
Boeing Pilot’s 2016 Worry on ‘Egregious’ Max Roils Jet’s Future - hourislate
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-19/boeing-pilot-s-2016-worry-on-egregious-max-roils-jet-s-future
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cletus
I wouldn't be that surprised if the 737 Max never flies again.

So the DoJ has a criminal investigation ongoing. That's one thing.

But the airlines and the families of the victims of the two fatal crashes have
standing to sue Boeing over this. This will take a long time to play out. The
problem for Boeing here is that these civil suits will have an extensive
discovery phase.

All they really need is an exchange like this and to follow the trail. Did a
manager bury it? How high did these concerns go? Who was aware of this and
signed off on having this system rely on a single sensor?

We're now at the point where single exchange that can be construed as a cover
up will kill this plane.

It's absolutely shocking to me that Boeing has played so fast and loose with
their reputation in a desperate attempt to compete with the A320neo.

So after all of this, how are we still at the stage this is "jeopardizing" the
job of the CEO? Like he should be done. If the ever-ballooning CEO pay packets
are justified by the shareholder value they create, doesn't the reverse apply?
The CEO is responsible even if he was completely unaware of it because he
failed to be aware of it, because he failed to create the culture and
management structure that allowed this to happen.

~~~
zaphar
I think it will fly again. I won't be surprised if it takes years and some
modifications to the systems before then. It may in fact turn the 737 Max into
an overall loss for Boeing due to lower sales and contractual fees owed to the
airlines for the planes that have already been sold and re-certifying pilots
to fly it

But fixing the 737 is going to be strictly less money than developing a new
model for Boeing. The right call here is to fix the issues both in software
and possibly with the addition of more redundancies in the sensors. They were
definitely bloodied by this but the plane itself is salvageable.

~~~
hunterjrj
> but the plane itself is salvageable.

You're probably right. From an engineering perspective.

Would you fly in a 737MAX post-fix? We have an engineering mindset here on HN
and so I would expect many of us to answer "Yes". But ask this same question
to the general public? How is Boeing going to repair the damage to both it's
brand and this plane's reputation, and convince the general public to fly on
this model?

~~~
ulfw
I wouldn't. That's because I DO have an engineering mindset. A bad platform
with tons of hacks to make it work and a severe bug/wrong design hack that has
been 'fixed' doesn't imply there isn't more of those we're just not aware of.

~~~
tim333
I probably would. I'm the kind who looks at the probabilities. I imagine by
the time they've fixed this the plane will be pretty safe.

Just ripping out the MCAS and telling the pilots to push the nose down
manually at high angles of attack would probably do it for me.

------
droithomme
So this Forkner guy was the chief test pilot for the 737.

He sends emails saying the MCAS is out of control. He also is the one that
tells the FAA MCAS should not be included in flight materials, and he later
emails them to remind them to remove it when they include it anyway.

His attorney says he's a nice guy and was under pressure from others.

Great. Indict him, bring him in, and have him testify under oath who these
others are and what exactly they ordered him to do.

As to the claim Boeing couldn't turn over the letters they found _before the
second crash_ to the FAA because the FAA itself was being "criminally
investigated", first what difference does that make given the FAA is still the
oversight agency, and second given that that investigation didn't start until
_after_ the second crash and therefore wasn't even a thing at the time they
discovered the emails.

~~~
ilaksh
I don't think it said he was driving to have it removed. I think he reminded
the FAA that it was not included even though it seemed substantial. In other
words suggesting they should review that decision.

~~~
droithomme
> In a Jan. 17, 2017 email, Forkner _reminded an FAA official to delete
> information about MCAS from materials written for pilots_ transitioning to
> the 737 Max from an older model of the jet. In the email, Forkner said
> “recall we decided we weren’t going to cover” MCAS in the 737 Max’s flight
> crew manuals because the system only operated “way outside the normal
> operating envelope.”

------
situational87
So the chief test pilot for the MAX project complained about this system
making the plane uncontrollable and this was all swept under the rug?

People need to be put in prison over this. This is negligent homicide.

~~~
ulfw
The whole FAA needs to be shitcanned is what needs to happen.

Their job is to test these planes. It's not like there's 100s of models coming
out every year. The 737 is America's best selling and most used plane - bar
none.

And that one hasn't been tested by the FAA? They just believed Boeing and
stamped their approval on it?

Well...

~~~
redis_mlc
> Their job is to test these planes.

No the FAA certifies airplanes, which is largely a paperwork exercise. They do
not have airline designers and test pilots sitting around.

~~~
ulfw
They don't need to have test pilots "sit around". They fly planes. Like a test
pilot does.

You can apply to be one here:
[https://www.avjobs.com/careers/index.asp?Job_Title=FAA+Fligh...](https://www.avjobs.com/careers/index.asp?Job_Title=FAA+Flight+Test+Pilot&Category=Federal+Government&Related=Pilot&RecID=118)

------
jessaustin
TFA doesn't seem to go far enough. Does anyone know the particulars of the
simulator experiences that inspired these comments? Was the simulator that
inspired those comments an accurate reflection of the real plane? Was it the
same simulator that was used by airline pilots? If not, which was more
accurate? Can the programmers of the simulator be made available to
investigators?

If the point is just to stir the pot a bit more, that's fine I guess. Keep up
the pressure; everyone at Boeing _and_ FAA who took part in pushing this
through owe a lot of suffering to the families of their victims. I'm just not
sure that someone who interacted with a computer simulation is going to be the
best-informed Congressional witness. That is, if the goal is really to find
out exactly what happened.

~~~
largbae
The simulators themselves are generally quite thorough, wherever feasible they
run the same software as the plane on simulated instrument input (which can
also be broken for simulation purposes).

Newer planes are more and more often fly-by-wire with shakers and motors to
provide the "feel" of the controls. This only makes the simulators more
realistic. Note that the engineer wasn't jumping to the conclusion that there
was a simulator bug, and trusted that the simulation represented the real
handling (as was borne out in reality).

Here is a 747 simulator on eBay to give you an idea of what's in the box:

[https://www.ebay.com/i/293183009463](https://www.ebay.com/i/293183009463)

~~~
jessaustin
In theory simulators are very accurate. In reality they might be. I'd expect
the simulator for an existing airframe with decades of service (like your
747-400) to be more accurate than that for a new airframe. The primary purpose
of simulators is training, not testing. While both the airframe and its
simulator are under development, substantial inaccuracies wouldn't surprise
me. TFA quotes this dude's attorney thus: "The simulator was not reading right
and had to be fixed to fly like the real plane." Is that true? Is that ass-
covering? How are we going to find out from this dude's testimony? Other
evidence must be examined.

TFA says this pilot had a hard time with the simulator. We also know that
these planes crash very often. We can't just put those two propositions
together to prove that the simulator predicted these planes would often crash
in this particular way.

------
rpmcmurdo
Pilot here...

This NYTimes article is a recommended read. The author discusses the role of
pilots who lack good airmanship (pilot training outside the US relies much
more on rote memorization versus learning to fly small planes and/or in the
military).

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-
crashes.html)

Boeing certainly messed up with the MCAS system design, but a perhaps bigger
error was to over-estimate pilot skills and intuition. A good "stick and
rudder" pilot would have cut out the automation promptly and likely recovered
from the situation.

For example, one of the factors in the crashes was airspeed. The pilots left
the throttle at takeoff power, and accelerated to such a high speed that it
was not possible to counteract the nose down moment. Also, had they noted the
airspeed, they would have immediately known that they were not at risk of
stalling, and that they were dealing with an instrumentation/automation
failure (in which case you cut out the automation and hand fly the plane).

This does not absolve Boeing. MCAS violated their "pilot first" design
pattern. It should have simply activated the stick shaker and an audio alert
(and redundant sensor inputs should have been in place to minimize false
positives). That said, the way pilots are trained in countries where light
aviation is not a thing is an issue to be dealt with.

------
awill
Hang on a minute.

From the article,

'Mark Forkner, the chief technical pilot for the 737 Max...'

then later, 'Forkner told Gustavsson that MCAS was “running rampant in the sim
on me,” referring to simulator tests of the aircraft. “Granted, I suck at
flying, but even this was egregious.”'

So Boeing's chief technical pilot admits he sucks at flying????

then later,'Forkner is now a pilot at Southwest Airlines Co., the carrier said
in a statement.'

Am I missing something? Is this a joke?

~~~
ilaksh
Yeah, you missed something. What he showed there was called "humility" and
it's something you will more often see with people who are actually extremely
confident in their skills. It was just a way of qualifying his statement to
reflect that the operation of the simulator, which is variable, affects the
outcome.

Of course he is an excellent pilot.

------
golergka
Americans don't understand how lucky they are, to live in a system where less
than a thousand civilian deaths is enough to so severely damage one of the
country's most powerful corporations, with very close ties to the military.

~~~
throwaway981211
I’m not sure what’s the point of your comment. As an American I’m also lucky
that my country isn’t facing the issues innocent people in Syria, Iraq, etc
face being caught in a civil war. I’m lucky we have vaccines, clean water,
contracts, courts, cops, etc etc.

None of that excuses Boeing’s gross negligence and lack of accountability.

I’ve dumped them from my portfolio although I still - unfortunately - have
exposure since they’re in the SP500.

At some point, I’m hoping heads roll at Boeing.

~~~
zaroth
There should be an S&P500-N fund where you can select up to N specific
companies you want to exclude, and they give you a dynamic ticker which tracks
that sub-set.

I wonder if it’s technically feasible without absurd transaction costs, to
either explicitly or effectively net out specific company exposure from an
S&P500 basket.

Even just a calculator which could tell you, for every share of SPY of you
want to not have Boeing exposure you need to short-sell X shares of Boeing.

~~~
domlebo70
Not a finance expert, but I don't think the transaction costs would factor
would they? You would own "units" in the fund, rather than the underlying
security itself. The makeup of the unit however, would be dynamic

~~~
toast0
A fully realized s&p 500 ex-FOO fund for every company (or every combination
of two or three companies) would probably not have sufficient demand to make
it efficient.

You would need to have some sort of clever accounting to make it work,
although, while retail commissions are at zero, and fractional shares may
become available, assembling your own index fund may be possible with only a
significant time cost.

~~~
ctchocula
Maybe they could implement it with S&P 500 and tqking a short position to
cancel out ownership of stock XYZ. This way they don't have the demand problem
you alluded to. Then they can charge customers an additional fee for this
customization, which would cover the cost of the short. I imagine some would
pay this additional customization fee since it's a small price to feel morally
consistent.

