McDonnell Douglas bean counter takeover of Boeing. A pox on the merger!!! Boeing used to be an Engineering company--engineers were God now it is the finance people.
8
How is the CEO, Dennis A. Muilenburg, still around? I don't fault him for a design flaw since he doesn't design the plane, but he is responsible for the culture of a company, and clearly that is a problem at Boeing. The CEO needs to take responsibility and resign.
9
I just keep thinking about Arthur Miller's play about WWII: All My Sons. Although published many years ago, it's as relevant today as it was then. Money is saved in the manufacturing of an airplane part which leads to the death of pilots - including the son of the parts fabricator.
How can a company value profit over the safety of human beings flying in their planes? Obviously it's easier to justify than we thought.
For shame, Boeing!
10
Where's the cry for information on Members of the House and Senators to whom Boeing or its officers contributed? Find out and name them. See what they've done as to the MAX and the crashes and said to the FAA. Speak out!
2
Ever drive a car on a dark road at night and have one of the headlights go out but the other one was enough to keep you from driving off the road? The easiest way to cut cost is avoid non-essential redundancy but it’s always a stupid thing to do when a system is critical.
3
Safety first, always.
Boeing has spent many decades ensuring that basic principle was followed. Not so these days, and many people have died as a result.
Ironically, this was also bad for Boeing's bottom line; even its profits were undermined.
When will companies realize that like the earth, they're rapidly approaching the tipping point where exploitation without regard for life no longer pays.
4
Gosh—- passenger safety after corporate profits- that’s really unusual.
Corporations are people. They’re not very nice people.
6
You can bet every dollar you own that if executives were to be held personally liable for this kind of damage, then they would build a company culture and set of processes that would prevent this from happening.
Unless that happens, nothing will change.
9
Rename the 737 Max B, 666, and then sees who flies on it anyway. It’s like an airplane never crashed before and no big American company tried to make a profit. It’s like at the public school where I teach, leave the old pipes but put a sticker on ever sink not to drink from it, Boeing should do likewise so long as the lawyers are happy.
3
When it comes to airplanes, SAFETY is number one, not profits. If Boeing can’t make a safe airplane, they should go out of business. Full stop.
9
@MIPHIMO
Today's fighters are unstable w/out software. More down to earth, your car would not work without software unless you're driving some late 1960's 1970's vehicle.
1
I am a pilot. The Boeing 737 max is not a aerodynamically sound aircraft. It's nobody's fault. The process for certifying a new airplane is so expensive and onerous that Boeing will always lose to the only other company in the business; Airbus. if they don't cut corners by modifying an existing design, the Fed Gov will say that Boeing has a new aircraft. This is why little airplanes look exactly the same as they did 50 years ago. No new designs are allowed unless they get millions (or billions) of dollars of testing. Obviously, the Pentagon has a different set of rules. The engineers at Boeing are way smart, like most engineers we all know, unfortunately they had to make aerodynamic compromises to the existing 737 in order to satisfy the the FAA. And I'm not saying the FAA is at fault! Most people at the FAA are taking a pay cut for the love of aviation. It's just another case of technology leading regulations.
5
@Epicurus
So throwing up arms in frustration cause the problem is insolvable?
Fatalism in a pilot? Now, there is another worry.
4
@Epicurus
Now this is funny.
The European consortium of airbus will beat Boeing because Boeing is hindered by regulations.
Here is what causes danger: drinking koolaide
6
We don't need regulations or watchdogs. The free market is working just fine! So what if a few hundred people die
7
Only when there are consequences to the CEO will this behavior change. Fines are simply a tax write-off.
13
Profit before safety. What a sad legacy. Strange how this occurred AFTER HQ was moved from Seattle to Chicago. Just sayin'
7
“Boeing tried to avoid adding components that could force airlines to train pilots in flight simulators, costing tens of millions of dollars over the life of an aircraft”
I’ve seen this sort of thing in other projects. There is one driving non-negotiable requirement that endangers the entire project. I wonder if they bit the retraining bullet, they could have got the plane out faster, cheaper, better anyway.
2
Boeing's behavior isn't particularly shocking - what should be the most concerning is that the FAA has outsourced to the companies most of the oversight. The excuse is the cost to hire and retain people with the expertise to actually regulate and investigate these companies. That should be a cost we are willing to bear, because ultimately lives are at stake.
6
He felt?
For pity’s sake engineers don’t have feelings. Engineers are experts at what they do. It is his expert opinion it could have made a difference. Not his feeling.
8
Having worked in the Aviation and Aerospace industry, I can attest that this sounds all to familiar. Cost reduction pressures driven by quarterly profit motivations are all too real.
Often, critical safety measures are compromised. One simply has to look at the rolodex of cost reduction activities at Boeing over the last few years to gauge whether or not safety measures were compromised for the sake of cost. It is almost a certain bet that it was. Cost reduction activities are built into cost curves and profit projections. As such as they are audited items. Pull out the information.
Too often, in our industry, we bring in external consultants with little to no experience in product design, supply chain issues or operations management to chart the course. That is a gargantuan mistake.
It is a good bet that Jim McNerney, when he was CEO, reached out to his consulting alma mater to help chart a cost reduction path. Whether or not the consultants promoted this particular endeavor related to the sensors is debatable. However, if the government and watchdog agencies are half serious about pursuing this to fruitful completion, it will become all too clear that quality issues are often compromised for the sake of cost. That is unconscionable.
12
Just as the cover-up often turns out to be worse than the crime, this is going to end up costing Boeing far more than it would have cost to fix the problem and for airlines to adequately train their pilots. If only they had listened to the engineers instead of the bean counters.
10
What interests me is why these planes are still not flying. The original estimate was that they would be cleared for service in June. Now, no projected date is being mentioned. Why is it taking so long? Are they finding other problems, or is the MCAS actually not suited to the task? It's pointless to speculate - the process is a black box - but I fear that this story has a long way to run.
6
@Stevenz
I will do my very very best researching that I shan’t be on a 737Max should they ever come back.
5
Disintegrating two shuttles wasn't enough. (Those were spectacular, but the relatively few people killed were volunteers and not innocent consumers.)
I'm tired of the culture of corporate arrogance. Some of us are more than tired; from various causes, they are already dead.
Trump has it backwards, as usual. We shouldn't be executing those "nasty" immigrants, nor "treasonous" whistleblowers. We should be executing executives, and self-dealing politicians. Let's start with him, and work our way through Wall Street.
13
Profit before safety? Was Marx right?
6
Iago told Othello What's in a name? It takes a lifetime to acquire & a moment to lose. Boeing's unsafe 737 Max design didn't wreck Boeing's name by itself. It was the subsequent actions that did it: not telling customers about the software, nor about the extra pilot training requirements, then stonewalling everyone after the 1st crash, & even after the 2nd, continuing to try to evade responsibility for its actions.
This string of soulless decisions & actions--with no sign of anything like a corporate change of heart--means that the flying public cannot trust Boeing any more. It has wrecked its "name" for a generation.
"Men must be governed" says Captain Jack Aubrey (of the Aubrey-Maturin novels about a British captain in the Napoleonic wars).
Well, corporations must be governed too. They aren't innately evil. They're innately amoral. And who defines all regulation as "over regulation"? The GOP. All businesses will be tempted to cut corners without oversight. Of course there's such a thing as over-regulation. But not in this case, at the cost of 100s of lives & the maiming of an important American company's prospects.
So for the sake of both lives & the American GDP we need to vote in Democrats & vote out Republicans in 2020. Just as the wheelman for the bank robbers bears responsibility for people the bank robbers killed, the GOP's constant demand for eliminating regulations makes it share responsibility for these deaths with Boeing.
Factio Republicana delenda est!
15
Well, here's the smoking gun...
1
Now is a good time to sell Boeing.
1
This reminds me of the exploding gas tanks on the Ford Pintos.
4
This nyt article seems to be the first concrete link to the CEO of Boeing to the decisions that doomed the 737max. I have a $10 betbwith an active American pilot friend that theb737max will never fly again.
6
This type of problem has been in the making for a long time. Cumulative errors, mishandling of legitimate concerns, prioritizing the wrong things all contribute to the culture which has brought the once proud and enormously respected company to this point. I mark the beginning of the the downward trend from an engineering driven company to finance driven as it's headquarters move from Seattle to Chicago. The rationale for the move was hollow at the time and the notion that business could not be adequately conducted from Seattle was absurd. Boeing was Seattle's pride, the workforce was excellent, well trained and committed to excellence. I'm not sure where this will end but I do not see Boeing ever being restored to it's former glory.
6
Of course, what did we expect? We live in a country in which everything involves profit: You die in a Boeing 737 because a safety system was well, too expensive to be installed. You die of cancer or other ailments if you, well, cannot afford to pay the for profit Health Industry. C'est la vie: money over human safeness and dignity.
8
"A Boeing spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said in a statement, “Safety, quality and integrity are at the core of Boeing’s values.”"
What else would he be expected to say, being a paid spokesperson for Boeing?
5
We love flying Southwest. When the Max becomes operational, we'll fly other airlines for about 3 years. Other people can volunteer to be guinea pigs.
9
The McDonnell Douglas mind set comes home to roost.
5
I'm sure the same thing happen with the Deepwater Horizon disaster. There is a very safe way, a reasonable safe way and a more economical way of doing things. Economics wins until the penalty is too severe. Has Boeing learned a lesson and adjusted is economic model?
4
What's wrong with that? People run a business because it generates profits. If people are not looking for profits they'd be in the Salvation Army already.
1
Um, not when your product category is commercial aviation, where customers pay for the ability to arrive safely at their destination. Infringing on that part of the implicit contract both with their airline customers and by extension their passenger customers to simply earn more of a return for Boeing shareholders, means not holding up the industry’s side of the deal.
9
Dead people make bad customers. Angry relatives of dead people make bad customers. Killing your clientele is not a good business model, period. Further, killing people is a crime, and should be treated as such. It's hard to do business in jail. People tend to not trust you so much...
That I had to write out this answer at all suggests that there is something very wrong with our society on a fundamental level. This is not a point up for debate - understanding this very basic concept about not killing your customers is (or should be) a basic criteria for being allowed to function in our society.
12
I only have a masters degree from a highest level university. Rarely can I easily, if at all, decipher visual efforts to explain a technical or comparative data. This one gets an A+ and further
indicates that it was a very faulty design without adequate safety considered for actual usage of the design, or adequate training and understanding by potential pilots. Thanks for you very clear visual explanation.
8
I beg to differ regarding the quality of the technical explanation. None of the three authors, nor their editor, apparently understands the concept of airspeed.
I have masters degree too. But only from a state school.
Nearly every business, government at the Fed, state or local levels, or US military prays at the alter of "efficiency" with everyone being urged to do more with less.
I worked at a company that was a vendor for a much larger one. For 4 years in a row, the smaller company would bring a handout showing how they were keeping any increase in parts in check, to only reflect raises in the cost of everything. The larger company came to these annual meetings for 4 years in a row with a demand to not only keep the prices the same, but actually reduce the prices each and every year.
I was later unofficially, but basically offered the job of President, a move from Director of I.T. I was grateful for the confidence, but declined sharing that I was planning on leaving the company because of particular savage-competitiveness found in this industry.
Efficiency is wonderful, but it is only one of many values and goals for any given company or part of the gov. At some point, you can get no more blood from the stone, I mean, hat's off from getting blood out of a stone in the first place. But from here on out, you will have to sacrifice other things to get more efficiency.
The bottom dollar is just that. America in particular needs to start thinking more comprehensively and holistically, rather than singularly at the very end of the profit statement.
How about consider integrity and safety for a minute, for example?
14
Boeing convinced themselves and their customers and their passengers that their 737 was essentially the same one that rolled out in 1967. It was not. The new engines altered the flight characteristics both in ways known to Boeing and ways not known.
Of course the FAA knew this. Conservatives assure us that regulation is bad, costly, burdensome; bureaucrats with their data and all that expensive and time-consuming testing. Fast forward to fast tracking airworthiness certification, by the applicant seeking the sign off. What could possibly go wrong? Now conservatives point out that hindsight is easy. It's easy for us; for those who died in the accidents, it does not exist.
10
Having a strange curiosity in the analysis of plane crashes, the one thing I have observed is that most accident are usually the accumulation of several smaller failures eventually coinciding in the same point to bring down a plane. The article in NY Times magazine two weeks ago covering the Indonesian and Ethiopian crashed only reinforced that observation.
Not not give any forgiveness to the technical failures of Boeing, one of the key points that I observed is the reliance on pilots to use automation to fly the plane. The picture of the Indonesian pilot was somewhat disconcerting in that he looked like he should have been playing video games rather that flying a 737. In both crashes, the pilots were not skilled in analyzing the problem they were having due to their lack of experience and training. Both of these accidents were recoverable failures. Just look at the difference in outcome with similar planes with Sullenberger's landing in the Hudson River. He was an experienced pilot.
In addition to the technical corrections needed on the 737 MAX, both Airbus and Boeing need to work together to insure that the planes that are being sold in countries that may not have the most developed air authorities insure that pilots are being trained properly. It seemed to me that this is a know issue, and both companies are more concerned about sales then safety.
2
In Alaska Boeing has a historic relationship. It’s kind of a local industry. When the HQ was removed from Seattle and the leadership given to non engineers and cheaper non union plant developed out of the north west it’s not surprising that quality has taken a huge hit. Incredibly sad for the life lost and frustrating to those of us who have admired and trusted this iconic industry.
8
The Max is inherently metastable due to its hardware configuration; it needs MCAS and well-trained crew for it to be airworthy for commercial passenger transport. Boeing decided it would be more financially rewarding to modify the 737 than to develop a new platform, and they did not adequately evaluate the risks of their decision, regardless the motive.
This is yet another example that competent oversight by bodies with no real potential financial conflict of interest is important and necessary to assure public safety. Sadly, the ability of the FAA has been eroded to the point of insufficiency, and worse it has become a shill for Boeing. The FAA should be revitalized and transformed into an independent, technically-competent oversight body, which is be easier said than done even in the best of political environments.
5
@StarMan
Key problem - the revolving door between government and the privatesectir. How to block that? Requires a cifferent political mind set.
1
Thank you, Mr. Curtis Ewbank!
This is going to sound old fashioned, but when I was kid in the 70s Wall Streetification hadn’t yet taken over so much of American culture and the way people think about their work. People took pride in their jobs. It wasn’t about being exploited in a gig culture. The USA built great cars, great TVs, and there were certain standards that were expected to be kept.
Now I just landed at JFK and the passport control area is an embarrassing disorganized mess compared to similar airports in Europe, Heathrow for example.
The FAA should make Boeing scrap the 737 MAX ASAP and move on. That jet plane will not regain the public’s trust to fly. The money men at Boeing thought they could outsmart physics and the engineers.
10
Profit over safety. Nowadays a familiar theme. When will integrity - whether in business or in politics -
win the day? Soon, hopefully, otherwise the price paid will far outweigh the irretrievable losses.
4
As true as this complaint may be, there were simple and obvious flaws that whose would almost certainly have prevented the accidents. Specifically (1) there were 2 air speed sensors, but the MCAS software only used one of those sensors data as input, and (2) the difficulty of overriding the MCAS and the lack of training.
With regards to (1), the MCAS software was outsourced to a foreign country. Who made the specs to use only one sensor, and why - there should be a record of that decision? How carefully was Boeing overseeing the outsourced software ? These details should be investigated - in detail - for the sake of future safety.
4
Boeing aircraft (and Airbus aircraft) are international products, with components from across the globe, but all the components are manufactured to Boeing' specifications. So nice try at blaming foreigners, but it's still all down to Boeing in the end.
Long ago, I blew the whistle on a large engineering project. I saw that the science was leading us to a dead end. I did not understand that the executives did not want the whistle blown since a dead end didn’t matter to the cash flow. Guess what happened to me.
10
The first point of failure was not with the MCAS system but rather with the top executives who failed to anticipate in a timely fashion the need for a plane to compete with more fuel efficient Airbus models. With no time to develop a new model, patchworks were aded to an old model. Simply add more fuel efficient engines, they thought, but they had to be mounted differently because of their size. This made the plane unstable and thus came MCAS.
To compound the problem, the MCSAS was designed with a single point of failure (one angle of attack sensor), akin to getting in a car and forgetting to close the door. This failure is incomprehensible to aircraft engineers and deserves further investigation. But the first failure initiated all the rest. Was this criminal? Perhaps but at the very least it indicates we cannot rely on Boeing's top executives to make decisions regarding plane safety. A new design and new executives are called for.
7
Bottom line capitalism run amok. How many shareholders actually question company executives about safety concerns? Unless the punishment really hurts, the corporation won't learn a thing.
4
Capitalism, greed, and the socialism of the military-industrial complex that subsidizes Boeing combine to put profits over safety.
The intersection of capitalism and greed is the origin of much of the harm corporations do to us and the biosphere.
Boeing is a "person," according to SCOTUS and Mitt Romney.
Seems to me Boeing should be put on trial for negligent manslaughter, convicted, and then given a corporate death penalty.
5
I may be mistaken, but didn’t trump brag about how HE helped Boeing reduce their costs? He supposedly said he cut cost by $1B, but ended up costing $2B more instead!
7
Same story at the nYC Department of Transportation. City Planners make engineering decisions and engineers are told to sign. And people die.
7
Someone said the military version didn't crash. But it looks like there is no mil version of Max. KC 46 uses MCAS and Boeing did add safety features to that MCAS, not to Max.
With the excuse they're different planes. They are different, in another way.
Airlines and Boeing minimize costs for each other, military pays full price. A tanker with precious jet fuel and two pilots gets more safety features than a planeload of civilians.
13
Boeing has been dominated the aircraft industry too long and it is about time that more new and innovative management personnel and engineers to join force with Boeing and rebuild a new Boeing Company. Boeing may spent more efforts to build American jet fighters for our defense industry and they should pay more attention to the safety of commercial airlines passengers safety issues. I felt Airbus manufactured commercial airplanes are much more comfortable and safe. For example Airbus 319 and 320 are comfortable and more leg rooms for passengers. Now Boeing learned a lesson and they should wake up and produce perfect passenger airplanes. Safety is the most important factor.You don't play games with peoples lives. As a frequent traveler and One K member for United Airlines I wish Boeing should strengthen their design and engineer experts. Not just paid low wages to cheap labor from India and other Asian countries. I trust American educated engineers.
5
@Tysons2019 Legroom is more a matter of the airline than the airframe. China Air's A320s are torture boxes, while EVA Air, A320s are comfortable. Same airframe. Different airline.
2
I wonder how well the people responsible for this decision are sleeping at night?
Greed, pure greed, reigns supreme.
5
Like Drew Carey once said....They sleep on a mattress full of money!”
Penny wise ...., and now look how many billions you lost over this max engineering mistake. What has happened to our made in the USA pride?
6
A system based on greed cannot self-regulate. The nature of greed is too short-sighted to even consider it's own long term good, let alone the safety and welfare of others. Time and again, every industry that lobbies for and receives relaxed regulation abuses the privilege.
9
Perhaps instead of criticizing Boeing for making decisions like this you should be criticizing the budget trash airlines in the third world who demand the cheapest planes and send out fools in the cockpit with poor training.
Every single mode of transportation ever made has chosen profit over safety. Why doesn't every single car that Mercedes makes have their most advanced safety systems standard? Why does Toyota let you add airbags? Do those decision not take lives as well for profit?
The disdain for the same corporate culture at Boeing which has made airplane crashes nearly obsolete because a couple of airlines send passengers up with pilots that do not know how to handle even basic emergencies is astounding. I would fly on a 737 8MAX with an American pilot any day of the week.
6
Great idea!! Probably what Boeing would have preferred too. Had they just been able to focus on pilot training as the sole cause of the crashes, none of the extremely troubling revelations about their decision-making process would have seen the light of day. Maybe the flying public wouldn’t notice the pattern and demand answers until a few more crashes.
5
@Ken Parcell The 737 Max is inherently unstable, due to moving the bigger engines forward and upward to maintain ground clearance without redesigning the plane, then adding software to compensate.
This makes sense in a fighter jet like the F117 Wobbly Goblin. Its pilots knew and accepted the risks. In a civilian airliner it's unacceptable, regardless of pilot training and malfunctioning compensatory software and sensors.
And the fact that Boeing didn't even tell customers about any of this means I can't trust this company any more. Nor has its actions after the crashes salvaged its once-sterling reputation.
4
American company, American engineers, American regulators yet you lay all of the blame on the foreign operators and pilots.
4
Thank you, Curtis Ewbank!
6
I think Boeing has to scrap this piece of junk entirely. I will never ever board one.
11
Because of the efficiency of the Max and the robustness of the 737 historically, Boeing was on track to sell more 737 Max's than they could make with untold fortunes in profit. Then because they scrimped on a few safety features and training, the program is in shambles and there is risk of destroying the entire company. Just shortsighted and stupid!
14
A more in depth version portrays more serious pattern and practice to some extent corroborated in multiple interviews w/ boeing engineering staff working on the project.
Boeing whistle blower’s complaint says 737 MAX safety upgrades were rejected over cost by Dominic Gates.
The NYT rendition somehow manages to understate issues involved w/ engineering & development of MAX and key malefactors directly responsible at Boeing.
7
Wall Street takes over. The engineers are shoved aside. What’s new here?
126
Just like healthcare in this country.
14
Isn't this the same as current GOP: Greed over people.
Money over dead body..
We have lost our way.. it's time to find balance and live for what is right as a priority.
4
Boeing is the best example of what is wrong in this country.
Fraud, coverup and deceit.
Fly Airbus!
6
That should be “… fly AN Airbus “ aircraft in the future
Coals to Newcastle. I believe Boeing made mistakes, serious errors, but a mistake it is believe Boeing cares not about our safety. Delaying return to service of a fixed Max is not good for the flying public either. Let the FAA and Boeing solve this without trying to throw fuel on a fire with a goal of destroying one of our great companies for destruction sake.
2
Just curious - Did James McNerny bring G.E.'s six-sigma program to Boeing? That could explain a lot (and cause a lot) about problems like this.
5
The only question little people need answered is whether and when Boeing executives and FAA regulators going to jail for the rest of their lives for the murder of hundreds of people. Call us when you have an answer to that question.
4
What should Boeing have spent for safety? After two deadly crashes, most would agree that Boeing and its client airlines should have spent much more. I estimate that Boeing should pay about $14 billion in compensation and penalties for the 737 MAX fatalities.
Eventually, wrongful death litigation will provide one possible answer to how much more Boeing should have spent. Meanwhile, one can estimate the dollar value based on the costs of existing regulations.
Policy makers often use VSL (Value of a Statistical Life) to decide if a regulation is worth the cost of implementation. When business fight regulation, VSL is the value our government uses. In practice, VSL varies, but $10 million makes a useful working number. Roughly speaking, if adding a regulation costs less than $10 million to save a life, the rule passes the cost test.
With about 350 deaths on two 737 MAX jets, Boeing should have spent up to $3.5 billion to prevent these tragedies -- assuming a corporation should be made to hold our lives the same value that we assign through our government.
Various allegations indicate that Boeing could have foreseen the likelihood of MAX crashes. So punitive damages might also apply. US law allows three times the direct loss as punishment.
For its inaction, Boeing might face about $14 billion in compensation and penalties for the deaths caused -- not counting penalties for misconduct in the aircraft certification process.
Even that cheapens our lives.
1
Finance and lawyers are the source of all evil. When these groups control a company, planes will fall from the sky, trains will derail, and confusion will reign. On a more macro scale, a civilization will gradually move towards impoverishment and diminished freedom.
They have neither the training or the mindset to deal with complex systems.
7
The circumstances around Boeing mirror the attitude of US car companies in the 70’s and on. Companies that were once proud of their engineering forsook the obvious—making a good car—for the death spiral of making money. David Halbertstam’s book The Reckoning describes it in detail. The scary part is that now the totality of the ruling GOP wants to bring that attitude to all of America. Billions of dollars are in the hands of a few and they care only about making more.
7
It's very clear how murky this whole situation is given the Times coverage of it. There have been numerous articles that seem to blame a combination of Boeing, the FAA, focus on profitablility, and a desire to slip things in without training pilots on them. Then there was the big Magazine article, by a pilot, basically saying that despite the regulatory and design issues, that any well trained pilot should have quickly concluded that there was overtrim going on, flipped the switches on the controls, and should have easily recovered control of the planes prior to the crashes.
Hard for a layperson to see these two different interpretations and devine where the truth actually lies. Clearly, the fox watching the hen house is an issue, regardless. Clearly, offering the signal highlighting a disagreement between two instruments as an optional upgrade rather than standard equipment is concerning.
Sounds like Boeing erred in selling so many of these planes to airlines where they knew that pilots were underprepared, and then setting them up for failure by not requiring additional training. Sounds like the airlines erred in failing to properly train their pilots. And, sound like the regulators failed, both domestically and abroad, in allowing all of this.
8
@Mark Terry The design is flawed and dangerous. As a pilot, I would be afraid to fly on this plane.
5
@Jennifer Hayward Good to know. I had concerns about a single point failure problem, however the pilot who wrote in the Sunday Magazine seemed to feel that the worst that *should* happen is that a relatively easy to respond to a "runaway trim" or overtrim problem. He does at one point say that the design is very flawed, but seems to prefer the narrative that the pilots, airlines, and maintenance people were more at fault.
It seems so many were at fault that a full fault-tree analysis really needs to be done, and all of the underlying causes need to be addressed.
2
I think there comes a point at which the C.E.O should be forced out to let the company address all these complex issues and move forward.
You can't change a company's culture while the same old C.E.O is still around. Look at the Wells Fargo case …. a fresh start is not easy, even almost impossible, with the same old people running the same old show. Maybe it's time to give Boeing a fresh start.
8
The role of regulations is to force companies to factor in the cost of safety failures up front, rather than after an "unforeseen" accident.
But the Trump administration is more focused on corporate profits than public interests. When you fail to calculate the cost of safety failures, profit motive is always going to look like a better investment. People will die, but the math has been rejiggered to ignore those "costs".
4
Maximizing profitability has flaws.
Where was the FAA?
If the Justice Department is investigating Boeing,
is it investigating the FAA too?
10
This company shouldn't be in business anymore. But there is no American company to take its place and indeed only one other such company in the entire world, so they'll continue on. But there had better be some substantial changes to that corporate culture and leadership.
7
"A Boeing spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said in a statement, “Safety, quality and integrity are at the core of Boeing’s values.”
Maybe, it's just that Boeing doesn't value any of those values more than it values the value of money and profit.
7
The corporate culture of boeing is so similar to the corporate culture of the US government, it just makes one wonder what's in store for Americans. It is not looking good for innocent passengers in either case.
8
I'm probably overgeneralizing, but the lack of government oversight must be at the very least partly responsible of all those deaths.
That's why "deregulation" as a political campaign issue causes me to seek out a candidate espousing smart regulation where lives are concerned. Trump and Republicans come to mind.
18
It's a flying machine. Cutting costs should be the last thing on anyone's minds. Boeing's image & reputation have been tarnished by poor, weak or inattentive executive decision makers.
Hundreds of people died in two terrible crashes. Thousands of people have been bereaved.
Boeing needs to do the only possible rational thing: come clean, fully clean; overhaul the process; pay significant compensation -- the kind that serves as a reminder not to repeat such egregious failures.
It will take years to rebuild confidence with the public.
Meanwhile, the WTO's decision against Airbus does not make Boeing look any better. Boeing has been cutting costs: wrong choice!
9
Looks like they could have saved billions of dollars. If they had done it right the first time.
20
I can't imagine anyone being willing to fly on a 737 Max ever again.
The U.S. will be a third world country until it develops ultra high speed trains in a way that China and other progressive countries have. We are in the dust of the world's leading countries; stuck in the mud and trying to jump over it in airplanes which are an environmental disaster.
8
@john michel America IS a third world country -- infrastructure and healthcare are but two reasons.
6
@Bella Wilfer You are absolutely right. Our political system is definitely 3rd world or worse.
@Bella Wilfer ... and a third reason would be the political circus presently going on under the Big Top. Embarrassing.
This issue isn't black and white like most people want to believe. The engineering design on this specific system(MCAS) was poor. Please remember that there is not one engineer who designs all the new controls. You have everything from strong experienced engineers to new hires who haven't designed anything more than what they cobbed together in college. The engineer who wrote the MCAS requirements/automation needed more oversight.
The thing with oversight is that it adds cost. These are your more experienced (and expensive) engineers. An executive looking to make his/her numbers may have a difficult time evaluating the effectiveness of the principal/chief engineers that spend a large portion of their time reviewing designs. The design engineers can say " I delivered 10 systems on time and on budget" while the Chief engineer has to say "I delayed 4 major projects due to safety concerns and these changes also added $10K of cost for each unit sold.... But it reduces the likeyhood that end users will be harmed."
Over time the staff gets cut until the schedule starts to be impacted. During that time you also loose some of the internal knowledge and lessons learned from the past. Finally you end up with people who aren't ready to design a system by themselves doing just that. Its a structural problem with blame for all.
Synthetic speed itself wouldn't have fixed this problem, however if used to determine AOA sensor health, then it could have been part of the solution.
7
@Stublepudge Very interesting. It sounds like the peeling away of the oversight layers of the process is an invisible change from the manufacturing standpoint. Do we need to regulate how airplane companies do design development?
@Stublepudge
Engineers had a saying -
Engineers just starting out from college are paid more than they are worth and senior engineers with years of experience are paid less than their worth.
4
@Stublepudge In other words, profit over safety.
1
Since cause & effects are rarely a known at the time of a decision point, what would their decision be today?
The cost of the safety item is now clearly minimal compared to the ongoing expenses incurred and yet to be incurred.
Short sighted bean-counter decision vs an engineers focus on safety and company reputation.
3
For all those that are out to slay the giant, the actual statistics on airline safety show that the number of fatalities per passenger mile has dropped significantly over the past 20 years. These crashes not withstanding, but the overall results have been outstanding.
1
@Ben P Um, it's possible to acknowledge general safety stats and also slay the giant who put profits ahead of safety.
1
there is an eerie similarity between Boeing/FAA and what is happening these days to the EPA and FDA. They are being decimated by this administration, the good professionals that they hired throughout the years are being replaced by political appointees. The levels of contaminants in our fruits and vegetables with pesticides are much much higher than what is permissible in Western Europe. Hence, I for one, will opt for an Airbus versus a Boeing every time I have a choice. My faith in US regulatory agencies to look out for the safety and well being of the American public is near zero
3
@Lorca
Putin has done his work. He can now retire in the comfort of knowing he put these people into power with the results yet to be imagined.
In such a corporate culture we "mere citizens" are nothing more than collateral damage.
6
Boeing is divided between gritty engineering and production facilities near Seattle and plush corporate headquarters in Chicago.
The engineers are concerned with safety and quality. The corporate executives are concerned with share price and profit. Both are ashamed of the 737max.
Perhaps the two Boeings should become re-acquainted by moving the executives into cubicles above the production floor.
Never mind, Trump is imposing tariffs on Airbus, and Europe will retaliate with tariffs on Boeing. In the end, Airbus will produce aircraft for the World market and Boeing will produce aircraft for the smaller American market.
And we, the American travelling public, will suffer anew the fear of flying in the cramped cabin of a Rube Goldberg contraption that depends on a computer program for stability.
3
This needs to be taken in perspective but at the same time Boeing must provide every last detail of the process and thinking by which it evaluated and then rejected synthetic airspeed for the 737 Max.
1
What a shame that money is often the main concern. Evidently, some people believe that safety is not nearly as important.
3
I worked for Braniff, the American Airlines as a aircraft mechanic. I saw first hand how the maintenance culture changed in the early eighties as the airplane people in leadership positions were replaced by bean counters. It was not for the better, safety wise.
Management saw aircraft maintenance as a liability as the maintenance department generated no revenue, just costs.
10
Reminds me of an old railroad saying:
Up the hill slow,
Down the hill fast.
Freight comes first,
Safety comes last.
6
The move of the Boeing HQ from Seattle to Chicago is telling and is part of a shift at Boeing from an engineering culture to a bean counting culture. It's one thing to skimp when designing a system for processing credit cards, another when designing a system for defying gravity.
19
How many examples of unabashed corporate greed that causes immense harm is America going to accept before it recognizes that government regulations are a necessary control in order to protect Americans.
21
Software will never fully fix fundamental hardware problems.
Yet in the rush to meet schedule demands, and in an effort to maximize profit, engineers concerns and opinions are often made subordinate to program managers' relentless chase of a Gantt chart and associated milestones.
4
I'm a commercial pilot, not an airline pilot, but I understand these systems. It is inexcusable that Boeing put the lives of 346 people at the mercy of a cheap device, one of which had already failed. In 2011, the flight crew on a Boeing 737-800 reported that the "angle of attack and airspeed failed" and declared an emergency. These sensors are subject to obstacles after takeoff and other damage on a regular basis. They are responsible for multiple data streams which pilots depend on. Criminal indeed!
45
The corporate culture responsible for this flawed design should have been countered by a robust FAA with the engineering and human dimensions expertise to unearth the flaws and insist on their correction before the aircraft was certified to carry passengers. That takes adequate funding of the agency and cleared-eyed oversight by Congress. Instead, Boeing was given way too much latitude to self-regulate. That, as the late Senator Fritz Hollings used to say is, "Deliverin' the lettuce by way of the rabbit."
Ultimately, we are all to blame. We want rock bottom airline ticket prices and cheap government. We got what we paid for.
10
No. We are “not all to blame.”
Put the blame squarely where it belongs: On corporate executives who sacrificed safety on the altar of profits.
1
Make the CEO personally liable for problems then the humongous CEO salaries would be more acceptable. You would also see much more personal attention to detail. Sorry Mitt Romney Corporations are not “people too”. Humans are people and that’s who should accept the liability personally.
20
I flew many times on this plane before it was grounded. I came to the conclusion that the “MAX” in the name referred simply to profits for both Boeing and the air carriers. The seats are so crammed in that going to the tiny restrooms for anyone other than a child is a real challenge. An Air Canada crew member told me the galley is too small and being located next to the restrooms in an awkward way is very difficult to access due to the restroom line that develops due to too few restrooms.
Shame on Boeing and the carriers for sacrificing everything that is safe, decent and dignified for a few more seats-worth of profits.
26
Money over safety, who’s surprised by this? The management, who are directly responsible for these deaths, are facing untold golden parachutes. If I were a stockholder, I’d be livid. Their stupid decision has cost Boeing lots of money, yet I hear no calls for justice.
19
You can bet that Boeing has an army of lawyers looking at cost/benefit analyses. "Let's pay each family 10 million to agree not to sue". It would be cheaper than fixing their planes, and since Boeing is all about maximizing stock value which means higher executive bonuses that's what they'll do.
13
Boring saves on labor costs by expanding in China . They were so desperate to weaken the union that previously had built Boeing into a powerhouse. Resignations are needed.
22
How interesting it is that the military version of this plane has not had these problems! When the FAA (run, of course, by Trump's incompetent appointee) relegates safety responsibilities to the people who are supposed to be the subjects of safety regulation, the fox will do what the fox wants.
The same is true of Barr and Trump - with Barr being a Trump sycophant, he should be prohibited from investigation of or in any other way interacting with the prosecution of his brain-damaged criminal boss.
Something stinks in both camps (and most Trump-appointed agencies), and the smell is growing by the day.
The military has its own pilots and engineers that vet (and help design) THEIR aircraft and its modifications. The FAA should be the civilian equivalent, but it certainly is not.
Just one more example of THE SWAMP. Trump hands this and the administration of all our other agencies to industry lobbyists whose primary allegiance is to their buddies and their portfolios, NOT US.
8
@RealTRUTH Partisan politics has absolutely nothing to do with this. It's nonsense and unnecessarily detracts from the real issue.
7
@Dave
Tell that to the Trump-controlled lobbyists who head most critical Federal agencies. Are you THAT unaware?
3
@Dave Wow. Excellent argument. Thanks for setting everyone straight.
1
If they ever get this thing air worthy, which I am sure they will, they ought to change the name of the plane. Who, nowadays, is going to want to fly on a plane named 737 MAX?
6
I wonder if he will be asked to testify before Congress. Or maybe lives don’t matter.
4
Where was the FAA and Dept of Transportation?
Willfully failing in their roles to protect the public, it seems...
Perhaps Elaine Chao -- aka Mrs Mitch McConnell -- can answer the question?
Or be removed from office for endangering the public and prosecuted for culpability in large losses of life due to her willful failure to carry out her oath of office.
8
Obama needs to testify before Congress. The plane was basically approved during his administration.
2
@Richard Wright
Sorry, that sounds like utter and complete disinformation.
The problems with this plane emerged in the last several years, while Chao and Trump were in office. Chao ignored the reports of problems! That has been reported in the Times, and elsewhere.
Maybe it's time to stop blaming Obama for anything and everything that has ever gone wrong?
Especially by Trump and those who seek to justify all the clear evidence of Trump and his "administration" not taking care of the non-.01% of the people in the USA!
6
How is that money saving strategy working out for you now, Boeing?
Just another average day in the world of late-stage capitalism.
11
@Nick Schleppend People died, this is no longer a business decision. People need to go to prison.
3
Maybe Muilenburg and other executives should be indicted for manslaughter. I hope so in their greed and profit over safety.
7
Having to train pilots would have cost millions of dollars over the life of the aircraft. Remind us again how much money Boeing's CEO is paid annually...?
The plane is "on a tight development schedule," for whose convenience? Only one entity's: Boeing's; not the public's. This factor right here seems a ludicrous one to impose and adhere to, literally at the costs to lives.
It's hard to believe how little Boeing's stock declines when news such as this breaks. I'm beginning to believe these newfangled software-focused airplanes are going to become the flying death traps of the future, in ways the more mechanical planes never were. But they're going to be just as dangerous and will make flying fearful again--unless you ride an Airbus.
9
@Diane Incorrect. You neglect the fact that airlines were pressuring Boeing to develop a more fuel efficient Boeing 737 and that it was their desire to make the aircraft type compatible with previous generations. Boeing is in a difficult spot -- it's hard to call out their customers. They made mistakes, of course. It's like a burger joint calling out their customers who got sick when they asked for their burger cooked rare.
And for the third part of your comment regarding Airbus aircraft: NEWSFLASH, Airbus aircraft are 100% controlled by software. And pilots still manage to crash them -- and not pilots from 3rd world airlines (AirAsia 8501), but from countries like France (Air France 447).
What is common across all aircraft types is airmanship -- somehow we've lost that when we started to use computers as a crutch. But computers are here to stay and when they fail, just like their mechanical counterparts, pilots need to be prepared to act decisively. THAT is what it comes down to.
9
@Dave Don't blame the pilots of Air France 447, which plunged into the Atlantic on a flight form Rio to Paris. Crash was found to be due to inconsistencies between airspeed measurements, caused by the aircraft's pitot tubes being blocked by ice crystals.
1
Greed can be a killer.
What is more valuable: Over 300 human lives or 300 millions dollars in profit?
6
@Inga Dora Björnsdottir Clearly it depends on who you ask. Perhaps the board of Directors need to face manslaughter charges since they won't fire the people responsible, they share culpability.
5
Gordon Johndroe: "Safety, quality and integrity are at the core of Boeing values". Question for Jondroe: How do you square this with the fact that hundreds of your customers died?
6
So, this guy let people die because he was afraid to lose his job?
1
Boeing's response should be to fire the exec and promote Ewbank, but we all know that won't happen.
3
So the labor unions fight for the rights of the workers but not for the rights of the passengers. No wonder union membership is sinking!
1
@William Perrigo How do the decisions of white collar engineers have anything to do with labor unions?
9
@William Perrigo. What exactly does your comment have to do with anything? If passengers want a “union” , let them start their own.
1
Seems Boeing safety-tests its planes on paying passengers. If enough people die to enough outrage, it will make some software changes to the poorly designed plane. Then it will put the plane back in the air to see if any more passengers die.
That's Boeing's safety program.
9
I think these latest findings pretty much repudiate the story in the Magazine a few weeks ago that blamed the crashes almost exclusively on pilot error. Boeing has a lot to answer for.
30
This is similar to the problem we've seen with hazardous product recalls by the FDA (e.g. cobalt hip replacements that left metal debris in peoples hips causing cobalt poisoning). The manufacturer cooks up some rational for why something with substantial design or material changes is still similar enough to something already approved and in use that it should be fast-tracked for approval. The regulatory agencies are chronically underfunded/understaffed so this clears their workloads. The net-net is the public ends up acting as new product guinea pigs until enough have sickened or died to force the careful design and manufacturing scrutiny that should have happened before regulatory approval. The Boeing 737 to 737 Max transition wasn't a superficial makeover, the changes substantially impacted the plane's aerodynamics, just as switching from plastic to metal artificial hip components had wear-and-tear implications that should have been looked at more carefully.
6
"....According to Mr. Ewbank’s complaint, Ray Craig, a chief test pilot of the 737, and other engineers wanted to study the possibility of adding the synthetic airspeed system to the Max. But a Boeing executive decided not to look into the matter because of its potential cost and effect on training requirements for pilots...."
Regardless of why Boeing did or didn't consider a "synthetic airspeed" feature, it would not have prevented the 737 Max MCAS failure.
Synthetic airspeed features on the 787 use information from an inertial guidance system (speed) and angle of attack sensor. If the 737 Max had had this system it would have had limited utility since it was the angle of attack sensor that failed that caused the MCAS to also fail.
What is instructive from the 787 is that it has three speed sensors and determines a "voted airspeed" from the three. If the 737 Max had had three angle of attack sensors it could also could have had a "voted angle of attack" to provide to the MCAS which might have prevented these disasters.
8
Eventually planes will have one pilot and a dog in the cockpit.
The pilot is there so the passengers think someone is flying the plane and the dog is there to bite the pilot if he touches the controls.
22
@Glenn
As yes, the Airbus philosophy of building passenger aircraft.
1
Although this is depicted as a safety over profit issue ,there seems to be lots of animosity to the concept of profit altogether.
Lets think this through for a moment .
Some of us appreciate having the option of air travel .
We know that it cost billions of dollars and years to develop a safe and relatively affordable airplane .
We are glad that thousands of Americans many of them not particularly wealthy have scrimped saved and delayed gratification so that the funds needed can be pooled and allocated to aircraft development .
In addition to delayed gratification these citizens have also put their money on the line . They may lose all or part of it .
We reward them with profit . Not obscene profit but only so much to entice them to delay gratification and and put their hard earned money to risk .
What happens if they attempt to charge too much and make obscene profit ?
You guessed it right . Inevitably one or more competitors will enter the market and undercut them .
How low will it go ?
It will go so low until its not enough to entice people to save and risk there money .
At the end of the day profit is simply the minimum payment /reward needed to entice people to take the risk .
Would you risk your money for the good of society with no commensurate reward ?
Guess what you can do it too . Start today to think of things that you can live without at least temporarily, open an online trading account , and buy some Boeing shares with the saved money .
1
@Ben Thank you. Not defending Boeing...but all designs involve cost/benefit decisions. Some costs and some benefits can e unforeseen. We love unforeseen benefits....the internet and ecommerce....not the costs...e-surveillance and phishing attacks.
1
Wow. An automated program capable of over-riding a pilot’s attempt to course correct, by driving the nose of the plane into the ground. Fantastic.
Why was the Concorde grounded, again?
9
A long chain of human errors caused the crash. Then there was 9/11.
The animated explanation of the angle of attack sensor problem embedded in this article is VERY enlightening.
If I'm not mistaken, that sensor seems to be mechanically actuated based on airflow(?) since it has a horizontal fin on it?
This strikes me as being obviously prone to failure, for among other reasons, that the device is external and exposed to wide varieties of temperature, weather conditions, bumping into gantries during 'pushback', etc.
Why not use an electronic level, like the type found in practically every smartphone on the planet now? Picture a 'bubble' level like carpenters use that is electronically calibrated and monitored.
4
LOL! what was I thinking?? That would cost too much money!
:-/
@Mikeweb As Einstein pointed out, the effects of acceleration are indistinguishable from those of gravity. An accelerating level would give inaccurate readings unless computer-corrected against some independent source of velocity data.
4
@Harvey Wachtel
Thank you for pointing this out. It's been many decades since HS Physics class, and my college Econ curriculum never covered such topics.
"Mr. Ewbank said that he did not initially file a complaint during the development of the Max, in part because the “fear of retaliation is high.”" When I began working at a company that used the Six Sigma quality management methodology, I was taught that a problem that could be fixed for ten dollars if it was discovered at the earliest stage in development would prevent the problem from going to the second stage of development that, if discovered, would cost one hundred dollars to fix but, if missed, would cost ten thousand dollars to fix if discovered at the third stage of development. People like Mr. Ewbank should be treated as heroes because they can prevent the billion-dollar mistake.
28
@Bikebrains
General Electric was a big cheerleader for Six Sigma. Look how their stock has performed - lousy.
@Bikebrains
For more details on Six Sigma at GE and at 6S inventor Motrola's decline see
https://sixsigmafails.com/ge-six-sigma-failure
Aircraft design needs to be supervised by people who love airplanes and money, but love airplanes more. But it is people who love money more whose rise to the top comforts investors and convinces them that the company is being run for them. Such managers reduce the risk that perfectionists will waste money and time, but they introduce other sorts of risks to which investors are blind. Investors see Boeing's problems as ultimately being public relations problems -- will the company be able to repair its reputation and stock price.
8
"...the work force tasked with making executive managements’ fever dreams a reality."
This pretty much sums up management's view of their employees at most US corporations nowadays.
5
Having been involved with the 737 since day one,it is somewhat shocking to this writer how the approach to design has changed. Using a single sensor on a system as critical as he MCAS would never have been even thought of. In addition, the models since the 737-200 are totally different aircraft than the -100 and -200 models and should not have been approved under the original 737 type certificate. The FAA has been faulty in judgment for decades.
11
You Sir are so correct. What was the failure in their design process that allowed this to happen? Their FMEA was a total fiasco! (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis)
Cue all the Wall Street movies we've seen in our lives with cocky young executives barking profitable but ominous orders at the nerds who protect us, then reveling at nightclubs with models, thinking they're winning. "Don't gain the world and lose your soul..."
4
Got it. Basically a flying Ford Pinto
How many times must extreme capitalism and greed learn the same lesson?
7
@JimGord The Ford Pinto is the perfect parallel. I remember when engineers pointed out that it was prone to gas tank rupture in slow rear-end collisions, and that a $5 part would solve the problem. Lee Iacocca's response: "Go review the project goals. Do you see safety in there?"
This goes back to Yale where McNerney studied at Deke. He then went on to Harvard Business School and then to GE as a protege of Jack Welch and he finished his career at Boeing as CEO. This would be a good case study for HBS....
7
No amount of spin will cover the fact that the basic aerodynamic design of this aircraft is flawed. Using software to correct a basic instability of the aircraft is absurd. Boeing keeps talking about MCAS improvement as the end of the problem hoping the public will buy it. It is not the end of the problem. The design of the plane is inherently unstable, hence the need for MCAS. Neither me or my family will fly on a 737 Max. Ever.
431
@MIPHIMO
Just wait until Boeing eventually pressures the regulators to allow flights to resume.
The PR problem for the airlines will be immense and probably fatal if they try to push it. Soon, it will be a badge of honor for an airline to claim that they fly a completely non-737 Max fleet...
80
@bill then please explain the previous in-depth articles that describe the aerodynamic issues caused by the engine installation change. It’s been well documented.
76
@MIPHIMO
amen
5
There are always trade-offs made between safety and cost.
The accidents that occurred on the Max not coincidentally involved less experienced pilots yet no one seems to be suggesting we up the minimum hours needed to qualify, least of all the airlines because of cost.
As new safety systems are developed we don’t immediately retrofit all commercial airliners because of cost.
Boeing has a safety record of developing and manufacturing 1000’s or airliners in dozens of types and variations that is incredibly good and given the very real dangers of aviation quite unlikely.
It is in their financial interest not to make mistakes yet even with the best expertise and intentions and over-site at some point some failures are inevitable.
14
@Mark Marks
“There are always trade offs”
Not as deadly as this. Management overruled their own experts.
‘Less experienced pilots”
Less experience by what standards? Straw man argument.
They were experienced pilots. The Ethiopian system malfunctioned repeatedly.
‘As New safety systems are developed ...”
Of course you don’t apply systems to all airplanes. What are you talking about? What you do is review benefits across all your product line. You surely did that and made the decision that dealing with dead passengers is cheaper.
“Boeing has a safety record ...”
They used to have a good safety record until the mini-Welches did their best to destroy a great engineering company.
24
@Mark Marks The other day, I walked out of a bar and had to make a decision between safety and cost. Drive after drinking, or pay for an Uber?
If I'd chosen my pocketbook over safety and killed 346 people, I would be labeled as a terrorist, tried, and likely executed.
Should calling myself a "company" eliminate all responsibility for my choices? Does pointing out that I hadn't killed anyone in all my previous drunk driving escapades give me a free pass?
35
@Randall Great remarks Randall. Reagan started the whole cascade of profit before safety. So sad and scary.
11
This reminds me of Ford Pinto case of cost-benefit analysis and ethics. Won’t corporations ever learn? They are actually run by people. Where are the consciences?
126
@scm There are no real consequences for anyone at Boeing for this. Worst case: Boeing goes bankrupt. The rich shareholders and executives will continue to be rich, the middle class workers will get new jobs, and the low-level employees will lose their retirement money and be forced to work until they die.
The only people with power to change it are the ones who benefit from it being this way in the first place.
21
@Randall
Perhaps a worker takeover of the company would be a good start. Of course, this would need a conscientious wealthy benefactor to steer the deal & guide the co-operative through the first 2 years. This is how you get rid of the Wall street parasites & bean counters.
6
@scm Well when the stock price approaches zero it will be a lesson for corporations and their owners.
4
A valuable whistleblower ! Once again, an airline is busted for dangerous cost control decisions that killed hundreds of passengers. This was the same cause of the crash of Alaska Airline 261 in 2000. A technician was chastised for worrying about faulty J ring. His supervisor attacked him for not being a 'team player' - which reflected the pressure from above to deliver a plane at a low enough maintenance cost.
For profit systems cannot be trusted to err on the side of safety; they calculate tolerable costs of catastrophic accidents and reduce necessary protections.
There is no clearer argument for competent federal agencies, staffed and vigilant- to balance profiteering with public good.
2
Why is the Boeing CEO not facing charges?
Why is he still in his job?
Because of this, the Boeing board of directors is complicit in negligent homicide.
We all need to see these people doing the "perp walk" with steel bracelets.
23
This is a real whistleblower.
3
Blow to Boeing: China to buy hundreds of Airbus jets, in mammoth US$35 billion deal sealed on Xi Jinping’s France visit.......Boeing Study: China will need to spend $2.9 trillion on new aircraft and ground services over the next two decades, according to Boeing Co., hopes are fadiNg with trade dIspute with the world’s second-largest economy as its trade dispute with the U.S. rolls on.
Does this story really surprise anyone? After the second 737 Max fell out of the sky, it was just a matter of time until there was confirmation that this was all about the bottom line.
6
So many comments blame "capitalism".
What do you propose as an alternative?
4
@Austin Liberal Capitalism is not the culprit. Greedy, lazy, corrupt management is the culprit. This plane will never fly again.
1
@Austin Liberal
Nothing wrong with "capitalism" just combine it with a death penalty for corporate killers. It's call aligning the incentives.
1
@Zarathustra
The 737 Max will fly again. I won't be on it. Ever.
(PhD engineer, then in software design, development for half a century. Boeing had us flying on the beta release. Nope.)
1
From all I have read, Boeing erred badly in design decisions related to the safety of the Max and its MCAS system. As the recent major investigative article in the Times pointed out, inappropriate cost savings at Lion Air and pilot error likely also contributed to the first crash, and may have played the dominant role.
I don't think there's a "smoking gun" in this article. Most big companies have ethics lines for employee concerns. These systems receive thousands of concerns, and companies need to make thousands of judgement calls. Whatever we do, we don't wish to discourage these systems or their use.
Hindsight is always 20/20, and Boeing made many serious judgement errors. 350 people died as a result.
Be we need to face reality. Because of corporate consolidation in the industry, there is no alternative to Boeing for long haul passenger jets in the US, and only one viable alternative worldwide, Airbus.
If we allow the trial lawyers to bankrupt Boeing, a very real possibility, things will be a lot worse than they are now. Passenger air transportation is an essential service.
The best option in these circumstances is for the government (not tort lawyers) to punish Boeing, and substantially increase oversight, without putting the company out of business.
It is possible criminal charges against some executives are warranted; this is a judgement call prosecutors will have to make; hopefully they will do so rationally, not based on politics or emotion.
5
Just want to say: My engineering thermodynamics professor left Boeing for academia because he'd seen too many engine tests that failed on the floor rewritten into successful tests by the time the reports reached upper management.
Go to any engineering school and ask how many of those professors took jobs in education rather than put up with the quality and safety control shenanigans that go on in industry.
5
Good story. And I appreciate the tone in which it was told/written. The facts/allegations speak for themselves. It's an important subject. Names are named.
Whomever was responsible for writing and editing it should be transferred to the desk responsible for covering the presidential election and Donald Trump.
6
Imho, it is not Boeing's corporate culture that is the criminal issue here, it is indeed all of American business culture. What we see at Boeing is simply displacement of actual engineering and know-how in design, manufacturing, and quality being completely usurped by a management culture driven exclusively by financial considerations, which appear sound in the short term, but are deadly and fatal in the long term. The financial thinking has gone so far as to completely sublimate any actual product engineering expertise, and discount anything that costs "too much" in a tragic effort to get to the cheapest cost. We see this everywhere in all kinds of products daily -- how they get cheapened to the point where they no longer serve their basic functional purpose -- drinking cups too thin and weak to hold their volume, plastic breaks and wears out, toilet paper that disintegrates, container lids that do not seal liquid, automated voice answering systems that no one wants to speak to (instead of a human for customer interaction),....and new airplanes that nosedive after takeoff. It's all the same disease, imho.
6
We learned quality control from China.
1
@Charlie Chan Actually it was Japan. You do know there is a difference?
@AgentG Boeing also outsourced work to save money. This is a corporate culture infested by MBA graduates who think that tableau, statistics and spreadsheets can replace knowledge and expertise, and short-term financial gain can supplant safety and quality.
3
It's impossible to keep costs down after a crash. You've got lawsuits to battle. Maybe it's a better cost-saving strategy in the long term to focus solely on preventing crashes.
5
NY Times, thanks for the information and to the hero, Mr, Ewbank, who may need a new job.
Remember the FAA hearings during the Bush administration? As a former private pilot student, I recall the spectacle. At that time, Congress featured FAA staff persons who had been physically threatened during aircraft safety inspections. Maintenance was simply not being done. The inspectors were told they were not allowed to report. The intensity of the industry and FAA corruption was notable. These recent tech improvements do not matter if the system is corrupt. Typically, everything which goes wrong is "pilot error" according to the usual FAA accident report; "The employee also did not recall Boeing executives citing the potential impact on pilot training when deciding not to study adding the system." Re the cite on stalls, I can tell anybody that a stall is basic. Stalls are sometimes fatal, even in smaller craft. If Boeing can't design a craft that costs this much and can't avoid a stall, Boeing needs to leave the industry. The description of the malfunction is horrifying. The pilot is prevented from knowing his craft's stall status and can't save himself or anyone else.
The record of GOP and regulatory enforcement? What should be a routine business procedure (inspections, training in a large company in the transportation industry) often becomes a whistleblower issue. In aircraft, shouldn't safety be the paramount and expected concern?
4
I think people don't have a conscience because they are unhappy-money is the only satisfaction , not another's wellbeing.
When I was in the USAF in the late Nineteen Sixties, I aced my 5-level (43151E) Specialty Knowledge Test, and I still remember some of the questions. One question was, "Why are the engines of a B-52 located below and in front of the wings?" The answer was, "To prevent flutter and stall."
I have read the 737 MAX had an engine installation modification to allow larger engines by raising the engines relative to the wing. I sure hope Boeing saved a lot of money with that brainstroke!
7
The whole affair was because Boeing went cheap. When they discovered the instability, had they redesigned the wings / engine mounts, none of this would have happened. It is ironic that their attempt to save $ millions, cost them $ hundreds of millions. They jumped over a dollar to save a dime.
Lastly, this was criminal. They knew better, and chose not to do the right thing. Boeing officials need to go to jail for this, possibly some officials at the FAA as well.
8
There is no evidence that these 'pilots' really knew how to use the manual trim controls that were right in front of them, and meant to be used in this exact sort of situation . They just continued to fight a malfunctioning automatic system while making illogical conclusions.
The reason why these planes are not splattered all around the globe is that most airlines hire better pilots- Pilots that are into aviation, not just the money, and that goes for the airlines too.
Both crews experienced 'run away trim'- a not unknown problem.
They could have turned off the trim motors, the switches were right in front of them, and easy to see. And then move the manual trim wheels that are sitting right next to them. This is what they were supposed to be trained to do . But they did not.
As far as blame goes , we have a lot of talk now. I suspect a lot of it originates with the possibility of lawsuits , and who you gonna sue? The pilots, who are dead and didn't have any estate ? the jerkwater airlines that are mortgaged to the hilt and have no money ? Or a multi national trillion dollar company in the US where you can actually get a court date?
6
@J J Davies whatever you think of the skill of the pilots (I assume you don't have any inside information on this) the fact that such a critical system on a airplane would rely on a single sensor with absolutely no redundancy is insane. This type of failure should have never gotten past the design phase, let alone allowed to be implemented. And many people are dead as a result, and Boeing is to blame (as is our weak regulatory system that allowed this system to fly).
11
@Pawel
I concur. I was taught in freshman engineering that redundancy is crucial for safety. Of course to a person who doesn't value safety, redundancy looks like a waste of money. It's not. Redundancy saves lives, and saving those lives is where you recover the cost of redundancy.
5
@Patricia Yes, redundancy is critical for safety. Also, let's not forget Kalishnikov's maxim: Simplicity is the price of reliability. (Yes, that Kalishnikov.)
1
Why, why, why, is the CEO of Boeing still sitting in the corner office--to restore faith in this company, the board needs to sweep out the entire management team--and bring in someone, that will clean house, and restore a culture where safety always comes before dividend checks.
17
@Amanda Jones A better question would be why isn't the criminal justice system prosecuting them all for negligent homicide?
Welcome to feudal servitude.
7
The fact that Mr. Ewbank waited to file his complaint has the odor of sour grapes, or maybe to assuage a guilty conscience. There are hundreds or even thousands of similar cost vs. benefit trade-offs that go into a commercial aircraft design. But it is clear from this article that his concerns had been vetted by company management, and then rejected.
Contrary to popular belief, adding more complexity to a system does not improve reliability, and often reduces it. For example, large commercial aircraft today use two engines instead of four. This was vigorously studied in the Boeing 777 design, which was the first overseas airliner to use two engines instead of four. Eventually it was decided that the lower complexity of two engines offset the reliability benefit of four.
These sorts of major design changes generally happen with the 'high-end' aircraft like the 777. Once they are perfected then the technology trickles down to lower cost products. This seems to be the case with the virtual speed indicator. According to the article: "A version of the system is used on Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, a new model of plane."
As a point of comparison, the IBM System/4 Pi (the flight control computer used in many aircraft) has a redundant set of five avionics computers using a voting algorithm. It does not use seven computers because adding additional computers was believed to be counter-productive in terms of reliability.
1
@W Twin engine aircraft have been flying trans-Atlantic long before the 777. Airbus A300 since the 1976 and Boeing's 767-200ER since 1984. But perhaps we should remember John Alcock and Arthur Brown, in a twin-engined Vickers Vimy, from Newfoundland to Ireland way back in 1919.
1
@W The real genesis behind the more-than-two-engines-over-water (most international routes involving the US) is a still-standing requirement in the FAA regs that an airline airplane be able to climb with one engine out. Since the early commercial jet engines used in the US (often Pratt & Whitney) didn't provide enough power for an airplane to climb on one engine, we had more than two. Even when the 75/76 Boeings were introduced, there was a lot of push-back in the name of reliability: Three engines would be more reliable than two. This was (figuratively) shot down when an Eastern L-1011 suffered a triple engine failure going from Miami to Nassau. (Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 9, 1983 issue)
As a very high time (20,000+ hours Pilot-in-Command) commercial pilot explained it to me then, a two engine airplane is inherently safer than a three engine airplane: When a single engine provides climb power, there is a huge surplus with both engines running, something you do not have with three engines.
Boeing has been, for decades, the pinnacle of trust and perfection in manufacture. I have been a member of the flying public on Boeing jets for 40 years, logging over 10 million miles. Never a concern. Never a second thought. That’s the reputation Boeing has achieved in my lifetime.
Now something has changed. Profits trump safety. The bottom line is more sacred. The CEO publicly misrepresents the safety of his product. The reputation is seriously tarnished, perhaps for good.
This CEO must resign. He was at the helm of this great company when the executive decisions took planes, lives, and a stellar reputation down.
29
"Profits trump safety."
That's the right verb, for sure.
2
Once again, when the bean counters run the company and make the decisions against the safety engineers, the results are lethal. But if you bet your company on an inherently flawed aircraft, it won’t be just the aircraft that goes down.
11
The “bean counters” don’t make the final decisions. That’s for the CEO.
Btw, I studied for ten years to be a bean counter (4 undergrad, 4 grad, 2 addl grad).
I didn’t count beans all day, and my colleagues didn’t make life and death decisions.
7
I predict a huge portion of the 737 max aircraft will become cargo haulers or scrap as the flying public avoids them. What an incredible fiasco for Boeing. What an incredible liability for any airline holding these as part of their fleet.
7
The profit margin on one of these planes is in the millions of dollars. I'm betting it is a lot more than we would guess.
In any case the safety system cannot possibly have cost so much it would cut into that profit in a significant way even if it cost a few million per plane.
6
We as a society have been deviating so much from the teachings of our youth that we suffer terribly both in innocent lives lost and financially. Jesus said in Matthew 3:66, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” That can be interpreted as create authentic value and you shall be rewarded. Most cultures have a variation of this saying and have tried their very best to abide by it. Most folks nowadays consider it a minor annoyance that gets in the way so they fight hard to obliterate it from their conscience as they willfully embark on creating inauthentic values to deceive their customers and rake in rewards in the form of profits. That eventually comes back to bite all of us in the end.
1
@Stephen Isienyi ...this is exactly why the ruling class has dispensed with religion in the last 100 years, replacing it with a monotheistic government.
“Boeing is not in a business where safety can be treated as a secondary concern,” Mr. Ewbank wrote in the complaint.
Apparently they were.
Who got the big bonuses?
18
I don't care what Boeing do about the 737Max or what they say. I'm never going to get on one of those things. I'd feel safer in a single-engined Cessna.
9
"The man who wishes to keep at the problem long enough to really learn anything positively must not take dangerous risks. Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks." -- Wilbur Wright, letter to his father, Kitty Hawk, September 1900
5
One word: capitalism.
17
@Greg Giotopoulos Yup. Is “Max” short for Maximizing Shareholder Value?
@Greg Giotopoulos If you knew anything about Soviet (and Russian) aviation and their approach to safety and design, you'd be 100% in favor to the capitalism's effect on aviation in the Western world.
3
The NYT magazine article on 737 Max describes the Lion copilot going through the documentation while the plane was diving. That suggests a warning light might not have helped and the crew were tasked beyond their training. In fact the article points to a series events that might have prevented the two crashes.
Aurora Flight Sciences has flown an aircraft across the country from takeoff to landing without the pilot, required aboard by the FAA, touching the controls. They are wholly owned by Boeing. Would you be comfortable with that?
3
The 737 Max can and will eventually be fixed.
What cannot be fixed is the malfeasance of the CEO and Board of Directors.
17
This corruption of Boeing began with the absorption of McDonald Douglas. There was a reason MD couldn't build as good a plane as Boeing and was facing bankruptcy.
Boeing pre-MD had a culture that valued engineering and quality but Boeing acquired MD's management and as the older Boeing leadership retired the MD management culture that led MD to failure began leading Boeing.
Boeing's culture was infected by the MD virus and needs to be disinfected.
53
As a spouse to a Boeing employee who worked during that time I completely asgree with you.
25
@Stephan I have a different take on the MDC -DAC-BA combination. In the late 1960s Douglas (in CA) was significantly impacted by supply chain issues and cash flow crunch associated with military aircraft production for Vietnam. McDonnell (in MO) was flush with cash from their robust defense aircraft business (but had failed trying to enter the commercial aircraft market) and basically bought Douglas (it wasn't a merger equals). The MO culture (the McDonnell family in particular) never meshed with the CA culture, resulting in little to no investment for commercial aircraft tooling in CA. MDC became less and less able to build affordable aircraft, and was acquired by BA in 1997 (again, not a merger of equals). This merger was caused by the DoD budget downturn under Clinton and the contraction of the aero industry, not because of bankruptcy. The then-Chair/CEO, Phil Condit (legacy BA) moved the company HQ to Chicago, ostensibly because it was nearer to United and American Airlines customers, but really because Condit wanted to live in Chicago; this is one of the key events that shifted management culture away from WA. The other was when Jim McNerney (GE legacy) became Chair/CEO in 2005, passing over Alan Mulally. In the 20+ years since the second merger an MDC person (Harry Stonecipher) was at the helm for only 1+ years. Current Chair/CEO Dennis Muilenberg actually began his aero career as a Boeing intern in 1985.
4
What a surprise, a CEO and CFO are far more concerned about the demands of its Hedge Fund investors rather than peoples lives. Why do BILLIONAIREs willingly trade lives for a few more dollars in their pocket?
28
@AzTraveler
Why wouldn't they? They have nothing to lose.
10
Goes to just how bizarre this whole situation has become...
That a synthetic air-speed indicator would’ve been a more representative gauge of what was going on outside the plane, than a real angle-of-attack sensor...
Am dead serious – Ewbank is spot on...
With the sort of turbulent flow that may accompany incipient stall, the AOA sensor might as well be on another plane...
And we still don’t have the list of airports not recommended for the 737 – even back two accidents ago...
Further, this blather about a tanker deploying an MCAS – i.e. that this was a known and in-production approach to what ailed the MAX...
Uuuh, no – and here’s an analogy...
Suppose a bus-making company added a feature to their perfectly-functioning buses...
That the bus would precisely follow a bus ahead of it, to make its travel more precise...
Now, suppose same said same bus-making company built a next-generation bus that had a nasty recurring tendency to veer and smack into a wall, on the way in and out of the depot...
Without another bus in sight...
So – the bus-making company adds a bus-ahead detector...
Along with some software to determine where the bus ahead would be, if there actually were one...
And when same said software detects a next-generation bus out of control to the left or right...
It slams it back onto the course of non-existent bus ahead of it...
Bluntly, Boeing without Alan Mulally is looking more and more like Apple between Steve Jobs’s stints...
5
@W in the Middle Your comment about Alan Mulally reminded me that Boeing really hasn't had a true airplane engineer/businessman as Chair/CEO since T Wilson (30+ years ago!). Mulally's acumen as an outstanding engineer and businessman was key in Ford's recovery in the mid 2000s. Boeing's decision to bring in Jim McNerney (a total businessman with no real engineering experience) and pass on elevating Mulally to CEO still haunts the company.
1
"Muck around, muck around, soon you won't be around."
Marine infantry proverb
***
Only we didn't say muck! Thank you, NYT, for an eye-opening and point-blank article that exposes just how wrong it was for Boeing to muck around when their own people said, straight-up, on the level, that the 737 Max had serious safety issues which left unaddressed would lead directly to people dying. If you have ever been on plane or a chopper that drops like a rock, as a Huey I was on with my Marine raiding team on a training mission in Okinawa in June 1988 dropped like a rock ("severe hydraulaics malfunction," as the crew chief later told us), you know what it feels like to stare death in the face and I would not wish that feeling on anyone. We were paid to face death, ultimately, and we knew that when we volunteered but none of us wanted to die on that chopper.
But folks who board any jet passenger plane are not paid to face death, they are paying hard-earned money to ENJOY LIFE. The missions my team was tasked with was hostage rescue, and another specific special ops mission was to save any American ambassador, if need be. We took those missions seriously, yes that was "our job" but bottom-line, we knew that SAVING LIVES was our duty and our mission.
When Boeing puts saving lives at the very core of its mission, at the very core of its being, they will discover that both their integrity and their profits benefit.
5
Imagine that Detroit designed a car that didn't drive straight and might at any time drive off the right side of the road. To overcome crashes on the right, they put a computer in the car to turn it left. Obviously, a faulty input might result in a head on crash when the computer steered the car to the left. Would such a car be allowed on US roadways? A resounding NO should be the answer.
Secondary input for a computer to compensate for an airplane that isn't airworthy isn't the solution. The 737 MAX, as designed is not airworthy and should never be certified to fly.
8
"... the current culture of expediency of design-to-market and cost cutting does not permit any other treatment by the work force tasked with making executive managements’ fever dreams a reality.'”
Employees are major stakeholders at Boeing.
Boeing's major mistake is not having union employees on their Board of Directors. Until they do, how can we Trust them?
7
The complexity and interoperability requirements of the various systems on modern aircraft make individual complaints such as this one of questionable value. Where was this engineer during design team meetings? Did he raise his concern there with his fellow engineers? Did his proposals pass a first order sniff test, or were they based on using some form of "unobtainium"? Did he bring his concerns to the various team leaders in time to incorporate their assessment at the appropriate design verification windows? There are simply too many variables for a lone wolf complaint to carry much weight unless there is a record of ignoring them through the design/verification/test process.
3
Curtis Ewbank is a hero.
8
What an indictment, profit over safety! Who are we, allowing such a perversion of our humanity, a grievous lack of ethics...for selfishness and greed to overwhelm our sense of prudence, and the bypassing of the fact that we have a conscience (that "knows" right from wrong)?
4
The primary goal of corrupt crony capitalist corporate plutocrat oligarch welfare is to enhance the profitable advantage of it's shareholders.
7
Yet the CEO is safe and sound inside his office, continuing to draw his fat compensaton, and deflecting responsibility everywhere but with the executives of Boeing.
This is incompetence on the part of the Boeing board of directors.
Watch.... this will be brushed away by the board and the shareholders as the CEO finds a few lower level "fall guys" to take all the blame and probably criminal prosecution as well.
10
Sounds like the Ford Pinto all over again!
5
Well, we now know the value of human life $.
5
Why is this a surprise to anyone? This is what happens when a company becomes too arrogant for its own good. The 737 Max is basically a pig of an airplane. Quickly designed as a competitive response to Airbus, the 737 Max in and of itself is not an airworthy plane, period. Since it requires a separate system (MCAS) just to keep the plane from falling out of the sky. If this was any other company than Boeing, the FAA would have called ‘foul’ right off the bat. But in an atmosphere where companies actually self certify their airplanes, the FAA did nothing. I will never fly in a 737 Max and I’m sure I’m not alone. Boeing has a huge problem ahead of it as far as getting the public to trust the 737 Max. The plane is a pig and the public knows it. Good luck with that.
13
@Mike L Yes and they were competing with an Airbus plane whose wings were much higher off the ground. Airbus had anticipated that engines would get bigger over time, and raised wing height. Boeing didn't. Hence the engines bought for the MAX didn't have enough space under the wing and needed to be relocated. Hence MCAS, AND a cheap-out on having multiple AOA sensors to disagree with each other in the case of one malfunctioning. Cheapness, criminal negligence and profiteering.
4
@KM
The original 737 was designed low to the ground before jetways became common. This was an intentional design feature to allow for easy entrance by passengers using ground ramps. The A320 and its variants were designed a generation later after jetways became standard at most airports. Higher wing height? Mostly design luck, little to do with foresight.
While I wholeheartedly agree with the general criticism of the shift by Boeing from being an engineering driven company to another "shareholder value" entity i think we need to keep our facts straight. Ralph Nader killed the Covair on suspect safety concerns and possibly ruined the best chance the US auto industry had to compete with European and Japanese imports.
2
It´s like with Trump... you try to get the best out of it.... but it DOES NOT work. Please illuminate the decision makers... if you can...
If its boeing, I aint going!
7
So you are aware that Airbus is having major problems with the new A-321neo. Stability issues — center of gravity, specifically.
Airbus is trying to develop software to mitigate the problem. In the meantime, airlines are blocking off the rear section of seats to keep the aircraft under control.
Are you still “If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going??”
2
So who got big bonuses related to the development of this flawed aircraft? Perhaps those bonuses should be clawed back and paid to the families of those killed in the two 737 MAX crashes.
8
Thank God for whistle blowers.
11
I started skydiving in my late teens and have kept skydiving though parachute and other equipment have become very sophisticated, high performance and safer - through maybe four iterations over the years.
I shudder to think that Boeing had anything to do with any of my equipment. Safety is always the ONLY permissible focus, not fun, not profits. Safety of yourself and others.
5
We may never understand what really went wrong, except we know something did go tragically wrong.
This was not pilot error, but rather a system that clearly failed to be safe.
Boeing would best fine the real cause or how else will they convince people to now believe it is safe to fly in.
5
Obviously profit comes above safety for any unregulated company in a capitalist 'free market' system like we have. A corporations duty is purely a fiduciary one by law.
Boeing is now a failed company and with it's failing will bring down its employees. It will probably be purchased by a Chinese group since they have many of the dollars in the world.
Will we see the light and add a social responsibility to our corporations?
6
This terrible loss of life and the uncovered behavior behind it, is another example of the current emphasis on software as the solution to everything. The generation now in power -- call them what you will, millennials, genx'ers etc -- have grown up with software to such an extent that they feel confident placing human lives solely in its domain. This includes self-driving cars (which have killed people), automated job hiring systems (which I would imagine screen out vitally qualified candidates and allow for gaming of the system), and more. Sadly, there may have to be more deaths or destruction for the current generation to realize that human control is still the best way to do things, and that software, while enormously useful, has to be kept in its place.
How shocking! NOT
It’s both sad and interesting to watch our country devolve and become similar to how things were around the turn of the 19th century:
Tons of “poor” people living week to week, working 2-3 jobs to get by; an elite few getting richer beyond imagination with no care of their fellow Americans; little to no oversight on companies actions;
Companies flaunting useless laws with their C level and Boards looking for ways to make a quick buck while denigrating others.
7
This is baked into the ego of our nation today - profit at all costs. In some cases we see it such as this or Purdue Pharma- in others it’s less apparent. But just as evil
5
Boeing of course will try to dismiss that as just one unhappy Boeing staffer taking a swing at the company while it is down. However.. that completely ignores this fact:
"Many current and former Boeing employees have privately discussed problems with the design and decision-making process on the 737 Max, outlining episodes when managers dismissed engineers’ recommendations or prioritized profits."
And the one who stood up publicly and formally put said concerns in writing.. he will likely be negatively impacted for doing nothing more then tell the truth.
"The engineer who filed the ethics concerns this year, Curtis Ewbank, went a step further, lodging a formal complaint and calling out the chief executive for publicly misrepresenting the safety of the plane".
Worse yet.. watch.. once the MAX is recertified (it will be... because a lot of money is involved here) ... the CEO will get a big fat bonus for taking Boeing "successfully" through this crisis.
One has to geninuely wonder... what serious management driven defects exist in other modern Boeing aircraft... waiting to push an aircraft over it's limits, overwhelming it's pilots, and killing hundreds more people.
9
Anybody surprised by this? American profit over human lives? This is why we need a government that actually serves us, not corporations, who bribe our "leaders," to get then to overlook these failures.
7
I really Have lost all faith in Boeing . They are truly criminally responsible for each and every death. There should be jail time for those who oversaw these projects.
1
The CEO should be fired and also put on trial for actions that lead to hundreds of debts.
This is an example of awful white collar crime and negligence that endangers and kills huge numbers of people.
5
Clearly, Boeing will be taking a bath on the 737Max. Neither I, nor mine will never fly on the thing. No sane person will ever fly on the thing. It is done. Will the shareholders and managers really pay for this? No. Taxpayers will cover the cost via defense spending.
Current management at Boeing is clearly worthless. It is surprising no one has called out former management who moved the headquarters to Chcago. Talk about taking the eye off the ball. That was purely an ego trip for the (Yale glad-hander) CEO (name?) who was from Chicago. Boeing was a great company.
Think about the damage that has been done to American industry since the onslaught of professional managers starting with the Harvard MBAs excreted from the early 60s onward. Zero innovation. Just destruction and self-dealing.
7
"Profits over safety" and workers, and environmental integrity, and ethics, and... .
Welcome to capitalism.
5
@JBWilson
Save capitalism from capitalists
It is an interesting book that shows that it is people, not the financial system, who make the wrong decisions.
1
Anyone who steps on a 737 Max had better say lots of prayers before they board. This plane is a flying kludge. It confirms what many of us have suspected, Boeing always puts profits over people and this is a good example of what happens when you do.
1
Boeing is certainly culpable in the way the development of the Max was handled and specifically MCAS, which is a kludge (geek-speak) to begin with, the sins of which were compounded by relying on only one of the two angle-of-attack sensors on board. Inexplicable.
But, the recent Times article by a respected former pilot and present aviation writer makes clear that the pilots of both the Indonesian and Ethiopian flights were under-trained and made significant errors. The Indonesian plane had exhibited exactly the same problems in a flight the day before it crashed, and when MCAS started pushing the nose down, a third pilot in the jump-seat saw the problem as he should have -- runaway trim -- and suggested that they throw the switches on the yoke to cut the power to the trim mechanism. The flight arrived safely in Jakarta. Yes, the badly designed and implemented MCAS system should not have presented the pilots with this problem. And yes, the airline should have fixed the plane after the first problem (it was reported) and didn't. But the pilots had a standard response they could have used and didn't. My point is that this whole situation is more complicated than just Boeing's greed and poor engineering and decision-making.
4
If or when the 737 Max returns to service-I will one of many who will refuse to ride it! I don't trust Boeing! They repeatedly blamed the pilots in the both crashes and they knew better! They knew their own decisions putting profits over lives were responsible!
2
Given the litany of Boeing mismanagement that culminated in killing 346, its amazing that the management of the company hasn't been purged let alone indicted.
6
Boeing is like the United States in microcosm. Rise, decline, and fall.
1
Profits over people. Shocking! It's the American way.
Not a surprise, sadly.
When do the criminal prosecutions commence?
2
My daughter is a flight attendant - for decades. My son-in-law is a pilot - for decades. They have two kids, ages 11 and 13.
So, that brings me to this - Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s CEO, brought in $23 million to his house last year, even a 27% increase in his salary from 2018.
Every time my kids stepped into one of the Boeing 737 to earn their living, Dennis Muilenburg put their lives on the line. Every time my kids stepped into one of Boeing 737, Dennis Muilenburg took my grandkids’ lives into his hands and tossed their lives aside so he could continue to make $ millions.
Listen up people, Dennis Muilenburg has been leading the Boeing operation. He needs to get fired. Over 300 innocent passengers have perished, and Muilenburg has toyed with thousands of airline employees, their families, and thousands of passengers and their families.
What is the hold-up here? Anyone who would have ultimately been responsible for the out and out murder of the innocent, would have been fired long ago.
Why is Dennis Muilenburg still heading Boeing and why does he even have a job?
50
@MIMA
Muhlenberg is overpaid but it really is a problem he inherited. Vote for Bernie Sanders. We might get some limits on CEO pay. Warren.....less likely. She comes from the Harvard establishment just like McNerney, the CEO who pushed the 737 Max. Warren is not likely to step on the toes that matter. Sanders could care less. That is why the rent seeking dems are flocking to Warren or Biden as opposed to Sanders.
4
@as
You use this space for politics. The reader's comment was about loss of lives and executive over-pay.
4
You need to be licensed, certified and experienced to fly a Boeing Air liner. However, you need NO certification, NOR ANY license to Engineer the hardware and software that pilots the same aircraft. If a company says you are qualified to do it, there are no questions asked. Engineers have no professional organization to back them up. Consequently, they have no status to enforce their judgement when unsafe products are manufactured.
--Robert Emmons, Licensed Professional (Electronic) Engineer.
3
@Madalyn973 I do not agree, Robert. I am also a P.E. and have the law to back me up. If you want an "organization", join the N.S.P.E., but I doubt that will do you any good. In the final analysis, a licensed professional who objects stands only with the law. States grant licenses to individual people, not to organizations.
I note that Mr. Ewbank is still employed by Boeing.
1
@Donald Champagne Donald, It is a fact that there are NO legal professional requirements for designing equipment or software which flies a plane. I assume you don't disagree with that? I guess you disagree with my opinion that being a member of a recognized licensed profession makes employers, customers and the public more likely to heed your opinion. I can only say that I worked as an Electronic Development Engineer, and I also worked in consulting it a top accounting firm that was full of CPAs and Attorneys. Unlike in Engineering, a license to practice was mandatory. Without it, you had zero status. No one really cared about your opinion. I am not saying that is sensible. I just say it is true in my experience. By the way, I don't know what branch of Engineering you are in, but in Electronics there are virtually zero PEs. I am one of the few.
1
A plane development cycle is 10+ years, and takes huge capital investments that can be a drag on earnings during the period. CEOs don't last that long. If their bonus is conditioned on profit/stock price, they have every incentive to not invest in long-term projects. This is exactly what happened with 737 Max, where the CEO (an MBA) touted record profits (obviously, because the company did not invest) and collected record bonuses.
The fundamental lesson is that in a company like Boeing with very very long-term product development cycle, CEO pay should not be conditioned on short-term profits, but rather success in product development.
4
Please read the outstanding NYT magazine article about this before reaching conclusions. While Boeing made it's share of mistakes, the main factor in the crashes was human fault. These were inexperienced pilots relying on technology they did not understand. They were not even aware of the MCAS system ( Boeing's mistake) but their behavior in the cockpit suggests that it would have made no difference. They apparently ignored basic flying rules and were the main culprit. The MAX has it's issues for sure, but the low cost Asian airlines and their poorly trained pilots and maintenance staff are far more dangerous than the MAX, which has been flying in the U.S. for years without accidents.
3
@Daniel B At least one of the two pilots was quite experienced and was workign for a reputable airline.
2
We already know how air carriers and plane manufacturers feel about their customers who pay to fly.
Now we know how they feel about their pilots and flight attendants.
5
Yes, passengers will have the freedom to not fly on the 737max (unless there is an aircraft swap or is the only plane flying to your destination). Airline crews, not so much if/when it returns to the fleets.
Prison time for the responsible persons might be an effective deterrent to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again
5
@Meryl g I agree 100%. But I would go farther.
For starters, the hard time should start with the CEO. I doubt that the potential for capital punishment or lengthy incarceration is much of a deterrent for many underprivileged young males in our country. But show me a CEO, an MBA, or a CPA (I am a CPA who also holds an MBA), and I'll show you someone who is darned sure deterred by the prospect of imprisonment--or, better yet, capital punishment.
In extreme cases such as Boeing's morally indefensible handling of the 737-MAX design process, we need to prosecute the CEO and everyone else involved in the decision-making process, including Board members who might have approved capital-spending projects to develop this horrific killer of an airplane. Until these people are prosecuted, not much is going to change.
The good news is that there appears to be some movement in that direction where the makers of opioids are concerned. There needs to be a lot more, and prosecution--including public shaming-by name--is long overdue.
1
The 737 Max 8 is done. Time for the 737 architecture to be retired after a very good run. Its short undercarriage clearance is simply not enough to support the new larger and more efficient engines desired by airlines. It’s sad to see this trusty workhorse pushed beyond its limits and come to this ignominious end.
Move on, Boeing, and develop a modern short haul aircraft.
8
The culture of “shareholder value” is to blame. Boeing used to be a company where engineering had the final say- this was changed by James McNerney who came from GE and introduced the GE culture of mindless and short term profits. The present CEO is just following his footsteps
No wonder GE and in future Boeing will implode
Managers have to behave in such a way that they serve the public good and not just shareholders
The Boeing 737 is fundamentally flawed from an aerodynamic perspective- it should never be certified for passenger travel
6
@Ajit Kanagasundram The Boeing 737 is NOT flawed from an aerodynamic perspective. MCAS was introduced to make the 737 MAX FEEL like previous generations of 737 aircraft so that pilots do not have to attain a different type rating. The larger engines made the aircraft fly differently... it didn't make it unairworthy. The KC-46 tanker, a 767 derivative, has a version MCAS because because the refueling booms make the plane feel different from the original 767. This is the biggest misconception being thrown around.
I urge you to read the NYT Magazine article.
3
Anyone who thinks Boeing's board of directors will receive any blame for this fiasco is dreaming. It does not matter if they have not provided oversight.
Among the board members is Nikki Haley, Caroline Kennedy, and an ex-admiral. In today's America, these people are untouchable.
12
@DeeBee
What do those folks know about running a company like Boeing?
3
Something I was taught when I was a young man working as a pipefitter apprentice on nuclear power plants.
"There are no accidents. Every single case of an accident happening comes down to human action. Cause will be either a failure to follow designed procedures or a failure in the design of the procedures. It is never an accident."
12
If Congress wants to save the lives of people like the 346 who died in the Boeing 737 Max crashes, all they have to do is pass a one-sentence law, “No airline manufacturer shall pay a bonus to any of its executives or officers in any year in which anyone dies because of flaws in the design of any of the company’s airplanes; because of flaws in the manufacture of any of the company’s airplanes; or because of shortcomings in the training and support that the company gives to pilots, crews and mechanics.”
9
@Raised Eyebrows The crashes were a result of bad decisions made 10 years ago, not last year and this year. The executives behind this have long collected their bonuses and gone.
1
@RSSF
Not true.
Lion Air Flight 610 crashed in 2018. Boeing executives elected to keep the flawed 737 Max flying. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed in 2019.
Had Boeing executives feared losing their bonuses if they kept a flawed plane flying, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 likely would not have taken to the air— and crashed.
Moreover, the one-sentence law would change Boeing’s culture. The new culture would build safer planes.
1
I worked at Boeing when the culture changed from engineering to finance. Engineers and technical people used to run the company. But beginning in the early 90s — about the time of the McDAC “merger” — the bean counters, accountants, corporate politicians, glad handlers, and Power Point cowboys took over. Result: 300 people died.
56
@James Cowles Boeing is not the only major US manufacturing company where this has happened. It's nationwide... Tell me which titans of American manufacturing are still respected world wide for quality? I can't think of one.
2
Boeing was always a socially conscious company until it moved it's corporate headquarters to Chicago, a long way from the manufacturing facilities in Washington. Boeing lost it's social DNA in the move to Chicago. The capitalist's management team decided that profits over people were acceptable. They knew there were serious design flaws but looked the other way. If a police officer kills someone they are held accountable. Shouldn't executives be treated like common criminals when their self serving decisions lead to multiple fatalities.
37
"Shouldn't executives be treated like common criminals when their self serving decisions lead to multiple fatalities."
Dream on @jeff bunkers. We live in an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy. (Trump has just made that more explicit.) The oligarchs will never be held accountable, to whit: How many chicken plant owners in Mississippi have been charged in the undocumented workers scandal? Zero. QED.
4
Another example of the need for regulation. Corporations are motivated by greed. They will do anything to maximize their profit including putting lives at risk. They resist regulation and invest exorbitant amounts of money in lobbyists. You know who the more high profile culprits are; oil and gas, financial services, pharmaceutical, airlines, cable/internet/phone, automobile, guns and many others. A lot of these industries self regulate which appears Boeing was doing. They complain that regulation will cost jobs but they have no qualms about reducing payroll if it will maximize profit. Is it possible for corporations to be good citizens and still make a reasonable profit?
11
All this is, in a way, a result of the abandonment of a Boeing culture led by engineers and pilots devoted to safety, based in Seattle.
Finance types and bean-counters, who knew little about how to make an airplane fly, took over the company, moved its headquarters to Chicago, famous for its mercantile-exchange culture, and focused on maximizing earnings and profit with all the tools in their MBA briefcases.
29
@bruce <==
Indeed, in followup, why would a company move its corporate headquarters so far away from where its products are manufactured? To help break the hold and influence of its experienced employees and Seattle-based leaders who would not want to leave the beautiful Northwest?
9
@bruce The facts do not support your argument. The chief "bean counter", Chairman/President/CEO Muilenburg, is not only a trained engineer, but also an elected member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering: https://www.boeing.com/company/bios/
1
@Donald Champagne
<==
Donald Champagne, please note:
The CEO who moved Boeing's HQ to Chicago was Walter James McNerney, who had an MBA, no engineering training, and was an outsider brought in at the very top of the company without any previous employment at Boeing or experience of its culture.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McNerney
3
If I was Boeing, I would create a nationwide focus group of airline pilots. On important design issues like the MCAS i would query this groups input to cover myself. This way you ensure safety, better legal protection and acceptance by your ultimate customer : the pilot. Granted they would be oblivious to cost implications. This would also be a strong selling point ; having the endorsement of a diversified group of pilots.
3
With the exception of civil engineers, most engineers in professional practice do not hold a state license/registration to practice engineering, and therefore are not required to undergo two hours of ethics training even two years. It would be interesting to know what, if any, ethics training Boeing requires of its employees, including managers trained as engineers.
12
@Donald Champagne :senior management at Boeing is filled with well-educated, advanced-degreed engineers who know enough to make the correct call; the ones who approved of the shortcut to put the square peg of flight management software into the round hole of the new airframe put profit, including bonuses, ahead of safety; not malicious, simply self interested, exactly what capitalism is designed to do
Boeing management is prioritizing money over lives. Cost has to be minimized in aircraft certification by keeping employees properly motivated, experienced program management, intelligent honest communications and accountants contributing their expertise to save money by minimizing waste and redundancy outside the the design realm.
4
This is not a case of profit over safety.
Boeing shareholders and management know good and well that without safety there is no profit but in fact painful losses.
It is precisely their quest for profit that is the best bet that they will study their blind spot vigorously and ensure that something like this never happens again.
2
Hey Ben Boeing thanks you. The check is in the mail.
3
The capitalist model, profit driven by cost competition, substituted the shortcut, rather than finding the proper efficiency.
It's highly probable that no path to appropriate certification of airworthiness exists without a robust regimen of original, newly developed pilot training for this new, not next iteration, 737 aircraft.
Senior management had substituted wishful thinking for proper qualty control. The cost so far has been human lives; far behind them are the loss of Boeing's reputation, asset valuation, market share.
Following the removal of the current Republican kleptocracy administration, the next leaders of the FAA must suit up in hazmat gear and clean that organization down to the bare walls. No one above the level of probationary engineer should remain at their present position. Boeing, the corporation, will have to spend a long time in detox before reaquiring the keys to the car.
7
@JS No. Tradeoffs between cost (which limits profit) and safety are inherent in any engineering activity. The former Soviets were faced with this just as much as engineers in America. I think the record shows that we have a safety record at least as good as that of non-capitalist countries.
1
@Donald Champagne I'm sure you would feel the same way if your mother, wife, daughter and/or son were on board one of those two crashed 737 Max aircraft.
3
This article presents further evidence for Boeing’s criminal culpability in the crashes of the 737 Max that comes from experts right within the company. But how much faith should we put in a criminal prosecution conducted under AG Barr?
The ‘current culture of expediency’ is deeply embedded in the domain of giant corporations or the federal government under Trump. It is very important that the entire public is informed of the specifics of this corruption and what harm it inflicts on this country. I admonish the NYTimes to give more space to this type of deep-digging journalism and to whistle-blowers. (And please protect them!)
5
MBA managers will do it every time! Profit, share price, stockholders are what maters NOT the product quality or safety.
23
I believe The Times reported on different manufacturing problems with the 787 Dreamliner, which has experienced other safety issues (such as cabin fires). It would be of public benefit for the The Times to do a thorough and updated comprehensive report on the range of issues with Boeing planes. Generally I worry the story about the 737 MAX obscures the reality that other Boeing jets with potentially fatal safety issues are still flying as I type.
20
Boeing was built by engineers who got dirt under their fingernails. They were not bean counters. Eventually, like often happens, this great and magnificent engineering company ended up in control of bean counters, guys that don't know which end of a hammer to use.
When skilled mechanics in Seattle went on strike to get better pay, the bean counters decided to move corporate headquarters to Chicago to get away from the engineering traditionalists in Seattle who had built the company and who cared more about engineering excellence than $$$$. Further, the bean counters went to a cheap labor state to break the hold that the engineers in Seattle had over the company.
Naturally enough the bean counters have wrecked the crown jewel of American manufacturing. That's what these type of people do. Their most important value is short-term $$$$. They know nothing about and care little about the engineering act of building the product. Huge multi-million dollar executive pay packages is what they really care about. Once those types of managers got control of the company, the downfall of the company was perfectly predictable.
256
@HipOath Very well said, I have seen this happen in other industries also.
15
@HipOath
European countries are way ahead of the US -- they have union employees -- who are also Major Stakeholders -- on their Boards of Directors.
Until we do, one can expect our brand of capitalism to continue to destroy itself.
34
@HipOath I know this is true. My husband worked for a major aerospace company with had incredible engineers, working in the same building as the executives. Everyone was involved in projects from start to finish with full communications and they turned out near perfect high tech, beautifully engineered and functioning products.... But no longer. Almost none of the current executive branch have an engineering background and there is almost no communication because exec offices are now elsewhere.
In the good old days, if a bean counter was wondering about the necessity of an expensive system, he could walk down to the engineering department and have an enlightening chat, with vigorous back and forth and the best possible outcome as a result of those discussions. That scenario is highly unlikely today, and because of that, this major American manufacturing company is now losing market share and respect and has seen major lay offs.
Bean counters may be necessary, but when they interfere with safety to save a few bucks, as at Boeing, they can bring down the very company they work for.
27
Boeing designed their new 737 Max so that pilots had absolutely no way to avoid two crashes with massive loss of life.
The regulators were impotent and just looked on.
Boeing used to be a company that made airplanes and also made a profit. In recent years it has become a company that only cares about profit, with airplanes being merely the road to profit.
For now on, whenever I have a choice, I will choose not to fly on a Boeing. If my only option is the new models of the 737, I will choose not to fly.
15
The Max series should never be allowed to fly. Boeing cut corners, tried to recycle a circa-1960 airplane, with fatal results while regulators and the US government looked the other way.
15
In the long history of aviation, has there ever been a commercial plane that, due to a single auxiliary component's erroneous data, automatically takes control of a normally climbing fully powered plane, and crashes it violently into terrain? Boeing should scrap the Max, and completely redesign it's aeronautics, so it can fly without MCAS.
52
Yes, Air France 447, an A-330.
The pitot tubes were momentarily blocked, the autopilot handed control to the pilots, and the pilots crashed the plane.
1
@David G. . I said "normally climbing" that plane was at high altitude, low air density, and in an disorienting, uncontrolled descent.
1
@David G. As you say, this was purely due to the utter incompetence of the pilots. The mechanical failure itself - loss of speed data for a few minutes - was insignificant.
You would think killing a percentage of your customers would be so bad for business it wouldn't even be considered by management as a viable option.
Removing government regulation may make it easier for US companies to profit but it comes at the expense of increased liability and damage to America's greatest corporate brands.
Boeing is one of a handful of US brands that people across the globe used to respect. I'm a frequent flyer. I now look to book on flights on Airbus planes.
The number of iconic American brands has now gone down by 1.
43
@HL you think but then look at the car manufacturers.
@Tom-And the result is Tesla is the only world class car that can be considered an American brand.
3
@HL agreed. I just read about the history of the corporation in the book Temp, by Louis Hyman. The M-corporation was started by GM and became the model for the post war era... it prioritized slow growth over short term profits. We abandoned it in the 70s. These are results.
2
The importance of whistleblowers cannot be overstated. For safety, for security, for democracy....and, once again, we are reminded of the complexity of human behavior, the fear of retribution and what it does to us, the courage of speaking out, the fact that once someone speaks out it's so much easier for others to do it, but we need someone to take that first step and be heard. And, this says so much about people who rule with fear as their primary tool. It's dangerous.
38
@gracie
The whistleblowers are there because the government abandoned its duties to serve & protect the public. They have basically filled a void created by a reckless, lawless governing body.
102
@cassandra
Very well said!
1
The NTSB should include a finding in their reports on the 737 citing "Bean-counter fixation on profits over people" as a contributing factor to the crashes.
18
It would be interesting to know what Boeing executives think now about their decisions to speed up the delivery of the 737Max to improve profitability. After two crashes, their business model is taking a large financial hit.
16
None of this will change until the executives who willfully jeopardize the lives of the public are put in jail. Other than that we're whistling in the dark and things will remain the same.
41
@jfr So true.Whether it be crashing the economy, crashing planes and cars, poisoning our food, polluting water and land, defective drugs, it's all just the cost of doing business. Profits far outweigh fines and judgements. Until top management of these corporations face serious jail time, nothing will change
7
Is this an example of “late-stage capitalism “? with short-term stock valuation, share holder value, CEO & Co compensation taking precedence over sound engineering and safety. As it turns out, the decisions were not only tremendously poor engineering decisions but also very bad business decisions. But nobody in the corporation will suffer. Do they even lose sleep over this? It’s just incomprehensible
13
I wish this article had included some context on the other major engineering questions that have been raised about development of the Max. I know the story is this one ex -post whistleblower and the synthetic airspeed issue. But just a mention that this is only one of several major engineering choices being examined that contributed to unsafe deployment of MCAS...? Such as the choice to rely on one possibly unreliable airspeed indicator to trigger the MCAS system; the lack of cockpit warning lights when airspeed indicators disagreed; the lack of anything alerting pilots to the “off switch “ for the MCAS....This engineers’ retroactive warning about one costly and complex system could be put in the context of many less costly options that would also have contributed to a more redundant safety system around MCAS. (Redundancies in safety fallbacks being a good thing, engineering wise)
16
And the whole question of developing a new body to conform with the new engines, plus the unprotected cables that run through the fuselage to control the stabilizer.
4
This is precisely why we need regulation. Independent, unbiased, strong, government regulation. Capitalism, left unsupervised, will put profits over people.
78
@Fred But remember that corporations ARE people?
Thanks Wall Street; Republicans.
Hey......cars are people too, right?
2
So many of these articles fail to mention the root cause of the problem with the 737 Max.
To compete with more efficient Airbus planes the 737 Max added huge, modern and more efficient engines to the old design. This was a change the original design could not handle so the added all kinds of electronics to compensate. The original engines were under the wing. If mounted that way the new huge engines would have scraped the ground so they put the new engines “in the wing” and that’s where the serious problems with the plane’s handling started.
78
@Eric Ambel essentially they took an old buick and souped it up into a porsche with exactly the results you would expect.
7
For me the article yet again shows stark reality of just how deadly unfettered capitalism is. Boeing has pushed the legal limits of how far a corporation can manipulate a system to maximize its profits, even if it means risking lives. Boeing drive for profits places the worth of human life somewhere below the size of its corporate dividends.
This is the sad indication of the depth to which current form of capitalism founded on oft repeated Regonomics dictum that the “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”.
Only instances in which corporations like Boeing respect human life are when they are forced to do so by strong government regulations and legislation. Fines are not enough; many corporations have simply accounted for them as the cost of doing business
31
It is all about maximizing profit; as a result, other factors (safety, comfort, service) are sacrificed. The United States has always been about rich people grabbing power and making money, but under President Trump it is much worse than it has ever been and is rapidly worsening. When the lives of our citizens have become more important than profits, a change in government is long overdue.
9
Bravo
Great reporting
Very proud of that engineer
Hold the execs accountable
Every public business has overstepped boundaries by chasing shareholder profits and their own bonuses
It’s a major problem and is underreported
It won’t stop until business execs get a severe wake up call
55
@Dc
And the only punishment they understand: confiscating all their darling assets.
2
Not mentioned is the vital role that the FAA should have taken throughout the development process. Years ago, the FAA, being short of government funds, went along with delegating their responsibilities to the aircraft manufacturer for signing off on critical systems.
The whole point of the FAA is that safety should be paramount and enabling a manufacturer to sign off is like putting the fox in the sheep pen.
52
@roger It is more like putting the bears in the sheep pen, taking the wolves, previously harassing the sheep and give them the henhouse while bringing the Fox inside to feed and watch all the time.
That is what the Republican Party has done to us with the present 'cabinet' and agency staff members. The dirt just goes way back and continues underground during Dem Admins. normally. Cheney/Bush changed that by trying to remove liberals/Democrats at all levels using his War Powers after the fall of the twin towers and the building of Homeland Security which was STRICTLY hiring on right wing credentials and was a major thorn in Obama's side that the Govenment positions had been so hollowed out that he HAD to use the Pen to make sure money previously spent by Congress got to where it was supposed to be despite the actions of the next congress to try to undo what was already agreed. McConnell sat on Everything that Might have made Obama or the Dems look good, and in so doing has grievously damaged this Nation and allowed an usurping pretender to take the Oval Office.
Mitch McConnell is guilty of 11 years of treason in trying to limit Obama to a single term he hurt millions, killed tens of thousands and brought misery to ALL Americans by allowing Trump the Usurper to take ANY seat in government whatsoever: Trump does not even qualify for Dog Catcher in most areas, let alone Head of State.
McConnell's incompetence and treachery is monolithic: that one, singular rock needs removed.
3
@roger - it's particularly worrying, and unprecedented, that the new FAA director was appointed on a party-line vote. They are an untrustworthy agency beholden to the industry not the public
5
@roger
How many other governmental Agencies have been given over to the manufactures to regulate?
I doubt this is a Republican or Democrat issue. All hands are greased and mouths sealed.
This, along with similar stories, screams of companies creating superfluous situations that will only lead to exponentially unmanageable scenarios all in an effort to maximize money at the expense of human comfort, happiness and safety. This is why individual air travel is so important. Remove these monopolies of movement.
1
This, along with similar stories, screams of companies creating superfluous situations that will only lead to exponentially unmanageable scenarios all in an effort to maximize money at the expense of human comfort, happiness and safety. This is why individual air travel is so important. Remove these monopolies of movement.
2
I don’t think synthetic airspeed would have helped pilots who left takeoff power on for 2 minutes and reached a speed of 350-450 knots. Sometimes it takes basic aviation skills to fly an airplane. Yes, airplanes have failures, pilots have to turn off all the automation and fly at times.
5
@Gino This was not possible on this particular flight control. That has been covered many, many times.
4
@Greg Hampikian, Ph.D.
Yes, it was/is possible to disable the MCAS and fly with manual trim. Automatic trim can be temporarily disabled with a thumb switch on the yoke, as well as turned off entirely with two switches on the lower right of the console between the pilots (below and to the right of he throttle). The catch is that if the aircraft speed is too high, the amount of force required for manual trim using the wheels at the pilots knees is more than the pilots can exert. The pilots needed to either catch the runaway trim earlier or reduce throttle significantly in order to recover.
2
You are incorrect. There are “Trim Cutoff” guarded switches 4 inches from the throttle. Read the prior article in the NYT for details on how they function. Look at p picture of the B737 throttle quadrant. Turning those switches off would have ended the problem. I’m not surprised that a 350 hour copilot was too overloaded to find the switches.
2
Putting profit over safety is standard operating procedure. Take for example General Motors
The faulty ignition lock had been known to GM for over a decade. It killed 124 people
No one was prosecuted, no one went to jail
Unless executives are personally held responsible, it will continue.
127
@Lars
Remembering Ford's "Pinto". It was determined that executives decided against including a $7 part, which would have saved people from being incinerated when the car was rear-ended.
9
@john
And that decision was based on coldly calculated cost-benefit analysis: "Why did the company delay so long in making these minimal and inexpensive improvements? Simply, Ford’s internal “cost-benefit analysis,” which places a dollar value on human life, said it wasn’t profitable to make the changes sooner. Ford’s cost-benefit analysis showed it was cheaper to endure lawsuits and settlements than to remedy the Pinto design"
This quote is from an article about the entire Pinto case : https://www.tortmuseum.org/ford-pinto/
5
Profit over safety? Just sounds like typical Republican policy. Is our government not eliminating as many safety and environmental protects as possible as we speak? I give Boeing an A for making America great again.
18
This is what happens in vulture capitalism when you let corporations 'self regulate'. Producing safe products take more time and money than producing unsafe products. Keeping our water and air clean is more costly than polluting both. Boeing is in deep trouble, and deservedly so. Thank goodness for whistleblowers.
112
@Markymark -- Not exactly. Producing unsafe, inferior products costs more in the long run. But with a time frame based on quarterly shareholders reports, the long run has little payoff.
2
“Boeing offers its employees a number of channels for raising concerns and complaints and has rigorous processes in place, both to ensure that such complaints receive thorough consideration and to protect the confidentiality of employees who make them,” he added.
Complaints from employees at Boeing, have been ignored for years. That this engineer took the step to formalize a concern, speaks to the culture, he knew that without documentation his concerns would not be addressed in a meaningful way. This is the culture at Boeing, regardless of what the CEO, or any other Boeing representative says of the company. They handed the company over to wall street and death is what happened.
137
This article does not mention the fundamental design flaw of 737 Max, too large engines that need to be placed too far forward on the wings, which causes aerodynamic problems. Boeing needed to redesign the body of the plane to enable it to accommodate the larger engines--a new plane, really. But, that would have slowed down the rush to market.
103
@bill you need to read the past articles which specifically mention the design flaw caused by the larger engines. It is well documented and the subject of numerous articles.
18
@bill Actually, an Observer is right. The 737 is an old airplane that Boeing was originally going to completely redesign in 2020, but because Airbus came out with the A320 NEO, Boeing hyperventilated and decided to scrap the new model in favor of an updated 737, but because the engines were too large for the ground clearance on the 737 had to hang them so that it necessitated installing the angle of attack sensors. Instead of the engines hanging below the wing they were hung so that a third of the engine was above the wing.
13
@Ted
But it appears that there are stability problems with the Airbus Neo too. Recent newspaper reports suggest that British Airways is keeping some seats at the back of this aircraft empty for such reason. It doesn't appear to have had much publicity yet. But let's wait and see what develops on this story.
1
Sadly upper management sees customers as profit units, not people, and the cost of paying off a few deaths less onerous than properly designing a plane. Until retirement I, a woman over 40 with an advanced degree, ticked off a lot of EEO boxes my company needed, so I was not 'fireable' and could push for ethics over profit. I wish there were more invulnerables in industries such as pharma to save lives instead of accumulating profits.
10
The image that repeatedly comes to mind when reading about the development of the Max is of a few country boys deciding to upgrade their old six cylinder beater automobile by adding a new V8 engine, and then deciding to use bailing wire to hold the modified contraption together. Of course our country boys were on a tight budget and might have had a deadline, so adding safety features were not on the agenda. Who would have thought an iconic American company would operate similarly with respect to their most popular commercial product?
24
@bill That's just plain not true. The plane is dynamically unstable, as it tends to nose up during acceleration. Then, the huge, forward placed engines actually increase the problem by creating their own lift. This did not pass safety muster, so Boeing wrote a piece of software called the MCAS and called it part of the airframe. This allowed the actual airframe design to pass, and allowed Boeing to bypass the rule that you cannot have single-input flight control, they simply did not call it flight control. This was only possible because they were allowed to self certify, and they decided all these small rule breaks were ok.
9
@bill The figurative bailing wire in the Boeing Max design was a faulty MCAS system itself, which was inadequately tested, and which had features barely disclosed to either regulators or pilots until after the second fatal cash. An old jalopy is not inherently unsafe with a V8, given certain design considerations and with disclosures to the driver that it will not handle quite the same as the unmodified version.
1
@Greg Hampikian, Ph.D. Thanks Greg. I could not have said it better.
I find it strange that the engineer left Boeing 4 years ago in part because he didn't like the safety culture, filed no complaint, then came back to work at Boeing last year under the same safety culture, and only filed a complaint this year after the crashes.
5
The profit motive in our American system of capitalism is responsible for countless unknown mistakes or shortcuts in manufacturing.
As long as the American dream is based on acquired wealth rather than the greater good for the citizens we will continue to have tragic outcomes like the Boeing Super Max.
161
You can certainly find evidence of your point in America’s Constitution where it’s asserted that this is a Country that should be driven by happiness. And happiness in a liberalism context is given by goods and wealth. This is just one of the drawbacks of this fact.
10
@Michael Kittle
Greed is the root of evil.
Doing things for more money often demands compromise of ethics and morality.
4
Not surprised at all that Boeing put profits over lives and safety.
When will the murder indictments be handed down?
57
This is how capitalism kills; the executives who made this call should, at the very least, be charged with criminal negligence.
250
@Jackson Ackermann
Hundreds of people DIED. They should be charged with homicide.
18
@Jackson Ackermann
"There's room at the top they're telling you still
"But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
"If you want to be like the folks on the hill."
-- John Lennon
2
It is sad to say this, but I don’t think anyone reading this story will be surprised that a corporation put cost and profit over people’s lives. It has been this way since the dawn of the industrial revolution and even before then, whether in manufacturing, mining, or any other industry.
But that does not mean that we shouldn’t continue to hold them accountable. And keep corporations from paying off politicians to relax regulations and oversight.
237
sad... true... human life has no value... They really believe money is everything!
20
@LT “ It is sad to say this, but I don’t think anyone reading this story will be surprised that a corporation put cost and profit over people’s lives.“
Oh give me a break, enough with the teenage drama. Companies are in business to make a profit. A company like Boeing is also well aware that its safety record and image is crucial to making a profit. There isn’t some fat executive in a oak suite with a big fat cigar stamping “Denied!” on proposals for “equipment to save people’s lives”. It’s just nonsense. They make decisions balancing cost, quality and safety. If that surprises you, you’re a two-year old. Honestly.
1
@Mike
You seem to know very little about systems engineering. Sensor failure (which is the root cause of the MCAS malfunctions) is not a rare event which is why critical systems (like flight control systems) typically have multiple sensors that are checked and monitored to ensure their results match. This has been a recommended engineering practice for at least 4 or 5 decades. Boeing clearly ignored the lessons of the past to achieve minor cost savings. I have been following this story closely for months and it is clear to me that Boeing has a management culture problem wrt to the business they are in.
How would you feel or react if your car suddenly accelerated to 100 mph and you could not get it to slow down due failure of an electronic component when a safety feature that would have cost less than an extra $5 could have prevented this event?
4
This airplane was designed in the 60s and should have been radically updated years ago. But Southwest continuously pressured Boeing to not change the cockpit so it did not have to retrain pilots and they could be easily scheduled to fly new or old planes. This focus on "keeping it vintage" to cut costs eventually cost hundreds of people their lives.
117
@kramnot......I’m not an aeronautical engineer but my readings indicate that when Boeing moved the engines forward on the wings the aerodynamics changed necessitating the MCAS system to overcome the new instability.
One thing leads to another.
20
Or it was the poor pilot training in many rapidly growing 3rd world countries, as suggested by a recent Times story.
@Mondo Man Why did they ground the planes in the U.S. if poor pilot training in 3rd world countries is the likely culprit?
Sometimes we can't accept everything we read at face value and look at the big picture.
1
This is exactly why we need independent oversight and regulation of corporations writ large. Left to their own devices they will always choose profit over everything else.
Always.
400
@Nathan Hansard We already have both of those for boeing. Do you really think planes aren't inspected by the government? They also failed here.
6
@Kevin
I'm not sure if you have read all of the available information, but the government through deregulation has given up much of it's oversight responsibility. Boeing was essentially allowed to self certify the 737 MAX.
38
@Kevin the government does not inspect aircraft, they inspect the inspectors. I know, I worked as a airline mechanic for decades and my dad was the Principle Aircraft Inspector for the FAA at American Airlines overhaul facility at Tulsa.
6