
Congressional inquiry faults Boeing and FAA failures for deadly 737 Max crashes - pseudolus
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913426448/congressional-inquiry-faults-boeing-and-faa-failures-for-deadly-737-max-plane-cr
======
phkahler
>> the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by
Boeing's engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing's management,
and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA.

That is being very kind to Boeing management. Its blaming the engineers and
the FAA but the management was just not transparent? Boeing fought hard for
their autonomy and ability to self certify, so I guess the FAA failed by
allowing that. But that doesnt exempt the management at Boeing who was
supposed to create an organisation with processes in place to design and build
safe airplanes. They had such an organisation but failed to maintain it as
such. That's more than a lack of transparency.

~~~
headmelted
This.

Also, I’m astonished that Boeing continues to talk about when it’ll deliver
the 737 Max when _no-one will ever willingly fly in one of those planes_.

Even their own staff have said in writing that they wouldn’t let their
families fly in one of those planes.

Boeing’s utter lack of awareness of the gravity of the situation continues to
amaze as much as the absurdity of this statement.

~~~
derwiki
No one? There are a lot of people who fly but don’t follow the news and have
missed all of this. And then others who will forget/not check every time they
fly.

~~~
sjm-lbm
I fly, follow the news, and assume I'll probably fly one one at some point
because there's not enough alternative options. It's not what I want, but if
they have a fix proven out by a lot of successful flight time and a MAX flight
has the arrival time I need.. why not?

Part of the reason Boeing is going to survive is the pure fact that Airbus
can't make enough airplanes to cover the market.

~~~
pydry
China and Airbus together probably can.

China already has a 737 MAX competitor - the COMAC C919.

People have been a bit wary of Chinese safety but Boeing kind of gifted them
the benefit of the doubt on that front.

~~~
dirtyid
COMAC is nowhere near ready and will have to prove itself in the domestic
market before international rollout. That said Chinese aviation safety is
among the best after a very rough start, but the real issue is airplane sales
involve geopolitics, and geopolitics is not looking favourable by the time
COMAC is ready.

>gifted them the benefit of the doubt on that front

I haven't seen anyone discuss this, but China was responsible for
(justifiably) grounding the MAX around the world and crippling Boeing short
term. CAAC was the first to ground Chinese MAX fleet after Ethiopian crash,
which inspired everyone else to despite FAA insisting MAX airworthiness. I'm
sure US is going to remember that when COMAC is open for deliveries, not that
the US will ever buy, but the smearing is going to be rough.

~~~
pydry
US won't ever buy COMAC. It's much too protectionist. Other countries will.

I expect Ethiopia will be happy to buy COMAC. As will most other countries in
the world that witnessed this shitshow.

The plane is pretty much ready. It'll start flying in 2021.

------
tremon
sigh.

> Republicans on the committee did not endorse the investigative report. [..]
> criticized Democrats for an investigation that "began by concluding that our
> system was broken and worked backwards from there."

So, do many republicans hold the view that killing 346 people in the first
year of service is acceptable business practice?

~~~
trabant00
> do many republicans hold the view that killing 346 people in the first year
> of service is acceptable business practice?

First you very carefully selected what to quote. You cut out this part:

> A statement from ranking member Sam Graves of Missouri says, "if aviation
> and safety experts determine that areas in the FAA's processes for
> certifying aircraft and equipment can be improved, then Congress will act."

Which makes it clear they mostly disagree about what the investigation results
say about FAA, not Boeing business.

Then you suggest the republicans not being ok with the investigation findings
means they are ok with killing people. They do not agree with WHY and HOW
these people got killed, obviously not disagree that this should have not
happened.

How you can misrepresent the other side so badly and still be so self
righteous is beyond me.

~~~
tremon
I did not try to misrepresent anything. That first quote I left out because it
was standard politician's doublespeak, i.e. not admitting anything nor
committing to anything.

Yes, my comment was a gut reaction. That reaction was purely based on the gall
of calling into question _whether the system is broken at all_. To formalize
my thought process:

1\. $system exists to certify machines in $domain (premise)

2\. 346 people die in two related $domain failures (premise)

3\. $politician rejects the notion that $system is broken (premise)

4\. a well-functioning system is apparently allowed to result in 346 deaths
(conclusion)

~~~
kortilla
Perhaps you’re just used to dealing with an industry that has little physical
risks where the thought of people dying in a normal functioning system seems
hard to believe?

Hundreds to thousands of people die everyday in vehicles and the NTSB doesn’t
even open investigations. It’s regarded as a well-functioning system. Are
Democrats fine with thousands of deaths every year?

~~~
CraigJPerry
>> Hundreds to thousands of people die everyday in vehicles

But not due to systemic issues like the Toyota unintended accelerations.

Deaths arising from systemic issues in automotive manufacture or poor road
design are relatively rare in comparison to driver-induced deaths due to e.g.
impairment by alcohol.

>> and the NTSB doesn’t even open investigations

It does for (systemic issues - the issues in question this whole conversation)

~~~
DuskStar
But a lot of the causes of car accidents ARE systemic!

"driving while 80 years old"

"driving while on 4 hours of sleep in the past 72"

"driving with the brake warning light on"

I'd count all of the above as "systemic", and bet that they cause a multitude
of deaths. We just don't want to accept the societal and monetary cost to
eliminate them. Others, like "driving while intoxicated", we penalize but
still do not take more than superficial steps to combat. (Superficial from the
perspective of aviation, at least)

------
avsteele
Are there any experts here who have read the report? If so I have two
questions.

1) How qualified are the congressional investigators to evaluate technical
decisions in the MCAS design?

2)Second point: Notably, the article is quite vague about the actual mistakes
that where made. Is there any specific bad decisions it notes that would be
errors without the benefit of hindsight?

~~~
salawat
I read the FAA's final report, and to be frank, I feel like many punches were
pulled. There were mountains of evidence of a dysfunctional culture and
cavalier attitude toward regulation at Boeing.

Despite the punch pulling, there were also admissions that the plane (without
the MCAS flight law) would not have passed certification requirements for
carrying passengers, cementing a solid motive for regulatory obstruction and
perception management.

Mary a mention or touching on any of that in the report. It went to great
lengths to show that the "process worked as followed" yet never addressed the
issue that said process led to 346 deaths.

It's frustrating, because I left the report with the feeling the conclusion
was "Process is fine, people just need to follow it better" when the entire
point of having a process is to take into account human capacity to err and
designing it out.

I think Representatives are basically applying their plank to the report.
Which is bloody stupid, because they need to be reading between the lines and
focusing on the problem, not whether their party leaders approve of their
approach or output.

~~~
jacquesm
Nary?

~~~
salawat
Yes >_>.

Apparently the ML behind autocorrect or my fat fingers betray me once again
after not checking back for 2 hours.

------
bearjaws
Who would have thought that after decades of privatization and corporate
lobbying, the FAA would no longer be functional enough to prevent this kind of
disaster?

This same story is repeating throughout all the American regulatory bodies and
it is only going to get worse.

~~~
varispeed
This is a case of privatisation of profits. The company for all intents and
purposes is a state run company through regulations. Corruption and greed
enabled to side step these

------
t3rabytes
Great. Now what we do to keep it from happening again? How do we reduce
corporatocracy and regulatory capture?

~~~
gmac
If the US system is even slightly functional, the FAA will get beefed up and
we'll be fine for a decade or two.

Then people will again start saying "we've had no accidents for years,
therefore flying is really safe, so why all this burdensome regulation?".
Regulation will get scaled back, something like the 737 MAX will happen again,
the FAA will get beefed up, and so on, ad infinitum.

It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't
be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as
nuclear power).

~~~
joss82
Nuclear power is not that dangerous on a large scale compared to coal power.
Or burning any fossil fuel for that matter.

~~~
yrro
So far, no. But a single nuclear power plant has the potential for continent-
wide devastation. Is the same true of the world's largest coal power plants
(~6.7 GW)?

~~~
joss82
> But a single nuclear power plant has the potential for continent-wide
> devastation.

This is not true.

The space destroyed to make way for coal strip-mining in Germany alone, is
larger than Tchernobyl exclusion zone.

------
bufferoverflow
I hope prison time for the execs.

But probably will not happen.

~~~
sebazzz
Remember Equifax? We don't talk about that.

------
tuna-piano
I understand there were problems at Boeing and the FAA that lead to the
unexpected first crash. I'm honestly not that bothered that a plane crashed
(besides the general sadness of any loss of life tragedies). Sometimes bad
things happen... these are complex machines and regulatory systems. The
process seems to be working and problems are being addressed. Plane crashes
are super, super rare.

What I don't understand, and does bother me, is why the plane continued to fly
after the first crash and even, inexcusably, for days after the second crash!
That seems to me a bigger indictment of Boeing's and the FAA's reluctance to
put safety over money.

------
known
"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of
thinking with which we created them" \--Einstein

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowden_\(film\))

------
stjohnswarts
I think any engineer who won't refuse to work on dangerous projects and not
take precautions is as guilty as the manager pushing for any unsafe changes.
You have to step up and let them know you'll leave if they don't change. Talk
to their managers if you don't have to. Save your emails too. Don't be party
to stuff like this, a big spot of blood will be on your shirt at the end of
the day if someone (or multiple someones) dies as a result. No one can forsee
everything but if you do and you don't do anything about it you are as guilty
as anyone down the chain of "unfortunate situations" that allowed it to
happen.

------
varispeed
Surely it was engineers decision to do short cuts. This is just appalling. All
managers should be in prison.

------
supernova87a
As with so many "root cause" investigations, there are deeper issues the more
you dig. And these issues turn out to be both a gradual evolution of
circumstances that changed Boeings, Congress's, and our collective
responsibility for the matter when you peel back the layers.

It turns out (in my view) that this is just the inevitable result of a slow
abandonment of the role that the military, federal government, and the US
people elected to play in the development of civil aviation in the last
century.

Maybe many have forgotten, but our civil aviation legacy largely came from R&D
and production of aircraft during WW2 and later. Boeing, McDonnell, Grumman,
Northrop, these were all companies that formed from that legacy. But what they
produced besides planes was a government infrastructure that was expert in
procuring, regulating, and evaluating the performance of not just aircraft but
also companies.

And it also produced aircraft companies that worked closely with government --
but most importantly, with their concerns in mind. They were partly the
customer!

Over 50 years, the pressures of public debt, cost of employees, efficiency,
etc. meant that that expertise in the regulatory bodies gradually began to be
hollowed out. Experts in government found themselves too bothered by the
heavier and heavier constraints of government, and lured by the higher
salaries of the private sector. The leaders of a new field were replaced by
mere maintainers of it. We all know what happens as that changes, I think.

Government gradually also became less of a "customer" in the design and
production of planes. And the airplane companies themselves became more
profit-need-driven. They are basically like the auto manufacturers with huge
workforces that need their insurance and IAM wages paid.

So what do you get in a situation like this? The inevitable:

Aircraft manufacturers that start to optimize their designs and production for
low cost and "simple" variations on old designs (don't want to invest in from-
scratch new planes). Regulators who don't know how to evaluate properly new
designs, and anyway whose responsibilities are basically staffed for and by
the airline because few people want to be regulators. And a public that
incentivizes this all because we have other debts to pay and don't want to
cough up the $ in ticket prices or taxes.

Until a plane crashes.

Anyway, that's my take. So if they were honest, Congress would point the
mirror at themselves too, in this exercise.

------
known
Proper Whistle blower program would have prevented these failures

------
renewiltord
Despite the fetishization of “real engineering” and “standards”, once again we
come down to the bare truth: software engineers are the only ones with true
ethical standards. Easily measured by numbers of people killed. In fact, web
front-end engineers are far more ethical than any others. If you work at Slack
you are a better engineer than Boeing aeronautics. Never forget this.

~~~
thehappypm
This is totally nonsense. You think drones have no software in them?

~~~
renewiltord
Well, drones don't have any Slack instances running on them. If you want to
exclude all defence contractor software-engineers from the list of software-
engineers that's fine. I am comfortable with that. Though I suppose when your
job is killing people, killing people is a sign of competence. I think Boeing
wasn't trying to kill people with the 737 Max, but I'm no expert on corporate
psychology.

The important thing to remember is that true engineering is building Electron
and React apps not whatever nonsense all these guys who go around constantly
accidentally killing people do. Aeronautics, such a poor field with poor
standards. Any guy using React+Redux is a superior engineer. After all, he
won't be killing anyone by accident.

~~~
thehappypm
I know you’re trolling, but even your troll argument is flawed. WayFair sold
furniture (ahem, cages) to ICE. Facebook monetizes murderers with ads. People
suck. Engineers in general are trying to make a better world. Sure “better”
might mean “my missile is better than my enemy’s missile”. Or “my ads are more
engaging than my competitor”. But engineers are building things. Through and
through, engineers build. Not too many professions can honestly say they
create.

~~~
renewiltord
Oh sure, you're going on the Evil/Good angle. That's fine. But let's set it
aside for the moment because I will probably just agree with you on whichever
stance you take, since I don't particularly care. I guess I did confuse the
matter by using the words 'ethics' but I meant "not presenting your ability as
far beyond what it is" so perhaps I can clarify and we can move on from that.

I'm going on the competent/incompetent angle which is orthogonal. The problem
is that those guys just aren't good engineers. If they _want_ to kill people
and they're doing it, or they _want_ to sell to ICE and they're doing it, or
they _want_ to monetize murders and they're doing it, then they're good at it.
That's competence.

Aeronautics engineers, though. They want to make things fly and they fall
instead. I don't think they've wanted to kill Boeing passengers, but you know,
considering their skill, perhaps they did, perhaps they did. In which case,
you're right, that's a field of highly competent passenger killers who we
thought were incompetent passenger fliers!

Web developers writing React on the other hand? Zero people intended to be
killed. Zero people killed. Billions of dollars of value. Creativity. Ability.
Competence. The virtues of a _real_ engineer. Perhaps one day other fields can
emulate their techniques to understand how they do it.

------
golergka
I still don't understand how you guys managed to build a country where a major
defense contractor and a government agency can be found guilty. There's just
too many reasons for this to fail to all the different level of corruption; I
look at this marvelling at how the hell does it still work.

If you don't see it as an incredible achievement and don't feel proud of it,
you don't have any perspective on what's the other parts of the world are
like, and were like for the most part of history. Don't take things like this
for granted.

~~~
WJW
They're not found guilty, government officials have "found that mistakes were
made and the culture is rotten". The first brings legal punishments, the
second can be waved away and swept under the rug with promises like "we'll do
better next time". Maybe a few pawns will be fired to appease the public.

~~~
golergka
That's still quite incredible.

