
Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company - davidperell
https://www.perell.com/blog/boeing-737-max
======
platz
> Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas? Because the airplane manufacturing
> industry is consolidating, and Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of
> human lives.

Was it really necessary to add the second part to explain why the merger
occured? 'industry is consolidating' seems reason enough. The mixing of
explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. Put the moralism and
ethics in it's own paragraph so we can understand the explanation first. If
it's all mixed up, then I have to evaluate every claim in the article as if it
might be ethical statements by the author instead of focusing on understanding
first, and then considering the ethical outcome after having attained the
understanding.

~~~
briandear
It’s a hyperbolic statement. Boeing employees and engineers also fly on those
planes with their families. It isn’t like they are making decisions with the
intent of compromising safety.

~~~
hannasanarion
Boeing executive decision makers don't. They never fly commercial, they have
private jets.

~~~
desdiv
Interesting side note, Boeing does make private jets - the Boeing Business Jet
family[0].

But Boeing executives doesn't fly on these, since they're too large for even
CEOs. Boeing executives fly on one of the three Boeing owned Bombardier
Challenger 650s [1][2][3].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Business_Jet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Business_Jet)

[1]
[https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N541BA/908...](https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N541BA/908966)

[2]
[https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N543BA/908...](https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N543BA/908968)

[3]
[https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N544BA/884...](https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N544BA/884121)

~~~
therockspush
Former CEO James McNerney used to fly in the BBJ all the time. Sometimes he
was the only passenger.

------
jl2718
Note two contradictory popular trends: 1\. AI is going to replace cheap labor
2\. Engineering companies are outsourcing because of cheap labor

The reality is that trend #2 is orders of magnitude larger. Any reversal of
that by ‘AI’ would be the biggest jobs boom in decades for western nations,
and according to this article, would increase quality and therefore trade
balance as well.

The other reality is that manufacturing automation with ‘AI’ is hard, takes a
lot of human effort, and is a huge part of a company’s value (e.g. Tesla).
Outsourcing is often selling off this value at a negative price. It is done
because Wall St analysts don’t know how to price this asset.

Like it or love it, it is investment analysts that determine company culture.
The good thing is that they are greedy; they may be misinformed, but they are
predictable. Everything above liquidation value is held in the heads of the
employees of the company. Its actually not that hard to compute, and if
business schools taught this, corporate behavior would change.

~~~
downrightmike
Unless you look at long term focused companies like Amazon, which is creating
all kinds of value without bowing down to short term market analysts. Had
Boeing looked beyond the immediate future and planned to upgrade the 737
frame, or make a new one so it could support the much larger engines, they
wouldn't be in this situation. But short term costs and profits, outsourcing
and negligence is running the company. Break them up until the have some
competency in what they are doing.

~~~
jl2718
Amazon is a case of purposely cultivating long-term investors and analysts.
Somehow they made a case that their intangible NPV is much larger than other
companies with similar profits. However, history indicates that a CFO will
soon take over, start outsourcing, and they will be more profitable, but their
long-term investors will sell to short-term investors and give them short-term
valuations (lower NPV).

~~~
downrightmike
Jeff would never give up any control, at least not until there are O'neil
cylinders in orbit.

~~~
njarboe
He is selling Amazon stock every year to fund Blue Origin. I sure hope he can
start turning a profit on his space company and gets his O'Neill cylinders
before he runs out of cash.

------
cellu_cc
While I appreciate the amount of effort the author put into writing this, Matt
Stoller’s analysis of the Boeing situation remains the best I’ve found so far:
[https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-
bailout](https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout)

~~~
vitaminCPP
This is short and excellent. Thanks for sharing.

I wish Mr. Stoller took more time on this:

> The Federal Aviation Administration, having outsourced much of its own
> regulatory capacity to Boeing, didn’t know what was going on, and Boeing
> didn’t tell airlines and pilots about the new and crucial safety procedures.

This seems like big deal to me.

~~~
K0SM0S
Indeed. Meet _accidentology_ , “the study and analysis of the causes and
effects of accidents”, which became a huge applied field during the second
half of the 20th century — notably driven by air traffic (also championned by
medical care among other sectors).

The gist of it is extremely simple: most fatal accidents happen because of a
_sum_ of mistakes, a _chain_ of more or less important errors which, taken
individually, would seldom lead to an accident, but together form "the perfect
storm". This is btw the true meaning of Murphy's famous quote (especially the
'worst possible time' part, e.g. software failing in-flight as opposed to
during tests), and how we avoid such outcomes.

The beauty of accidentology, beyond engineering / repairing honesty, beyond
tons of carefully written procedures and double checklists, is also quite
simple: to systematically track the origin of mistakes, to reward people who
were involved in finding the issue, and fix the problem once and for all
through better practice, better documentation, changing procedures.

It contributed to make air travel statistically the safest means of
transportation for human beings (the rationale was that plane crashes were so
traumatising to the general public that it wasn't enough to be "better" than
cars or trains or ferrys; air travel had to be 99.99...% safe to succeed).

In this case, we indeed have multiple failures which form a chain of events:
the manufacturer (Boeing) cutting corners on safety, the regulator (FAA) also
cutting corners in what looks like plain and simple corruption here, and
somehow everyone else (companies, pilots) taking for granted what Boeing/FAA
said. All in the name of more profit, for a ridiculously tiny part of the
population. The results are the tragedies we witnessed. And while the first
crash should have been a wake-up call, the fact that Boeing themselves didn't
come forward and did let a second crash occur is borderline criminal (for
courts to decide, anyway, but the question seems salient in this case).

It's all extremely worrying and sets a dire precedent for the USA as a lax or
incompetent regulator, and a champion of big corporations now apparently
digging way too far down the 'profit hole' — it has literally become a grave
by that point.

------
solatic
> In the case of information technology-related manufacturing, research,
> development, and marketing are the most profitable areas to specialize.
> Fabricating the units and linking critical components is a low-margin race
> to the bottom. Inspired by this theory, companies like Boeing aim to
> specialize in high-margin activities and outsource the rest.

This is the core point which the author seems to be trying to make, that
outsourcing necessarily raised costs because it's a de facto defective
strategy for improving margins. What the author fails to delve into is
precisely why subcontracting failed to deliver as imagined - did
subcontractors fail to deliver airplane parts within tolerances? Were the
specifications provided to subcontractors faulty? Did the outsourcing
contracts fail to require compensation for failing to deliver on-time and
within tolerances; did such requirements exist but in reality such financial
obligations caused subcontractors to run out of money / go bankrupt and
default on their obligations? Was no insurance purchased to hedge against
these risks, so that costs would not explode along with delays?

Part of smile theory is that when you decide to outsource lower-margin
operations, the ability to outsource effectively in and of itself becomes part
of your core competency. That Boeing executives failed to reduce costs as
planned through outsourcing is less proof that outsourcing is inherently poor
practice and more proof that competency at shifting numbers around on bean-
counting accounting sheets is not the same thing as competency at outsourcing.

~~~
jl2718
There are different kinds of outsourcing. One is where a subcontractor has an
existing and superior product, which incurs integration cost, but results in a
superior product. The other is exporting a core competence to an inexperienced
subcontractor for less cost, which incurs training costs, integration costs,
loss of intellectual capital, logistics loss, and results in an inferior
product.

~~~
solatic
> which incurs training costs, integration costs, loss of intellectual
> capital, logistics loss, and results in an inferior product

What I'm arguing is that, in order to effectively outsource, one must get good
at the so-referred training and integration costs, while hedging against
logistics issues. Otherwise you will get, as you prophesy, an inferior
product. But I'm not convinced that's inevitable.

Of note, keeping everything in-house can result in its own logistics issues,
as the organization becomes necessarily larger and must pay related overhead
costs. So deciding to keep processes in-house doesn't mean you get to
completely ignore "logistics loss" because you're paying a similar price in
its stead.

~~~
rsj_hn
> What I'm arguing is that, in order to effectively outsource, one must get
> good at the so-referred training and integration costs, while hedging
> against logistics issues

I think by now we have demonstrated that this is false, no? In the 1960s, it
was a popular idea (especially among managers) to assume that a company can
have a core competency of "management" rather than making products or
services. If true, such a core competency would mean

1) You can take a great manager at an Ice Cream making company and move him
over to an Aerospace company and he'd still be a great manager.

2) Rather than being facilitators who helped to coordinate talented people,
managers had their own talent at "managing" and so you can pay them the kind
of superstar wages that were previously paid to superstar performers.

3) The above two skills could be efficiently measured and identified to allow
scaling them to a large organization.

This idea was obviously very popular, and so a business structure called the
"conglomerate" arose where one huge company would buy and own many different
smaller companies all with completely different product lines, because the
competitive advantage of the conglomerate was viewed to be "managing" rather
than producing, and thus the superior managers would improve margins at pretty
much anything they were put in charge of.

But unfortunately what ended up happening was that the conglomerates
underperformed. There are still some conglomerate hold outs, like Berkshire
Hathaway, but everyone knows that this is because of Buffet's investment
acumen, not because Berkshire has a stable of excellent managers. Perhaps
there is such a thing as pure "management" skill, rather than say,
"Engineering Management", but if such a skill exists, it's sufficiently
difficult to measure and/or replicate from one product area to another that
none of the businesses who thought they had this skill as a core competency
actually had it. This remains the case today -- there are many well managed
companies, and many talented managers, but 'management' has never been and
cannot be a core competency of any firm.

So this idea that Boeing can shed its core competency from building planes and
replace it with a "coordination" core competency is a rehash of the
conglomerate dream with the same disastrous outcomes, and many people who saw
what Boeing was doing knew exactly what this would lead to.

~~~
solatic
> it was a popular idea (especially among managers) to assume that a company
> can have a core competency of "management" rather than making products or
> services.

No, that isn't the argument at all. A manager at an ice cream factory doesn't
need to understand aircraft manufacturing tolerances. If a manager at an ice
cream factory outsources the production of chocolate, and the chocolate that
arrives as an input is slightly off-grade, it's not going to cause thousands
of tons of aluminum and human flesh to come crashing out of the sky.

Risk management has its similarities across disciplines, just as the
principles of Lean Manufacturing are similar across disciplines. But you can't
effectively outsource something you don't intimately understand, which (by the
way) is why it's impossible to outsource research.

~~~
rsj_hn
I guess I don't understand your point. First, you say "that's not the
argument", but then you make the case that Ice Cream production is
qualitatively different. Yes, exactly! You don't have the depth of the supply
chain or the level of interconnectedness in the ice cream factory as you do
when you are building a jet with pieces outsourced that are moving parts that
need to work together. A slight flaw in the wing tip will change the stresses
on the plane, the fuel efficiency, will require software updates, and will
trigger changes throughout many other components. Now change that from "flaw"
to unknown factor. In that environment, it's really impossible to specify what
the tolerances on everything should be in full precision, you need a team of
people with a common purpose and short communication paths who can collaborate
on fixing these issues in a cooperative manner rather than in a contractual
vendor/supplier relationship. E.g. if there is a problem discovered in the
design, perhaps you need some changes in the wingtip design and in 1000 other
parts, and everyone needs to work together to make that change. Now, what
happens when these are 1000 different companies working to spec, with lots of
lawyers poring over the details of what was required. It becomes an unworkable
nightmare. Only a true coordination talent with heavy doses of prescience
could try to solve that nightmare, Boeing thought they had this coordination
talent, but they didn't because no one does.

Such a talent is not a core competency of any firm.

More importantly, such a manufacturing process is incompatible with
innovation, where you have to be able to make lots of mistakes as you stumble
towards a better design iteratively. It only works when everything is known to
spec before the contracts are signed -- e.g. when you are _not_ innovating.

This type of design agility can't be extracted from the minds of conscientious
engineers working together on a shared vision, and parceled out to for profit
contractors looking to do spec work.

Similarly risk management certainly adopts a common language, but the idea
that you can actually manage risk in a quantitative way is not something borne
out by experience. Rather, you can cover your a$$ and say you have sign off
from you GRC people so that when stuff breaks down you can point the finger at
someone. We just exited a massive financial crisis, and we see security
breaches on a massive scale, most of which happen in firms with well funded
GRC teams. Again, wishing that you can control these variables does not make
it so. Putting together a bureaucracy to control something doesn't mean that
it's controlled.

~~~
solatic
> Such a talent is not a core competency of any firm

No it's not, which is why agile processes have less risk than waterfall
processes. You're not making the argument that Boeing should keep all of their
manufacturing in-house, you're explaining why Shenzhen has become the hardware
manufacturing capital of the world. Shenzhen isn't controlled by a single
company, and the ability to quickly order parts from other manufacturers in
the Shenzhen area allows hardware manufacturers to respond with the agility
you describe. Who controls the individual manufacturing processes is less
important than the speed of the feedback loops.

> the idea that you can actually manage risk in a quantitative way is not
> something borne out by experience

Well, Wall Street would disagree with you.

> We just exited a massive financial crisis

2008 happened not because the underlying risk models were wrong but because
people were sold high-risk instruments on the fraudulent premise that they had
almost no risk at all, and the rating agencies which mislabeled the risk hid
behind the First Amendment. If the high-risk instruments were honestly
represented at sale, they wouldn't have been purchased by people seeking low-
risk instruments, and the portfolios of most market players would've been
well-diversified as planned and able to withstand those kinds of shocks. That
the rating agencies were able to hide behind the First Amendment (risk
assessments are not political speech) and that nobody went to jail for the
fraudulent risk assessments remains a great injustice, in my opinion.

> we see security breaches on a massive scale

Because law and regulation do not set sufficient financial penalty for
insufficient security practice and the market at large has shown not to care
enough about security to punish players with poor security practice, so the
financial risk of a breach is (in my opinion, unacceptably) too low to cause a
change in corporate behavior. Again, not an issue with risk management, just
people responding to systems as designed.

> Putting together a bureaucracy to control something doesn't mean that it's
> controlled.

Sadly I actually agree with you on this, which is why I wrote, and I quote,
"competency at shifting numbers around on bean-counting accounting sheets is
not the same thing as competency at outsourcing".

------
sargram01
You see this at startups too, middle eng management were actual engineers and
as the startup grows career managers creep in and skew the alignment of the
engineering departments away from engineering solutions, the “product” they
make, to problems they understand instead, political jockeying, manipulation,
appeasing the LCD and the next managerial rung above them.

~~~
aphexairlines
Your initial scenario is still flawed: "middle eng management were actual
engineers." The problem is elevating management above other roles. At that
point the course has been set.

~~~
hinkley
And they may know how to manage devs but they have very little change of being
good at , which is what protects the dev team.

When the smooth talking suits show up and tell their pretty dictions, there
aren’t enough people who know how to push back.

But where would you find these classically trained managers who haven’t drunk
the Taylor koolaid?

------
gist
I don't flag articles but this is one that I would flag. Why? It's typical HN
'red meat'. Well presented and (seemingly) well written and thoughtful. But
the writer not only has no expertise (he did research?) but offers no backup
(other than things that other news outlets have written) for most if not all
of his statements. Now it's on thing if you are a major news outlet (NYT, WSJ
or online well know publication) and it's another thing if you are just 'some
guy, writer with a 'media company'' (what he does) and you do this and post
your own articles.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davidperell](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davidperell)

Why bother to read this exactly? There is always a question of what you read
being true and sure it's fun to poke positive or negative. But honestly having
a flashy website or blog is not enough.

(Kudos David for being opportunistic (I really mean that btw) pulling this
off).

~~~
theYipster
Couldn’t agree more. This is a rambling mess of an article which strings
together past commentary on Boeing’s history and the 737 Max without making a
coherent point.

Furthermore, the author also gets a number of things wrong about his research,
and also presents statements as pure fact which are purely false.

Here are three examples I pulled out—in order from minor to argument-
disqualifying.

1\. The author cites innovation on the 787 as having electrically operated
systems in place of hydraulics. He meant to say pneumatics. The 787 does not
have an engine air-bleed system, using solid state electric systems to power
the aforementioned components instead of the system of valves and ducts which
manage the flow of high pressure air coming off the engine, as is the norm on
other aircraft.

2\. The author sites engines being outsourced historically because of a
natural difference in engineering expertise between engine and airframe. While
engine and airframe engineering are different domains, the real reason
airframe manufacturers don’t make engines and vise-versa is entirely due to
the Air Mail Act of 1934. I suggest the OP research the United Aircraft and
Transport Corporation.

3\. The OP’s central argument of cost control, and particularly outsourcing,
as being a central driver to engineering problems with the MAX is hindered
when he cites example and supporting arguments primarily about the 787
program.

Yes, cost control is an overarching issue and one that is being investigated
vigorously, and 787’s level of airframe outsourcing has been a key problem to
that particular program’s profitability.

However, the author fails to understand that the outsourcing he talks about is
made at the program level. Citing the 787 as being representative of Boeing as
a whole is spurious. The author also fails to understand how outsourcing
effects engineering both at Boeing and down the supply chain.

In truth, the level of outsourcing on the MAX is largely no different than on
the NG. (The previous model 737 that has been flying safely for decades, which
went into service 2 years before the MD-Boeing merger.) It has been common
since the advent of the jet age for there to be separate suppliers for engines
and components—i.e landing gear or avionics. This does not mean innovation and
engineering expertise is past over the fence—-airplanes are in fact built on
strong partnerships between firms, and that includes partnerships between
engineers. This has always been how the industry works.

Now, tying this back to my 3rd example: The 787 supply chain problems the OP
sites are in regards to final assembly of fuselage and wing structures — this
is a specific area in which one could argue the 787 went overboard in
outsourcing. This, of course, has nothing to do with MCAS—a piece of flight
control software—nor the AOA vanes that feed it. Flight control systems,
sensors, and vanes are typically outsourced, as they are on the 777, 767, 777,
and 747 (all of which engineered and built before the merger.)

...

If we really want to add value to the conversation about Boeing’s culture, the
737 MAX, and engineering aircraft—then let’s please build some knowledge first
about how aircraft systems are actually engineered.

Disclaiming that nothing can be definitively said about the MCAS crashes until
all the investigations are complete and known, I strongly believe the issue is
not a software failure but a systems failure, and particularly, a failure in
the management of the safety classification and assessment process.

There is also the matter that the 737 is a very old program. Beyond the
argument that it was a mistake to try to modernize a 1967 design and
architecture a 3rd time, there is also the problem that the 737MAX doesn’t
necessarily adhere to current engineering standards for safety
assessment—especially at the systems level. This is because the 737MAX was
engineered under the authority of the original 737 certification.

For aerospace engineers working in industry, it would be useful to map what we
know about MCAS and the 737MAX against the requirements outlined in DO-178C
and, especially, ARP-4754. Unfortunately, the 737MAX doesn’t subscribe fully
to ARP-4754 methodology, since it’s a continuation of the program certified in
1967 and not a new type.

------
seanalltogether
So exactly the situation that Steve Jobs describes in his infamous interview
on how sales and marketing takes over product focused companies.

~~~
azinman2
What makes the interview infamous? Did you mean famous?

~~~
throwaway2048
I suppose its infamous amongst sales and marketing folks.

~~~
stjohnswarts
I would point out that there are very few sales and marketing folks reading
hackernews vs engineers and scientists and coders.

------
im_down_w_otp
I don't understand how this was a software failure. From everything I've ever
read about this issue, including this piece, the failure seems very much like
a model & design failure.

It seems like a systems & human factors engineering failure. Not a software
failure.

~~~
mantap
There were absolutely software design failures - to have two sensors but only
read the value of one of them and to not even apply sanity checks to check the
sensor is working (e.g. is the sensor saying that the aircraft is pointing
towards the sky when it's on the ground?).

It's simply crazy. The only plausible explanation is that Boeing did not
perceive MCAS to be safety critical, even though it had control of the
aircraft, and so they didn't bother to apply any redundancy to it. Boeing
seemed to wrongly assume that any failure modes would appear as a runaway
trim.

~~~
im_down_w_otp
That seems very specifically to be a design failure, not a software failure,
no?

------
pavlov
_> To this day, industry insiders still joke, “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing
with Boeing’s money.”_

That's commonly said about the Apple-NeXT acquisition too — NeXT paid a
negative $429 million to take over Apple.

Obviously the results were much different there...

~~~
j1vms
> > To this day, industry insiders still joke, “McDonnell Douglas bought
> Boeing with Boeing’s money.”

> That's commonly said about the Apple-NeXT acquisition too — NeXT paid a
> negative $429 million to take over Apple. (...)

I guess that is why it is considered a joke. It sounds like the management
teams of NeXT / McDonnell Douglas benefited much more (in the long term) than
the investors of their defunct, purchased companies. Benefiting through
greater compensation and clout without really taking over (i.e. owning) the
purchasor's company.

------
AlleyTrotter
Happens every time the accountants and MBA's take over. Experience with three
companies bought out by investment funds/accountants. Move on as quickly as
possible. Cheers

------
ilaksh
My own personal (fanciful) beliefs:

\- at least two executives including the CEO should get life in prison

\- at least two people from the FAA should join them

\- Boeing should be dismantled and become at least two separate companies.

\- The FAA should also be rebuilt from the ground up.

\- Create a new type of corporate tax that helps ensure the FAA has a more
adequate budget.

\- New law that ensures that CEO and some other upper-level decision makers
need to have senior engineering experience. (Ideally there would be no
executives at all, just engineers, but that's too unrealistic even for my
fantasy here).

------
mltony
> The new engines were too big to fit in their traditional spot under the
> wings. To combat the problem, Boeing mounted them forward on the wings.
> Moving the engine position forward shifted the plane’s center of gravity,
> which altered the aerodynamics of the aircraft. The position of the new
> engines pulled the 737 tail down, pushed its nose up, and put it at risk of
> stalling.

Can someone explain to me how this is possible? In my understanding If you
move the engines forward, it would move the center of gravity forward as well,
and this would push the tail up and pull the nose down - exactly the opposite
from what's written in the article. Does some fancy aerodynamic effect play
some role here that leads to stalling?

~~~
alumowa
Layman here. What I picture in my head is due to the engines being placed
higher and more forward on the wing, it will want to rotate nose up when
thrust is being produced.

~~~
salawat
This is correct, and normal behavior actually. That's already accomodated for
in modern designs.

What isn't is the extra lift at high-AoA and longer lever arm for the lift
force to operate through. MCAS was meant to counter that, and arguably would
have been a perfectly reasonable fix if they'd have designed it to the proper
degree of redundancy, and actually told pilots how it worked and that it
existed.

------
jorblumesea
I've often felt GE and other industrial conglomerates have similar issues as
those brought up in the article. Too much focus on quarterly profits and
investor payouts, obsession over stock prices and "wall street" metrics.
Everyone talks about Japan or China stealing our industrial base but it often
feels like we did it ourselves.

------
JMTQp8lwXL
Interesting read, but most of the article is about the increased costs of
outsourcing of component fabrication. It doesn't really explain how the MCAS
system evolved, or the outsourcing on the software side, even though the
author identifies a software failure as the primary source of the crashes.

------
dmix
Has anyone considered that the MCAS bug was just simply nasty and difficult to
detect in their simulator?

It’s easy to look back with retrospect and make sweeping judgements about the
entire company and the FAA.

But fundamentally this was all over, as the author mentions, a single software
bug and a lack of backup sensors to offset the risk.

In addition it was the technical pilots who asked for the stick to be harder
than it was, which added to the difficulty in that unique situation.

The MAX was otherwise a very safe plane was it not?

There will always be limits to how effective regulatory oversight can be.

~~~
privateSFacct
It also relied on a the pilot as a critical control - which is why there was
no real automated backup or redundancy.

Not unreasonable, doing stab trim cutout is a memory item for most operating
manuals - pilots were already the circuit breaker for other stab trim issues.

Automation working - great. Maintenance failures? Provide error messages
(which occured here). Maintenance issues not resolved and automation
misbehevior? Stab trim cutout memory item.

Despite all the claims that the stab trim cutout did not work all real
evidence is that it did. Other issues around pressure on flight surfaces not
explored properly making recovery in overspeed and other conditions very hard.

Badly designed system? Definitely. Brittle when facing poor maintenance?
Clearly! Not taking into account broad pilot population. Of course. Definitely
should be fixed, and frankly automation probably will be increased to decrease
assumptions around pilot behavior which can be variable.

This accident was the result not only of this bug but a chain of issues.
That's why flying in the US is pretty safe, the chain from procurement to
maintenance to pilot training is strong so compensates for poor elements.

If you follow SAA technical for example there is evidence overseas that bogus
parts are making it into plane repairs, with predictably bad results. We are
not seeing that in the US (yet), though if inspections get soft I'm sure it
would show up here too. Those bogus repairs will mean that some automation
will break and the plane may not behave properly in ways that could have been
designed around with better assumptions.

My prediction? We are going to get iphone style authentication / serial number
chips in key plane parts with electrical connections and the plane will
eventually refuse to fly without the right parts - just like your coffee maker
and iphone. Right now it is trust based.

~~~
largbae
s/This accident/These accidents/

As you'll find in this article below, Boeing specifically removed the yoke-
back function, which is the natural pilot input to nose up the plane. They
also specifically for the MAX removed the separate switch for automatic stab
trim assistance, so you have to turn off the motorized function entirely to
turn off automated inputs including MCAS. The Lion Air crew could be heard on
the radio saying that they did disable the stab trim, but in this situation
the force required on the manual trim wheel was beyond the pilots' strength.
The pilots turned the electronic stab trim back on in hopes of using the
powered system to get back up, after which the undocumented and unstoppable
MCAS nosed down the plane again, killing them and their passengers.

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/boein...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/boeings-emergency-procedure-for-737-max-may-have-failed-on-
ethiopian-flight/?amp=1)

Your post reads like a sophisticated attempt to blame the victims, or at least
the pilots and ground crews of the victims. These crashes were not caused by
poor pilots, but rather secrets on top of secrets, all by Boeing, all for
money.

The MAX had new aerodynamic characteristics, but that needed to be a secret.

So MCAS was added to the electronic trim assistance to hide the new
characteristics, and the switch to disable it was removed to protect the
secret.

A faulty AOA sensor was now able to bring down the plane, but in order to keep
the secret the single AOA option was still available and sold. Maintenance
crews regardless of quality would not have been aware of the criticality of
the AOA's secret role as a single point of failure for the whole plane.

When the first one crashed, secrets covered it up.

When the second one crashed, it still took all of those "ppor maintenance",
"broad quality" non-US airlines and regulators to bring a stop to it.

And apparently the secret-keepers are still trying to hide.

Please don't blame dead pilots for this.

~~~
salawat
One more thing, the flight computer was eventually found to be a single point
of failure after being subjected to testing that should have been done in the
first place.

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/newly...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/newly-stringent-faa-tests-spur-a-fundamental-software-redesign-
of-737-max-flight-controls/)

Another regulatory no-no that wasn't brought up until the certified aircraft
had been out in the wild long enough to kill people.

~~~
privateSFacct
Is this the five independent bit flips in worst possible order and combination
from _cosmic rays_ failure?

First -> if this is your worst failure mode (ie, worse than pilot error,
mechanical fatigue and failure, engine failures, fueling issues, crazy
passengers etc) then you have a plane and overall safety system that is
incredible.

Second -> this wild set of events again does not crash the plane - though it
would put the pilots in a bad spot similar to the existing MCAS issues.

~~~
salawat
>First -> if this is your worst failure mode (ie, worse than pilot error,
mechanical fatigue and failure, engine failures, fueling issues, crazy
passengers etc) then you have a plane and overall safety system that is
incredible.

Or would be, if it didn't violate design constraints that demand no single
point of failure can have the capability to result in loss of the aircraft.
I.e. components with failure profiles of catastrophic severity _MUST_ have
redundancy. You test the least likely events to ensure you have sufficient
fault tolerance for that very reason.

>Second -> this wild set of events again does not crash the plane - though it
would put the pilots in a bad spot similar to the existing MCAS issues.

Actually, one of the three test pilots did in fact lose the plane in the
simulator. Hence the reclassification of the flight computer as a component
with a catastrophic failure potential.

Look, I'm about the last person you're going to get to buy into the awesome
safety of an aircraft that can't even pass a textbook test case for computing
in adverse environments. If the bloody thing was so safe and high quality, it
wouldn't have been able to suffer that induced failure in the first place. It
would have been designed out. The fact Boeing was caught off guard by that
failure means they weren't looking very hard, and were banking that no one
else would either. Which is generally a really bad assumption to make, because
Murphy finds a way. Every time.

~~~
privateSFacct
There's lots of potential for failure that the planes allow when flying.

Some quick examples - they could have sensors around gas quality but do not -
they rely on the folks providing the avgas to have good fuel. They could do
built in weight and balance calcs with sensors - they do not, they rely on
poor estimates for that. etc.

Boeing in particular ALLOWS pilots to fly planes outside of most flight
envelope limits. They do this in part because historically they didn't trust
the computer as much and trusted pilots more.

Airbus by contrast doesn't let you do this unless you take air data totally
offline or something crazy to force alternative law. I suspect boeing will be
moving towards the airbus model which is probably right. Airbus had arguably
less local myopia when designing their planes - ie, future pilot populations
come from a big group and making the plane as error proof as possible is best.
Airbus had some issues around their automation without pilot override
initially but I think those are resolved by now.

If you want a scary video - check out this early A320 flying - first fly by
wire / autothrottle:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAg-
WauGrLU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAg-WauGrLU)

Can't have been a good feeling as that pilot. Note that the A320 is now
considered a very safe plane.

Aircraft have evolved from systems with almost no built in redundancy or
safety. The design of the 737 is pretty old - 1967 or so. Let that sink in for
a bit, consider what type of tech they had back in. This is not a 777
generation plane or even A320.

------
sudoaza
MBAs ruining everything again, this is so familiar it ain't even funny.
Putting business guys at the top is one of the biggest mistakes in companies,
even if we concede that they are needed they should have very limited power
not the control of the company like today's CEOs.

------
jgeada
Engineers create value, management is a tax on that value. And when management
takes over a company culture the next stop is typically bankruptcy as
management wont stop until all value is extracted into their pockets. American
corporate history is littered with examples.

------
jonplackett
Reminds me of what a Steve Jobs warned about marketing people taking over and
product people being pushed out:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM)

------
booblik
While it is nice to think that this is all a beancounter fault, and to an
extent it is, there must be an engineer in Boeing who was tasked with this
difficult and challenging mission how to avoid the expensive recertification
of the airplane. They must have spent many sleepless nights thinking how to
make that happen, until finally reaching a eurika! moment. And I want to
believe that they thought the solution they proposed was both sound and
economical, yet the execution was lacking. In the end there must be an
engineer behind every feature, even if they were pressured by non engineering
manager to compromise.

------
tomohawk
When the 737 was first created, iterating a known type of aircraft was much
less of a concern. It was not a key design constraint.

As time went by and we learned more and the good idea faeries had time to
think about things, we now have all kinds of regulation that makes the cost of
making a new plane much higher if it is not an iteration on an existing
design.

This sort of regulatory pressure has a tendency to nix innovation in favor of
stability, and that's what we see here.

~~~
jyounker
I don't think this is a new phenomena. My understanding is that the MD-80 was
built on the DC-9 airframe partially to avoid the costs and efforts of
recertification, and that was 40 years ago.

Aside from regulation, There are very good business reasons from both ends of
the industry that exert pressure to iterate on an old design. (E.g Each
additional airframe dramatically increases the complexity of an airline's
maintenance organization.)

------
RedBeetDeadpool
Didn’t get to read the full article, but it sounds like a case of snakes in
suits. Did the leaders and managers in charge at the time the poor engineering
took place get any sort of reprimanding or blame, or have they walked away
with accolades of their quarterly performance and cost savings with continued
increases in salaries and public reputation?

------
PaulHoule
People forget the other purpose of outsourcing which is that it diffuses
complaints from other countries that they are buying planes from dupolists and
should do something about it because sweden, japan, and other countries that
might develop and aircraft industry can point to some part of every Airbus and
Boeing made in their country.

------
segmondy
Why are the engineers being blamed? Why not frame it as

Boeing MBAs took over the company and drove quality down.

------
fmajid
I agree 100%. McDonnell-Douglas' corrupt military contractor culture ate
Boeing from the inside. I have family that work at Boeing and the tales of
corruption they told me are hair-raising.

------
piva00
I read this article [0] about a month ago that went through what happened to
Boeing after the MD merge. After reading it I went through some other articles
comparing the development of the 777 to the 787 (the first plane to be
designed with this new Boeing management completely in control) and it's
staggering how Boeing went downhill from an engineering-focused company
perspective to a bean-counter paradise, it seems to be the common trope: you
let business people take complete control of your products' pipeline and the
race to the bottom starts, the company can still deliver while the old culture
lingers but as more time passes the more problematic these deliveries are
until the company has been sucked dry to deliver on-paper good quarterly
reports but is rotting from the inside.

Maybe it's a side effect of financial capitalism taking over, maybe it's not
but it's quite correlated.

[0] [https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-
invest...](https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-
investigation-indonesia-lion-air-ethiopian-airlines-managerial-revolution)

------
gaze
The headline is written as if this is the fault of the engineers :/

