
FAA allows jetmakers to ‘self certify’ that planes meet U.S. safety requirements - glassworm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-the-faa-allows-jetmakers-to-self-certify-that-planes-meet-us-safety-requirements/2019/03/15/96d24d4a-46e6-11e9-90f0-0ccfeec87a61_story.html
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salawat
That, right there, lines up exactly with what I was afraid had been going on.
I'm quite impressed with Brazil for doing their own footwork to ensure their
pilots are well informed.

I am abjectly horrified at the self-certification process the FAA has adopted,
however.

As someone who has spent a long time doing Quality Assurance, I've learned
that Engineering often develops blind spots as a result of diplomatic friction
with other areas of a company, and cannot often fend off potentially dangerous
technical compromises without an adversarial force capable of stopping the
entire show. Even with one, if that department is still answerable to the same
overarching business pressures, there is still an elevated level of slippage
and inherent risk.

The FAA should never have allowed self-certification. By acting as an external
quality control force, the FAA guarantees a decoupling of any financial
interest on the part of the inspector, and actually acts as a unifying force
against which competing airframe manufacturers can unite. It aligns incentives
to keep the FAA getting better at design inspection/approval, and gets
airframe manufacturers focused on making information relevant to certification
as easily accessible as possible.

Trying to implement that type of mechanism in house, or through delegation
aligns incentives in such a way where poor or inaccessible documentation is
encouraged to make any inquiries or attempts to prove liability more
difficult. It also increases the incentive for the in-house inspector to
"give-in" through social forces, and workplace dynamics.

I recognize these types of dynamic everyday in software shops, but I'd never
imagined it would happen somewhere that produced something that absolutely
must work.

