
How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system - mimixco
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/
======
mimixco
Notable and disturbing here is the lack of Max simulators in existence. It
looks like neither Lion Air nor Ethiopian nor any US airline had access to
one.

Also linked in this article is the original FAA table of differences between
the Max and other 737 models. It makes no metion of MCAS.

~~~
ajross
Yeah. As much blame as Boeing and the FAA certification process seems to
deserve here, it's worth pointing out how much of the cascade of failures is
in the airlines and cockpits too.

I mean, yes, the trim system was being driven by input from a single
nonredundant sensor, which is a violation of the kind of engineering for
failure process that airliners should be designed in. But at the same time
that trim system is, _by design_ , not strong enough to overpower pilot input
to the other control surfaces. I mean, it's supposed to have been possible for
the pilot to just fly the aircraft to a landing in the face of outrageous trim
problems.

But the actual pilots didn't, not because they weren't strong enough to push
the yoke but because they simply didn't know what to do and didn't have the
presence of mind to just yank hard on the controls. Somehow the culture of
"just fly the ?!@#! plane" got lost in all those training iPads.

~~~
tafda
Not true.

[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/) Quote:

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.

One current FAA safety engineer said that every time the pilots on the Lion
Air flight reset the switches on their control columns to pull the nose back
up, MCAS would have kicked in again and “allowed new increments of 2.5
degrees.”

“So once they pushed a couple of times, they were at full stop,” meaning at
the full extent of the tail swivel, he said.

Peter Lemme, a former Boeing flight controls engineer who is now an avionics
and satellite-communications consultant, said that because MCAS reset each
time it was used, “it effectively has unlimited authority.”

~~~
ajross
Yes true.[1]

You're misunderstanding that quote. It's talking about "authority" in the
sense of software's authorization to move the trim tab, not the aerodynamic
authority of the tailplane.

The 737 has a 60 year old, very conventional elevator with a trim tab. The tab
changes the resting angle of the overall elevator, and thus the "center point"
of tailplane force on the airframe. Being out of trim means that the aircraft
might naturally want to pitch up or down, and forces the pilot to apply to
force to the stick (which moves the elevator, not the trim tab!) to correct
it.

This stick force can be significant and surprising, but it's designed to (and
the certification surely requires it to) be achievable by a pilot under all
conditions. That is: it's not supposed to be possible for _any_ trim failure
on a 737 to render an aircraft uncontrollable, and I don't see any assertion
in the analysis of the MAX 8 that changes that.

At the end of the day, what happened here is that the aircraft had a runaway
trim failure. That was a failure that was understood and forseen (albeit not
under software control) in the aircraft's original design, and the redundancy
to treat it was the pilot's physical ability to override the trim. This was
supposed to have been a recoverable failure within the cockpit, and it wasn't.

[1] Style note: why do people do this on the internet? Ah hah! You fool! You
are WRONG! Stuff is complicated folks, be nice, assume competence, assume lack
of malice, try to teach and not argue.

~~~
tzakrajs
Your footnote is really appreciated. I think there is a lot of trauma in this
world and coping is a daily struggle for many of us. My hat is off to you.

~~~
wenc
I don't know -- in discourse, it's perfectly fine to dispute ideas (it's the
foundation of Western civilization and of analytical thought, and is a means
to knowledge and wisdom).

If we cannot argue in a marketplace of ideas, we are prevented from having
hard but necessary conversations. We need to adhere to parameters of civility
of course, but to me, a necessary freedom is the freedom to disagree/dispute.
Some ideas are truly wrong and they need to be put through the crucible.

That said, I've always been told to always "address the ideas, not the person"
(never attack someone's character) and to adopt a pose of "curiosity".

------
linuxftw
This article seems to be second-hand reporting some of the information
originally broken here [1].

There's a lot of damning information, not only for Boeing, but also a lot of
negligence at the FAA for pushing engineers to 'delegate' reviews of certain
components back to Boeing themselves.

[1] [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/)

~~~
GuB-42
AFAIK, the FAA, like many regulating bodies take everything at face value,
making sure they are not getting lied to isn't their jobs.

An audit usually goes like: "I see that you mentioned a change in document X,
show me the corresponding test report", "who is responsible for that part?",
"does document Y match document X, as required by norm Z?".

They will never check that you actually did the tests, or that the analysis is
correct. Only that the paperwork is done correctly and that the person
responsible is identified. Their field of expertise is in the process, not
software or mechanical engineering.

But now that they have a list of names, and if one of them rubberstamped
something that wasn't actually done, things won't go well for him. It can get
really serious, possibly resulting in prison time, so managers usually don't
that this duty lightly.

~~~
linuxftw
> AFAIK, the FAA, like many regulating bodies take everything at face value,
> making sure they are not getting lied to isn't their jobs.

I don't think this is accurate whatsoever. USDA has inspections all the time,
they don't just check a report you file with them and go "Oh yeah, they know
what they're doing over there." Similar with other industries.

If a regulatory body doesn't validate the tests of a manufacturer, what good
is that body?

~~~
michaelcampbell
> > AFAIK, the FAA, like many regulating bodies take everything at face value,
> making sure they are not getting lied to isn't their jobs.

> I don't think this is accurate whatsoever.

Which part, that the FAA encourages delegation to Boeing? This is established,
AFAIK.

~~~
linuxftw
Regulatory agencies taking things at face value.

~~~
tracker1
It's pretty common all around... it's as much about documenting who to point
the finger at as anything else.

------
vpribish
Since I keep seeing partially-informed comments about 737 pitch controls
here's some notes and terms and links: It's not obvious, it's not simple, and
other planes work in other ways - you can not just assume the 737MAX is like
them.

The 737 horizontal tail externally looks like 3 moving parts:front-to-back
(and large to small) is: Stabilizer : Elevator : Balance Tab.

see here:
[http://www.b737.org.uk/flightcontrols.htm#Pitch](http://www.b737.org.uk/flightcontrols.htm#Pitch)

Stabilizer moves in response to trim - this is what we are mostly looking at.

Elevator moves in response to the control column.

Balance tab has several modes depending on flaps and hydraulic system health -
but it mostly serves to offset aerodynamic force on the elevator in case the
hydraulics fail and the elevator has to be controlled manually.

(there is one other pitch control, I learned - the spoilers on the wing can
give some help in landing in case the elevator controls fail.)

There are many modes of operation and simple generalizations will not help.

------
Insanity
>, “Boeing 737-800 pilots were required to receive some additional training on
the MAX 8, which included an hour lesson on some differences. Additional
training was not required, as the 737-800 and the MAX 8 have same type
certification.”

How are those type certifications determined? It seems to me that there should
be an instance checking if the type certifications make sense.

Or perhaps they did, and they just really look like similar planes. In which
case I wonder if the threshold for 'versioning' should be changed.

(I know nothing of how this actually works, it just baffles me that seemingly
different planes get the same certificate)

EDIT: I read the FAA does check this, but I wonder on what _grounds_ it makes
the decisions.

~~~
saluki
y, sounds like a change like this:

The system, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or
MCAS, was incorporated because the plane has larger engines placed further
forward on the craft, and so has a chance of facing a stall at lower speeds
than earlier 737 variations.

Would require more training than a few hours.

~~~
pdonis
_> has a chance of facing a stall at lower speeds than earlier 737 variations_

No, that's not the issue. The issue is that, because of the pitch up moment
created by the engines, at higher angles of attack the force required to move
the yoke decreases instead of increasing. That's (a) a highly undesirable
characteristic since the changing feedback confuses pilots and makes it hard
for them to know when a stall is imminent, and (b) a violation of FAA
certification requirements. MCAS was added to compensate for the pitch up
moment from the engines by adding nose down trim, so the yoke force would be
similar to that of previous 737 models.

~~~
ams6110
You're correct, however without MCAS it could be easier for the pilot to
accidentally pitch into a stall when flying manually. That is why the
requirement for consistent feedback, as you say. So the people who say the MAX
engine placement makes it "more prone to stall" are not entirely wrong.

The media has done a poor job of communicating exactly what MCAS does and why
it was developed. With today's media motivated by virality, ad clicks and
eyeballs, most seem more interested in reporting this as dramatically as
possible.

~~~
stcredzero
_With today 's media motivated by virality, ad clicks and eyeballs, most seem
more interested in reporting this as dramatically as possible._

In 2019, we need to wise up to these shenanigans. Fear isn't the only
mindkiller. It turns out that Outrage Virality is very synergistic with fear.
Our society needs to become very skeptical and notice when something is
evoking that particular emotion. We need to view people hawking outrage like
we now view medicine shows.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

EDIT: If someone has gotten one to really hate a person, really want to harm
them, and wonder if they're really sentient, or wonder if they're looking at
the same reality, or wonder if they're really human -- this is a big red flag.
This is _precisely_ the state of having those in-group/out-group instincts
tweaked. Word to the wise! Expert tip: It even counts when one is shocked at
someone else's groupthink! Perhaps especially so.

------
stcredzero
There is a big difference between how you behave when you're calm, vs how you
behave when you're under stress. Basically, you start hitting sub-sentient
"defaults." You default to your training. You default to inherited flight or
fight behaviors. Emergency procedures and training need to be designed with
this in mind, or they will fail.

(Presentation preparation is like this. My last presentation failed because by
self-training wasn't designed with this in mind.)

~~~
Numberwang
How would you design presentation preparation with that in mind? Or anything
for that matter?

~~~
stcredzero
_How would you design presentation preparation with that in mind?_

Rehearse. Repetition strengthens associations and so increases the chance that
you will fall into the same behavior.

 _Or anything for that matter?_

Masaad Ayoob revolutionized police gunfighting techniques by simplifying
movements and changing techniques to more closely resemble the natural stance
people take when in the "Fight or Flight" mode.

When an airplane is diving into the ground, the natural inclination for pilots
is to pull back on the stick. Making the override resemble this would be a way
of following this design principle. I think the situation which caused the
accident is a bit more complicated and nuanced than just that idea, however.

------
mannykannot
This is a pretty damning statement, with respect to the original safety
analysis submitted to the FAA:

"The safety analysis... assessed a failure of the system as one level below
“catastrophic.” But even that “hazardous” danger level should have precluded
activation of the system based on input from a single sensor — and yet that’s
how it was designed."

Neither Boeing nor the FAA should have given this a pass.

------
jcims
Unvetted image comparison of the cockpits

737 MAX 8 Cockpit - [https://i2.wp.com/thepointsguy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/0...](https://i2.wp.com/thepointsguy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/06/IMG-Norwegian-Air-Boeing-737-MAX-8-cockpit.jpg)

737 800 Cockpit -
[https://i.imgur.com/eRULoST.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/eRULoST.jpg)

I don't really know my way around an airliner but the key displays seem to be
quite different and there's a lot fewer knobs on the MAX 8.

~~~
brozaman
I don't know nearly enough to have a respectable opinion on this, but those
screens can display different information configured to display different
information at the user's choice.

Here you have another max 8 with a completely different layout on those
screens: [http://www.driven-
technologies.com/images/bt_portfolio/52/or...](http://www.driven-
technologies.com/images/bt_portfolio/52/original/82d7d6b3d0dfab66726be2fc2f2a3833.jpeg)

~~~
racingmars
That's a 787, not 737 at all...

------
azernik
For those who were wondering why pilots didn't override the autopilot? Turns
out that just made things worse:

==================================================

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.

One current FAA safety engineer said that every time the pilots on the Lion
Air flight reset the switches on their control columns to pull the nose back
up, MCAS would have kicked in again and “allowed new increments of 2.5
degrees.”

“So once they pushed a couple of times, they were at full stop,” meaning at
the full extent of the tail swivel, he said.

Peter Lemme, a former Boeing flight controls engineer who is now an avionics
and satellite-communications consultant, said that because MCAS reset each
time it was used, “it effectively has unlimited authority.”

...

Boeing insists that the pilots on the Lion Air flight should have recognized
that the horizontal stabilizer was moving uncommanded, and should have
responded with a standard pilot checklist procedure to handle what’s called
“stabilizer runaway.”

If they’d done so, the pilots would have hit cutoff switches and deactivated
the automatic stabilizer movement.

Boeing has pointed out that the pilots flying the same plane on the day before
the crash experienced similar behavior to Flight 610 and did exactly that:
They threw the stabilizer cutoff switches, regained control and continued with
the rest of the flight.

However, pilots and aviation experts say that what happened on the Lion Air
flight doesn’t look like a standard stabilizer runaway, because that is
defined as continuous uncommanded movement of the tail.

On the accident flight, the tail movement wasn’t continuous; the pilots were
able to counter the nose-down movement multiple times.

In addition, the MCAS altered the control column response to the stabilizer
movement. Pulling back on the column normally interrupts any stabilizer nose-
down movement, but with MCAS operating that control column function was
disabled.

These differences certainly could have confused the Lion Air pilots as to what
was going on.

~~~
outworlder
> For those who were wondering why pilots didn't override the autopilot?

MCAS only works when autopilot is OFF (and flaps retracted).

~~~
azernik
I'm using autopilot in the loose sense, to refer to the general suite of
mavhine inputs to the flight controls.

------
danaliv
These crashes are captivating, especially given how astonishingly safe air
travel has been in the past decade or so. If I remember correctly 2017 was the
safest year in the history of aviation.

And airplanes, particularly modern jets, are fascinating no matter what
they're doing. I remember twenty, thirty years ago looking out the towering
floor-to-ceiling windows at the airport, marveling at how many different
technological fields had to come together to make air travel possible:
materials, energy, engineering, radio, logistics, physics, process control,
weather prediction, mapping, software development—nowadays even spaceflight
and the freakin' theory of relativity come into play where GPS is in use. As a
budding geek it was (and still is) catnip.

And then these two MAX jets go down within months of each other. Three hundred
and forty six people killed. Three hundred and forty six families shattered,
forever. When I think about them, I'm reminded that these weren't just
malfunctions to be debugged in my terminal, these were _three hundred and
forty six_ tragedies that will ripple out to their friends, families,
coworkers, and beyond, for decades to come.

I wonder if we are being hasty in our speculation about the causes. I know we
are all intensely curious—that intense curiosity is, I think, a defining
feature of the community that frequents this site, and something a lot of us
owe our successes to. I notice though a tendency for speculation to evolve
into factual claims through repetition, and I wonder if we should be more
careful not to allow repetition to take the place of evidence.

Accident investigation is a slow process, and slow processes are frustrating.
Information comes in a trickle. It's natural to want to piece together
whatever details we have, wherever we can find them. In our hunger to find out
what happened, how these 346 people lost their lives, let's not lose sight of
the fact that the information we have right now is _incomplete._

Let's also not lose sight of the fact that we are talking about people. For
the loved ones, this isn't an interesting puzzle; this is a gut-wrenching
sorrow. I try to keep that at the center whenever someone asks me what I think
about these crashes.

I'm glad the MAX is grounded. And I'm intensely curious about what happened. I
try to temper my thoughts on the matter according to the amount and quality of
information I have, and the degree of knowledge and experience I've acquired.
I don't always succeed. But I can at least rest easy knowing that the
investigative team has access to a wealth of information and experience, and
that they will make their data and findings public when their work is
complete.

~~~
linuxftw
> Accident investigation is a slow process, and slow processes are
> frustrating. Information comes in a trickle. It's natural to want to piece
> together whatever details we have, wherever we can find them. In our hunger
> to find out what happened, how these 346 people lost their lives, let's not
> lose sight of the fact that the information we have right now is incomplete.

Slow, and possibly corrupted process. If we believe the FAA has been captured
by industry, do we trust the outcome of their investigation to be impartial?
Do we trust their investigation to be at all competent?

I think it's incredibly important we all remain skeptical of the FAA and
Boeing in this; the FAA's reluctance to ground the MAX 8 until it was ordered
by the president shows their bias. Any sensible human with a safety-first
mindset would have immediately grounded the aircraft after the second crash
until a complete investigation was done.

~~~
Thrymr
This is likely one reason that the French have been put in charge of part of
the investigation of the Ethiopian crash.

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/why-france-is-
analyzin...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/why-france-is-analyzing-
ethiopian-jets-black-boxes/)

~~~
azernik
Also has a lot of the specialized hardware and equipment required - Ethiopian
Air tried shopping their blackbox around to Germany, but they didn't have the
hardware to connect to so badly damaged a specimen.

------
chmaynard
Required reading for anyone interested in understanding what probably went
wrong.

------
trt808
So what's the most likely outcome for all the grounded planes at this point?
As someone who has some fear of flying I'll definitely make sure none of my
trips include a 737 max in the future, no matter how many patches or upgrades
boeing releases

~~~
kalleboo
[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/)

> _According to a detailed FAA briefing to legislators, Boeing will change the
> MCAS software to give the system input from both angle-of-attack sensors._

> _It will also limit how much MCAS can move the horizontal tail in response
> to an erroneous signal. And when activated, the system will kick in only for
> one cycle, rather than multiple times._

> _Boeing also plans to update pilot training requirements and flight crew
> manuals to include MCAS._

> _These proposed changes mirror the critique made by the safety engineers in
> this story. They had spoken to The Seattle Times before the Ethiopian
> crash._

> _The FAA said it will mandate Boeing’s software fix in an airworthiness
> directive no later than April._

After the fixes are implemented I wouldn't worry too much about it. Lots of
planes have had terrible design flaws that were fixed. The pre-MAX 737
included.

~~~
CaptainZapp
_Lots of planes have had terrible design flaws that were fixed._

Sure, but none of those planes (in the last 30 years or so) had two full hull
losses within month of each other with brand new planes.

------
azernik
"Both Boeing and the FAA were informed of the specifics of this story and were
asked for responses 11 days ago, before the second crash of a 737 MAX last
Sunday."

i.e. people were following up on this before the public outcry started.

------
ilamont
_The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated
increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the
safety of its own airplanes._

How does it work in other countries?

~~~
chmaynard
Funny, I've never heard the FDA make a statement like that. If it takes longer
to certify a new pharmaceutical because of lack of resources, so be it. It
needs to take longer.

Instead of applying pressure on the FAA to cut corners, Boeing and Airbus
should lobby Congress to increase FAA funding.

------
jussij
The details provided by the article read rather badly for Boeing for several
reasons.

Firstly, I think the whole issue is not going away any time soon which is bad
enough.

But what looks worse is the article points to high levels of incompetence, if
not gross negligence in the design and testing of the MCAS.

 _Like all 737s, the MAX actually has two of the sensors, one on each side of
the fuselage near the cockpit. But the MCAS was designed to take a reading
from only one of them._

 _Lemme said Boeing could have designed the system to compare the readings
from the two vanes, which would have indicated if one of them was way off._

 _Alternatively, the system could have been designed to check that the angle-
of-attack reading was accurate while the plane was taxiing on the ground
before takeoff, when the angle of attack should read zero._

I can see this headed to the courts and if the details in the article are
found to be correct, there's a good chance Boeing would be up for a rather big
settlement, not to mention a massive dent to their reputation

~~~
dboreham
I think the underlying problem is that a control system was designed with the
assumption that its purpose was to make the pilot force feedback feel right,
for regulatory compliance reasons. Therefore it was designed with low
reliability requirements, presumably on the basis that if it doesn't work, no
biggie because it's only there to make the controls feel right, and that only
happens when the plane is about to stall, which never happens...

Then...it turned out that when this control system malfunctions (which is can,
quite often, due to aforementioned low reliability requirements), it will
actually crash the plane.

The lesson is probably: make sure that some system you're designing with low
reliability characteristics (only uses one sensor, doesn't have redundant
power supplies...) will fail with safe or benign outcomes.

------
Animats
Well, now we know. Boeing has blown a reputation for quality they had for half
a century.

The Cormac C919 just got a big boost.

------
Merrill
How did Boeing decide to kill the 757 and to continually delay the "New
Midsize Airplane", and to progressively extend and modify the 737 until it
reached 757 size in the 737 MAX 9?

I would bet good money that there is a wonderful book to be written about
competing design teams, rival marketing plans, and mahogany row politics at
Boeing about events resulting in the MAX kludge.

Also: "An airline pilot reveals why a plane Boeing discarded 12 years ago is
the one they desperately need"

[https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-757-pilot-
reveals-737...](https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-757-pilot-
reveals-737-not-replacement-2016-11)

~~~
masklinn
> How did Boeing decide to kill the 757 and to continually delay the "New
> Midsize Airplane", and to progressively extend and modify the 737 until it
> reached 757 size in the 737 MAX 9?

> Southwest Airlines has only operated Boeing 737 jetliner models, except for
> a period from 1979 to 1987

I expect that sort of things was part of the decision. Even more so as Boeing
never really try to unify their offering and provide airbus-style CCQ[0][1] so
there is a very strong incentive & pressure to update frames and keep them in
the same rating to avoid crew retraining costs.

[0] moving from an A320 to an A380 can take as little as 15 days, other moves
are much shorter (down to 2 days CCQ for — I believe — moving between the A330
and the A340)

[1] boeing does have some common type rating courses but only between a few
pairs e.g. between the 757 and 767, or from the 777 to the 787

------
chasely
Is there a way to figure out where the 737Max is still being flown? I ask
selfishly as I have a flight on Norwegian Air Argentina coming up and
according to their seat map I appear to be on a 737 Max8, but there is no
indication about the actual metal being flown for their flights, as far as I
can tell.

Norwegian suspended its use of the 737 Max8 for their main airline, but I
haven’t seen anything about their use on their subsidiary airlines.

~~~
trimbo
It is grounded worldwide

~~~
chasely
So it is. Thanks.

------
kevin_thibedeau
I wonder who at Boeing pushed to redesign the landing gear. At this point it
would have been the cheaper option.

~~~
0xffff2
Redesigning the landing gear means redesigning the wing. I'm not an aerospace
engineer, but I do work at an aerospace organization. I've been told my
multiple AE's that redesigning the wing is basically the same amount of work
as designing a new plane from scratch. In light of that, I'm still not sure
we're there yet in terms of purely monetary costs.

------
aidenn0
For those curious about catastrophic vs. hazardous, the standard being used is
DO-178B[1]

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B)

------
cashsterling
I am losing my mind over some of this (and trying to reserve some judgement
because we don't have all of the facts yet).

In the age where "engineers": (1) can automatically land a "VW bug sized"
rover on Mars (2) can land booster rockets practically from orbit (3) can make
an adaptive flight control system that can fly a drone even when half a wing
is blown clean off mid-flight (on purpose).
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=JyyN-
qWWNfQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=JyyN-qWWNfQ)

How does this MCAS system, as part of a larger flight dynamics system, have so
little understanding of what the hell it is doing to the flight dynamics?

I am beyond confused...

------
Simulacra
This will all fall on the shoulders of Boeing. They installed a feature
without properly notifying pilots and airlines. Thus when things went haywire,
the pilots had no idea what was going on.

~~~
ineedasername
Hopefully it will also fall in part on the FAA, which greenlit the thing for
use without checks that might have caught this.

~~~
chappi42
And will it also fall in part on the passengers who demand cheap and cheaper
air fares? (Not only to the detriment of their own safety but also to further
increasing ecological debts).

~~~
gdubs
I started to compose a reply to your comment, and it turned out to be a
deceptively hard question to answer.

My attempt at a succinct answer is that carbon should be more expensive, and
that Boeing very likely moved too aggressively to meet the market with a more
fuel efficient plane.

In some ways – based on my probably naive understanding – consumer desire for
a cheaper flight results in increased fuel efficiency, since the cost of
flying is heavily dependent on the cost of fuel. Environmentally speaking,
that's good. However, better fuel efficiency resulting in cheaper flights
leads to people flying _more_. That's bad.

Pricing carbon to reflect its true environmental cost could fix that issue, by
raising the price floor. Consumer choice would still drive higher efficiency,
but ideally the overall higher cost of carbon would keep flying to a
'sustainable' rate. (Whatever that turns out to be.)

What I don't have a clear sense of is whether point-to-point travel with
planes like the Max are better for the environment. Theoretically, hub-and-
spoke travel is more fuel efficient. The reality ends up being more
complicated, with airlines flying half-empty 747s. From what I understand,
that makes airlines like Southwest (which operates point-to-point) more fuel
efficient.

But I'd love to hear a more clear explanation from someone who better
understands the subject.

~~~
oconnor663
> However, better fuel efficiency resulting in cheaper flights leads to people
> flying more. That's bad.

This part sounds complicated. It might be good for the people but bad for the
environment. On the other hand, it probably also displaces some long-distance
driving, and we have to estimate how much that is. Even if the environmental
impact of reduced driving doesn't cancel out the cost of added flights, it's
probably worth putting a value on the safety benefit. (Even though the current
thread is about plane crashes, flying is overall much safer than driving, and
reducing driving by even a little saves lives.)

~~~
masklinn
> This part sounds complicated.

It's also extremely well known especially in environmental economics, if not
well understood / solved: it's Jevon's Paradox (more efficient use of a
resource can lead to an increase in demand which causes an increase in total
resource consumption).

------
mrbonner
So this is the equivalence of “let the software engineers do the QA” thing.

~~~
rurban
Nope, software engineers at least have a sense of proper QA. This is the
equivalence of “let the product manager do the QA” thing.

~~~
avs733
You are sincerely suggesting that software engineers have a stronger sense of
QA than aerospace engineers?

~~~
rurban
I was automotive engineer and software engineer. Both have a proper sense of
QA, both do their own testing and both know what's right and wrong. Bad
product managers certainly not.

------
starpilot
EASA and other nations' aviation regulators are also on the hook for not
validating this certification as thoroughly as they could have.

~~~
azernik
Everyone trusted the FAA. So much for that.

------
cratermoon
tl;dr: Boeing said, "trust us", FAA said, "OK cool, less work for us. Golf
Friday?"

------
wnevets
>FAA for pushing engineers to 'delegate' reviews of certain components back to
Boeing themselves.

How much more proof do we need as a society that self regulation is a fool's
errand?

~~~
ineedasername
Unfortunately, regulation doesn't fit with the narrative of self-determination
and "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"

Instead the narrative is about big, bloated bureaucracies, ignoring the fact
that they got so big by having to respond and add additional layers every time
someone figured out a new way to screw things up, as with Boeing.

~~~
dmix
I've never heard anyone criticizing the size of the FAA or calls for airplane
manufacturers to be deregulated. Do you have examples of this? Or are you just
making a general politicized point about deregulation?

On the other hand I've seen many people complain about "regulatory capture"
between FAA + Boeing repeatedly. That's even on the Wikipedia for FAA.

> The FAA has been cited as an example of regulatory capture, "in which the
> airline industry openly dictates to its regulators its governing rules,
> arranging for not only beneficial regulation, but placing key people to head
> these regulators."

Which is an entirely different problem than a culture of "pulling up your
bootstraps".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Administratio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Administration)

~~~
ineedasername
Yes, I have an example. The parent comment was about regulation in general,
and mine was in response to that. However, there was the massive deregulation
of the FAA in 1978 due to this sort of pressure. It had one effect of creating
more competition in the industry, but it arguably went too far and has had an
impact on safety as well. [0]

[0] [https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/perspective-on-airline-
sa...](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/perspective-on-airline-safety-
deregulation-increases-risk/)

~~~
briandear
I am not sure if you know what you are talking about. The FAA can’t be
“deregulated” as it is the regulatory body. And the airline deregulation that
happened in ‘78 was deregulation of airline routes, not airline safety
requirements. Furthermore, that 1996 Brookings opinion; that hasn’t held up
very well considering that US aviation has an extraordinary safety record
since that time and an even better record than during the regulated days. More
people are killed by trains every year than die in commercial airliners, but
are we suggesting that train regulation is deficient? About 16 people a week
are killed by trains in the US, yet with commercial airliners in the US, we’ve
had a just single fatality since 2009.

By any measure, the FAA and industry have done an exceptional job of keeping
the American flying public safe.

~~~
ineedasername
I think you're cherry picking and looking for reasons for me to be wrong
because you don't like my conclusion. The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and
FAA were closely affiliated agencies until the '78 deregulation, and in the
wake of it the FAA picked up some of the CAB's former duties. The CAB was
deregulated out of existence.

And simply saying the Brooking's opinion isn't relevant isn't actually a
supporting argument. Neither is stating that trains have more deaths: so do
cars, but neither point is relevant to whether or not airplane safety was
damaged by deregulation. Besides which, I think your estimate misses the much
higher casualty rates among private aircraft, which do in fact rival cars [0]

The question has little to do with whether the FAA has done a good job, it's
about what happened after the deregulation, and whether it would be even
better without it.

[0] [https://www.livescience.com/49701-private-planes-
safety.html](https://www.livescience.com/49701-private-planes-safety.html)

------
argd678
With all the sensors on an aircraft, obviously the ones physical exposed out
side the aircraft are more likely to malfunction, but I’m sure there are many
unexpected behaviors that have yet to be discovered when other sensors fail
too.

