
Boeing Admits It Knew of a Faulty Safety Alert in 737 Max - digighoul
https://digit.fyi/boeing-admits-it-knew-of-a-faulty-safety-alert-in-737-max/
======
Deimorz
As far as I can tell, this is exactly the same story as 4 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19835608](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19835608)

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idoubtit
This post is of very low quality. "Boeing admits..." but no source, no date,
no quote.

I suppose this is just a mashup of previous articles published in newspapers,
which were all discussed here. The WSJ was the first to reveal (11 days ago)
that Boeing knew for a whole year that the alert device was faulty[1]. CNBC
added some details[2]. A NYT link was published here and much commented[3],
where a comment pointed to the official Boeing statement[4].

[1]: WSJ
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19772220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19772220)

[2]: CNBC
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19780032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19780032)

[3]: NYT
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19835608](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19835608)

[4]: Boeing
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19835901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19835901)

[edit: typo]

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throw03172019
Always looks worse when you keep denying, denying just to turn around and
admit it later.

Why is this such a common way to handle these situations?

~~~
joeyrideout
Good public relations (PR) is not intuitive. The best practice when it comes
to bad news is Robert Dilenschneider's advice to "tell it all and tell it
fast", but companies are often hesitant to do so for legal and political
reasons.

EDIT: To elaborate, getting ahead of an unfolding story is difficult even for
experienced PR people. One misplaced word may be taken out of context or even
used as admission of guilt in an ongoing investigation. This is generally why
PR folks default to true generalities, e.g. "we care about our customers'
safety" or "what happened is terrible and should be prevented from happening
again".

My knowledge of PR is limited to the book "When the Headline Is You" which I
highly recommend. It gives a great perspective on how companies manage
themselves in the public light.

~~~
petilon
_> The best practice when it comes to bad news is Robert Dilenschneider's
advice to "tell it all and tell it fast"_

When it comes to disclosing hacks, standard practice is to disclose a small
hack first then disclose that the hack was "worse than previously thought".

Examples:

[https://www.slashgear.com/outlook-com-hacks-is-worse-than-
mi...](https://www.slashgear.com/outlook-com-hacks-is-worse-than-microsoft-
first-claimed-14573231/)

[https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a3pqqb/the-facebook-
hack...](https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a3pqqb/the-facebook-hack-is-way-
worse-than-previously-thought)

[https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-
crime/article/21...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-
crime/article/2172796/cathay-pacific-cyberattack-far-worse-previously-thought)

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/13/equifax_security_br...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/13/equifax_security_breach_bad/)

[https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/ba-hack-
investigation-36...](https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/ba-hack-
investigation-3611486)

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/iran-hack-worse-than-
reported](https://www.thedailybeast.com/iran-hack-worse-than-reported)

------
pnw_hazor
Who wrote the software?

Even though there are two sensors, the signal from the faulty sensor was used.
(Why no comparison checks or consensus checks?)

Also, there was no limit on how far the MCAS could move the stabilizer. MCAS
was limited to 2.5 degrees of change 'per cycle' but each time a pilot tried
to pull up the nose, MCAS reset enabling another 2.5 degree of movement.
Ultimately the stabilizer was pinned in the max-down position.

Boeing and perhaps the FAA let the software into the field but it was bad/lazy
software engineers that killed people.

 _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.

“They could have designed a two-channel system. Or they could have tested the
value of angle of attack on the ground,” said Lemme. “I don’t know why they
didn’t.”

The black box data provided in the preliminary investigation report shows that
readings from the two sensors differed by some 20 degrees not only throughout
the flight but also while the airplane taxied on the ground before takeoff._

[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/)

~~~
salawat
If you have been following, in one of the pieces over the last week or so
reported that they outsourced the software.

Which begs the question of who signed off on the acceptance tests.

------
mseidl
People need to be in jail.

~~~
chrisseaton
That wouldn’t fix anything that’s happened in this situation or help prevent
it happening again.

~~~
orev
I mean, their negligence literally killed 2 planes full of people. It’s hard
to view this in a way that ISN’T a jailable offense, at the very least.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>It’s hard to view this in a way that ISN’T a jailable offense, at the very
least.

It's highly likely that no one jail-able person (you can't jail a corporate
entity) had enough information and knowledge of the situation to meet the
criteria of criminal negligence. Nobody knows the full picture. That's just
the nature of building a large system like this. I know what my code does. I
have a pretty good idea of how it affects the whole system. I can reason able
what edge cases I don't know about might cause my portion of the system to do.
I can't (with any reasonable degree of confidence) reason about the end result
of that edge case being fed through the entire system.

~~~
mimixco
I call BS on that. The person who designed the software knew about testing for
mission critical code and if they didn't know, they shouldn't have been hired.
The investigation into Toyota's unintended acceleration problems found a
widespread corporate culture of ignoring _known protocols_ in the testing of
mission critical software. Is this the same problem Boeing has?

Even this story manages to confuse the _people_ responsible with the company
where they work. It says "Boeing didn't know the feature was optional." What a
crock. Surely someone knew, like the person who decided to make it optional,
for starters!

