
How Did the FAA Allow the Boeing 737 Max to Fly? - bookofjoe
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-did-the-faa-allow-the-boeing-737-max-to-fly
======
2T1Qka0rEiPr
> ...the F.A.A. outsourced key elements of the certification process to Boeing
> itself, and that Boeing’s safety analysis of the new plane contained some
> serious flaws, including several relating to the mcas.

This _sounds_ insane. Is there a reasonable explanation?

~~~
matt4077
It's not necessarily terrible. Boeing obviously has a strong financial
interest in safety. The _Fight Club_ theory of managing an acceptable number
of fatal mistakes really doesn't hold for the airline industry, because their
failures are large and public, because people are inherently afraid of air
travel, and because the investigation of plane losses tend to produce far more
definitive results than car crashes.

This investigation seems to be turning against Boeing. They will survive, but
it almost definitely will cost them far more than whatever they saved by
cutting corners. There will also be changes to the certification process, and
non-US authorities will take a hard look. Any new incident would become an
existential risk for Boeing.

It's important to remember that a company like Boeing isn't a single person.
People working on the certification process would usually have incentives that
differ from the company as a whole: they do not individually reap the benefits
of cutting corners, but bear the brunt of any mistakes, including moral
responsibility, possible criminal charges, and an end to their careers.

Such schemes are employed in many industries. Usually, corporate structures
and cultures prevent the sort of top-down pressure that people imagine being
at play here. Threatening your safety engineers (fire marshals, data
protection officers, etc) with job loss for doing their job would result in
whistleblowers and lawsuits. It will be interesting to see _how_ exactly this
failed at Boeing.

~~~
tsherr
Clearly, Boeing didn't have enough interest. The idea that self preservation
should be enough to make companies "do the right thing" ignores the fact that
if they cut corners, people die. If the CEO could be held criminally liable,
that might work, but in this case the only downside for Boeing will likely be
share price drops.

------
bookofjoe
Should the FDA not approve drug studies funded by pharmaceutical companies? If
that were the case, the world would be a far worse place. Of course there are
drugs that gain approval that shouldn't, some of which get pulled. I am a
patient currently on three psychiatric medications daily, with a history of
four major depressions one of which resulted in a nearly successful suicide
attempt when I was 29. I am also a 70-year-old retired neurosurgical
anesthesiologist with 38 years of experience in academic and private settings.
During that time, I published over 100 scientific research papers, many of
which reported on the first human trials of experimental drugs later approved
for general use in anesthesiology. As such, I had to get approval from our
institutional review boards before beginning the studies, which when completed
and written up were then anonymously reviewed by three experts before being
published in major journals in my field. Even with such rigorous filtering,
some fraudulent papers appear, sometimes on a major scale resulting in
retractions of hundreds of publications, headlines, and resignation and firing
of scientists (though criminal charges are very rare). Patients get harmed and
even die as a result of these falsifications. But the balance is still much to
the positive side. In the end, we assume that the great majority of people
have a moral compass that points toward honesty. Otherwise, our society
collapses.

~~~
lgvln
Thanks for sharing your personal experiences, especially your history of
depression. It’s not something that most people are willing to speak about
because of the social stigmas associated.

The cynic in me thinks that society needs to reward honesty and/or
disincentivize dishonesty instead of relying on personal ethics for most
matters though.

~~~
bookofjoe
Being open about my history is WAY easier — and far less likely to bring
negative repercussions — now that I'm 70 and retired. My 35-year-old daughter
and 67-year old brother wish I'd shut up about it, but I believe that the more
open I am, the more good it will do.

------
shakna
A single sensor for an automated system that can control the flaps?

No redundancy on a system that can control flight. A system that is supposed
to help avoid a stall scenario.

That alone is a crazy oversight, let alone differences between safety analysis
and actual capabilities.

This stinks of truly awful management - the rules of the sky were written in
boood. Ignoring them has shown serious consequences, because we already knew
not to do this.

~~~
Arwill
>A system that is supposed to help avoid a stall scenario.

This article doesn't get the point right. From this article it sounds like
some optional "helper" system for pilots to avoid stall. Another article got
it right, the plane itself is unstable because of big engines if the MCAS is
not there to stabilize it. So its not some optional system, that the pilots
would switch off when manually controlling the plane, its there for the plane
to fly at all.

~~~
shakna
Apologies if I wasn't clear enough.

> So its not some optional system, that the pilots would switch off when
> manually controlling the plane, its there for the plane to fly at all.

And that fact makes it utterly damning that there is absolutely no redundancy.
A single sensor?

It's a critical component. No redundancy on a system that can control flight.

------
twoodfin
Per HN guidelines, I don’t usually comment on why I flag, but I flagged this:
It’s little more than a recapitulation of the Seattle _Times_ story which was
posted and discussed here extensively already.

The 737 Max saga is certainly right in the HN wheelhouse, but it’s becoming
difficult to pull signal from noise when so many articles with so little new
information are rocketing to the front page daily.

------
jeffrallen
The New Yorker article is a rehash of the Seattle Times article, which is
excellent investigative reporting.

~~~
hydrox24
The Seattle Times article is available here[0]

[0]: [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/)

------
deugtniet
This sounds a lot like regulatory capture [1]. It's becoming more and more
clear that the institutions that were / are(?) great at ensuring the safety of
the public have been undermined by special interest.

For a really striking example of regulatory capture, look no further than the
FCC.

One way to make sure that regulatory capture does not happen, is to ensure
that money is not part of lobbying. But that's another discussion.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture)

~~~
ReptileMan
We could actually try to compensate competent people monterarily enough so
they want to work for the government.

In that case they won't be swayed so easily by special interests.

There are people willing to work for the good guys for half the money, but not
for order of magnitude less.

------
akg_67
Biggest losers with such incidents is the credibility of US government,
government agencies, and institutions. Other countries used to rubber stamp
approvals once a US institution had certified something. The nepotism,
politicization, and corruption in such institutions is eroding the credibility
and creating barriers and preferential treatment US companies and products
used to receive worldwide.

FAA, FTC, US Treasury, US military all have lost credibility in recent years.

~~~
trevyn
Is it possible to empirically measure such credibility?

~~~
wongarsu
Sure. The easiest and most direct approach would be a questionnaire along the
lines of "an FAA certification improves my confidence in the product (1:
strongly disagree, 5: strongly agree)". Then just get every group you care
about to regularly answer the survey.

You can also measure indirect effects, like how many agencies rubber stamp
standards and certifications by the agency in question.

The interesting question isn't if it's measurable but if somebody measured it
and is sharing the data

------
JustSomeNobody
> \- Understated the power of the new flight control system, which was
> designed to swivel the horizontal tail to push the nose of the plane down to
> avert a stall. When the planes later entered service, MCAS was capable of
> moving the tail more than four times farther than was stated in the initial
> safety analysis document.

> \- Failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot
> responded, thereby missing the potential impact of the system repeatedly
> pushing the airplane’s nose downward.

This likely would not have been included in the simulator, right? So, even if
pilots had be given more training, it would not have done much good. The
system would still be acting different to the training.

~~~
dukoid
Interesting... Are the commercial flight simulators using an actual physics /
aerodynamic model with all the components -- or just empirical data and lookup
tables / expectations? I suppose in the latter case, behavior is more likely
to deviate from reality?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Plane_(simulator)#Flight_mod...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Plane_\(simulator\)#Flight_model)

~~~
bdavis__
i think in this case there is no '737 MAX' simulator, as the existing 737
simulators were considered identical for flight training.

back to your question, most full fidelity flight simulations use actual models
that are validated against flight test data. and in most cases, they run the
same software code as is used in the actual air vehicle.

which brings us back to the question..is a 737 MAX the same as other 737's?
No.

------
rbanffy
I wonder why there is no big red button that puts everything on full-manual
immediately.

~~~
Yaggo
Same here.

But, I'm not sure if the concept of "full manual" is anymore relevant with
modern passenger jets. Are they even flyable without any computer intervention
or too unstable / have too complex flying charasteristics?

~~~
sbradford26
Commercial airliners are stable when flying. The advantage of an unstable
aircraft is high maneuverability which you don't need in a commercial
airliner. Also in full fly by wire aircraft there is a "red button" that will
drop the flight controls into a fail safe mode. This mode usually has much
simpler control law, and disables other functionality like auto land/auto
pilot/tail strike prevention.

In a non-fly by wire air craft though like the 737 max, a full manual mode is
basically when you have auto pilot disengaged. There might be a mode you can
enable to disable other functions like tail strike prevention/MCAS but I a
haven't ever heard of it.

~~~
nwatson
[0] explains that fuel efficiency considerations prompted Boeing to push the
altered 737's larger new engines well forward compared to prior iterations,
causing the airplane to pitch nose up in some maneuvers in unstable fashion.
The MCAS system was introduced to compensate, and is the component that failed
in both crashes.

[0] [https://hackaday.com/2019/03/14/mcas-and-the-737-when-
small-...](https://hackaday.com/2019/03/14/mcas-and-the-737-when-small-
changes-have-huge-consequences/)

~~~
sbradford26
Basically all planes have flight profiles where they are stable and unstable.
Just because a plane is unstable in certain conditions, does not make it an
unstable plane. A stable plane is a plane that is aerodynamically stable for
most of its flight profile.

The 737 MAX is just not stable in every condition that the old 737 NG was. And
it probably goes the other way, there are most likely flight conditions where
the 737 MAX is stable but the 737 NG is not.

The difference is that pilots had been trained and have flown the old one for
many years and trained to avoid the unstable conditions for the old 737.

*Flight conditions meaning: air speed, AOA, bank angle, total thrust, altitude.

~~~
VBprogrammer
> The difference is that pilots had been trained and have flown the old one
> for many years and trained to avoid the unstable conditions for the old 737.

I don't think that's the case. MCAS was added to satisfy a requirement in the
airworthiness certifications that requires positive control forces to increase
AoA. The lift generated by the engine nacelles caused this to not be the case
at high AoA.

None of what has been revealed so far indicates that the pilots had issues
related to the symptom, rather they had issues with MCAS. In a way the cure
has been worse than the disease.

------
papashultz
As a software engineer having to deal with OPS teams that are reluctant to
push new software updates to production because according to them, well, most
of the time developers introduce new bugs in new releases, so they rather
stick with what they have.

Anyway, I would not want to be the software engineer in charge of the Boeing
737 MAX 8 new update. Imagine what will happen if there is another accident
after the software update? Do you think the proposed software solution is
enough?

