
FAA pushes back on Boeing exemption for 787 safety flaw - mpweiher
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/faa-pushes-back-on-boeing-exemption-for-787-safety-f-449263/
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greggarious
I'm not an aviation expert, but their reasoning seems to be "it's a tiny
chance and we reaaaaaallllly want to use these planes".

We are talking about a known bug that could lead to deaths.

This isn't some critical military aircraft or a cargo plane that without which
food and goods can't be transported. The only "harm" will be to shareholders.

People are more important than profits.

~~~
GuB-42
> People are more important than profits.

That's not absolutely true. People lives have a value, around $10M for US
transport. It means that if the cost of potentially saving one human life is
more than $10M, it isn't worth it, as in, there are more important things to
do with that money, including improving safety in other areas.

Now profits are important too. Companies need money. That's how they pay their
employees, do R&D, stuff like that. If they don't make money, employees will
get fired, and they won't be able to develop new, better and potentially safer
planes. For airlines, they may be forced to make tickets more expensive or
lower their standards to compensate for the costs of planes that don't fly.
Talking about shareholders, you may be a shareholder too if your savings
include Boeing stocks. Less profits has an avalanche of undesirable effects.
Some of them affect the 1% but the majority of it make things slightly worse
for the 99%.

~~~
ggg9990
If it’s government money it makes sense to save $10m here to apply it there
(in theory). But when it’s Boeing’s money it makes no sense at all. Boeing
isn’t going to take the $10m they’re not spending and put guardrails on
dangerous highways.

~~~
Johnny555
It's not really Boeing's money, they aren't a charity, any increase in the
price of an aircraft gets passed on to airlines (and from the airlines to
passengers)

If unlimited safety improvements are required without regard to cost, it could
drive the cost of the aircraft so high that airlines can't afford to upgrade,
so they keep their older fleet in service for longer. Which works for a while,
but airframes do age and need to be retired.

~~~
nollbit
That's only true if Boeing was the only manufacturer that builds this category
of planes (they are not).

Boeing has an issue in their planes that the A350 doesn't have. So if the
price of 787's goes up because it needs to go from unsafe to safe, then
airlines can buy A350s instead.

~~~
bcatanzaro
Or they can buy the 787-10 with the Rolls Royce engine that is already
certified. (Check out the article!)

In this case, the problem is with the engine, not with the plane, and the
alternative engine is already approved and in service.

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InTheArena
The FAA does a great job with general plane safety. Boeing does a great job
with Safety. It's great to see this in public, so we can understand the system
that leads to aviation being a unbelievably safe form of transportation, while
still being responsive to the market.

(See [https://www.popsci.com/why-air-travel-became-so-
incredibly-s...](https://www.popsci.com/why-air-travel-became-so-incredibly-
safe))

All of that said, the modern generation of engines are so complex to hit their
efficency windows, it's majorly impacting airlines. The A320-NEO engines by
Pratt & Whitney have huge problems that have significantly impacted airlines
and carriers, while GE is struggling with this problem.

All of these are engineering problems, with a complex trade-off between
efficiency (fuel), safety and cost.

~~~
sjm-lbm
There's also a problem with the Trent 1000, the other engine option on 787s:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rolls-royce-hldg-
trent100...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rolls-royce-hldg-
trent1000/rolls-royce-says-tripling-capacity-to-fix-trent-1000-engine-
problems-idUSKCN1IU2NY)

Basically, the compressor is not lasting near as long as expected, and, since
it's a safety-critical part, airplanes are spending a lot of time on the
ground awaiting expensive inspections and repairs that weren't in anyone's
maintenance schedule.

~~~
rogerbinns
Also everyone is futzing with business models. There are maintenance
facilities from many companies all over the world that can work on airframes,
engines etc. The airframe and engine manufacturers are seeing all this post-
sale income go to those companies, and not back to the manufacturer. So they
are "fixing" that.

For example Rolls Royce does "power by the hour" where the airline is
essentially paying rent on the engine while it is in use. That means Rolls
takes care of the maintenance etc (all rolled into the per hour price). There
are far fewer Rolls locations that can do that work. Then suddenly a lot of
maintenance work needs to be done, and planes have to wait.

For those interested in aviation, I recommend following leehamnews[1]. The
industry is very similar to what is faced in the software industry but over
far larger timescales. eg airframe manufacturers have constant streams of
improvements, but have to work out if and how to charge for them, how to do
deal with existing aircraft of the same model without them ("backwards
compatibility"), and the constant spending money to make money. You even see
second system effects (arguably the birth of the 787 was just that
financially, manufacturing and technically).

[1] [https://leehamnews.com](https://leehamnews.com)

~~~
a2tech
And Rolls wants their suppliers to be doing JIT delivery of all their parts--
no one in the supply chain wants to be stuck holding the bag on inventory so
Rolls expects to whistle at Pratt-Whitney for parts, and Pratt expects to be
able to whistle at their suppliers (and down and down the supply chain) and
still be able to get parts within an incredibly short window. Oh and they
don't want to pay for anything they order until 6 months after receiving
delivery. Its an incredibly tough squeeze on the supply chain.

You can tell some of my customers are in aircraft engine manufacturing.

~~~
kpil
The problem with JIT is the same as the problem everywhere else: When the
wrong type of bean counters look at a cost too nearsightedly, they typically
address the "static" costs and miss the hidden costs that are much harder to
both understand and measure - typically "dynamic" costs that are both under-
reported and hard to measure, and also to understand since there are a lot of
moving parts.

The whole point of JIT is to take control of the dynamic effects so it's a bit
ironic.

~~~
toomuchtodo
JIT works when those making the decisions are experienced engineers with
financial knowledge, not bean counters without domain experience (IMHO).

------
sargun
Hey! This is regulation at work when it's working. That's awesome. I gotta
say, I'm a pretty big fan of the FAA in terms of taking their approach of to
safety and regulation.

This seems kinda weird though to authorize for a commercial passenger craft?
I'm curious, why would they authorize such a thing?

~~~
GiuseppaAcciaio
Indeed, the FAA have no real reason to authorize that; I would also not expect
them to want to grant any exemptions on a blanket basis: usually aviation
authorities make rulings on specific aircraft, based on the flight and
maintenance data.

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ronnier
> The GEnx-1B engine has a software bug that in one instance prompted the
> computer to shut down the engine during a step climb to a higher altitude in
> ice crystal icing conditions.

> Boeing said on 4 March that GE’s fix for the shutdown problem is included in
> a broad software update called “B200”, and it’s not scheduled for delivery
> until December 2019. But GE has told FlightGlobal and the FAA that the B200
> software update will be ready by the first quarter of 2019.

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Firerouge
6 months to a year and a half before Boeing thinks they'll have a software
patch... That seems silly long

~~~
tivert
> 6 months to a year and a half before Boeing thinks they'll have a software
> patch... That seems silly long

IIRC, SQLite is flight certified...which means that they have to show that
every _machine code_ branch is tested by their test suite [1]. This stuff is
not developed with the same lax processes as "move fast and break things" web
apps.

[1] From some Youtube talk by one of the lead SQLite developers.

~~~
massel
I would _love_ to see that talk if you can dig it up - SQLite's stability
story is fascinating.

~~~
santix
He mentions it here: _SQLite: The Database at the Edge of the Network with Dr.
Richard Hipp_ \-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jib2AmRb_rk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jib2AmRb_rk)

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ejo4041
"Boeing’s responses to the FAA are due by 30 June."

Article is a month old, response was due to FAA already but I can't find it
anywhere.

~~~
mCOLlSVIxp6c
It looks like they had a meeting on June 12, 2018 in Des Moines, Washington
(FAA Office?).

Here's a direct link to the "Record of Discussion":
[https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=FAA-2...](https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=FAA-2018-0186-0005&attachmentNumber=1&contentType=pdf)

Unfortunately it doesn't really add any new information.

For those that are interested, here is the FAA's entry in the Federal Register
from Boeing's Petition for Exemption:
[https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/03/23/2018-05...](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/03/23/2018-05910/petition-
for-exemption-summary-of-petition-received-the-boeing-company)

The documents related to that Petition for Exemption can be found on
Regulations.gov by searching for Docket ID FAA-2018-0186
[https://www.regulations.gov/searchResults?rpp=25&po=0&s=FAA-...](https://www.regulations.gov/searchResults?rpp=25&po=0&s=FAA-2018-0186&fp=true&ns=true)

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gmueckl
With safety critical software, the devil you know may sometimes be the better
choice. Changing the code to fix a known problem with a known workaround may
make things worse by introducing unknown bugs. So which chance do you take?
Sometimes not fixing a bug is the right thing to do.

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a-dub
I think a simpler solution would be to require them to post an enormous bond
that would tank the company if it came due in the result of a failure in the
field.

They can ask for engineering data, but that can fudged. Asking them to bet the
company on it is a much surer bet, imho.

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ars
The FAA is right not to approve this. How can Boeing think they can ship this
without knowing what the bug is?

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thrillgore
Someone at Boeing or GE -- do the right thing and leak the bug details.

