
Boeing Crashes Highlight the High Costs of Cheap Government - molecule
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/boeing-737-max-crashes-highlight-the-high-costs-of-cheap-government.html
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kazinator
Throwing money at government just to make it expensive won't fix this kind of
problem.

What if a bigger, fatter, better funded FAA is still in cahoots with Boeing?

~~~
pohl
I grant the existence of some who seek to make government less expensive for
the sole sake of it being less expensive. (Existence proof: Grover Norquist,
who wants to drown it in a bathtub.) Who are these mythical creatures who want
it to be more expensive without providing more/better services?

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kazinator
Pretty much every governmental bureaucrat.

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pohl
People say that a lot, but without really thinking it through. There are 2.79M
civil servants, each of which can be pejoratively referred to as a
"bureaucrat" if that is your wont, and pretty much every one of them wants
government services to become more expensive solely for expense's sake?

That doesn't even pass the smell test.

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purplezooey
Many people don't realize that as much as we like to complain about big
government and wasteful spending, the private sector is just as bad, or worse
in some cases.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
>It is true that the F.A.A.’s current delegation rules have been around for
more than a decade — and that America’s commercial airlines have assembled an
enviable safety record over that period. But the available evidence also
suggests that America’s refusal to adequately fund the F.A.A. allowed
corporations to gain inordinate influence over a public-sector function — and
many people died as a result.

This is classic motivated reasoning. The authors know that the US Airline
safety profile over that time is stellar. Knowing they can’t base their claim
on the actual statistical safety record, thy resort to using a comparison with
vague words such as ‘suggests’ and ‘inordinate’ and emotionally charged
phrases: such as ‘corporations to gain inordinate influence’ and ‘many people
died.’

They are hoping that your emotional brain will overlook the lack of argument
of real quantitative evidence and jump on the emotional bits of the argument.

This is similar to how anti-immigration groups will seize on a high profile
crime committed by an immigrant and use that to say that immigration should be
stopped/cut back without discussing if immigrants are actually more likely to
commit violent crimes than natives.

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Gibbon1
You could argue that the current record is simply a legacy of previous high
quality government regulation and oversights. And that the 737-MAX is the
first article of the new regime.

Another good example of that is the defective Bay Bridge replacement between
Treasure Island and Oakland. That bridge is going to fail during the next
earthquake because of design flaws that the oversight agency didn't have the
manpower to spot. CALTRANS after three decades of Republican lead budget cuts
doesn't have the ability to safely oversee projects of that size anymore.

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DrScump

      CALTRANS after three decades of Republican lead budget cuts doesn't have the ability to safely oversee...
    

Republicans have been in the _minority in both houses_ and had absolutely no
power in the CA legislature appropriations process for _over two decades_. For
much of that time, the Democrats had _supermajorities_.

The new Bay Bridge debacle falls squarely on the Browns.

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Gibbon1
Guess who doesn't know how government appropriations work.

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masonic
No guessing necessary.

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watertom
Seems like in the U.S. the pilots are properly trained and are capable of
handling the difference in the new vs old aircraft.

Other countries aren't fairing so well. Is this a failing of the U.S.
Government's FAA? No.

I have a good friend who was a Naval aviator and did crash investigations for
the Navy, his ordered list for causes of aviation crashes. The top 3 causes he
believes are responsible for 99.9% of all crashes.

1\. Pilot error due to fatigue (Which the U.S. has made strides to drastically
reduce) 2\. Pilot error not due to fatigue 3\. Pilot lack of training 4\.
Plane failure (hardware, software, mechanical, etc)

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cmurf
>Seems like in the U.S. the pilots are properly trained and are capable of
handling the difference in the new vs old aircraft.Other countries aren't
fairing so well.

What specific difference training did U.S. pilots receive that foreign pilots
did not? How are pilots in other countries improperly trained? What is the
evidence either 737 MAX crash had anything to do with training? If better
training can mitigate flawed design, should that absolve any portion of
manufacturer liability for any discovered flawed design?

In a proper investigation, all bias must be removed, and that includes
statistical likelihood of prior causes of crashes.

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DuskStar
> What specific difference training did U.S. pilots receive that foreign
> pilots did not?

Well, they all have far more than 200 hours of flight time, for one. Even the
copilots.

> What is the evidence either 737 MAX crash had anything to do with training?

The fact that the problem was displayed to the pilots (trim severely out of
norm) and they didn't follow the correction procedures properly. Though that
might not be "training" as much as "competence".

> If better training can mitigate flawed design, should that absolve any
> portion of manufacturer liability for any discovered flawed design?

 _Really_ depends on the flaw.

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cmurf
The pilots of Lion Air 610 had in excess of 5000 hours. Flight experience
doesn't answer the question I asked either. The assertion was made that U.S.
pilots received difference training (NG vs MAX). What difference training?

You assume without evidence the problem manifests like runaway trim. And then
proceed to assume without evidence the incompetency of two pilots. And yet you
refuse to assume the incompetency of the automation, which didn't mere fail,
it countermanded with lethal force the 100% correct control inputs of the
pilots. The idea they have to assert their sanity by flipping two switches, is
about as ridiculous as automation not having to assert its sanity when it, by
design, trusts a single point of failure one upping that by trusting it while
it's failing and one upping that to extreme by taking action on it without any
regard to other input sources including the pilots themselves. It's beyond
obscene to me.

I have personally trained private pilots with competency at identifying failed
gauges, knowing which one to disregard, and estimating the missing values by
inference from the remaining gauges. And this is in sub-200 hour pilots. The
skill required for the instrument rating exceeds this particular automation in
the AOA failure case by quite a lot. And the skill required for commercial and
ATP ratings is even greater than that by quite a lot. Meanwhile MCAS upset
from judgement of a single sensor induced such an unusual attitude it became
unrecoverable.

So the assumption of incompetency by pilots, while cutting automation all
kinds of slack is to me 180 degrees backwards.

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DuskStar
I think I misread difference training as _different_ training there, my
apologies. And the Ethiopian Air copilot had ~200 total hours, thus the
comment.

> You assume without evidence the problem manifests like runaway trim. And
> then proceed to assume without evidence the incompetency of two pilots. And
> yet you refuse to assume the incompetency of the automation, which didn't
> mere fail, it countermanded with lethal force the 100% correct control
> inputs of the pilots. The idea they have to assert their sanity by flipping
> two switches, is about as ridiculous as automation not having to assert its
> sanity when it, by design, trusts a single point of failure one upping that
> by trusting it while it's failing and one upping that to extreme by taking
> action on it without any regard to other input sources including the pilots
> themselves. It's beyond obscene to me.

I didn't say that it manifests like runaway trim. I said that it manifests as
"severely outside the norm trim", which it most certainly does. Unless you're
saying that full nose down trim is normal? As for "asserting incompetence
without evidence", they're certainly less competent than pilot #3 on the Lion
Air flight the night before. (since, you know, that guy realized what was
going on and how to resolve it)

As for the automation being incompetent, yep you're right! It is! But airplane
crashes don't happen for one reason - not commercial flights at least. They
happen when a sequence of failures occurs, just like here. Boeing failed to
consider the worst case behavior of MCAS, Lion Air maintenance fucked up, and
the Lion Air pilots weren't able to diagnose the failure that morning. (The
failure pipeline of the Ethiopian crash is still to be determined) As for why
Boeing failed there... It's at least partly because the automatic trim
controls weren't considered a safety critical part, since they had multiply
redundant backups. It's just that the backups were "turn off electronic trim"
and "grab the trim wheel and hold it in place", both of which require pilot
action. (Allowing stuff like this to get grandfathered in is arguably a hole
in the FAA's systems)

> I have personally trained private pilots with competency at identifying
> failed gauges, knowing which one to disregard, and estimating the missing
> values by inference from the remaining gauges. And this is in sub-200 hour
> pilots. The skill required for the instrument rating exceeds this particular
> automation in the AOA failure case by quite a lot. And the skill required
> for commercial and ATP ratings is even greater than that by quite a lot.
> Meanwhile MCAS upset from judgement of a single sensor induced such an
> unusual attitude it became unrecoverable.

Well then why was the issue so difficult for the pilots to diagnose here?
There's a gauge for trim, and I'd hope it would be looked at when trying to
figure out why you have to keep pulling back on the yoke so hard.

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bushido
I am not a pilot. But based on my understanding the activation of nose down
due to MCAS doesn't present itself like the standard runaway trim that pilots
are trained on.

Trained Behaviour:

\- In case of continuous trim

\- perform yoke jerk to disable the automatic trim (per previous 737 models)

\- turn off electronic trim

\- grab the trim wheel and hold it in place

\---------------

MCAS Behaviour:

\- On nose down event, pilots pitch the flight up, adjust trim

\- Which disables MCAS for 5 seconds

\- No continuous trim event manifests

\---------------

From what I've read on some pilot forums, Boeing made a few errors:

\- Removed "Yoke Jerk"

\- The 5 second delay removed the continuous trim conditions

\- Didn't sufficient train pilots on this condition i.e. intermittent
automatic trim

\- Pilots did not see the behavior that they were trained for in the few
seconds between each nose down event

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DuskStar
> From what I've read on some pilot forums, Boeing made a few errors:

I'll agree with #2-4, but #1 was the entire point of MCAS - to reduce the
response of the aircraft to pulling back on the yoke in high AOA situations.
Disabling MCAS when pulling back on the yoke would thus make the aircraft less
safe, and cause it to (rightly) fail certification.

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jmclnx
Well as the saying goes, "You get what you pay for"

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stillbourne
There is only one way to fix this problem folks. Privatize the FAA, deregulate
airplane manufacture, and use the money saved to give the rich a tax cut. The
rich will then trickle down on the planes to save us from these software
issues.

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mieses
actually you are right

