
Boeing safety system not at fault, says chief executive - sjcsjc
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47980959
======
LeoPanthera
This headline is highly misleading. The article says "Dennis Muilenburg
maintained the system was only one factor in a chain of events that led to the
disasters."

I watched the actual event and this is generally accurate. He maintained that
all accidents are a result of a series of events, all of which would have to
occur for there to be a crash.

He did _not_ say that MCAS was not at fault - the opposite, in fact, since he
said they were testing a new version of MCAS to prevent future crashes.

~~~
panarky
Highly disingenuous to infer that if multiple factors that coincide to create
a failure, that this component is not "the cause".

Of course there are always multiple factors, but all the evidence points to
the MCAS system as a major contributor to these catastrophes.

I don't know who's advising Boeing on their crisis management and media
strategy, but they're doing it wrong.

Every time Boeing attempts to sidestep or minimize this it makes me trust them
less.

Take a lesson from the Tylenol poisonings [0] and the Rogers Commission
investigation of the Challenger disaster [1].

Step 1 in enlightened crisis management: accept responsibility.

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

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report)

~~~
tempguy9999
> Step 1 in enlightened crisis management: accept responsibility.

Agreed completely, but let me be devil's advocate here.

If he accepts responsibility then boeing is presumably fully and immediately
legally liable. I guess that, particularly under US culture of suing anything
that moves, everyone will try to cash in to the maximal extent possible.
Including airlines possibly cancelling their existing orders - might they
cancel 4,700 plane orders? What would that do to the company? By how much
would boeing's liability increase on a straightforward "mea culpa"?

I can't agree with his butt-covering but I can see why it's happening. There
seems to be little upside to accepting the blame. Could it destroy boeing? How
many jobs lost?

"Boeing employs more than 153,000 people across the United States and in more
than 65 countries" <[https://www.boeing.com/company/general-
info/>](https://www.boeing.com/company/general-info/>) and a whole long-tail
of US jobs indirectly.

How would it affect the US economy and standing in the world (I mean, more
than it's already doing now)? I'm sure he's being leant on from above.

etc.

(please note I'm presenting a possible explanation, not endorsing it. There
seems no moral way out of this. The real cause is the historical stupidity
that allowed this to occur, for which he should definitely swing, and a few
more suits. I am NOT endorsing these things I wrote but they seem things he
will have considered. NB am a brit so I'm looking at this from the outside).

~~~
panarky
I suspect this is exactly what's happening - butt covering up and down the
chain of command to avoid blame and legal liability.

This makes sense in a short-term, myopic view limited to first-order effects.

Enlightened crisis management isn't about the moral way out just for the sake
of morality. It's about looking ahead to the second- and third-order effects.

When Tylenol was poisoned with cyanide, Johnson & Johnson could have taken the
short-term, myopic approach. They could have held press conferences to explain
how this wasn't their fault, it wasn't their responsibility, that many factors
contributed to the catastrophe. They could have lobbied regulators to leave
Tylenol on store shelves because it was an isolated incident.

Instead, Johnson & Johnson took responsibility. They communicated
continuously. They to the initiative to remove all Tylenol products from the
shelves. They redesigned the product to make it tamper-evident. And they led a
campaign to educate people to inspect the seal and return any product where it
was broken.

This was very expensive. In the short term, Johnson & Johnson would have made
more profit just concerning themselves with first-order effects.

But in the long term, second- and third-order effects dominate. J&J enhanced
their image, they made the Tylenol brand more valuable, and they built a deep
reservoir of trust.

Boeing should take a lesson.

~~~
luma
You're comparing apples and oranges here. In the Tylenol case, it seemed clear
that the cause wasn't neglicance on the part of J&J, and the remedy of
clearing all product off the shelves probably cost them somewhere in the
millions of dollars.

In Boeing's case, the issue almost certainly is due to intentional actions
taken by a number of people, and buying back existing 737 MAX8s + cancelling
all future orders would amount to billions and could very well sink the
company.

I think the parent comment is spot-on. Boeing is playing a game of damage
control, and they're presumably being advised by some smart and experienced
people. They're not accepting blame, an act which we can assume is motivated
by the legal implications of doing so.

------
jonplackett
Since the main battle to getting this plane flying again is going to be public
trust, I think they’re going about this all wrong.

First admit full responsibility. Then at least you have a shot at people
trusting you to fix it.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
At this point the planes either need to be retrofitted with their original
engines or scrapped. They will remain flying deathtraps no matter how much
software is piled on to patch the issue.

~~~
travbrack
Why? What I've heard is that if the pilots know how to disable the pitch
correction, the plane won't fight them in the event of a sensor failure and
they can land safely.

~~~
underwater
Isn't that exactly what happened with Ethiopian Airlines? The pilots knew
about the MCAS, knew what was happening, disabled the system, but were unable
to physically adjust the trim to prevent the crash?

~~~
theclaw
I’ve not read anything that suggested they knew about MCAS. They knew about
automatic stabiliser trim, which is a different system also present on the
older 737 NG. The way MCAS monitors angle of attack, and the way it is
temporarily disabled by pilot trim inputs was not known to them.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
They followed the recovery checklist. Step 1: Use the trim cut-out switches to
stop MCAS. After the first crash, any MAX pilot would have to be a moron to
not be informed about the issue and Boeing's (useless) guidance to resolve it.

~~~
theclaw
Yes I agree, they knew about the possibility of runaway stabiliser and they
were not morons. Boeing’s guidance was useless to them because it left out a
description of how MCAS operates, and I’m not sure it even mentioned it by
name but I may be wrong on that.

If they had known that MCAS is disabled for 15 seconds by pilot trim inputs,
they could have saved the plane. Toward the end of the flight they went off-
book and re-enabled auto trim, blipped the trim a few times and 15 seconds
later MCAS jumps on and dives them into the ground. All they needed to do was
keep making small trims.

~~~
acqq
> If they had known that MCAS is disabled for 15 seconds by pilot trim inputs,
> they could have saved the plane.

I understand it as "if they were able to consistently, all the time, until
they land, fight the plane which was trying to kill them every 15 seconds
turning the nose to the ground, resulting all the time in even harder position
(due to the forces involved) they would..."

Flying death trap indeed.

------
theclaw
Video of Muilenburg press conference:
[https://youtu.be/xOQmQpKHVWA](https://youtu.be/xOQmQpKHVWA)

He says MCAS is a “system that’s designed to provide handling qualities to the
pilot that meet pilot preferences.” That’s somewhat economical with the truth.
It’s designed more to meet the airline’s preference not to have to retrain
their pilots, and Boeing’s preference to recover lost market share from
Airbus.

------
goldcd
The scary thing I take away from this, is that I'm now interested to know what
plane I'm going to get on.

For my entire life I'd thought (rightly) that "aircraft are the safest mode of
travel" \- this issue has for the first time ever made me realize that
aircraft safety is not an absolute. People making planes put up with all the
same crap I do at work.

~~~
jumelles
It's still the safest mode of travel.

~~~
travbrack
I'd be curious to know how many planes could crash every year and still
produce a lower death toll than auto crashes.

------
linuxftw
> Mr Muilenburg said that both accidents occurred because of faulty data from
> a sensor which triggered the plane's Manoeuvring Characteristics
> Augmentation System (MCAS).

As if Boeing wasn't responsible for the faulty data and the poor programming
that caused the plane to nose into the ground?

I suppose we should just go ahead and blame the earth for being in the flight
path as the leading factor in the crash.

------
ajnin
> It said that once the 737 Max 8 returns to the skies, it will "have an
> activated and operable disagree alert and an optional angle of attack
> indicator".

Really, after all that they're still going to hide part of that arguably
critical system behind a (presumably paid-for) option ?

~~~
theclaw
The disagree alert/indicator was previously an optional extra[0]. Boeing are
saying it will now be fitted as standard on all 737-MAX, including those
already out there.

[0] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-crash-boeing-
ao...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-crash-boeing-aoa-
idUSKCN1NZ0QL)

~~~
azr79
Well that's too late, isn't it? Personally I'm not getting into any of those
flying death traps ever

------
pcurve
He added: "As in most accidents, there are a chain of events that occur. It is
not correct to attribute that to any single item."

He is selling this point hard. The problem is the chain is short and every
chain has Boeing's fingerprint on it.

------
ncmncm
The only thing that could get Boeing out of the hole this guy keeps digging
deeper and deeper would be for him and his chief engineer to resign.

The longer he takes about it, the worse it will get.

------
jumelles
Boeing just keeps digging in and it's both a bad look and a poor strategy.
This is not how you should react when people are scared to fly on planes you
manufactured.

