N O T !
11
Doesn’t the FAA report to the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell, leader of the right wing?
2
My understanding is the horizontal rudder kick was originally designed to be only 0.6 degrees, but was changed to 2.5 degrees after flight tests. That's one kick per MCAS alert, which will be substantially continuous if the AOA sensor has malfunctioned. This change from 0.6 to 2.5 wasn't communicated back to the FAA.
Even at 0.6deg it seems a (lesser) disaster waiting to happen, with only one AOA sensor input, and no (standard equipment) warning light to check that both AOA sensors are functional and in agreement.
As an engineer who works on software tools for the aviation industry, I'm shocked and appalled that any competent engineer couldn't see this coming.
IMO Boeing deserves what they get, they shot themselves in the foot by their own incompetence. and greed.
204
full authority of horizontal Stabilizer given to the MCAS system.
2
@John: I'm sure the engineers saw it coming but were overruled by management.
11
@John Boeing might deserve it but those in the planes that crashed and will crash didn't and won't.
3
They are still building the aircraft? Although I don't normally fly the main routes that the Max is said to be used on, I can definitely say that I will not fly on any Max aircraft, even if they claim to "fix" the problem. The Max is a result of cut corners and shoddy workmanship. Lord knows how many other problems can occur after this from an aircraft that was rushed purely for profit with no regard for passenger safety. I've flown on Airbus aircraft and always felt safe. Boeing as well. Although I am not refusing to fly in a Boeing aircraft at all, the Max is out for good. Plus.... All I have heard about in this article is Boeing's profits and reputation. So what? What about the 300 plus people killed so they can "profit"? What about their families? Just pay them big settlement, brag about how much they compensated the families and all is ok, business as usual? What Boeing has shown me is that they have no regard for safety, that profit will come before safety in their eyes. I personally don't want anything to do with a company like that. I also don't want to see thousands of people lose their jobs either, so I truly hope Boeing can get their stuff together, because rebuilding their reputation after this is going to be a very long and difficult road, at least in my eyes.
17
@Bill The cost to stop the line, wait, and start it up again is incredibly huge. It is cheaper to slow it down some.
Profit is their product, right?
W R O N G !
1
@Bill
While Boeing works to "fix" the software, I am still in the belief that a lack of pilot training is more of a problem than expected. Given more than 4,000 flights per week across the US in Max 8's without a crash, it sounds like Boeing is trying to catch up with Airbus' automation system.
Personally, I would rather fly on a plane controlled by the pilot(s), not by technology.
All of this push to automate what pilots are trained to do makes me want to change my travel plans to road trips. Even the old ad slogan from 50 years ago is sounding pretty good: Next time take the train. Oh, WAIT. Train engineers don't seem like a good combination either.
3
@Bill What is missing in all this is WHO ( by name )at Boeing IS RESPONSIBLE for this horrible blunder and thus WHO ( by name ) should be held to account.
When my husband worked for Boeing decades ago, he told me that the planes had multiple redundant systems, sometimes as many as 11. I felt very safe in Boeing planes knowing this. Now it turns out the 737 MAX depended on one AOA sensor. How could Boeing do this?
391
@janellej. Shortsighted stupidity and greed sound like good motives. This was very "un-Boeing like ", but they've changed.
30
@janellej
The other redundant systems were more money, welcome to 21st century capitalism!
32
@janellej Seems that there were more safety backups but at an extra charge (apparently way in excess of actual cost)
20
We criticize China for lack of innovation and the former Soviets for their old designs. Now we are putting new engines (that do not fit well) on an old design to save on the cost of designing a plane from scratch. Clearly the Max referrers to stretching an old design to the maximum. Profit and stock price over quality and safety. Getting the grieving families to sign away their rights is another Max low.
35
@Sutter
Putting these newer, more powerful engines on older-but-updated airframes sounds kind of like putting a turbocharger on a Yugo.
On the other hand, while the 747 is history — reassigned to package shipping and aerial firefighting — I think I read that the Airbus A380 just didn't have the market the consortium thought it had.
Airlines and airliner manufacturers can err in their decision-making processes. At least the short-haul aircraft from Embraer (a Brazilian company) and Bombardier (Canadian) seem to be doing just fine.
2
I have a strong feeling that competitive pressures have caused many other serious product problems but have never seen a collection of big problems of this type. One that I have heard about a few times is Andy Grove's pressure on his development team of the Intel 8086 chip to leave out some important security features and speed up release of the chip because of fears of what Motorola was doing, and the ripple effect of that on all the Windows crashes in the 1990s, but this is the wrong place for detail on that. There almost have to be examples in the auto industry, and others in the airline industry. And I think there are many examples in the software industry.
19
@MG
In the auto industry, we can look no further than Chevy ignition switches and the airbag fiascos.
Which is to say, I believe the industry excitement of "self-driving" cars and big rigs is a boondoggle dream cooked up by a bunch of silicon valley tech heads who want to automate everything they get their hands on. One can imagine malevolent geeks thinking of ways to highjack those automated cars and trucks using something like a police "speed gun" aimed to disable those cars.
The race for better mouse traps will never end.
1
@MG
Windows crashes of the 1990s were Intel's fault?
Very unlikely.
MS Dos was a crash prone piece of garbage in the 1980s too.
Funny, that you "forgot" that Microsoft solved the Windows 98 crashes and introduced the stable Windows NT both in the 1990s.
@MG What about the medical industry???
As a pilot for 30 years I think the problem is not all Boeing Software. It also seems to me that both pilot countries are teaching aircraft fly by wire and the pilots don't understand flying.
Or put another way they simply are not qualified pilots. I have read that there have been two runaway trim problems on 737s in the US and the pilots simply disconnected the motorized trim. This is probably because every pilot in the US began flying in 2 or 4 seaters and moved up from Private to Commercial, to ATP ratings long before they had the flyby wire machines that they now have. So people stay off of other countries airlines in the 2nd and 3rd world. Ethiopia had a 200 total time co pilot in their 737. No ratings at all to be 2nd seat in a 737.
10
@Bil and Marcia
I don't know about Lion Air, but Ethiopian Airlines is very well regarded in the industry for their flight training, maintenance training, and flight operations training. They in fact modeled their training program decades ago on the TWA model and have their own training university for pilot training, maintenance, and flight operations.
Which does not mean that pilot fault is not part of the chain of events that brought the Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX down... but I do feel you are over playing the "if they are 3rd world pilots they obviously are under-trained" meme here and completely ignoring the overall world pilot concerns now over MCAS, how it works, how to deal with it when it tries to fly the plane into the ground (something no automated software should ever do), etc.
73
The pilot of the Ethiopian Air flight had over 8,000 hours experience. When did Lion and Ethiopian Air take delivery of the Max and when did Boeing provide a flight simulator? Didn’t EU regulators require flight simulator training before this plane was approved in Europe?
1
@Bil and Marcia I have my doubts that a pilot with “30 year experience” would not show some empathy to pilots who lost their lives trying to fly an aircraft still in the takeoff phase, with unreliable airspeed instruments, with a software that kept pushing the plane’s nose down, with the stick shaking, with a lacking flight manual and training, and all this in a cocophony of alerts.
“Simple” indeed.
6
I was shocked to learn that Boeing appears to have adopted an attitude to the Lion Air crash that appears have been more marked by insouciance than any sense of shock, alarm or acceptance of responsibility for a crash, the characteristics of which appeared to represent a devastating design failure. Apparently vague assurances were given that a software modification would be ready by Christmas but that deadline passed without action, comment or explanation.
Even when a second crash in very similar circumstances killed another 200 people the company maintained a public position that there were not any serious problems and argued that airlines should continue to fly the plane. They even lobbied President Trump to prevent the FAA from grounding the plane. It was really only when gradually increasing passenger alarm and the fact that a number of countries grounded the aircraft and refused to allow the Boeing 737 Max aircraft to enter their airspace that Boeing (and the FAA) began to face up the the magnitude of the problem they had wrought. Sad.
114
@TJG
And for a while their appeals to Trump worked. I suspect his change of mind came only after some wise person in the White House (I assume they still have a few of those) explained that if an American Max 8 crashed, there would be no way to escape the political fallout.
8
A non-fault-tolerant safety system hidden from pilots with new and terrifying fault characteristics for a predictable fault?
What could possibly go wrong?
The Boeing 737-MAX was a good idea--addressing a major commercial opportunity.
The MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) is a nit in the overall design. The way it gently adjusts the horizontal stabilizer for 10 seconds, pauses, then repeats until the pre-stall condition clears or until it makes its maximum adjustment suggests a significant design discussion of how big a change to make, and how far to go.
The biggest design errors were clear:
1. Asking themselves if this system was "flight critical". More importantly, asking if the system's accidental operation would endanger the aircraft--and how likely that operation would be.
2. hiding the system, so pilots would not know of its existence.
3. Not verifying that the pre-stall condition was real by verifying the angle-of-attack sensor indication with the other angle-of-attack sensor, and also a "reasonableness test" based on other indications like speed and attitude from internal sensors.
4. Not conducting "what if" experiments on the cockpit impact of a false pre-stall response, and what the pilots would have to do to save the aircraft.
The repairs to the MCAS to make it fail safe are technically pretty simple.
The repairs to the Boeing culture to prevent future events may be harder.
108
Kind of crazy that a computer was able to take over the aircraft on the basis of readings from a single sensor (one angle of attack sensor) rather than two or more..
Even crazier that pilots were not told about the possibility and trained how to disable the computer.
HAL got the better of two crews with fatal results and the main fault lies with Boeing. Bring on the law suits.
17
As an engineer with more than 30 years of experience, I've never worked on a project that wasn't "Go, Go, Go" and an "Intense Pressure Cooker". Engineering is a complex, costly and time-consuming endeavor where unrealistic schedules are the normal state-of-affairs. This doesn't mean that safety is automatically compromised, unless the company is run by bean counters.
20
@W The consequences of bad engineering are often more serious in aviation than in most other industries. If the speedometer of your car gives a false reading, in the worst case you get a speeding ticket. If the airspeed indicator on an aeroplane gives a false reading, lives are at stake.
If the engineers at Boeing say that things were rushed with 737 MAX, I think we should listen to them, not brush it away by saying that all engineers are busy.
11
@Ademeion
Part of my experience is with aircraft sensors used on both Boeing and Airbus products. The article is merely confusing a high stress work environment with poor safety. That is not always the case, but it can be.
"Because the [software] system was supposed to work in the background, Boeing believed it didn’t need to brief pilots on it, and regulators agreed. Pilots weren’t required to train in simulators."
Umm...would that be the FAA regulators who outsourced regulation to Boeing employees?
Clearly corners were cut (faulty wiring blueprints and construction? Really?) and employees were aware of it, if people confidentially talked to the NYT about this.
I suppose there will be numerous Harvard Business School case studies on what went wrong here, but the sad part is, those case studies already exist for other products done in by corporate arrogance and unrealistic expectations.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you double a production timeline, burn out employees, and cut costs by cutting corners, down the line there will be problems.
44
Whoops, I meant "halve" a production timeline.
2
I find it interesting that my home town airline, Delta, has never bought a 737 MAX. What did Delta know or suspect about this ill-fated aircraft.
23
This was not just an issue of rushed orders and competition, this was an issue of figuring out how to make the most money with the least amount of expense and effort. Making safety features an optional and expensive add-on, is showing a total lack of moral leadership. When money becomes the bottom line, this is NOT a company one should trust in any way, shape or form. The short-cuts taken to save money on training is another example of money driving important decisions. Now with this recent unimaginable loss of life in the two recent crashes, a lot of someones should sue the bejesus out of this corrupt company. I am not a person who believes in all the lawsuits that plague our daily lives---but this is one for the history books.
137
Profit over safety; aided and abetted by lax regulation from "bought" regulators. Koch-style capitalism at its most vile and destructive. Some Boeing exectives need to be in jail, right alongside the FAA regulators - who didn't regulate.
132
How nice of the CEO to make a visit from Chicago to where the planes are actually made.
10
@Alan Dean Foster
I was deeply suspicious of Boeing's decision to relocate its headquarters to Chicago from Seattle. From what I read years ago, it was simply because the new CEO preferred living in Chicago. That was a huge expense for one executive ego.
Perhaps they should reverse that decision and move back to the Puget Sound area to at least appear to be a hands-on management team. A good decision for PR and managment efficiency
Was this a portent of things to come?
1
Don't make excuses.
Any management that should put safety features on an optional buy list is incompetent.
This company is part of the walking dead. A zombie company.
If you want to see enemies of the United States, here they are.
81
Boeing Perfectly exemplifies American greed and American capitalism taken to the ugliest “max.”
Boeing is now intertwined with the age of Trump, and as I’ve said repeatedly I will never ever ever fly a Boeing 737 max plane until the day I am in the grave. It is readily apparent that this is an inherently flawed airplane design with engines they did not match the fuselage in a 1965 design. There is nothing that Boeing’s steak eating lobbyists or spinners can do to convince me (or the public of the World) that this is a safe plane to fly. Shame on Boeing.
What is scarier is it Boeing (and Southwest Airlines) still thinks that everything is great.
And the really crazy part is look at all the Wall Street hucksters (Morgan Stanley raised their target price on Boeing from $450.00 to $500.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Thursday) that even as of the last few days are putting 450 and $500 price targets on their stock. The ridiculousness & hucksterism of the Trump era will never stop. I’m afraid.
69
Excuse me, but the FAA certified the 737 Max in 2015. Who was President in 2015?
The issue/problem is much deeper than the actions of the current Trump presidency.
16
@ColoK
I'm afraid you are right about that. Not that it was Obama's fault the FAA approved the airplane. But I would argue the problem dates back to the promotion of Alan Greenspan to Fed Chairman in the late 1980s. His self-described libertarian philosophy of economics not only embraced the thrice-failed trickle-down theory, he believed in — and put into practice — near-total deregulation throughout American industries.
From his shareholder value at the expense of the country, to "releasing the creativity" of the free market, we lay most of what went wrong with our economy, safety regulations, environmental protections, bankers run amok, manufacturing jobs sent off-shore, and now this decision-making at Boeing.
As much as I hate Trump and liked Obama, neither of them played a role in these accidents. It was Greenspan's obsessive role in deregulation that created this mess.
4
@ColoK
Trump shut down the FAA for 35 days. Trump never bothered to appoint a head to the FAA.
Trump has no conception that his decisions have consequences that you and me and others may pay the price of. He is a child.
Dump Trump.
3
Where are the murder charges?
Send the entire Boeing C-Suite to prison.
32
Boeing’s leader, W. James McNerney Jr.: Educated at Yale.
Chief executive of American Airlines Gerard Arpey: Educated at The University of Texas.
Both schools just implicated in the college admissions scandals.
Perhaps if America’s leaders were educated at merit based Universities, where money did not trump all else, we would not have lives lost over stupid profit based decisions, and planes would fly based on the merits of their safety.
23
No surprise here. Boeing with the 777 and it lithium ion batteries 🔋.
4
@Elhadji Amadou Johnson
Not the 777. It was the 787 that had the lithium ion battery issues.
Like the 737 MAX now, the 787 received a cease-flying declaration by the FAA until the problem was root-caused and resolved.
Interesting note, in at least some cases with the 787, faulty wiring was the cause. Boeing has a history of wiring issues over recent years with their newer aircraft models, and the fact that they rushed the 737 MAX through design and completely (to this very day) have missing details in wiring procedure in the construction plans simply further portrays Boeing putting passenger and crew safety behind revenue.
3
@Elhadji Amadou Johnson
I think you are thinking of the 787 Dreamliner.
@Elhadji Amadou Johnson 787 not 777...
Months before Boeing’s announcement of the Max, the commercial airplanes executive, Mr. Albaugh, critiqued the decision by Airbus to refit the A320 with bigger engines, which could alter the aerodynamics and require big changes to the plane.
“It’s going to be a design change that will ripple through the airplane,” Mr. Albaugh said in the meeting with employees.
“I think they’ll find it more challenging than they think it will be,” he told them. “When they get done, they’ll have an airplane that might be as good as the Next Generation 737,” a plane that Boeing had launched in 1997.
In other words.. Boeing exec predicted stability issues with adding bigger engines to the A320 by their competitor, yet failed to predict the same outcome for the 737 MAX which they positioned as a competitor. /facepalm!!
Further.....
Just as Mr. Albaugh had predicted for Airbus, the decision created a cascade of changes. The bigger engines altered the aerodynamics of the plane, making it more likely to pitch up in some circumstances.
To offset that possibility, Boeing added the new software in the Max, known as MCAS, which would automatically push the nose down if it sensed the plane pointing up at a dangerous angle. The goal was to avoid a stall. Because the system was supposed to work in the background, Boeing believed it didn’t need to brief pilots on it, and regulators agreed.
Boeing impacted their own program, deliberately did not disclose MCAS to pilots or the FAA, and cost lives.
26
@Chuck
When the wire-head geeks in the aircraft industry thought they could dispense with pilot control — except in an emergency — the result was too much dependence on technology and not enough trust in trained pilots.
Automation taken to extremes can be very dangerous to all concerned. A couple of friends of mine who flew as airline captains have told me they would never let go of total control of the aircraft in takeoff and climb until they engaged autopilot at cruise altitude.
And there is an old pilot training instruction when it comes to handling an emergency: First, fly the airplane.
Which means, turn off the autopilot and take command. Then figure out what is going wrong. In the cases of the two Max 8's, it sounds like the pilots either didn't have enough training, or the software could not be turned off as with autopilot.
1
Seriously? How much lower can Boeing's reputation sink? Disgusting. So glad a criminal DOJ investigation has been opened against Boeing.
14
@Mary T.
Sadly though.....Too Big To Fail of course. The US government is so dependent on Boeing for defense, they will bail these people out of whatever fallout (commercial or otherwise) that comes from the final outcomes of the 737 MAX crashes.
1
“You can have it good; you can have it fast; you can have it cheap – pick any two.” — Red Adair.
489
Well, there are some combinations possible:
Good & cheap won't be fast.
Fast & good won't be cheap.
Cheap & fast won't be good.
It seemed that Boeing picked the last one and this decision years ago may have cost the lives of innocent people in our days. I hope regulators will do a better job to double and triple check a possible "software update" before these failed products will ever be use again. However, passengers around the world will make their own decision based on their confidence, and airlines know that. It's likely that the greed of few managers a couple of years ago will probably cost thousands of jobs now.
25
@AJ North, exactly - and that applies to nearly everything - any industry or endeavor. I've seen that statement prominently displayed in a few different businesses - but that was decades ago.
It seems these days fewer companies care about "good" anymore - it all has to be made as cheaply as possible, to maximize profit no matter what.
PS: Often now, you don't even get 2 out of the 3 - just 1.
20
Boeing is not the only manufacturer who had problems w/faulty data. The Airbus 320 had problems w/3 Qantas jets where faulty data made the pilots switch off 1 auto pilot & the 2nd auto pilot had problems too. This 320 pitched down causing injuries to people not belted in. The excellent pilot was able to stop the plunge. But it happened again. His military experience helped divert a disaster. Qantas investigators learned that the same thing happened to 2 other 320s. The Smithsonian Channel airs a program called Air Disasters. This episode is called Free Fall & is available to view now. In summary the Australian version of the NTSB could not find out why it happened but Airbus made changes and it hasn’t happened since, that I am aware of.
It appears both airlines have issues w/the amount of technology in the cockpits. Older pilots generally came from the military & knew how to fly a plane using instruments. We are teaching a younger group of pilots to fly a plane by pushing buttons that move levers. Are they learning the ‘older’ method of using the throttles & other devices in the jet? I don’t know. I don’t know how to fly but do enough research to know that both manufacturers need redundancies to avoid bad data being fed into the master computer. I know extra forms of amassing the data & confirming it is correct, is available. Shame on Boeing for charging extra for safety features. If things continue the way they are now, a future crash will be blamed on the computer.
25
Scenarios with similar consequences have occurred in the medical device industry. The worst happens when employees within the company are uncomfortable with cutting corners but lack adequate data (or whistle blower protection) to quantify the risk so they succumb to the pressures of capitalism.
It's not a black and white issue unless laws or the company's product development process is compromised. That is why a capitalist system with constitutionally enshrined moral principles needs strong regulations that FAA, FTC and FDA are supposed to provide.
11
Boy, this is new, a fossilized corporation acting like a monopolist and taking half the country down with it. Never heard of anything like this before.
Welcome to capitalism, everything is fine, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
27
Boeing said: “Safety is our highest priority as we design, build and support our airplanes.”
No...it isn't. Corporations have two key business drivers and ONLY two - - 1) shareholder value (stock price) and 2) executive compensation. That's it. Nothing else matters. 'Twas ever thus.
579
We would do well to require that corporations be certified demonstrating an ongoing commitment and evidence of adhering to a triple-bottom line in all decision making: social responsibility, environmental responsibility and profitability
56
@explorer08
As I like to put it: In most big businesses in the U.S. "The Golden Rule" has been supplanted by "The Rule of Gold."
24
@Zane
That seems exactly correct. If the corporate papers only include profitability in the mission than management has a fiduciary responsibility to the owners and they cannot (easily) promote safety and social responsibility. We need a new kind of corporation that requires balance. Where is AOC??
15
Cut the Fat out the company by Substantially reducing CEO COMPENSATION, AND Out source the Manufacturing within the USA.... It could take 40 years to build a name brand and 5 minutes to loose it... Provide all equipment for free... Specifically software updates and anything to save souls. Build it right one time then chargee reasonable service fees, to avoid crashes.
9
This article states that Boeing plans a "MCAS update" by April, and that it will "make a previously optional safety indicator in its cockpit standard."
I have 2 questions, which I admit are rhetorical:
1) if an "update" is needed, why wasn't this thought of BEFORE hundreds of lives were placed at risk; and
2) why should anything to do with safety be "optional"?
Competitive pressure is a lousy answer to these questions.
151
@Richard:
Let's break down the number of passengers who were at risk. . . Typically, the Max 8 has a max capacity of 172 passengers per flight; before its grounding, there were 8,600 flights; let's say, for the sake of potential lives threatened (admittedly, there are individuals who have traveled more than once on the aircraft, and the planes were likely not at capacity on every flight. . . ), roughly 1.48 million were exposed.
13
So, compare the Max record for crashes and deaths to the 767, 777 and 787...during the same time frame from product launch.
@JC For those who died and their survivors, probably because of Boeing's rush, statistics are cold comfort.
8
Classic corporate denial; they haven’t figured out over at Boeing that this plane is unlikely to fly again, and that their backlog of orders will soon evaporate like the morning mist.
It’s a bit reminiscent of the early days of the financial crisis in 2007, when each day the executives at the big banks would comfort themselves with talk of how it would all be better in the morning, so buy the dip.
70
There were 8,600 MAX-8 flights a week before the recent groundings. Only two of them have gone awry, but the media is painting this like the plane is a death trap. While I agree an investigation is in order, many people are overreacting ("I'll never fly that plane again!"). Assuming no more crashes, Boeing's stock might be a great buying opportunity soon.
5
@Amanda
Well golly with that logic if a plane does 10,000 flights in its lifetime it will only crash 1.2 times, count me in.
5
@Amanda Statistically two deadly incidents in few months make it more like a russian roulette than a dead trap. Consider that the number of worldwide yearly casualties, for whatever reason, is in the range of one thousand.
2
@Amanda
You can buy the Boeing stock that I just sold.
4
When I designed an error reporting system for medicine, I studied aviation's history and how aviators learned from mistakes. I was particularly struck by three issues that enhanced the probability of error in both fields: interruptions, lack of sleep, and hurry.
Interruptions led to the "sterile cockpit rule," where only issues related to the plane are discussed when the aircraft is below I believe 10,000 feet. Lack of sleep and fatigue were at least co-issues in the Colombian, Saipan, and Little Rock crashes. Hurry was the issue in Tenerife back in 1977, aviation's worst disaster.
When there is an extremely low non-zero probability of something bad's happening, extremely large repetitions will lead to a definite non-zero expected value of failure.
The Max 8 issue reminds me of Challenger, Columbia, and so many other disasters that occurred when something purportedly "safe" wasn't.
The other lesson yet to be completely learned, because the investigation isn't over, is that a concatenation of several factors is usually behind a disaster. Right now, I see lack of a second sensor, no simulation training and a different aerodynamic profile as factors. There will undoubtedly be more.
The Max 8 now joins household terms like "Challenger" and "Chernobyl" in the lexicon. May we learn from whatever comes out of the investigation, and may we apply the human factors knowledge to other fields as well.
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@Mike S.
And just like the DC10 became the MD11, despite the only real change was the 0 becoming a 1, this puppy will get a new handle. Soon.
16
@Garrett Clay I had that thought, too. It sure won't be the same name.
10
@Mike S.
Wow Mike. Very insightful and well stated. "Right now, I see lack of a second sensor, no simulator training...". Bingo!
5
737 Max was doomed from conception. It is a perfection illustration of a perfection storm of arrogance engendering poor vision and leadership and greed driven sales model.
NYT's reporting thus far showed clearly, having lagged behind Airbus because Boeing was too full of itself, Max was rushed and its safety compromised, regardless of what Boeing employees felt. The patch work of software remedy for a design flaw, however, could have been compensated if Boeing standardizes all the tools the pilots need to fly the new plane and the pilots were given some extra training or at least information on its new features.
But Boeing did not commit this fiasco by itself. FAA helped, a lot. I was incredulous to know that safety and communication features can be made optional.
This is a very good example of corporate malfeasance when there is no proper oversight. Greed is a very powerful motivator, much more so than concern for lives of others.
187
@Doodle
Until we have all the information and a definite cause of the Max 8 crashes, I wouldn't rush to judge Boeing.
Air accident investigators are trained not to jump to conclusions, no mater what the initial evidence shows. Only skilled forensic analysis and the expertise of investigators will fill in all the gaps. Only then can we say for certain where the fault lies.
Updating the venerable 737 was a smart business decision. Already one of the best and safest planes flying, there was no reason not to improve upon the design. Sure, a totally new aircraft could have contained more composite materials and other stuff, but essentially there is nothing wrong with the original design that has been upgraded numerous times.
If you want to talk about "arrogance engendering poor vision and leadership and greed driven sales model", you need look no further than Airbus and their decision to build the monstrous 500 plus seat A380. This plane will have the shortest operational life span of any recent commercial airliner. The Concord made more sense.
On the other hand, Boeing scrapped their plans to improve and expand the the 747, perhaps one of the greatest planes ever designed. Boeing recognized the market trend and quickly came to the realization that the market for ultra heavies was shrinking in favor of smaller more efficient twin engine long range jets like 777 and 787.
3
@Larry. There is a huge difference between corporate hubris that leads to a plane being an economic failure (A380) and the hubris that results in planes crashing due to shortsightedness and greed. The former is bad for the manufacturer, the latter is deadly for hundreds of passengers. I prefer the one that's bad for the manufacturer any day.
32
"Updating the venerable 737 was a smart business decision."
Perhaps, but rushing the update wasn't.
"Already one of the best and safest planes flying, there was no reason not to improve upon the design."
There were reasons, but saving money was considered more important.
"...essentially there is nothing wrong with the original design that has been upgraded numerous times."
Depends on the upgrade. They altered the flight characteristics of the plane considerably. One could argue that the design isn't original anymore, but it was treated as if it were.
"If you want to talk about "arrogance [...] look no further than Airbus and their decision to build the monstrous 500 plus seat A380."
You ruin your comment by parallelizing a plane being too big and too expensive to most customers, and producing a plane that's not safe because it was rushed out to save money.
"On the other hand, Boeing scrapped their plans to improve and expand the the 747, perhaps one of the greatest planes ever designed. Boeing recognized the market trend..."
Not true. In 2005 Boeing announced 747-8, the biggest 747 ever, for which the wing was largely redesigned, and the body was stretched for the first time in the history of the 747. This expensive redesign sold much worse than Airbus A380. There are only 154 orders to date. So Boeing decided to build it's largest passenger plane ever, that's not selling well, years after Airbus decided to build A380. Let's get our facts right, shall we.
13
Talk about haste makes waste. Not only does Boeing need to fix promptly immediate problems with the current design, it also, and more crucially, needs to go back to the drawing board and design a completely new flying machine, for as long as it takes to produce a state-of-the-art, technically sound, reliable passenger carrier. By then, we might have an effective FAA to complete the circle of trustworthy oversight and inspection millions of people around the world have relied on to travel safely in commercial airplanes.
12
So I guess its true that 'haste makes waste.'
Also, how did Boeing get away with making critical safety features an 'add-on option'?
10
@Dances with Cows: It became a critical safety feature when Boeing decided to use only one AOA sensor for input to the MCAS.
7
The GOP put industry insiders in charge of the FFA.
2
@John: Thanks. I now know what 'angle of attack' means and how it relates to the maneuvering characteristics
Boeing not taking Airbus seriously is very much like American automobile makers not taking the Japanese seriously in the late '70s and early '80s. The same is true for American steel companies when they didnt invest in new techologies practiced by their European competitors (hearth vs arc, etc...).
With this rush by Boeing, one cannot help if they somehow influenced the FAA for "self-certification" of their planes...
15
This article serves mostly to obscure the issue for readers, not illuminate the problem.
Every global business faces competition, every firm ramps up the sense of urgency, and employees report overwork, fatigue, and takes short cuts. Airline maintenance is no different. A breathless recounting of "go go, go" does not make it the real problem.
The problem, based on reports, is bad science multiplied by bad people. Upper echelon (for good and bad reasons) lost its moral compass. They placed the wrong engine (too big) on the wrong frame (too small), produced an aircraft too low on the ground, aerodynamically unstable, that inevitably pushed the nose down in flight. Then they relied on a software "patch" to fix the problems with basic aerodynamics.
Please call it for what it is, instead of resorting to "they were too rushed." People died here. This is serious.
The 'nose dragged down in flight' fixed by a 'software patch' signals failure of moral and ethical reasoning. It placed too much pressure on an untrained, nay unaware, pilots. Of course they would be flummoxed in real time, and panic, and try with what they know how to do, and then in most tragic terms, fail.
Both pilots on the jet in Ethiopia were under 30 (one reportedly 25?). Would you let your 25 year old ride your Ferrari with a large number of passengers when you know that the brakes are working only because of a software patch. Get real.
389
@Kalidan
I read this differently. With the larger engines on the plane the nose tended to pitch up, the software was installed to correct the steep upward angle from the larger engines, thus pushing the nose down to stop the plane from stalling from a to severe upward angle. The aerodynamics was changed. but the opposite of what you describe. What was severely lacking was training for the pilots, and Boeing making important safety features "bonuses" which cost more. Something that keeps the airplane from crashing is not a bonus feature.
50
"Every global business faces competition"
Well, that’s "illuminating"...
"...every firm ramps up the sense of urgency, and employees report overwork, fatigue, and takes short cuts. Airline maintenance is no different."
It seems pretty arrogant from you, who assumably have no first hand knowledge of the situation in the factory, to say there wasn't too much rush, when the engineers who were there say there was. Engineers say they had to make the blueprints in half the time they normally did, and that the blueprints were sloppy, and things were missing from the prints. I hope the investigators don't brush that side of the matter aside as lightly as you do.
"The problem, based on reports, is bad science multiplied by bad people."
Designing aeroplanes is engineering, not science.
"Would you let your 25 year old ride your Ferrari with a large number of passengers". "Get real." "People died here." "This is serious."
You tell others to get real, and you talk about Ferrari buses :-o. The pilots also weren't some random youngsters borrowing a fast car from their dad, but professional pilots, who were trained at a reputable flight academy, and were certified to fly the plane.
"...when you know that the brakes are working only because of a software patch"
You seem to be saying that the airline knew that there's a design error in the software system, and because of that they should have put more experienced pilots to fly 737 MAX's. Can't you see how illogical that is?
17
@Ademeion I'm afraid that there is one bit of gross inaccuracy in your statement. Very few pilots are actually certified to fly the 737 MAX because of Boeing's unethical decision to pretend that this new aircraft was not, in fact, new because the frame itself was a pre-existing one. There is only one training simulator for the 737 MAX in the entire United States (one of the largest air travel markets in the world, perhaps needless to say).
Meanwhile, Boeing told airlines and their pilots that this "updated" aircraft did not require new simulator time when they themselves *had not done due quality assurance on the aircraft*. It is literally *their business* to know that there is a fatal design error in the software system, but executives put profit above people. Can't you see how obvious that is?
12
I keep asking myself, where are the shareholders. Belatedly, the regulators have engaged. But not the shareholders. Given the size of Boeing, Vanguard and Blackrock must own substantial interests. Why aren't they making noise? Openly discussing a changing of the guard among directors and officers?
But maybe shareholders have been the problem. What group drove the decision to avoid innovation and instead drive Boeing to another redesign of the 737? Which group drove the decision to price impt safety equipment as expensive options?
It looks to me that the Boeing culture is the problem, and the shareholders must demand change. Sure, it means foregoing near-term profits, but those may be gone anyhow. This corporation needs to reinvent itself. And the mission starts with accountability.
47
@maqroll
According to publically available data, institutional shareholders owned about 70% of Boeing at the end of 2018.
The five largest institutional owned about *one-third* of the entire company. These investors were, in descending order of ownership:
- Vanguard
- T Rowe Price
- Newport Trust
- Blackrock
- State Street
So you're assumption is right on the mark: A very small group of institutions can pretty much call all the shots. They can prioritize anything they want when evaluating a company: Share price, community commitments, employee interests, consumer safety, and so on.
But it's not as simple as blaming these institutions. Understanding how they set priorities requires each of us to look in the mirror ourselves.
When individuals choose funds to put our savings in, how much do we think about social responsibility or safety compliance?
4
@maqroll
I keep wondering the same thing about Wells Fargo, an institution that is practically a pirate. Yet big investors such as Warren Buffet don't involve themselves. Our system is broken.
Let’s hear more about the relationship between those rushed Boeing sales, the faulty safety training for the Max and the acting Secretary of Defense, (formerly of Boeing)and possible kickbacks to Donald Trump for participating in the sale of 100 Max 737 to Vietnam.
154
@Ron Hertz
Happened too long ago. As much as Trump is a train wreck this has other origins.
7
@Garrett Clay
Perhaps "train wreck" is the wrong analogy here.
2
I suspect more legitimate players will emerge in the large airplane manufacturing field as a result of this needless and preventable tragedy, though I wonder and worry if making it even more cutthroat will further exacerbate safety...or might achieve just the opposite and make it safer, especially if the FAA decides to start fulfilling its duties again.
10
Just who is going to line up and buy these jets now?
33
There is a factor not mentioned in the article that is very critical. Many Boeing office facilities for its talented engineers and software developers are crowded, noisy, and distracting. In such an environment, the risk of making a careless mistake is high. While collaboration is of course essential, many times people have to fully concentrate on the task at hand. Doing the engineering design and analysis of a modern jet airplane is a very complex task. An office environment that facilitates such work is absolutely essential. Boeing too often failed to provide that.
79
New revelations every day, yet they continue to build the plane. At this point what else can they do, but canceled orders and law suits will likely ensue. Will Boeing survive this? I'm not flying on a MAX if or when they go back in the air, and I'm not buying Boeing stock no matter how cheap it gets. Also, I'd really like to know if Boeing had/has procedures for the individuals working on the project to bring up concerns as they worked out the designs, and if so did Boeing executives heed the advice of its own employees. Or, were all the decisions made by executives in order to meet deadlines?
78
@Ginger
I have been obsessed with the details that caused these two crashes.
There has not been anything new for a while now (at least a week).
Your decision to fly on a MAX is yours.
I look for guidance from the pilots of the 737 MAX who must spend many days each week flying the aircraft for guidance on the aircraft's safety.
The US pilots who demanded and got full information on the MCAS system after the Lion Air crash are confident in the safety of the aircraft based on their understanding and experience. The same MCAS "false-alarm" control action has been seen by several pilots who had the knowledge and training needed to understand what they were seeing. Pilots with knowledge of the MCAS were able to fix the false trigger of "stall prevention" and continue the flight with no drama and normal flight operations.
The proposed fixes and flight training will reduce/eliminate the MCAS control malfunctions--and the training US Pilots already have will respond routinely to any false triggers. Every pilot will now get the same (or better) training.
This aircraft type already has many millions of safe flight hours. It also has 2 crashes caused by what is now a well understood problem. That problem is proven be be manageable with knowledge and training alone. The problem itself will be much reduced or eliminated and all pilots will be trained before the planes carry passengers again. When they do, I will fly on them.
3
@Mark Johnson
None of that solves the original design flaw. Those fuel efficient engines seem to be incompatible with the old 737 design. No Max 8 or 9 software is going to change that.
8
@Mark Johnson
Thank you for a levelheaded, common sense, no-drama comment. It stands out in stark contrast to many of the remarks I’ve read on this topic on many Web sites over the last several weeks.
Many readers fail to realize that nearly all aspects of a modern airplane rely on computers and the software that directs them.
Perhaps they think that the stick/yoke is connected by a stainless steel cable running over pulleys back to the rudder or stabilizer.
Lots of comments start with the assertion that using the new engine was a flat out mistake that the Boeing Company attempted to paper over with a kludgey piece of software — rather than viewing the entire aircraft as an integrated system of hardware and software where during design both metal and programming are manipulated to achieve the best overall performance. (Consider the stealth B2 bomber with its engines on the inside and lacking tail, rudder, or stabilizer — it relies on sensors and software to do everything. )
MCAS, while basically functional, was not robust and tragically it’s likely that defect led to two crashes and the loss of lives. It needs to be fixed.
I’m with you. When it’s fixed I’ll fly on it.
1
The quality of the design teams and quality control in South Carolina has been substandard since Boeing began operations there.
Trash and lost tools left in newly delivered military jets, Patrick Shanahan's bizarre tenure at the DoD promoting Boeing F-15s at the expense of the F-35, and a host of bush league management and engineering practices are indicative a company deserving investigation and indictments.
214
@UTBG
What does this have to do with the MAX 8? SC assembles the 787 Dreamliner. MAX 8 was neither designed nor assembled in SC.
6
UTBG; I agree and note that the South Carolina Boeing plant is a no union shop that pays considerably less than the Washington plants which are union. I have been offered jobs at SC numerous times as a inspector, I’m a old ex airline A&P with Inspection Authorization but the money offered was laughable.
You get what you pay for and Boeing ain’t paying much in South Carolina.
30
@SC, it's indicative of Boeing's corporate culture. Boeing's rot in SC no doubt has infected its operations in Washington.
7
Ethics is why college is important. Most tech schools who factory out engineers and software programmers do not teach ethics. I know how hard it is to stop the process and tell upper management there is a glitch. But when there are lives involved knowing about ethics and having a conscience can bring about change in the organization that is long term. Unfortunately money is at the bottom of upper management decisions. If only they had vision and instead looked to the future of building safer airplanes and winning the trust of passengers rather than lining their pockets now. I am quite sure Boeing personnel knew about the errors and glitches. No software programmer or engineer would be worth the money if they didn't know about the glitches. Criminal charges should be brought upon upper management people but also those engineers and programmers who knew. Only in this way, can ethics seem to matter to those who have the responsibility to stop the money machine.
90
@amrcitizen16
College is way too late to start teaching ethics. If you do not have a moral backbone by 18 you are not going to find one in college.
As you mention "money is at the bottom of upper management decisions." We need a totally new way of thinking. A new economic system that places people before profits. That type of thinking needs to start well before college. It needs to start at home and be reinforced from kindergarten forward.
83
@amrcitizen16
Don't drag the engineers into this. They designed a more robust system which Boeing management decided should be sold as an "option" and which Ethiopian Airlines management decided not to purchase.
Also this : "no software programmer or engineer would be worth the money if they didn't know about the glitches" Is a false statement. I'm not sure why you think engineers are immune from mistakes but I've been programming for 30 years and I promise you LOTS of things come as a surprise to the developers. There is no perfect system because there is no perfect person.
I don't think that was the case here -- this one sits on management's conscience.But I'm tired of hearing people talking trash about the engineers.
17
And don't leave management, business, and MBA programs out of that. It seems like those programs may be teaching ethics as "growing the business", not a duty to your customers.
Remember the outrage when Carter pushed for laws making it illegal for US companies to pay bribes overseas? That showed us a lot.
14
Haste is waste. The CEO of Boeing should resign immediately for at least the perception that Boeing was in a hurry to beat Airbus. There could be certainly more factors that could have contributed to the crashes of 737 Max but the current perception and the grounding of all the 737 Max is the sole responsibility of the management of Boeing.
161
@Girish Kotwal Unfortunately, James McNerney has retired. He was CEO when all of this got started. He nearly destroyed 3M Company (my opinion - where I worked), but we lucked out when he got the offer from Boeing. He basically parked himself at 3M until the Boeing job opened up.
I am curious to know if he "Six Sigma'ed" Boeing. It's a great way to destroy moral and reward do-nothing brown-nosers.
6
or at the very least take no bonus this year and instead live on the $23 million from 2018. Although having to survive on his mete $1.9 million salary might be tough...
11
There was far too slow decision-making for the go-no go decision on the MAX by Boeing leadership that put them in this time crunch leading to the shoddy safety decisions. Based on watching them closely for years, it was probably because they were obsessed by union wage issues and strike history in Washington State so they had to do the big job of setting up new facilities in South Carolina. But it seems like Boeing's obsession with the union was misplaced because their profits in the last year have been so large that even if they had paid the workers more, right now they would have been sitting pretty for many years. Instead they focused on South Carolina and on every last dime of profit. Safety features as extra-cost options, really Boeing?? Boeing and its large shareholders wanted it all, got greedy, cut corners, and will pay the price.
479
@Will Hogan
One can only hope that they DO pay the price.
35
"The price" is the well-off losing money?
I won't shed a tear... unlike those who have lost their loved ones
32
@Will Hogan, the dead and their loved ones have paid the price.
32