
FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes - dboreham
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-26/faa-finds-new-risk-on-737-max-and-orders-boeing-to-make-changes
======
jussij
The FAA suffered a major loss of credibility in their handling of the first
round of testing/accreditation of the MAX.

The FAA can't afford another stuff up this second time around and as such I
suspect they will be checking every aspect of the plane in very fine detail.

That could spell more trouble for Boeing.

~~~
BorRagnarok
I still don't trust the FAA at all. They've been sourcing out their own work
to Boeing since the 787 Dreamliner [0]. That's seven years ago. I don't think
this will make them change their practices. The 787 fiasco certainly didn't.

Personally I'd be happiest if the world just scrapped all the Max-es. Just
scrap 'em, let Boeing go out of business, it's what they deserve now, they
shouldn't exist anymore as a company. There are enough businesses that happily
create planes without putting profit before people.

It's really too bad that there's no footage of either of the crashes, because
if people could see what happened they would never fly one of those things
again. That's why people don't fly zeppelins anymore. Not because of what
people said or read, but because they saw. The Max deserves the same.

Do you want to fly in a plane which was created using the deaths of over 300
people to finalize the design?

[0] The Boeing 787: Broken Dreams, Al Jazeera Investigations,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os)

~~~
moftz
It's not footage but that angle of attack is absolutely nuts. I don't think my
brain would have been able to process that kind of image out my window if I
was a passenger on that plane.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIunpQQpzs0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIunpQQpzs0)

~~~
83
I think you mean angle of descent. Angle of attack is the angle of airflow
with respect to the wing.

~~~
Rooster61
Not to mention the AoA data was suspect, at least from one of the sensors.
That's what caused the chain of errors leading to the MCAS nosediving the
plane.

------
rjvehn
There are a myriad of issues that put the planes at risk, but I think that the
fact that when the control system (MCAS) is engaged causes it to ignore
feedback is the biggest issue of all.

"But with the MCAS activated, said Fehrm, those breakout switches wouldn’t
work. MCAS assumes the yoke is already aggressively pulled back and won’t
allow further pullback to counter its action, which is to hold the nose down.

Fehrm’s analysis is confirmed in the instructions Boeing sent to pilots last
weekend. The bulletin sent to American Airlines pilots emphasizes that pulling
back the control column will not stop the action.

Fehrm said that the Lion Air pilots would have trained on 737 simulators and
would have learned over many years of experience that _pulling back on the
yoke stops any automatic tail maneuvers pushing the nose down._ " [0].

If you bought a new computer, how pissed off would you be if you lost data not
because of a hard-drive failure, but because of a weird design decision of the
1 penny caps lock key? Imagine spending the time to setup a proper RAID system
and losing everything because of a _design decision_ in the keyboard.

I mean if the media keeps reporting about the small stuff that's wrong, it's
going to make people go "well planes are complex and things happen" and almost
ignore the seriousness of a design decision that ignores user input.

[0]: [https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/faa-e...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
aerospace/faa-evaluates-a-potential-design-flaw-on-boeings-737-max-after-lion-
air-crash/)

~~~
th0ma5
To be fair, ignoring user input could have potentially have saved Air France
447... I mean I actually can't think of an automated fool proof system that
would've fixed 447, but incorrect input was a major factor.

~~~
halter73
IIRC, the cockpit voice recording included a comment from one of the co-pilots
about how pulling back on the yoke couldn't cause a stall. The assumption was
that the Airbus's fly-by-wire system would prevent it and ensure the aircraft
still climbed as long as the pilot held back on the stick.

The co-pilot apparently didn't realize that the sensor issue that disabled the
autopilot also disabled the stall prevention. And that's despite an audible
"STALL" warning being repeated in the background.

The captain was not in the cockpit when the whole situation started, but as he
re-entered the cockpit during the stall he saw one of the co-pilots holding
back on the yoke and told him to push the yoke forward to prevent the stall.
The co-pilot followed the instructions, but only for a few seconds before
pulling the yoke back again.

All of this is to say if the plane hadn't been _known_ to ignore user inputs
in most situations, the co-pilot might not have assumed the Airbus would do
the right thing and climb no matter what when pulling back on the yoke. So in
a sense, _never_ ignoring user inputs might have also saved Air France 447.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Exactly - the computer had switched contexts, but the pilot hadn't. And
expecting pilots to switch their mental map of expected behaviour when the
computer does (and did so with, from the accounts I read, very minimal
indication that it had done so) during a high stress situation, is asking for
trouble.

~~~
acqq
The indications were different alerts continuously sounding. It’s a complex
problem, there’s a lot that can go wrong at once.

------
kahirsch
When the Boeing CEO had his press conference in April, he said "we've
confirmed that the MCAS system as originally designed did meet our design and
safety analysis criteria and our certification criteria."[1] I yelled at the
screen "you know that means the criteria are _flawed_ , right? If the
procedures didn't catch this mistake, that means there are other mistakes that
weren't caught!"

A flabbergasted reporter then asks him if he means to say that MCAS was
designed to push the nose down 21 times. The CEO then blamed the pilots for
not following procedures!

He repeatedly avoids avoiding admitting that any mistakes were made. He was so
intent on avoiding blame that he gave me no confidence that Boeing could learn
from its mistakes. The longer he talked, the less confidence I had in Boeing
as a company.

I have no idea why this guy still has his job.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOQmQpKHVWA&t=9m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOQmQpKHVWA&t=9m30s)

~~~
retSava
Admitting culpability more or less admits financial responsibility as well.

If Boeing would say "we're at fault", people would sue them (more than now)
and have greater chance at winning those lawsuits, since Boeing already
admitted to being at fault.

I can imagine Boeing, and the Boeing CEO, is trying very, very hard at walking
a fine line of not admitting being at fault, but also saying that they are
"taking responsibility" (since they have 300 souls, public opinion, and
lawmakers against them). They have to convince people (those that matter, ie
those stopping operation and sales) that the MAX and Boeing are safe.

~~~
BorRagnarok
Can you imagine killing 300+ people and then having to talk in such a way to
accomplish that down the line the least amount of money will go to the
families of the victims? This man has really has no soul.

------
mevile
I wonder if they're just now finding new things by simply running the software
in a simulator, what more will they find, and what does this say to their
continued assurances as to the safety of this plane?

~~~
blackflame7000
On the flip side, all airplanes have flaws to some degree or else they would
never crash. A deep audit of everything in the end should make things safer.
And Boeing also has a solid safety record on their other models 777 and 767

~~~
jussij
_Boeing also has a solid safety record on their other models 777 and 767_ and
an incredibly poor safety record for their 737-MAX model.

The problem for Boeing is the history of flying has many examples of planes
with poor safety records being rejected by the flying public.

Only time will tell if the 737-MAX joins that illustrious group, but the more
the plane stays in the news for all the wrong reasons, the better are it's
chances.

~~~
blackflame7000
The original 737 had a terrible safety record at first because of a rudder
hard-over flaw. It then went on to become the most used in history

~~~
pvg
That doesn't sound right. The 737 went into service in the late 60s. There
were two confirmed fatal accidents involving rudder hardover in the 90s.

~~~
blackflame7000
By Original I meant the NG version

~~~
pvg
Both accidents attributed to rudder hardover took place before the 737 NG
first flew in 1997.

~~~
blackflame7000
There were a lot more than just 2 rudder incidents.

USAir Flight 427

United Airlines Flight 585

Eastwind Airlines Flight 517

Silkair Flight 185

Copa Airlines Flight 201

China Southern Airlines Flight 3943

MetroJet Flight 2710

~~~
pvg
I mean. I am going by wikipedia here but most of the things you've said in
this subthread seem to be inaccurate. It wasn't the original 737. It wasn't
the NG. And most of the accidents you've listed were not caused by that
particular rudder design problem (as far as I can tell, 3 were, maybe?). You
keep adding new inaccurate things without the slightest acknowledgement you
might have misremembered or misstated something before.

------
kjar
This plane appears to be a (sorta) flying dumpster fire rushed to market
against Airbus with tragic consequences. One design flaw after another is MAX
failure.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The industry is pretty homogeneous and somewhat of a revolving door between
the few OEMs. What are the odds that the code on this plane is orders of
magnitude worse (in terms of code quality) than every other similar bit of
code in the sky?

Edit. I should have to say this but I'm not defending Boeing here. I'm saying
it's not at al unforeseeable that the other planes, even ones by other
manufacturers are just as bad. Clearly they thought nothing was abnormal about
this one until it started falling out of the sky. I see this kind of like
diesel-gate. If one of them is cheating they're probably all cheating.

~~~
notatoad
My instinct is that you're probably correct, and most planes are probably
riddled with similar problems and would look bad if they came under the same
scrutiny as the 737 Max is currently under. For example, I remember after the
787 was launched there was a few stories in the press about the batteries
catching fire mid-flight, but it turned out the designers and engineers had
accounted for that possibility and it wasn't really a big deal. They've
improved the batteries, but it didn't actually hurt anybody.

However, the problem with the max seems to be that instead of designing for
failure - assuming that critical systems might fail and the plane should
recover gracefully from the failure of most internal systems - they seem to
have designed for success, and made the assumption that no part of the plane
will ever fail. And that's obviously not realistic, and we're seeing the
consequences of it here.

~~~
rsynnott
> My instinct is that you're probably correct, and most planes are probably
> riddled with similar problems and would look bad if they came under the same
> scrutiny as the 737 Max is currently under.

0.5% of all 737 MAXes which exist have killed everyone on board. No other mass
market production airliner in recent history has that sort of record, AFAIK.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Wikipedia says 393 have been produced, so more like 0.25%.

~~~
BorRagnarok
2 out of 393 is roughly 0.5%

~~~
AnimalMuppet
<facepalm>

------
bjourne
Since this thread is already full of armchair airplane engineers opinions
about the root cause, I'll add mine too: Never ever write new software under
the condition that it must work _EXACTLY_ as old software. It can't be done
and you'll always miss something.

Case in point: Wine. They've been at it for years and the emulation layer is
still far from perfect. It works 99% of the time which is good enough for
games, but I wager not for airplane control systems.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Wine is not a good example. They don't have access to the source code of the
original system, and they haven't had the resources to cover the entire
footprint of the Windows APIs.

~~~
skykooler
That's a good point. It'd be like comparing Boeing building a new plane to,
say, Tupolev trying to build an identical copy without any blueprints.

~~~
JorgeGT
> _Tupolev trying to build an identical copy without any blueprints._

They actually did. It's called Tu-4:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4)

------
Xcelerate
I made a post about three months ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578201](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578201))
that my main fear with the 737 Max was that they rushed the plane into
production and more mistakes were made than with just the MCAS system.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the case. I doubt Boeing will ever convince me
that enough "patches" have been made to make the plane safe to fly on.

~~~
markbnj
If after all of this the much more knowledgeable pilots are willing to get on
the thing and fly it, I'd be comfortable getting in the back.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Why bother given how it easy it is just to chose another itinerary with a
different type of plane? It's not like there's only one itinerary/plane type
per route or anything.

------
rfugger
I'd be pretty comfortable flying it after all this attention and review. It
will probably be the best reviewed passenger plane software developed in
America, if not the world once this is over.

Boeing deserves a 9-figure fine though, and its shareholders should lose
massively to make sure this doesn't happen again.

~~~
mantap
I'm not convinced. The pressure on Boeing to fix this ASAP is immense. That is
not a good environment for writing safety critical software. Especially if
they are doing a "broader software redesign". I don't believe that software
quality can be enforced from the outside.

~~~
rosege
Yes, having to use your employee car parking for these jets is not a good look
that I'd imagine they are keen to have going on for long.
[https://www.flyertalk.com/articles/boeing-has-so-many-
ground...](https://www.flyertalk.com/articles/boeing-has-so-many-grounded-
maxs-theyre-parking-them-in-the-employee-parking-lot.html)

~~~
karthikb
Interesting tidbit in the video. At 1:43 you see a MAX in Jet Airways livery -
an airline that ceased operations and terminated all flights about 1 month
after the grounding began.

------
teh_infallible
I hate the fact that all discussion focuses on the software and ignores the
airframe.

~~~
cmurf
What's the problem with the airframe? What's the problem with the larger
engine nacelle causing a different pitching moment? I've yet to read either of
those violate any portion of FAR 25. There is still an open question whether
the MAX should have or will have a separate type certificate from other 737's,
thereby requiring pilots of a type rating to fly the MAX, thereby requiring
full disclosure and training on all differences.

Which pilots should have had anyway, even if it didn't require a new type
rating.

~~~
tremon
_What 's the problem with the airframe?_

The #1 problem with the airframe is that _it is not identical_ to the original
737 airframe. Therefore it shouldn't have been certified as a 737, and it
should have required pilot training.

Boeing has been using software to _emulate_ a 737 airframe to avoid the pilot
training costs. This approach itself is fraught with problems, and I hope the
FAA puts a hard stop to these non-solutions.

~~~
cmurf
The 757 and 767 do not have identical airframes, they share a type
certificate. The Airbus 320 and 340 do not have identical airframes, they
share a type certificate. I think you do not understand type certification.

The 737 MAX airframe is substantially more like a 737 NG airframe, than a 757
is to a 767. Etc. It sounds like you have a problem with how airplanes are
type certified, not a problem with the airframe.

~~~
tremon
Rather, I have a problem with airplanes falling out of the sky because pilots
don't understand what they're flying, and airplane manufacturers trying to
obfuscate their machinery. The details of how and why are secondary to that.

~~~
cmurf
I think literally everyone has a problem with airplanes falling out of the
sky. Anyone saying otherwise is perhaps a comedian. So I still have to insist
you work harder to refine your complaint. The complaint is legitimate, but
it's also ordinary. To contribute to the conversation you have to bring
something a little bit more than just the ordinary.

Indeed, it might very well be questionable that the 757 and 767 have the same
type rating. But then, even though they have the same type rating they do
still have difference training. Is iPad difference training really adequate?
Who evaluated this? Were there contrary opinions?

------
hwestiii
This all points up the glaring conflicts of interest in the corporate business
environment. Most of us think that Boeing is the business of building
airplanes, but as a publicly traded company, its real business is making money
for its shareholders, and aerospace is just a vehicle toward that end. The
Boeing CEO's steadfast refusal to take responsibility for these two crashes
are nothing more than CYA designed to limit or defer financial responsibility
for >300 deaths and protect and privilege shareholder value above the safety
and well-being of the flying public.

~~~
LMYahooTFY
This is only the beginning of a question.

It's not obvious how the responsibility for those deaths should be allocated.

What's the tolerance threshold for airline fatalities?

~~~
count
Zero. Aviation is a zero tolerance activity on safety issues.

------
GiorgioG
RIP 737Max. I don't see how the airlines can risk flying this PR nightmare
again.

~~~
jillesvangurp
They'll do some rebranding and resume business as usual after the FAA approves
their tweaks. Boeing will have lot of inventory ready to ship and there will
no doubt also be some lucrative discounts for airlines currently staring very
hard at competing offers from Airbus. Airlines will be flying these planes for
decades.

~~~
easytiger
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/18/british-
air...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/18/british-airlines-
parent-iag-reveals-plans-buy-200-boeing-737-max-jets)

~~~
sambe
Yeah, this is pretty weird and a little scary. I wonder if they are using it
as a negotiating tactic - get offered a super low price and then give that
price to Airbus to match? Airbus have already enthusiastically said they will
bid on this business.

~~~
CaptainZapp
My guess is that Boeing essentially gave the plane away in order to have one
_please, just one!_ success story at the Paris air show.

I can't imagine any airline making a deal at 50% list price with the current
perception of that death trap with the public.

50% of list price, btw, is in the ballpark of usual discounts granted to end
customers by Boeing and Airbus[1].

While I'm not privvy to any internals (obviously) my take is that IAG
essentially gets the plane for free in exchange for a PR win for Boeing.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_between_Airbus_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_between_Airbus_and_Boeing)

------
zaroth
An issue recovering from uncommanded stabilizer trim which is _not_ MCAS-
related?

I’m going to assume there’s a real issue they are trying to report on, but
Gell-Mann effect is strong with this one and some key information is missing.

------
ngcc_hk
Not going to trust that model, like dc10 (?). May work not engineer. But as
customer, only get 1 life. Not as software beta tester.

~~~
333c
How can you practically avoid a model of plane, other than avoiding all
airlines that operate them?

~~~
jussij
Just visit a flight tracking website before booking.

In addition I'm sure airlines not flying the MAX will be using that fact as a
marketing tool (i.e. we only fly Airbus etc) so you could limit your bookings
with just those airlines.

As an example of this, here in Australia I know one of the carriers is
planning to fly the Max some time next year.

If they go ahead with that plan, I will be making sure not to book with that
carrier at least for the next few years.

~~~
bigiain
From what I hear, at least one of the carriers here that _was_ intending to
fly them this year, has cancelled all the maintenance courses for them... They
aren't going to be flying them until 2025 apparently, so all the engineers
booked on courses to do maintenance for the 747MAX8 are getting re-booked for
Airbus courses...

~~~
yots
I may not be interpreting this right, but does that imply they already have
the planes, which will now stay in storage until 2025 waiting for all issues
to be resolved?

If that's correct, aren't there possible risks for flying a plane that had
such a long period of inactivity?

~~~
jussij
> which will now stay in storage until 2025

This is the really big problem Boeing now faces.

For these planes to fly again they need to be certified safe to fly again.

However since the FAA was one of the last authorities to ground the plane, it
really does not matter what outcome they achieve in their current
investigation.

Other aviation authorities around the world will take their own time to
investigate if the plane should be allowed to fly.

The conundrum for Boeing is it wants the plane back in the air ASAP but I'm
sure many of the world aviation authorities are in no real rush.

------
ulfw
If only the FAA wasn't corrupt and did their job of testing, verifying and
CERTIFYING the 787 and 737max in the first place rather than outsourcing it to
the VERY MANUFACTURER Boeing.

I don't know where y'all went to school, but I was never able to self-grade my
year-end exams.

Absolutely unthinkable banana republic behaviour and not a single head rolled
(except for the about 350 poor dead souls who had to pay for this corruption
with their life).

~~~
PaulHoule
The 787 and 737max represent two different things.

The 787 is an advanced and innovative plane. It blazes the way in terms of
seat-mile cost, comfort, fuel consimptoon, etc.

The 737max is a half-baked response to the re-engined a320 and also the
somewhat smaller planes like the a220 and e195-2 that beat the 737 in cost per
mile and noise as well as being more comfortable. (Think of the Japanese cars
that were small on the outside and big on the inside compared to 1970s
American cars)

The 737max tried to innovate as little as possible, and that is where it got
into trouble.

I think Boeing still thinks that it can get the FAA to avoid a simulator
training requirement but they won't and by trying they will delay the
recertification at the expense of airlines, shareholders, etc.

~~~
ulfw
Oh without a doubt you’re right. Doesn’t change the fact though that both got
partially self “certified” by Boeing

------
_jal
Aside from the 737, what other Boeing planes have seen significant design work
recently? I'm becoming more curious about those.

~~~
mehrdadn
787? Thought not sure how recently you're referring to.

~~~
ngcc_hk
Quite like 787. Even better than 380. Hope it is good.

------
dominicr
“Addressing this condition will reduce pilot workload” is a funny way of
saying they're going to stop planes crashing themselves!

We're all quite used to having problems described in the least threatening way
but I'm thankful that I've never had to do so about something that could
result in people dying.

------
Havoc
Boeing seems to have a safety culture issue. Which is a lot worse than one
dodgy plane...

------
pseingatl
Is the defective processor also used in the 737-800/900 non-grounded aircraft?

------
dandare
As a web/game developer, one thing I never understood is the alleged
complexity of these control systems. There is no image/voice recognition, no
graphics engine, no rocket science. What are they even doing? Or is it all a
big lie?

Lines of code, from the internet[1]: Pacemaker: 100k Boeing 787: 5M Chevy
Volt: 10M Modern car: 100M

[1] [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/millions-lines-of-
code/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/millions-lines-of-code/)

~~~
petascale
As a web/game developer, you forgot to include the OS and the drivers in the
lines of code involved in executing the stuff you are writing.

The Linux kernel was 15M lines in 2013 [1], more than half of that was
drivers. Windows XP was apparently 45M lines, the 2009 Debian distribution
300M lines [2].

So you're into millions of lines just to execute "Hello world" on a PC.

Simple control systems generally don't use an OS. E.g. Arduino is as simple as
it gets, here [3] is a 30-LOC example snippet for a HTTP client. But if you
dig down into the included libraries (most of it is on GitHub) you'll find
that there's (quick estimate) 10-20k lines of code involved in executing those
30 lines. And you haven't actually _done_ anything yet, that's just the
infrastructure to allow C code to interact with the hardware with a few
standard libraries for math and IO.

Modern cars are complex enough to have OSes [4], with the corresponding code
complexities.

In short, web developers vastly underestimate the code complexity of
interacting with hardware in a low-level language because it's not something
they deal with. The umpteen million lines of OS kernel and device drives are
done by someone else, and for people who just _use_ a PC it (mostly) "just
works", to the extent that even advanced users aren't aware of the complexity
behind it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Codebase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Codebase)

[2] [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/111281/exploding-
am...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/111281/exploding-amount-of-
debian-source-code-lines)

[3]
[https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HttpClient](https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HttpClient)

[4] [https://www.quora.com/What-operating-systems-are-used-in-
car...](https://www.quora.com/What-operating-systems-are-used-in-cars)

~~~
dandare
Are you suggesting a passenger car runs its own Linux distro? What would be
the reason, other than Not Built Here syndrome? (Or the goal to deceive
regulators.)

How many I/O devices/drivers does a pacemaker talk to? How many of those are
written by/customized by the pacemaker's developers?

If you include the underlying stack, then also my <body>Hello world</body>
runs on tens of millions of lines of code (Browser+OS).

~~~
petascale
> How many I/O devices/drivers does a pacemaker talk to?

A pacemaker would presumably be similar to Arduino: A simple processor, no OS.
100k lines (your numbers) isn't all that much, given that C standard libs are
into the tens of thousands alone. Pacemakers have sensors to detect heartbeat,
logic to send an electric pulse only when needed, and have an interface where
medical personell can hook up a computer to adjust some parameters. So 2-3 IO
channels at a minimum (one or more sensors, one or more outputs for the
electric pulse, and some sort of wireless interface for adjustments).

> Are you suggesting a passenger car runs its own Linux distro?

According to Quora (last link in my reply above) the most common alternatives
are Windows Embedded Automotive, a Linux derivative, and QNX. Why? To avoid
writing millions of lines of fairly complex code on their own, of course. Just
like a desktop developer saves a ton of work by writing on top of the OS
rather than implementing their own OS from scratch.

> If you include the underlying stack, then also my <body>Hello world</body>
> runs on tens of millions of lines of code.

Yes, but that's the point: The numbers for lines of code in a pacemaker or car
includes the entire stack. If you want to compare it to web development,
you'll need to include the full stack there too.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
The computers are all part of the problem with this and it's a trend I've
noticed for a long time now. Regarding critical output and human input.

~~~
JudgeWapner
I see your point. At some point computers simply cannot help us anymore for
certain tasks and can actually begin to be a detriment.

Software bugs notwithstanding, too much computer means less human piloting and
less actual hand flying experience. It might lead to a lower bar of acceptance
to be a pilot, or discourage the types of people who actually love flying
(since it's mainly done by the computer). More software can mean more
complacency, less attention and engagement, less feeling of authority (by
being so conditioned to surrender to the computer) and less "feeling" for what
is right and wrong in any situation ("the light is green, that means no issue
with this thunderstorm, company policy says fly the route when the light is
green") .

It's perfectly okay to let some jobs (or mechanical assemblies) be manual even
when they _could_ be made auto.

