
The Roots of Boeing’s 737 Max Crisis: A Regulator Relaxes Its Oversight - tafda
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/business/boeing-737-max-faa.html
======
mevile
Deregulation never seems to result in more competition, just more
consolidation and more and more powerful companies with increased lobbying
powers and personal connections to top government officials.

~~~
rayiner
I mean this is facially untrue. We’ve been undergoing a 70-year long period of
deregulation, and it’s been overwhelmingly positive. (Not to mention, it’s
been copied by nearly every Western European country, and has markedly
improved what during the 1970s and 1980s were very weak economies.)

We can get next day packages from Amazon, for example, because of the
deregulation of the airline and trucking industries:
[https://parcelindustry.com/article-5131-De-Regulation-of-
the...](https://parcelindustry.com/article-5131-De-Regulation-of-the-Airline-
Industry-FedEx-and-Last-Mile-Delivery.html). Previously, package delivery
would take much long because packages would be transferred from carrier to
carrier operating on regulated routes with regulated prices.

In the electric industry, deregulation of the generator side of the industry
has caused wholesale electricity prices to plummet. Today, more than half the
cost of electricity is from the still-regulated, retail distribution side.

As to airline deregulation: fatality rates per million passenger miles has
trended linearly down since the 1960s. So have ticket prices.
[https://www.fastcompany.com/3022215/what-it-was-really-
like-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3022215/what-it-was-really-like-to-fly-
during-the-golden-age-of-travel).

We have also largely avoided regulation of the first major post-FDR industry:
the Internet. If the US operated the way it did in the 1950s and 1960s, we’d
likely have regulated prices per ad impression and things like that. Instead,
the industry has flourished in the absence of regulation.

There is a reason anti-deregulation screeds focus on isolated incidents and
are heavy on narrative. Why are we fixating in one instance of failure instead
of looking at what airline safety records have looked like over the past
decades overall? Objective views of numbers and long term trends make the
situation look far more rosey.

~~~
mikeash
It doesn’t seem very useful to talk about “regulation” as some sort of
singular entity.

When you talk about the positive results of deregulation, that’s all economic
regulation. Freight being run on regulated routes with regulated prices was
protecting various groups’ economic interests. Usually at the implicit expense
of the economic interests of everyone else.

Safety regulations are a completely different beast. Safety regulations in
aviation have increased massively over this same timeframe, and the result has
been an even more massive increase in safety. Crashes went from routine to
unheard of despite a huge increase in activity. Cars have seen a similar
increase in safety regulations and in actual safety, although the safety gains
have been more modest and seem to have stalled out in the last five years or
so.

That doesn’t mean safety regulation is necessarily good or that deregulation
couldn’t be helpful sometimes. But the actual track record in recent decades
is completely contrary to this idea of decreasing regulation providing better
results.

We’re fixating on one instance of failure because it looks like a canary in
the coal mine indicating a threat to the safest mode of travel ever devised.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Safety regulations are a completely different beast.

Only they're not. If you impose a billion dollars in fixed regulatory burden
then you can no longer have sub-billion dollar companies.

But lack of competition erodes everything -- even the safety rules, because
bigger companies are more capable of capturing regulators.

Any regulation which is the direct cause of a lack of effective competition is
doing more harm than good.

> That doesn’t mean safety regulation is necessarily good or that deregulation
> couldn’t be helpful sometimes. But the actual track record in recent decades
> is completely contrary to this idea of decreasing regulation providing
> better results.

That's kind of the point. The entire frame of "regulation bad / deregulation
bad" is a farce. What you actually need is regulation that maximizes the ratio
of benefits to regulatory burdens. That means removing burdensome and
ineffective regulations and having efficient and effective ones.

But evaluating regulatory efficiency and effectiveness is dry and non-
partisan. Framing it as "we need more regulation" is failing before you even
begin.

This 737 MAX debacle is a case in point. It came about because Boeing was
trying to avoid the high costs of recertification, so they didn't change
things that could have made the plane safer because changing them would have
required recertification.

So we have "safety regulations" negatively impacting safety by making it move
expensive to improve safety than not. That's not a case of needing more
overall regulation or less overall regulation, it's a case of needing to
replace worse rules with better rules. The ideal outcome is that the net
regulatory burden becomes _lower_ and as a result it becomes less expensive to
make changes that improve safety.

~~~
kjar
If I interpreted this argument correctly - regulation is bad, costs money. How
much is a human life worth? Clear to me is that Boeing did that sick math and
rolled the dice and F’d up royally and fatally.

FAA was gamed, but If you think Boeing would self regulate, I think you are on
a different timeline where stockholder dividends are not the prime directive.

~~~
Mirioron
I understood his argument as: regulation is rigid and some regulations end up
pushing things towards a bad ending, because actors in the real world don't
always do what regulators imagine they will do. Eg the total costs of
recertifying the plane are so high that it's worth it (for the company) to
roll the dice to avoid it.

~~~
dmix
This isn't about whether more or less regulations should exist or not, but how
we can build better administrative systems. When the regulations create an
environment where only one or two mega-companies like Boeing can exist,
combined with pretty much any democratic system where said company can have a
direct influence on both the regulatory agencies (often through staffing via
knowledge gaps in industry/academia where those in the company often are the
only ones who know enough to make the policy) and policy making itself by
elected officials in favour of just the current company not the future.

Simply put, the definition of 'failure' of a regulation needs to be broadened.
Regardless if it reduced deaths by the company _itself_ in the near term, if
it adds long term risk to deaths/accidents in the future by encouraging
regulatory capture and eliminating any competition but Boeings to exist - we
are worse off as a society, period. The only option we are allowing is some
pseudo-market mega-corps with monopolies and the mediocrity in both service
and safety or public gov run companies (which do make sense occasionally, but
rarely).

There's a few solutions I can think of here which isn't "all regulation is
bad" or "lets only have mega corporations in every market via poorly designed
regulation" or "let gov nationalize the markets":

a) Contextual oversight. Allow a certain level of freedom at the lower tiers
of markets so a future competitor to Boeing can exist and challenge them on
everything from prices, to technology, customer service, and safety (which yes
is a massive competitive advantage, ask all the people who now refuse to fly
in Max, what other options do they have? A single European version of
Boeing?). While allowing the courts to expunge any company that sacrifices on
safety or any other externality via tort laws, liability, via stronger
consumer and property rights.

b) Constant pressure on regulatory agencies (possibly by an outside agency) to
look for regulatory capture within agencies and severely punish civil servants
and companies engaged in any backroom deals, creating policy/incentives which
are barriers for competition with little/zero benefit to citizens, punishing
companies for obvious lapses, etc.

c) Stop politicians from anointing themselves job creators and promoters of
businesses. They should strictly be in an administrative role when absolutely
necessary (to eliminate any forms of violence, coercion, externalities that
courts can't handle, etc). This is the biggest source of the worst of a) and
b).

When politicians think their job is to 'create jobs' themselves by creating
monetary/policy incentives for companies, this inherently create incentives
for kickbacks to politicians and moral hazards for companies, and therefore
should not be the job of politicians period. The only "help" to companies
should be to help get out of the way by eliminating useless policy OR
streamline necessary administrative systems. Otherwise don't help them at all.

Companies should not be able to buy success and maintain success in markets
(by that I mean monetarily regardless of behaviour or outcomes) by having
influence from politicians. All policy should be neutral of company size (or
tiered based on size, the way modern rent control has tried to stop
disincentivizing new lower income buildings by not applying to new
developments) and factor in small firms who can't afford a team of lawyers or
checkbox checkers.

------
std_throwaway
> In the middle of the Max’s development, two of the most seasoned engineers
> in the F.A.A.’s Boeing office left.

> In their place, the F.A.A. appointed an engineer who had little experience
> in flight controls, and a new hire who had gotten his master’s degree three
> years earlier.

This is how you grow an army of YES-men without any substantial backbone. The
type that makes good middle managers and keeps the process moving smoothly.
Unfortunately for these engineers, they might ultimately be responsible for
the system they signed off on.

~~~
tomohawk
This is how the government works. The government is just an institution, and
institutions do not care about you. They just don't. They follow their rules
and guidelines. If the guide is to put a GS-13 in that slot (employment
category), then that is what will happen. There's no magic. Just rules.

Boeing did not build great planes because of the FAA. They built them because
their culture and expertise were aligned to do so.

In the fact, the safety culture at Boeing was once so great that they often
worked with the FAA to establish standards and guidelines, because the FAA
simply did not have the expertise that Boeing had.

When that culture failed, Boeing failed.

~~~
perl4ever
"Boeing did not build great planes because of the FAA. They built them because
their culture and expertise were aligned to do so."

People say things like this, that when a company is competent, or ethical, or
whatever, that it's not thanks to the government.

Yet I hear/read every day where a company says that they _cannot_ do a given
sensible, or ethical thing because it is not mandated by law. Every disclosure
(e.g. privacy) I get with a financial account says that they cannot give
customers more rights than are mandated by law.

I wonder what the reason for this disconnect is?

~~~
tomohawk
Government regulation can certainly help, as long as you can somehow ensure
adequate expertise and actions are taken. For example, a lot of farm raised
shrimp from outside the US is not what it is advertised to be. This impacts
legit US producers who want to sell healthy food by putting them out of
business. If the USDA and FDA actually were competently regulating, then this
would not happen.

Aircraft are much more difficult. When making the 747, Boeing was faced with
needing to have it certified by the FAA, but FAA did not have the expertise to
do that. So Boeing worked with the FAA to develop the regs and tests and so
on. I really cannot imagine how the FAA would ever be able to hold on to a
competent aviation grade software engineer for very long. Even if they could
hire one, within a year or two their skills would atrophe.

~~~
markdown
> This impacts legit US producers who want to sell healthy food by putting
> them out of business.

I'm sorry but there is no evidence for this claim. I can't think of a single
Big Food company that wants to sell healthy food. Look at the poultry
industry. Look at how milk, pork, and beef are produced. There's no reason to
believe that "Big Shrimp" would be any more ethical.

Local corporations put profit before health and safety just as much as foreign
corporations do.

~~~
waqf
Yeah, because the people who would have wanted to put healthy food before
profit have either overcome that desire or gone out of business. Just as GP's
model predicts. The corporations you get are the ones you regulate for.

The tech industry is the same: we'd love to protect users' data better than
regulation demands, but it's hard to make the business case because you just
do a lot of work to put yourself at a competitive disadvantage while the users
don't notice or don't believe the difference. If data protection were
effectively regulated then compliance woudn't be a competitive disadvantage,
and then we might have a hope in hell of shipping a good product.

------
azinman2
Kind of BS. Yes the regulations and oversight should be amazing and effective,
but Boeing should have redesigned the airframe from the beginning when it
became clear that the more efficient engines didn’t work with the frame. Let’s
not misplace the blame here. Their business driven goals (don’t require
simulator training) were smart until they couldn’t be made to work. Instead
they forced it, resulting in death of human lives and possibly Boeing itself.

~~~
rwc
This is way over the top. Boeing will be fine on account of being too
important to fail (and we can debate endlessly whether that’s a good thing or
bad thing but that doesn’t change the veracity of the statement). Boeing’s
_customers_ wanted the Max to be built on the 737 platform. You’re vastly
underestimating the impact of a new airframe on carrier operations if you
think it’s as simple as simulator training.

~~~
nrb
I think above ALL, Boeing’s customers want airplanes that only make controlled
landings. If that’s unachievable in practical terms with the current airframe,
then it shouldn’t exist in its current form.

------
40acres
There are so many underlying threads here: the revolving door between
government and industry, the influence of lobbying, lack of competition within
critical American industries, deregulation, lack of funding for regulatory
agencies. All sums up to regulatory capture. Sickening.

Time and time again regular people are getting screwed by the same patters,
the previous paragraph basically summarizes what led to the 2008 financial
crisis as well.

~~~
bartimus
In a deregulated world banks wouldn't get bailouts. They would go bust.
Governments wouldn't pressure France with import tariffs to protect their
aviation industry.

In a heavily regulated you still got dieselgate. It got exposed by the private
sector.

There's many factors at play. There exists no world where Boeing benefits from
having their planes crashing.

~~~
fzeroracer
There does exist a world. It's a world of calculated risks, where people
figure out how far they can push things before the risks start eating into
profits.

It's the same thing that occurs with risk analysis using customer data. They
only fund exactly as much security as they need. Does the company benefit from
having private data leaked? Not particularly, but if the cost of having data
leaked is less than the cost of securing that data, then businesses will not
secure their data.

Which is where regulations come in.

~~~
bartimus
The regulatory world is also a world of calculated risks.

In any case. The result of the calculation will always be:

"crashing planes = not good for our company"

------
jorblumesea
One issue the article didn't cover, but I wish it did, was the obvious
corruption of the FAA by industry lobbying. The revolving door of industry ->
government -> private industry leaves any regulation weak and often
ineffectual. We call it "lobbying" but the reality is that it's just
corruption and bribery under a nicer name.

One specific example to highlight the issue...

Ali Bahrami works for the FAA, lobbies to delegate oversight to the airlines,
then leaves for a lobbying job, then is back at the FAA again at a higher
position. It's hard to believe he's always acting in the public's interest
with so much industry money and connections.

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/with-...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/with-close-industry-ties-faa-safety-chief-pushed-more-delegation-of-
oversight-to-boeing/)

------
jeffdavis
Probably true but not nafarious/corrupt. It's just human nature that if you
watch something and it appears to be safe for long enough, you stop watching
so closely.

It's also alkind of a paradox: the safer something appears to be, the more the
safety is taken for granted and pushed to unsafe levels. C.f. the mortgage
crisis or a million other examples.

~~~
danso
From what data are you deriving this theory of inevitable entropy? The safety
record of the airline industry overall does not appear to be declining or
regressing. On the metric of commercial jet fatalities, 2017 was the safest
year ever [0]. Or are you suggesting that the 737 MAX is the canary in the
coal mine of an imminent era of airline disasters caused by complacency? Why
is that more likely than the lobbying and bureaucratic changes documented in
the article?

[0] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aviation-
safety/2017-safe...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aviation-
safety/2017-safest-year-on-record-for-commercial-passenger-air-travel-groups-
idUSKBN1EQ17L)

~~~
mikeash
2017 was the safest year ever with zero fatalities in jets and less than a
hundred fatalities total.

2018 saw a couple hundred deaths in jet crashes.

Where does one get the idea that airline safety is regressing? Well....

~~~
danso
The commenter I replied to is asserting that a regression in safety is the
natural order of things, and this is in response to article alleging systemic
dysfunction on the part of Boeing.

I wanted to know what statistical basis he's working from, because the
phenomenon he describes is not at all self-evident, not when airline safety
has been solid for decades. That we just recently had the lowest annual crash-
fatality count, in a decade that is arguably the safest decade in history of
passenger travel, undercuts his claim. Unless he thinks the Boeing crashes are
the harbinger of this inevitable safety regression.

I don't understand your comment if it's meant to be a rebuttal to me. The fact
that after 2017's record safe year, hundreds of airliner passengers have in
_crashes involving new Boeing airliners_ , is support _for_ the NYT article's
thesis that Boeing is to blame. Not just, "shit happens as things get better".

~~~
mikeash
I don’t have a particular opinion one way or the other on the idea that safety
tends to revert. But given the past couple of years, I see why someone might
think it is starting to revert.

~~~
danso
Yes, people thinking there might be a regression in airline safety is the
entire basis of the article. The main factors for that regression,
particularly with respect to Boeing's record, is what's being debated.

------
bgorman
A major problem is that regulatory capture leads to less competition, yet the
common solution proposed is "more regulation/government". The US federal
government effectively forced Boeings 2nd biggest competition to shut down
their business in 2017 (Bombardier's C Series program, now sold to Airbus for
pennies on the dollar). It seems to me that if a democratic government is
given broad arbitrary regulatory power, it is a given that it will be used to
limit competition for special interest's groups benefit. If anyone has any
examples of a large federal agency that hasn't been captured, I would be
interested to know more.

~~~
tw04
Except the bombardier issue had literally nothing to do with regulation and to
claim it did is misleading. That was 100% Trump with his tarriff BS. The FAA
and safety regulations played 0 part in it. We could have literally an
unregulated airline industry and it wouldn't have changed the bombardier
situation.

~~~
bgorman
Without speculating about political motivations, the Bombardier CSeries
tariffs were imposed by two Federal regulatory agencies for "unfair
competition/dumping". (US International Trade Commission, and the US
department of Commerce)

~~~
tw04
Which again, had absolutely nothing to do with the FAA or anything safety
related. Conflating the two is misleading at best. My point stands.

~~~
bgorman
Your original post started off with this sentence: "Except the bombardier
issue had literally nothing to do with regulation and to claim it did is
misleading".

------
naikrovek
> The F.A.A. eventually handed over responsibility for approval of MCAS to the
> manufacturer.

This is pure WTF, right here.

~~~
russdpale
Yes, an MCAS system with 0 redundancy.

> So even some of the people who have worked on Boeing’s new 737 MAX airplane
> were baffled to learn that the company had designed an automated safety
> system that abandoned the principles of component redundancy, ultimately
> entrusting the automated decision-making to just one sensor — a type of
> sensor that was known to fail. Boeing’s rival, Airbus, has typically
> depended on three such sensors.

“A single point of failure is an absolute no-no,” said one former Boeing
engineer who worked on the MAX, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about
the program in an interview with The Seattle Times. “That is just a huge
system engineering oversight. To just have missed it, I can’t imagine how.”

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/a-lac...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/a-lack-of-redundancies-on-737-max-system-has-baffled-even-those-who-
worked-on-the-jet/)

~~~
Nomentatus
No need to imagine - Boeing was selling the sane more-sensors solution as an
extra, and just assumed - before the fact - that no airline would pass on the
extra sensor. That would be insane. So, more money for Boeing, AND a lower
list price. The airlines shouldn't have bought unsafe airplanes, but were
crazy enough to do so. The buyers turned out to be even worse chancers.

~~~
markdown
> The airlines shouldn't have bought unsafe airplanes, but were crazy enough
> to do so. The buyers turned out to be even worse chancers.

The plane was made by Boeing, and signed off by the FAA as being safe. Some
airline on the other side of the world isn't going to even pretend to know
more about the plane than Boeing and the FAA do. It was a completely
reasonable assumption to make that the aircraft was airworthy.

The only airlines who would know that the FAA is actually corrupt (captured by
Boeing) and could be failing at their regulatory function are the US airlines.

It's unfortunate that you seem to be blaming Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines
for the crashes because apparently they should have known better than to trust
that Boeing and FAA would approve a faulty plane. Keep in mind that the FAA
approved the plane _as is_ and not "airworthy only if you buy the extra
features"

~~~
raymond_goo
And in addition, the new MCAS System was apparently hidden from the manual.

------
rectang
The background of all of this is increased corporate power in American society
relative to individuals. Regulatory capture happens more quickly and fluidly
when government is more accountable to corporate money than to voters.

------
Merrill
The roots are when they moved the Boeing Headquarters from Seattle, where they
made airplanes, to Chicago, where they did not.

They stopped being an engineering and production company and became a
marketing and accounting company.

~~~
vermontdevil
It started when Boeing bought McDonnell and in turn McDonnell took over
Boeing.

You can read more here

[https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-
bailout](https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout)

------
stretchwithme
I think it's more a lack of long term thinking. Leaders that do not have a
long term stake in the company but who can profit from a rise in the stock
price in the short term.

What if executives could only sell their shares five years after they acquired
them? What if they experienced losses when the company does?

Boards and shareholders need to get smarter. I'm hesitant to regulate it but I
see no problem the SEC rating companies for their incentive structure. It
should be updated whenever leadership changes or the company changes
compensation.

Companies lad by founders who still have most of their wealth in company stock
should garner the highest rating. Companies that don't require CEOs to invest
and who allow CEOs to exercise options stock and sell stock whenever they want
might get the lowest.

How executives can sell stock should be part of that rating. If executives can
only sell an amount of stock gradually, say in 8% increments every month for
the next year and can't change that schedule, that is safer for shareholders
than allowing them to sell whenever they want.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
It'd be interesting if executives and upper management were paid in dividends
for 30 years.

That way, you have a vested interest -- even after you leave the company -- to
make sure it does the right thing.

~~~
stretchwithme
Definitely something to that. 30 years might seem like too long a period. But
if you want your pension to stay healthy, build it to last. That message would
be pretty clear.

------
p5a0u9l
It's seems easy to dogpile on Boeing in this situation - there is likely even
truth to narratives of under valuing engineering at Boeing, I should know. But
the story of corporate greed and callous corner cutting is too easy and starts
to feel like group think. Boeing, as the plane manufacture, has the task of
ensuring safety under a vast array of conditions. And in truth, they, along
with industry have made flight incredibly safe. Not only are planes
complicated, they are complicated systems composed of many more complicated
subsystems operated by Airlines across the world under different regulatory
agencies, with differing training and maintenance standards. It's complicated
and it's always easier to see flaws in hindsight. Second, don't think that
Boeing doesn't know that there business hinges on consumer confidence. Every
time there is an incident with a plane - manufacturer's fault, operator's
fault, or whatever, Boeing gets a black eye. Regulation is critical, but not a
blanket solution to industry challenges. It may not be right, or ideal, but
there are good reasons the faa delegates. How much more funding should we give
them to make us feel safe? Fatality frequency is measured in "per billion"
today. We want a bad guy when there is tragedy. I fear that want will further
damage a company already fighting for it's life with Airbus. Let's not let
them off the hook, but neither are the causes or solutions simple.

------
WheelsAtLarge
It's interesting how this lesson is never learned. We constantly see how
oversight is reduced or removed because companies decide that the costs are
too high and the rules too stringent. But as soon as the rules are relaxed the
companies immediately begin to cut corners and things begin to fail.

It's human nature to find ways to get from point A to point B using the least
amount of energy even if we need to break the rules. We should all keep that
in mind.

~~~
georgebarnett
This lesson will continue until we realise that the ultimate goal is the
improvement of our society and that to get there we create markets which serve
society.

At the moment we appear to be confused and think the goal of society is to
have markets, so we regulate for the market and hope society gets an outcome.

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
Well put.

------
danso
Seems like another anecdote of where seniority and experience in engineering
is something that can't be quite replicated/replaced by technical
qualifications:

> _In the middle of the Max’s development, two of the most seasoned engineers
> in the F.A.A.’s Boeing office left. The engineers, who had a combined 50
> years of experience, had joined the office at its creation...In their place,
> the F.A.A. appointed an engineer who had little experience in flight
> controls, and a new hire who had gotten his master’s degree three years
> earlier. People who worked with the two engineers said they seemed ill-
> equipped to identify any problems in a complex system like MCAS._

I assume engineers new to the industry (and government regulation) would be
lacking in "big picture" thinking and in confidence and skill in navigating
and investigating bureaucracy – the NYT notes that Boeing's early MCAS report
"didn't prompt additional scrutiny from the F.A.A. engineers". But the NYT
also reports that the engineers made what seemed to be a straightforward
technical misjudgment:

> _In several briefings in 2016, an F.A.A. test pilot learned the details of
> the system from Boeing. But the two F.A.A. engineers didn’t understand that
> MCAS could move the tail as much as 2.5 degrees, according to two people
> familiar with their thinking._

Though it's hard to tell from that paragraph and its context whether the
misunderstanding came from simple technical error and incompetence – e.g.
misreading or not fully reading the specs – or deliberate
deception/obfuscation from Boeing, and/or inexperience and naivety in doing
regulatory work.

------
readams
The underlying assumption here seems to be that if only the FAA had examined
in detail every aspect of the development of the plane, of course they would
have found all the problems. Underlying this assumption is the idea that
Boeing is either trying intentionally to create unsafe planes (as though this
is good for Boeing) or that the FAA could hire engineers that are way better
than Boeing's engineers.

I don't buy it.

~~~
danso
The latter half of the article makes specific claims to how lack of FAA
expertise and manpower, and increasing deference and complacency to the
industry's self-reporting, led to missed signals. For example:

> _When company engineers analyzed the change, they figured that the system
> had not become any riskier, according to two people familiar with Boeing’s
> discussions on the matter...So the company never submitted an updated safety
> assessment of those changes to the agency. In several briefings in 2016, an
> F.A.A. test pilot learned the details of the system from Boeing. But the two
> F.A.A. engineers didn’t understand that MCAS could move the tail as much as
> 2.5 degrees, according to two people familiar with their thinking._

> _Under the impression the system was insignificant, officials didn’t require
> Boeing to tell pilots about MCAS. When the company asked to remove mention
> of MCAS from the pilot’s manual, the agency agreed._

The "change" mentioned is Boeing overhauling MCAS to have a four-fold increase
in magnitude of control over the stabilizer (2.5 degrees vs 0.6 degrees). Your
belief is that the FAA, even with a better-staffed review team, and less of a
culture of rubber-stamping industry engineer assessments, would have reached
the same conclusion? And/or do you think the MCAS change is actually not a
problem it's scapegoated to be, and that Boeing was right to tell FAA to
remove it from the pilot's manual?

~~~
readams
I'm saying I don't buy that the FAA was ever likely to catch the problems with
this system that the engineers at Boeing didn't catch. In hindsight it's easy
to say the system was a problem and clearly it was, but the FAA was never
going to catch anything.

The meeting with the FAA pilot you mention only goes to reinforce this; nobody
in the FAA is ever going to have all the right context to put this together.
Rather than trying to find some meeting with the FAA where someone could have
caught it, there were probably many many meetings inside Boeing where it
should have been caught.

------
PieUser
This article ends abruptly

~~~
interestica
Yeah, what was the deal there? Cliffhanger? I legitimately can't tell if
intentional.

~~~
danso
I think it's just an example of a common news article pattern: put the most
memorable and/or important finding or anecdote at the top, and end with the
second most memorable.

It's not a cliffhanger. It's an anecdote – a FAA employee asking what seems
like a seemingly-too-basic question "days after the Lion Air crash". The Lion
Air crash happened last year, and the body of this article is ostensibly the
answer to that employee's outburst.

------
rubenhak
Systems are getting too complex for traditional methods of validation and
certification to operate. Safety and correctness of intelligent machines
should be validated by even more intelligent machines.

Another big problem is that there is very little competition. In reality there
are only two players. Smaller manufacturers get absorbed by big ones. As a
result grounding a single model causes economic catastrophe in many airlines -
leading to significant ticket price increase!

~~~
jacquesm
Simply applying the rules would have worked just fine here.

------
8bitsrule
"they followed proper procedures and adhered to the highest standards."

And here I thought 'highest standards' meant not creating death traps.

------
solotronics
I wonder if critical systems such as this would become more or less reliable
if a law forced the companies to release the source code to the public so that
anyone could audit. Something like the rewards Tesla gives to the hackers that
compromise their systems should be set up by the government for critical
software.

------
cgb223
Where are the smaller airline creating startups trying to eat Boeing’s lunch?

If there ever was a time to take down a giant, this is it

~~~
jacquesm
How on earth does 'airline creating startups' live in the same sentence as
'Boeing'? Boeing is an _aircraft manufacturer_ , not an _airline_.

Airline creating startups do not compete with Boeing, they compete with
Lufthansa, Air-France-KLM, Delta and so on.

And even if they did create airplanes, small start-ups do not usually directly
compete with giants the size of Boeing on their home territory. Airline
manufacture - even with shitty regulation - of a new model passenger plane is
not something a 'smaller airplane creating startup' would successfully pull
off. It will take a very large amount of money and a huge team to do this.

------
tehabe
This is what I always fear when I hear deregulation. It is not that regulation
is gone, it is just that it is shifted to the regulated and this is one
possible outcome, people die.

------
throwaway3627
This is regulatory capture that corporate-political plutocracy brings. I hope
Nader sues the pants off them in his goddaughter's memory.

------
cedivad
The root is our current form of capitalism.

------
sddfd
The elephant in the room is that we made requirements for getting a completely
new plain design into the market so expensive and time-consuming, that Boeing
cut corners and reused an existing design to get around the process.

~~~
ProfSarkov
Completely new plane designs are being introduced into the market all the
time. What are you talking about?

~~~
sddfd
No, they don't. New variants enter the market, such as the 737 MAX, which are
easier to certify.

Boeing introduced the last new airframe for commercial passenger transport on
2009 (the 787). Before that, it introduced the 747 in 1994.

Which new airframes that enter the market all the time are you talking about?

~~~
jacquesm
The 737 MAX is a new plane, they hacked the type certification process to get
around that.

