
Doomed Jets Lacked 2 Safety Features That Boeing Sold as Extras - edward
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety-features-charge.html
======
ajnin
> Boeing charges extra, for example, for a backup fire extinguisher in the
> cargo hold. Past incidents have shown that a single extinguishing system may
> not be enough to put out flames that spread rapidly through the plane.

Well that's something that is not comforting to read. Charging extra for
comfier seats, I can understand, but charging extra for features that might be
the difference between life and death for 100+ persons, that's just sick and
criminal in my mind.

~~~
cja
Road vehicle manufacturers also charge extra for safety features.

~~~
RankingMember
The person who will be occupying the vehicle gets to make those decisions.
Unless you're buying your own 737, you don't get to make that choice.

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nyeormex
_In the software update that Boeing says is coming soon, MCAS will be modified
to take readings from both sensors. If there is a meaningful disagreement
between the readings, MCAS will be disabled._

How was MCAS rolled out and certified flight-ready when it did not rely on
readings from both sensors? This breaks a cardinal law of airplane safety --
always have redundancy.

~~~
Someone1234
Because MCAS wasn't originally proposed as having enough authority to make
dangerous flight inputs. It was allowed by that standard.

Then Boeing increased how much authority the system had to pass a different
part of certification without telling the FAA.

> “The FAA believed the airplane was designed to the 0.6 limit, and that’s
> what the foreign regulatory authorities thought, too,” said an FAA engineer.
> “It makes a difference in your assessment of the hazard involved.”

[...]

> The discrepancy over this number is magnified by another element in the
> System Safety Analysis: The limit of the system’s authority to move the tail
> applies each time MCAS is triggered. And it can be triggered multiple times,
> as it was on the Lion Air flight.

I'd suggest reading the full article/context:

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/faile...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-
implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/)

~~~
nyeormex
Interesting, thanks for this.

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stanski
To be fair, I don't think the "disagree" light would've helped those pilots
any. Knowing that the AoA sensors disagreed isn't going to help them
troubleshoot a system they are not aware exists. It's just one more warning to
troubleshoot while fighting the aircraft.

If anything, it's MCAS that needs to be heeding the AoA readings disagreement.
Instead it's more than happy to only rely on the reading of one of the
sensors.

~~~
matt4077
I seem to remember reading about an incident recently where pilots noticed
divergent sensor reading and aborted take-off.

It would seem that AoA disagreement would be the very first symptom of the
failure that lead to these crashes. Since pilots are likely not to immediately
notice this (hence the indicator), this feature may well have given them
additional time to sort out a response. Depending on how this failure
progressed, it may have even been discovered on previous flights or before
take-off.

~~~
Someone1234
That's a really good point.

The AoA disagree could go off as soon as the nose is lifted, which still may
give pilots just enough time to abort take-off or immediately request landing.

~~~
VBprogrammer
> which still may give pilots just enough time to abort take-off

Airliners are committed to takeoff by the point of rotation. Typical ops
manuals would abort for any warning before 80kts, at a speed known as V1 they
are committed (even in case of engine failure) this typically occurs 10-20kts
before rotation speed where the pilot initiates lifting the nose.

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ocdtrekkie
It's comforting knowing the airline I usually fly on bought both options. I
wonder if we could mandate these options being public and who ordered what, so
that airlines are more hesitant to leave them out?

Reminds me so much of the car market though. Adding a $3 thermistor is
"automatic temperature control" and requires a trim level that costs $1,400
more.

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cube00
Scary parallels with the way Tesla is selling software updates to enable
features. Let's hope consumers don't have to choose which safety features they
can afford in the future.

~~~
Yver
For a long time, ABS and airbags were as extras as well. The difference is
that a consumer shopping for a car can decide how much safety they want to pay
for, while air travelers have no idea how safe the plane they are going to
board is.

~~~
lm28469
ABS, ESP aren't only for the safety of the person buying the vehicle.

You can have the latest, safest car money will buy and get plowed by a 30
years old land rover without any crumple zone and die because he couldn't stop
in the snow/rain (bald tires, used break pads, &c.).

It's always a balance between regulations and ""freedom"".

In some US states you can drive anything as long as it has and engine and a
plate. I lived in CA for a while, everyone drive with bald tire, I remember
opening google maps on a rainy day, LA area was full of the red ! accident
signs.

The world is a big kindergarden, you can't expect people/companies to do
what's best for themselves/others so you have to enforce the rules through
laws and regulations.

If companies were allowed to sell cars without safety features for a lower
price people would buy them.

~~~
imtringued
That 30 year old land rover will most likely be obliterated by any modern car.
When comparing old vs new cars the size difference is completely irrelevant.
Modern compact cars are much safer than old large cars.

~~~
lm28469
Yeah but we're not in a car crash benchmark here. If you end up paraplegic and
the other guy is dead you still lose.

> When comparing old vs new cars the size difference is completely irrelevant.

impact force = mass * speed² / (2 * distance)

The crumple zone of modern car improves your _distance_ here, mass (size)
still plays a huge role.

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OliverJones
Well, they tried to fix an airframe stability problem (caused by fitting
larger/heavier engines to an existing airframe platform) with a fly-by-wire
solution.

Kinda like if you or I could rent an 18-wheeler truck with a promise that it
"drives just like a car."

One wonders: Did outside air temperature or weight-and-balance issues figure
in to these crashes? Hotter=less lift. Weight too far aft=nose up tendency.

~~~
VLM
An accurate analogy, although a better HN automobile analogy in the sense of
more accessible to the general public would be trying to drive SUVs like cars
results in rollover accidents.

Its an error of regulation to permit a ridiculously safety critical real world
physical system to digitally emulate a historical virtual system to save
training money. Its a perfectly good aircraft on its own; it just has
intentionally hacked and modified controllers to fake being another plane, and
those hacked and modified controls unfortunately kill hundreds of people.

Given the merger of government and aerospace its going to be a huge
dysfunctional fight where neither side can back down and admit they need to
change things. My guess is for purely political reasons both sides will admit
guilt, although its obviously completely a government failure. On the other
hand, as per the recent VW Diesel situation, if the government implements
stupid regulations that are followed to the letter resulting in predictably
dumb outcomes, the government accepted no blame and the company was attacked.
There are strong indications going both directions which will make this
interesting to watch.

~~~
treis
>An accurate analogy, although a better HN automobile analogy in the sense of
more accessible to the general public would be trying to drive SUVs like cars
results in rollover accidents.

That analogy implies that the pilots were trying to fly the plane in a way
that it couldn't handle. A better analogy would be a safety mechanism on the
SUV that prevents drivers from turning too sharply and rolling over. The
crashes are caused by that system incorrectly measuring the turn rate, forcing
the car to drive straight, and have it run off the road.

Really, there's nothing wrong with the MCAS system in theory. Plenty of planes
require computer controlled inputs to fly safely. The problem is in the
execution. The base model lacks redundancy and pilots weren't trained well
enough to handle the system malfunctioning. And in the case of the Lion Air
crash a poor safety culture.

Honestly, the problem is probably already solved at this point. Correcting the
issue that caused the crashes is simply flipping a switch. The issue is
identifying what's causing the control issues to know which switch to flip.
Every pilot should be hyper aware of the potential issue and they'll be able
to easily diagnose and fix in flight issues.

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baxtr
I am sure that some pricing and bundling consultancy has made a "good" job
here.

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ethagknight
(Woof, sorry for the long comment) A little thought experiment, and I want to
be clear, its apparent Boeing screwed up big time, but I also expect my
airline to make every effort to incorporate all safety features. Since it’s a
bit of an ethical gray area where cutting edge or expensive safety features
are knowingly foregone, I haven’t seen the fact discussed concerning these
airlines’ culpability for choosing to acquire aircraft without safety features
to save money (aka, to make more money), just like Boeing marks up the cost of
these features to make money. I realize that the AoA disagree is a safety
feature that would have informed pilot of a bad Boeing design, but are there
other sensors and features that could have been offered by Boeing, but aren’t
available or aren’t purchased for similar reasons. If it was an option on the
order sheet, and they had technical consulting to assist with specificying the
plane, then they made an active decision not to beef up on safety.

I’m sure there are better examples that have a higher probability of improving
safety, but for some fun examples, where are the massive, inflatable,
roofmounted airfoils that inflate like big airbag parachutes in the event of
an impending crash. What about 5 pt harnesses for all passenger? Where are the
uniformed armed security squad on every flight to deter hostage situations?
What about full situational awareness mesh network radar comms a la the F-35?
What about no carryons allowed in the cabin to reduce flammability and
airborne objects during crashes? Each of these things offers a potential,
incrementally-increasing level of safety for passengers, that are not taken up
by the market.

For an analogy, If my cabby didn’t buy curtain airbags from the Ford, and I
get my head smashed in a wreck caused by a malfunctioning component elsewhere
in the car, doesn’t the cab company still have some culpability for skimping
in passenger safety? If not in that scenario, what about a poor level of
maintenance (but still technically compliant) of the vehicle? At some point,
for contracts of carriage, it’s up to the carrier to establish an expected,
acceptable level of safety for its customers.

Again, it sounds like Boeing bears the lead blame, and it wasn’t clear the
features as sold offered valuable data to the pilot in the event of an
emergency, but I also expect my airline/carrier to provide as much safety is
commercially reasonable. Just like when reviewing legal contracts or lines of
code, if a line item is added with no obvious reason for existing, one must
ask “why is this item here?”

------
mnm1
I'm sure if Boeing had correctly described the lack of these features as
potentially crashing the airplane, these airlines would have bought them. As
it is, hundreds of people had to die because Boeing wanted to make a little
extra cash selling essential, potentially life saving features as add-ons. If
that's not criminal, I don't know what is. Of course, I would bet money that
no one is held responsible for this, as usual. We probably won't even get a
canned apology. This airplane design should be grounded permanently. If Boeing
is willing to let hundreds die by making critical systems optional, who knows
what other issues the plane has that will kill even more people? There should
also be an investigating into how this plane was certified, as clearly
regulators failed to do their job and check Boeing's greed. The CEO and people
at Boeing responsible for this plane should face criminal charges as well as
anybody in the regulatory bodies who decided to certify this plane buying
Boeing's claims that it was just another 737 when that is not the case.
Without criminal charges, Boeing and other companies are going to continue to
play with people's lives to make a few extra bucks.

------
foldr
[https://youtu.be/UAvuZsflglw?t=8382](https://youtu.be/UAvuZsflglw?t=8382)

------
DailyHN
> A United spokesman said the airline does not include the features because
> its pilots use other data to fly the plane.

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VBprogrammer
An angle of attack sensor is loosely equivalent to a G-meter in a car. Calling
it a safety device is a bit of tabloid reporting.

That said, given the sensors are used directly as input having a disagree
light is a reasonable thing to expect.

~~~
tyingq
It's standard equipment on new Cessna 172's and marketed as "Safe Flight",
specifically called out as a way to avoid a stall, etc. When the industry says
it's a safety thing, it's hard to blame a reporter.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Yeah, marketers aren't any better. If I was buying a new 172 I'd probably be
more interested in a BRS (whole airframe parachute) than an AoA sensor.

[https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/general-
aviation/201...](https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/general-
aviation/2016-12-30/cessna-adds-safe-flight-aoa-new-
skyhawks%3Famp&ved=2ahUKEwil3Pvvo5PhAhUr2OAKHT7rDygQFjAAegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw2KnayYMbyI7efq78lKx9EK&ampcf=1)

Since these are twin engine aircraft, you could make many arguments about blue
line speeds and balanced runway lengths but I'll take your point.

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mizchief2
Why is the story that Boeing sold them as extras instead of the airlines not
buying the option?

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PaulHoule
If it is a 737, the airline isn't buying any extras for comfort, even though
they might give it a fancy paint job. (e.g. it's like putting a padded seat on
a torture rack)

~~~
tyingq
Not sure what you mean here. There are airlines with business class in a 737,
and there's also the BBJ. Aircraft owners are free to choose how crowded the
seats are on any aircraft.

~~~
PaulHoule
You aren't going to be all that comfortable in business class if the airplane
has a circular fuselage that squeezes you in the vertical direction.

The 737 is a classic story of undercompetition and underinvestment. The design
goes back to the 1958 era 707, and it feels tiny on the outside even though it
is big on the inside.

The Embraer 195 is much smaller than the 737 but it feels more like the 767
inside because it is designed with the human physique in mind.

Boeing was shocked by what it cost to develop the 787, but had it given the
same treatment to the 737 it would have been able to recoup the costs more
quickly because so many 737s get made. Also since the 737 is so common in the
sky anyone who is concerned about climate change, noise, or any other
environmental effects of air travel would see the 737 as a priority.

Ten years ago you could take a widebody from NYC to LAX. Today if you fly, you
wind up on a 737 or an A320 which is basically the same thing. For me it is a
reason to stay home, drive, or take the bus.

~~~
tyingq
I think that's a reasonable point for the 737/A320 coach window seat. That egg
shape of the Embraer hull does afford more room. It seems negligible for 737
business class though, since the seat is quite wide.

