
Staff emails claim Boeing 777X ‘shares Max problem’ - theslurmmustflo
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/01/18/staff-emails-claim-boeing-777x-shares-max-problem/
======
dehrmann
That's a disingenuous headline (I blame the Telegraph).

> In an email from June 2018, before the first Max crash, one Boeing worker
> wrote: “Best part is we are re-starting this whole thing with the 777X with
> the same supplier and have signed up to an even more aggressive schedule.”

> Another member of staff warns about a relentless cost focus...

> Last September, the 777X suffered a setback when it failed a ground test of
> its strength, suffering an explosive decompression that tore the fuselage
> and blew off a passenger door.

None of those are what I would call the "Max problem," (I'd consider that to
be MCAS) but there does seem to be a systemic problem off cost cutting and
aggressive deadlines.

~~~
Brave-Steak
I don't think it's a wrong characterization, imo. The problem with the MAX
isn't necessarily the MCAS, but the culture and business/engineering processes
that allowed MCAS to go all the way to production _and_ allowed the company to
convince their customers not to implement pilot training. There are multiple
levels of failure beyond just MCAS being a thing, and the emails might suggest
that (some of?) these systemic issues are also affecting the design of the
777x.

~~~
notatoad
the problem with the max is that it has a tendency to crash. everything else
is just a cause or symptom of that problem. If the 777X isn't going to crash,
then it doesn't share the same problem.

when planes operate properly, nobody cares what business or engineering
practices allowed that.

~~~
ironmagma
Why are the causes of that problem not really problems in themselves? Crashing
could have multiple different causes; crashing is just a symptom.

~~~
notatoad
They are problems for the people working on solving the crashing. They aren't
problems for anybody else.

for passengers, airlines, and anybody other than Boeing, the only problem is
the crashing.

~~~
ironmagma
Isn’t that a bit like saying the problem in medicine is dying, and other
things like heart disease, cancer, etc. aren’t really problems for the
patients, as death is the only real problem?

~~~
notatoad
if you had cancer but experienced no symptoms, died in a car crash at age 95,
and the cancer wasn't discovered until your autopsy, would you say it was a
problem?

~~~
ironmagma
Of course it was a problem. If a person has diabetes but then they get shot to
death, that doesn't make the diabetes irrelevant.

If 40% of people walking on the earth got cancer today, and it was
asymptomatic, it would definitely be a problem, even if nobody saw it as their
personal problem in this moment.

------
shadow-banned
Please, anyone let this be a lesson: you can destroy a brand that took decades
to build in a matter of months.

~~~
texasbigdata
The decision to launch a product and the immediate after process take a few
months, but the entire product development process took years likely.

Also....it makes me uncomfortable when news stations report "internal email
says X". Like...a) if it's not a news outlet that's tech knowledgeable that's
always scary b) let's say 5000 employees worked on this. 20x emails per day. 5
year period (10000 days). That is a lot of emails that went into discovery for
the attorneys or forensic guys to parse. Theres probably a lot of knowledge in
there but humans are smart about that they selectively email (I knew someone
that interned in the Obama White House and a large email flow was "documenting
for posterity what they wanted to be in the record" through emails to no one
in particular, was what she said). The 777 could be messed up, but "staff
emails" is such an uncomfortable source. Did the likely top tier law firm
really leak email contents?

~~~
kortilla
> documenting for posterity what they wanted to be in the record

The correct term is “re-iterate the talking points on the record to help shape
the narrative”. It’s not for posterity, it’s for ass covering.

If all corporate emails were to become a matter of public record, they would
be filled with PR-speak as well.

~~~
salawat
It isn't PR speak when you just tell the truth in an email and don't let
management bully you into not saying what needs to be said to prop up their
take on it.

It can end up a bit dangerous, because they'll be more than happy to drag you
through the mud in court to try to discredit you, but a lot of people kinda
expect that anyway.

~~~
kortilla
No, the whole culture around email changes when people know for certain it’s
part of the public record of the company. I’ve worked in environments where
all emails are retained due to government contracts, and an unwritten rule
immediately emerges that nothing that could be used against the company is
said in emails. Backchannels emerge with IMs, SMS, etc where the real
conversations happen.

------
OliverJones
If William Langeweische's NYT article from last September
([https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-
crashes.html)) is accurate, Boeing is scrambling to make a transition from
selling airplanes requiring extremely high pilot skill ("airmanship",
Langeweische calls it) to requiring medium pilot skill. They're trying to make
the transition due to competition from Airbus. They're partly using public
relations and market position to do it. "No transition training needed to fly
this differently-shaped airplane!"

It's not terribly surprising this is causing all kinds of upheavals at Boeing.

Richard Feynman is right again. "For a successful technology, reality must
take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

Boeing changed my life. My family traveled a lot when I was a little kid. The
advent of the 707 meant we no longer had to spend five days on a ship in the
North Atlantic to get from Europe to New York or vice versa. I sure hope they
can pull their company out of its present poorly controlled descent.

~~~
yc-kraln
Oof. I have to assume your last sentence was intended.

------
userbinator
It's not just planes; I've noticed a lot of things seem to get better over
time, then take a nosedive (pun not intended). I wonder if it's an inherent
property of systems to do this, or if it's the result of some perverse
incentives to have "progress" at all costs.

~~~
pgt
Yes, it's a type of evolutionary gradient descent: you see an entity get stuck
in a locality-constrained hill-climb before it gets culled by another entity
that climbed a different hill (of regulation).

------
riffraff
Have airlines cancelled orders of the 737 Max? If yes the will they be
canceling orders of this one too?

~~~
gsnedders
> Have airlines cancelled orders of the 737 Max?

Yes. (Though IAG did agree a letter of intent—not an actual order, though—with
Boeing for 200 aircraft. It was rumoured this was the biggest discount seen in
the aviation world since Ryanair's large post-9/11 order.)

> If yes the will they be canceling orders of this one too?

Probably not? The 777X will be looked at incredibly closely prior to
certification, and doesn't have the design oddities of the 737 MAX, so it
probably is much lower risk, even with the cultural problems.

~~~
comfymatrix
> The 777X will be looked at incredibly closely prior to certification

One would hope so...

------
mxscho
Boeing is the stock with the biggest weight within the Dow Jones Industrial
Average. Trump often uses this index as a public measure of his personal
success.

Is it too much to assume that the government would try to figure out some
rescue operations (whatever they may look like) to save Boeing financially in
case that this is required? One reason for the trade dispute with the EU is
Airbus.

~~~
jonplackett
Not just for that reason - Boeing are pretty important for the military for
all sorts of reasons. They would never let them go bankrupt.

~~~
Traster
Well, they don't need to go bankrupt to tank the DJIA. Having said that, Trump
would cite the Eurostoxx 50 if he felt it made him look good. It's more a case
of selecting data that makes him look good than actually being committed to
one understanding of success.

------
jonplackett
I can’t read the whole article because of the paywall.

But from the lead in it doesn’t look like it really is ‘the same issues’ as in
problems with a lack of redundant sensor and overly aggressive correction due
to engines that are too big.

Anyone whose read the whole thing care to correct me?

~~~
Pfhreak
The sensors and correction are a symptom of the issue at Boeing, which is an
aggressive pursuit of profit over safety.

~~~
jonplackett
That's not the same as being the same issue. Issue implies something more
specific.

~~~
Pfhreak
Not at all. The 'issue' could be a technical issue, a cultural issue, a
corporate issue, a documentation issue, a legislative issue, a personal issue.

If you stop diagnosing when you find a faulty part, you aren't diving deep
enough. Ask why some more -- what allowed us to even ship a faulty part in the
first place? The sensors in the plane are a faulty technical design, but what
_systemic_ issues enabled that faulty design to be shipped at all? _Those_ are
the root cause issues.

------
gordon_freeman
On another note: I just wish if every website would charge based on pay-per-
read (e.g. $0.50/article) instead of forcing me to register or start a free
trial or pay for a monthly subscription.

~~~
craigharley
It’s all because of card fees. It’s not economical to charge $0.5

~~~
jiofih
That “problem” has been solved two decades ago. In the EU debt reins, with
zero fees, and there are dozens of micro-payments systems operating all over
the world. Isn’t Venmo big in the US?

~~~
tjohns
Venmo is far from ubiquitous. (None of my friends or family have a Venmo
account, for instance. They prefer other apps like Square Cash / Google Pay /
PayPal, or don’t use payment apps at all.)

Debit cards are not popular here because they tend to lack robust fraud
protection - and even if they did, your bank account could easily be zeroed
for weeks while they work to reverse the fraudulent charges.

Also, debit cards still have an interchange fee here. It’s cheaper than credit
cards, but even for a small purchase there’s usually a $0.20 minimum fee -
which is too much for microtransactions.

~~~
jiofih
> they tend to lack robust fraud protection

That’s funny. Debit cards have always been PIN based and way safer than
credit. I’ve never personally heard of a single case of fraud.

There is nothing stopping micropayments from happening as a technology, except
political/market incentives. It’s already a reality everywhere else, even
north Africa. Rationalizing it just solidifies the status quo.

------
avalys
These articles are getting a little tiresome. Private enterprise is about
competition and cost reduction. That’s what drives improvement, innovation,
and efficiency, and it’s what differentiates private enterprise from
government spending, which is about justifying why things need to be so
expensive.

Yes, Boeing was too aggressive about reducing cost to compete with Airbus and
they need some major reform because hundreds of people are dead. But let’s not
forget that this drive towards cost reduction is what still allows you today
fly across the country in perfect safety for $300. All these people saying “Of
course Boeing should have designed a totally new plane from scratch with
quadruple-redundant systems, only the most experienced factory workers to
build it, all parts made out of unicorn tears for safety’s sake, etc.” have a
misguided view of how engineering is done.

Perfectly reasonable decisions by Boeing to try to reduce costs for their
customers and passengers are now being characterized negatively, merely
because they are intended to reduce cost. People don’t seem to realize that
it’s easy to build an expensive airplane - the hard part of engineering is not
always choosing the easy, expensive option.

~~~
gregoriol
You probably are a developer, but engineering in life critical fields can't be
reduced to cost efficiency.

~~~
avalys
I’m a developer and a pilot. I understand that cost is not the only factor. My
frustration is, the attitude in the media today is to report negatively on
every single instance they can find of Boeing trying to reduce costs as if
that is a sin in itself, when it’s actually the most fundamental driver of
improvement in the entire economy!

~~~
jschwartzi
While I would agree with you in general, I hope in this case you can see how
Boeing’s judgement can be called into question based on the terrible decisions
they’ve made contemporary to the 777X development. And these are decisions
that have cost lives. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume they’re
just cheaping out and don’t really care about passenger safety when they have
a track record of cheaping out and not considering passenger safety on the 737
MAX.

~~~
kortilla
The 737 MAX issue wasn’t Boeing cheaping our though. It was Boeing trying to
avoid recertification so it was a drop in for existing 737 customers. In other
words, Boeing was trying to target the airlines that cheap out and did
something stupid to get there.

This wasn’t a quality problem. This is was a failure to recognize (or willful
hiding) the importance of training pilots on MCAS.

~~~
jschwartzi
Boeing knowingly misrepresented the handling characteristics of the 737 MAX
rather than risk losing money by building a new airframe to accommodate larger
engines. That’s definitionally cheaping out. Rather than starting a
development program and taking the business risk, potentially costing money,
they chose to instead risk the lives of passengers by fixing an aerodynamic
problem in software. For money. This calls into question their integrity as a
company.

~~~
kortilla
No, it’s not cheaping out, it’s just trying to target a very specific market.
It’s targeting cheap customers. Boeing had no problem paying whatever the
costs to actually make the thing compatible with the 737. You’re right that
it’s still a violation of integrity, but it’s not being cheap by cutting their
own costs inappropriately.

