I know better than to read between the lines on a press release like this, but can't help but notice that it falls far short of accepting responsibility for the problem.
He admits that MCAS "activated in response to erroneous angle of attack information" but doesn't admit that this alone directly resulted in the crashes. Rather, he implies that this sets off a chain of events which the pilots are unable to deal with ("pilots have told us, erroneous activation of the MCAS function can add to what is already a high workload environment") which puts undue blame on the pilots rather than the system.
If you'll excuse the analogy, it's as if they installed a new griddle in a restaurant kitchen which randomly gets ten times more hot than it ought to be, with no warning. The cook doesn't know it's too hot until the eggs start burning. Now the manager is saying that since the kitchen is so busy, the cook can't flip the eggs fast enough in response to these randomly fluctuating high temperature events. We're being told it's the cooks' fault.
I don't like being bullshitted and find this sort of dodgy language completely inappropriate when 300 people died.
Indeed, the whole press release brings to mind a couple of points from "Engineering a Safer World" which, if you're interested in this stuff, I can't recommend enough[0].
In the section "Questioning the Foundations of Traditional Safety Engineering":
Old Assumption
Most accidents are caused by operator error. Rewarding safe behaviour and punishing unsafe behaviours will eliminate or reduce accidents significantly.
New Assumption
Operator error is a product of the environment in which it occurs. To reduce operator "error" we must change the environment in which the operator works.
And:
Old Assumption
Major accidents occur from the chance simultaneous occurrence of random events.
New Assumption
Systems will tend to migrate toward states of higher risk. Such migration is predictable and can be prevented by appropriate system design or detected during operations using leading indicators of increasing risk.
In the press release we see both the "operator error" and "random events" hand-waving. Regardless of the fiduciary duty of this man, this is just not good enough.
The same quotes in an easier to read format, and I agree with them:
"Old Assumption
- Most accidents are caused by operator error. Rewarding safe behaviour and punishing unsafe behaviours will eliminate or reduce accidents significantly.
New Assumption
- Operator error is a product of the environment in which it occurs. To reduce operator "error" we must change the environment in which the operator works.
---
Old Assumption
- Major accidents occur from the chance simultaneous occurrence of random events.
New Assumption
- Systems will tend to migrate toward states of higher risk. Such migration is predictable and can be prevented by appropriate system design or detected during operations using leading indicators of increasing risk."
Just a day ago, user Gibbon1 also posted a link to a talk by the author of that book:
In a similar vein, I found Boing's statement about the software fix objectionable: “Our proposed software update incorporates additional limits and safeguards to the system and reduces crew workload,”
... reducing crew workload enough that the crew have a chance to figure out why the plane is trying to kill them? Nice move.
With the way litigation works, corporations will never admit blame for anything, since it greatly increases their legal risk. It's unfortunate, but their responsibilities lie with their shareholders, not the people who lost their lives on their planes.
> their responsibilities lie with their shareholders
This is the "shareholder value" theory, modern economists successfully brainwashed the population with. It became popular during the 1980s, "greed is good" times. It's just an ideology disguised as a science. The purpose and structure of modern corporation hasn't changed in the last hundred years or so. In 1950s and 1960s the public good, among others, role of corporations was wildly accepted. What changed is the ideologues who became more vicious and took complete control of the narrative.
I know it's about litigation and looking out for themselves, but Boeing had to have been apprised of the reports and findings from multiple agencies about the circumstances of the crash prior to this announcement. Surely, some granule of awareness had to sink in for Boeing and the CEO to realize "Damn, we fucked up." One way or another, the public is going to realize Boeing seriously fucked up, whether they will admit it or not. The total dollar amount of the damage is still going to be settled in court, but there's no escaping the fact that Boeing's actions had an impact in this catastrophe. Boeing would have to be incredibly oblivious to hold a position that they had nothing to do with this.
But that's not how this whole show goes. CEOs are like robots that only act happy or serious. Go into a press conference and act all remorseful for the public, but don't ever offer a genuine apology or own up to the company's actions. Then when all the legal dust clears, the CEO can give a later update about how he is "shocked and appalled" that a verdict could possibly blame Boeing. What a joke.
People may get angry about this fact, but it really is the simple reality of an executive's fiduciary obligations. Ideally you run the enterprise in a manner that keeps the discharge of fiduciary duties within your personal moral constraints, but if you're not careful enough, you end up in this guy's shoes. And that's why they pay him the big bucks, because of such risks.
That said, it's also true that Boeing is in a boatload of trouble. This is gonna get ugly. Likely not for the CEO. I'm pretty sure his signature is not on any of the relevant paperwork. But now that this report has been released, it might be prudent for people who do have their signatures on the relevant paperwork just to consult with some legal counsel. I suspect Boeing, as a company, wouldn't hesitate to throw them under the bus.
I’m appalled by this point of view. Perhaps this is a weakness of capitalism.. primary responsibility should be to those who perished, not the shareholders.
A Japanese executive would accept responsibility honestly and commit seppuku.
I don't expect him to kill himself, but honesty seems the least we should expect in its place. Dishonesty is what caused it, and dishonesty continues dragging it out.
He should be pelted with rotten fruit whenever he show his face in public until he comes clean.
Yeah in fact it narcissistically points out how much this hurts them, and how smart and heroic they are in their solving of the problem. Wow good thing they happened along to save the day, eh?
Yep, it is full of bullshit corporate PR and crisis management. This story has just begun. FAA and Boeing hopefully will be held responsible. I don't hold my breath to see criminal charges for Boeing management, but this time, I wouldn't be completely surprised, if it happens.
> I don't hold my breath to see criminal charges for Boeing management, but this time, I wouldn't be completely surprised, if it happens.
I'd be very surprised if it did happen. "Lucky" for Boeing, it was mostly brown people in a third world country that died. Had it instead been two American planes that went down, Boeing and their executives would be in significantly deeper shit.
Unfortunately, there's nothing different he can say at this point. If he wrote it they way you and I would like it to be, he'd probably be facing shareholder lawsuits and SEC fines and none of that would lead to a productive outcome. And it wouldn't change the fact that 300 people are still dead. All we can do at this point is hope they don't rush the MAX fleet back into service before its really ready and that the Boeing board really inspects the company's culture to ensure the whole fiasco has a lasting impact. Almost a "never again" sort of approach. Boeing has been doing a tremendous amount of innovative stuff and pushing the envelope in way more areas - commercial flight, space, military - than ever before, but apparently at the expense of what got it to its dominant position in the first place -- uncompromising engineering excellence. I would agree with you that before we, as the passengers of their products, can move forward, a stronger statement needs to at least address the specifics of how this is going to change.
And not to diminish this one issue - but if this can happen to Boeing, imagine the risks that many other companies with less of a track record in engineering may be inadvertently taking with introductions/reliance on ML. We've focused a lot on the ethics of AI making life/death decisions but in this case, based on what we know today, the prime culprit seems to lie in the decisions of humans (i.e. not to put two devices in place, or three as many have suggested, the decision to place engine mass in a different area, the lack of UI in the cockpits, etc)
Yeah, this is better than their initial "what, me worry" response. They should just own up to their screw up. They will owe giant fines and be sued. Their reputation is what is more important long term. Own up to the change.
Companies will usually not admit any kind of fault because it opens for door for trials and so on. You should not expect a press release like this to fall into self incrimination. Press releases are reviewed by groups of lawyers as well so they will edit the language carefully.
> You can't admit fault or imply so. The legal department will veto it.
They should do it anyway. After the Challenger and Columbia disasters, there were major public changes at NASA. If there are none at Boeing now, we have a huge problem (since the number of deaths is an order of magnitude larger!).
Well, then I'm irrational too, because I won't set foot in a 737 MAX after this shitfest. The FAA also lost a lot of trust, for rubber-stamping this.
The first accident was maybe understandable. We all know that shit happens. But Boeing has zero excuses for not immediately grounding the whole fleet after, and for putting out that useless recovery procedure which didn't work in this case. They let a deadly plane fly for 5 months after they were aware of it, and after the second crash they were phoning Trump to keep it in the air.
> The FAA also lost a lot of trust, for rubber-stamping this.
From documents I've seen (which I cannot find the links to now), it appears that the FAA let Boeing themselves do some of the certification work and sign offs.
Putting the foxes in charge of the hen house, so to speak.
The integrity of engineering excellence should never be sacrificed for profit and/or conveniency in places where it involves human lives. Realistically and pragmatically speaking, you only ever get to have just one single shot at establishing and maintaining that kind of life/death level of trust. Fuck it up, and you're gone- quite literally, mind you.
This is some Challenger O-ring type of shitshow. Accidents are one thing; incompetency or, worse yet, callous indifference is absolutely unacceptable.
I think lack or major crashes in recent years made them complacent and emboldened them to roll the dice. Then hit snake eyes. Then also may have looked down on the foreign pilots are the airline. Had this been a Southwest plane they may have grounded the plane.
I suspect we're going to end up seeing evidence that the first accident was also the result of known risks being down-played / swept under the rug in the name of profit.
One perspective is that the first and second accidents happened because the band-aid fell off, and the first accident should have been the cue to use stickier bandaids. But it seems very unlikely that no engineer anywhere through the development said "This design is for shit and is WAY too dependent on a bandaid that can't realistically be adequate".
I will. I like flying places, and I'm not going to let some unfortunate hiccups get in the way of that. I trust Boeing and the people who work on airline safety a heck of a lot more than I trust ride share drivers who flip U-turns in the middle of the block, slam on the brakes, narrowly miss bicycle riders, etc. And I use the heck out of Lyft & Uber. I've got better things to worry about.
The main thing for me is that NOW pilots will be aware that there is a piece of software running in the background that might fight them. The first thing they will all learn is how to disable it so they can actually fly the airplane. That's even without a software fix.
To me, it all comes down to to Boeing being able to self-certify their aircraft, and they knew they were sneaking the "fix" known as MCAS as a way to prevent loss of sales to A320. Super shady in my opinion.
The reason this preliminary report is so damning is that it's evident that the pilots on flight 302 knew this - they realised what was happening, took the necessary steps to disable MCAS, and still couldn't stop the plane from crashing and killing everyone on board.
> At 05:40:35, the First-Officer called out “stab trim cut-out” two times. Captain agreed and First-Officer confirmed stab trim cut-out.
MCAS should be disabled at this time and this is confirmed further in the report.
> At 05:40:41, approximately five seconds after the end of the ANU stabilizer motion, a third instance of AND automatic trim command occurred without any corresponding motion of the stabilizer, which is consistent with the stabilizer trim cutout switches were in the ‘’cutout’’ position
I see this playing out in a couple of possible ways. One is that it ends up like the DC-10. Public confidence is lost, even though the problem is fixed. The aircraft end up going into freighter service.
The other is that they make a convincing case that the problem is resolved. I don't know if that's possible given today's default hate for big corporations, we'll see. They've done it before with the 737 and the rudder problem it had in the 1990s or so. That problem led to a few fatal crashes, but I'm not sure it ever got the attention that this story is getting. The news cycle was different then.
I would absolutely fly on one once the problem is corrected.
Be my guest. For sure I won’t be aboard one of these death traps in the next accident.
And we’ll have another accident if they let this killing machine take off again given that they are just doing a useless software fix.
In all fairness this plane is only a danger to its crew (and to regular commuters). Even without the software fix, the probability that you get into a crash in one of the few times in a year when you make a leg in this plane is still infinitesimal. For the crew that spends the whole year in there, different story.
When CEO said "We're taking a comprehensive, disciplined approach, and taking the time, to get the software update right.", I wondered if they would characterize their initial design the same way.
It's shameful to even try to pin it on software. The fundamental problem is that they didn't want to do the right thing by admitting and teaching pilots that this plane has different flight characteristics and they need to train for flying a similar, but different plane.
As long as this MCAS software even exists on the plane, I'll never fly on one again. If they take MCAS out, certify, and train properly then I'll fly on them. Otherwise, no.
It's actually very rational. No one can declare something complex like a plane or a version of Windows to be "safe" or "secure". Only the absence of incident for a long period of time is an indication that it is.
You, as a non-expert, can absolutely take that stance - but when it comes to planes I am comfortable demanding that mechanical units can be provably safe and secure and that there is a reasonably exhaustive understanding of those unit interactions that assures safety at some point.
There has been the mention that the customization of planes in a certain way exposed this error - that's the bullshit part. Planes are complicated, the testing of them is complicated, allowing your marketing/sales team arbitrarily inject feature flags into your life or death machine to maximize profits is silly.
Make a thing and prove it is safe, if you wish to modify said thing, then prove the new version is just as safe - and don't allow corners to be cut with something as dangerous and expensive as a plane, these things aren't cheap and they don't need to rapidly iterate versions, they can move slowly and safely and be held to a standard of provable safety that I agree would be unreasonable for software like windows or instagram.
As an aside, I would offer more leeway to Cessna, given their focus on the individual consumer market and emphasis of customization, if someone ordered the plane equivalent of the small pizza with half sausage no cheese and no sauce[1], but not too much more leeway due to the danger these planes can have on others.
He could put his safety where his mouth is and vow to only fly on the MAX for the next two years. That would be a much stronger vote of confidence than whatever words his PR firm came up with.
That doesn't really prove anything though. The risk to a specific flight is still quite low. The risk that is concerning is the risk of any 737 Max flight crashing. It would be like a lottery detractor saying "I'll prove that no one wins the lottery by buying a ticket every day, and never winning." Chances are that person won't win. But chances are quite high that someone will win.
That's a terrible show of confidence. What are the chances that the next plane to have an accident is carrying the CEO? What is the average expected punishment to the CEO for getting it wrong? It's probably less risk than BASE jumping.
I would rather there be guaranteed liability: have the execs set up a legal system to refund the entire order book and voluntarily plead guilty to federal charges in the event of another > 10 MAX deaths. But frankly, if Boeing is at fault for 340 deaths they should already be doing that.
No. Aside from this one issue, the plane is likely as safe or safer than every previous 737. With this much public attention, this issue will get resolved and then some. The end result will likely be the safest plane in the air.
"We regret the impact the grounding has had on our airline customers and their passengers." - I really hated this. As if they did the grounding for safety reason and regrets the cost. As if the passengers and clamoring for flying in 737-MAX.
There's obviously a lot of concern and outrage. But I wonder if Boeing's share price would have been higher than last year if the two crashes were in first world countries specially US.
I don't doubt that Boeing will fix the MCAS problem, but the bigger issue for me is what other systems were hacked into place in order to rush this plane to market to compete with Airbus? The whole philosophy behind the design of the 737 MAX is what has me unsettled, not necessarily this one particular issue.
This. We have seen that there was another problem only noticed because of the extra scrutiny. We have a saying in the software business: two is an impossible number.
That said, the Air France Airbus dive into the ocean was caused by an equally stupid design decision that should never have shipped. Pilot and copilot were applying opposite force on the joystick, and instead of a siren going off, it just averaged them. Have they even fixed that yet? It was in ever Airbus.
This has been a 50 year problem in the making, and whether it's for better or worse should be more carefully studied. Because here's my understanding of the history:
Through WW2 and the proliferating age of defense contractors, the government (mostly defense department, but also civilian agencies) stood almost on equal footing with contractors in their ability to design, scope, and evaluate big projects.
You would see scientists and in-house advisers at these departments able to expertly evaluate proposals/designs by contractors with sufficient background knowledge and tools to do so. They even worked closely with contractors to lay out the requirements and designs for systems, or products.
But, through the decades, a couple factors eroded this equal footing of the government / regulatory experts:
-- Shrinking of government budgets for (or unwillingness of the public to stomach) the ranks of Washington "bureaucrats" who represented this expert class of people (what harm is there in cutting "fat" from public servants who don't seem to produce anything tangible?)
-- More attractive pay, career potential, prestige, etc. of working in the private sector
-- Political distaste for being seen as working too closely with contractors
So what happened is that gradually but surely, government lost the tools to do these things themselves, and by sheer need to still have things approved, shifted the work onto industry.
What can you do when industry comes to you with new complicated designs for things, and you have no one who can assess (and no budget to pay for assessments of) whether those designs are safe? You ask the person proposing to critique themselves, and in many cases, they seem to know more than you anyway.
Of course, what in part probably led to our current situation.
As I said in the beginning, the pros and cons of operating a system in this way should be looked at.
As a society, my question is, how do we make it possible to choose to do these things in the way that produces the right outcome? For a start, I think we need to stop asking everyone to make uninformed votes about certain detailed things we don't understand, yet rely on every day. That definitely produces bad consequences for many issues.
The deep reason is the hollowing out of the technical professions. Engineering (not software 'engineering') is not in the scope of most college bound youth.
Claims aren't evidence. But testimony is evidence. How compelling that is depends on their credibility, qualifications, and whether there's corroborating evidence.
It is unclear if they are lacking technical expertise, but they are certainly being significantly more lax than one would want a regulatory body to be.
It's now fairly obvious MCAS was at the root of those two crashes. But, did it save lives in other circumstances?
Meaning, was there ever a case where the nose went up so much, because of the bigger motors and their different location on the wings, that the activation of MCAS prevented a stall? I'm surprised no one seems to talk about this.
It's also surprising the MCAS was implemented at all, instead of an alarm. Yes, the point of MCAS is to make appear the MAX is the same plane as earlier models (when in fact it's not), but if pilots need to learn how to deal with MCAS malfunction, isn't it the same as learning to deal with unexpected stalling during take-off? The whole reasoning sounds kind of circular.
That is what it looks like. In some sense, you are not “contrlling” a 737MAX, you are flying a virtual machine emulating the 737 previous gen, whose host is a new generation.
Calling it an emulation layer is more than slightly disingenuous. MCAS just sits and watches until a specific set of circumstances occur. Only then does it try to trim the nose down. Did they implement it well, no. Is that an "emulation layer", no.
They were going to lose customers to Airbus, who had a longer range plane. The solution was to retrofit larger engines on the 737. But they were too large and collided with the ground. They moved the engines to the front of the wing for ground clearance. This made the plane unstable and tend to tilt upwards, so they came up with MCAS to work around the instability.
> It's also surprising the MCAS was implemented at all, instead of an alarm.
Regulations are that "(1) The stick force vs. g curve must have a positive slope at any speed up to and including VFC/MFC; and......(a lot of other text)......During the approach to the stall, the longitudinal control pull force should increase continuously as speed is reduced from the trimmed speed to the onset of stall warning."
The Max's aerodynamics are such that as you approach a stall angle, at a certain point the force inverts and the aircraft "pitches nose up" reducing force against the stick close to the stall angle.
An alarm thus fails to meet the stick force requirement. The intention behind the MCAS is to push force against the stick throughout the approach to the stall angle to meet the requirement.
(Which obviously created a whole host of failure modes that everyone seems to have entirely missed).
> The Max's aerodynamics are such that as you approach a stall angle, at a certain point the force inverts and the aircraft "pitches nose up" reducing force against the stick close to the stall angle.
Which anybody who claims that MAX is safe without MCAS is ignoring: without properly working MCAS the plane effectively starts to misbehave exactly when it shouldn't (when it's harder to save it).
Unfortunately, with improperly working MCAS, the way it was designed (non redundant single sensor which is blindly trusted by MCAS and which is in effect stronger than the pilots fighting against it) there were already two crashes.
As far as I know, MCAS has never activated in service due to actual high AoA. However, even the 737 classic could have "interesting" pitch up characteristics:
"The Boeing 737-300 was on approach to Bournemouth Airport following a routine passenger flight from Faro, Portugal. Early in the ILS approach the auto-throttle disengaged with the thrust levers in the idle thrust position. The disengagement was neither commanded nor recognised by the crew and the thrust levers remained at idle throughout the approach. Because the aircraft was fully configured for landing, the air speed decayed rapidly to a value below that appropriate for the approach. The commander took control and initiated a go-around. During the go-around the aircraft pitched up excessively; flight crew attempts to reduce the aircraft’s pitch were largely ineffective. The aircraft reached a maximum pitch of 44º nose-up and the indicated airspeed reduced to 82 kt. The flight crew, however, were able to recover control of the aircraft and complete a subsequent approach and landing at Bournemouth without further incident."
> It's now fairly obvious MCAS was at the root of those two crashes. But, did it save lives in other circumstances?
Let's say Boeing ships a new airliner, where in 1/1,000 flights, the wings fall off for no reason.
Would you be asking the question of: "But did the wings save lives in other circumstances?"
Of bloody course, they did. Doesn't mean that they should have ever shipped an aircraft, where the wings fall off for no reason!
MCAS was a hack around a redesign of the plane. If the plane would have crashed at an even higher rate, without that hack, then the conclusion is not: "WOW, MCAS saves lives."
The conclusion is: "That airplane should never have been shipped, because it is a deathtrap."
If it would have crashed at a lower rate, without MCAS, then no, MCAS was not a net life-saver.
Boeing chose to redesign the place, making it more dangerous to operate. To mitigate the danger, they added MCAS, which was also dangerous to operate. It doesn't matter whether or not a MAX with MCAS, or a MAX without MCAS is more dangerous. What matters is that a MAX with MCAS is dangerous. Nobody put a gun to their head, and made them redesign their plane.
I'm not trying to defend Boeing, I'm trying to understand if MCAS is actually needed in real life.
Reading the other comments it seems the answer is yes.
That said, it's unclear that a Max with MCAS is dangerous: the danger comes from pilots not being aware of it / trained for it. Which, again, doesn't disculp Boeing in any way.
> Nobody put a gun to their head, and made them redesign their plane.
The execs at Boeing probably felt the A320 was a gun to their head. The A320 was set to eat their lunch, and they made a decision that ultimately has resulted in 300+ deaths. Was it a malicious decision? I give them enough credit to say that they honestly believed they solved the problem with MCAS. Was it a malicious decision to lie about pilots not needing to re-train? I'm leaning towards yes.
It's a bandaid fix for an airframe issue. So yeah it probably saved lives, but ones which shouldn't have been at risk in the first place.
The whole thing wasn't kosher - re-using an old airframe to save costs even though its not really compatible with new engines to rush something to market with reduced certification requirements. The bandaid coming off shouldn't be where the focus should be
Culturally move fast & break things shouldn't be how aircraft go to market
The problem with dealing with a departure stall is they’re extremely deadly, happen faster than a person can react to, and are in general unrecoverable all because of the lack of altitude. If it was the case that you could easily deal with a departure stall in the 737-MAX then they would have seen no need to implement MCAS.
Are you claiming that the fact that without MCAS, the plane being fundamentally dangerous is a good thing? I am not sure that "MCAS saved lives because that plane is begging to crash otherwise" a big selling point for Boeing.
"It's now fairly obvious MCAS was at the root of those two crashes. But, did it save lives in other circumstances?"
Very possible. The question is, should you use a plane with an unstable design in civilian air transport? AFAIK, a stealth bomber can't fly without the help of a computer to keep in in the air. But for a civilian aircraft this should be a very conscious decision and nothing that is hidden under band aid.
If you don't want to fly in a aircraft which requires a computer to fly then avoid anything Airbus and almost all other modern passenger jets. The 737 is literally as close to that ideal as you'll find in service today. If an EMP goes off your are still in trouble though, the engines have FADEC, so they'll probably shut down.
MCAS is an example of where ugly hacks take lives, not save them. If the plane was properly engineered hundreds of people would be alive, it's not a choice between MCAS and a dangerous plane.
I guess you can't tell. You could see how often it operated but not know whether the pilots would have saved it. That said it's pretty unusual for professional pilots in an airliner to get into a stall situation.
The desired mode of operation for a plane is to keep flying, without crashing. MCAS did not save anybody. By that logic steering wheels are also saving billions of people because without a steering your car would veer off the road.
"An erroneous AOA input can cause some or all of the following indications and effects:"
"IAS DISAGREE alert."
The whole "what to do" is then:
"Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are moved to CUTOUT."
We know now that the pilots performed what was there laconically written, and that even these actions couldn't save the plane.
Which means either:
- Boeing never actually tested how to really handle the situation described then or
- Boeing indeed tested that and knew that IAS DISAGREE procedures would also be followed and which would guarantee to make the plane uncontrollable (for details see here: https://leehamnews.com/2019/04/03/et302-used-the-cut-out-swi... how one pilot recently reconstructed that and made a video about it, which was later withdrawn on the demand of the pilot's company -- note a single pilot here did what Boeing, which is supposed to sell hundreds of billions USD worth of these planes didn't want to do), but bet on "it won't happen soon enough, we can get away with it."
I can't find that anybody can excuse either of these.
The pilots didn't actually do that. They did not use electric stabilizer trim to "neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT" in fact the trim had been run markedly down by MCAS by the time they switched off the electric trim.
Readit News
He admits that MCAS "activated in response to erroneous angle of attack information" but doesn't admit that this alone directly resulted in the crashes. Rather, he implies that this sets off a chain of events which the pilots are unable to deal with ("pilots have told us, erroneous activation of the MCAS function can add to what is already a high workload environment") which puts undue blame on the pilots rather than the system.
If you'll excuse the analogy, it's as if they installed a new griddle in a restaurant kitchen which randomly gets ten times more hot than it ought to be, with no warning. The cook doesn't know it's too hot until the eggs start burning. Now the manager is saying that since the kitchen is so busy, the cook can't flip the eggs fast enough in response to these randomly fluctuating high temperature events. We're being told it's the cooks' fault.
I don't like being bullshitted and find this sort of dodgy language completely inappropriate when 300 people died.
In the section "Questioning the Foundations of Traditional Safety Engineering":
And: In the press release we see both the "operator error" and "random events" hand-waving. Regardless of the fiduciary duty of this man, this is just not good enough.[0] Open Access PDF: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/engineering-safer-world
"Old Assumption
- Most accidents are caused by operator error. Rewarding safe behaviour and punishing unsafe behaviours will eliminate or reduce accidents significantly.
New Assumption
- Operator error is a product of the environment in which it occurs. To reduce operator "error" we must change the environment in which the operator works.
---
Old Assumption
- Major accidents occur from the chance simultaneous occurrence of random events.
New Assumption
- Systems will tend to migrate toward states of higher risk. Such migration is predictable and can be prevented by appropriate system design or detected during operations using leading indicators of increasing risk."
Just a day ago, user Gibbon1 also posted a link to a talk by the author of that book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBktiCyPLo4
... reducing crew workload enough that the crew have a chance to figure out why the plane is trying to kill them? Nice move.
This is the "shareholder value" theory, modern economists successfully brainwashed the population with. It became popular during the 1980s, "greed is good" times. It's just an ideology disguised as a science. The purpose and structure of modern corporation hasn't changed in the last hundred years or so. In 1950s and 1960s the public good, among others, role of corporations was wildly accepted. What changed is the ideologues who became more vicious and took complete control of the narrative.
But that's not how this whole show goes. CEOs are like robots that only act happy or serious. Go into a press conference and act all remorseful for the public, but don't ever offer a genuine apology or own up to the company's actions. Then when all the legal dust clears, the CEO can give a later update about how he is "shocked and appalled" that a verdict could possibly blame Boeing. What a joke.
That said, it's also true that Boeing is in a boatload of trouble. This is gonna get ugly. Likely not for the CEO. I'm pretty sure his signature is not on any of the relevant paperwork. But now that this report has been released, it might be prudent for people who do have their signatures on the relevant paperwork just to consult with some legal counsel. I suspect Boeing, as a company, wouldn't hesitate to throw them under the bus.
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
Dead Comment
I don't expect him to kill himself, but honesty seems the least we should expect in its place. Dishonesty is what caused it, and dishonesty continues dragging it out.
He should be pelted with rotten fruit whenever he show his face in public until he comes clean.
I'd be very surprised if it did happen. "Lucky" for Boeing, it was mostly brown people in a third world country that died. Had it instead been two American planes that went down, Boeing and their executives would be in significantly deeper shit.
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They should do it anyway. After the Challenger and Columbia disasters, there were major public changes at NASA. If there are none at Boeing now, we have a huge problem (since the number of deaths is an order of magnitude larger!).
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Am I irrational for not wanting to be on the first 1-2 years of flights on 737 MAX after it gets its software update?
The first accident was maybe understandable. We all know that shit happens. But Boeing has zero excuses for not immediately grounding the whole fleet after, and for putting out that useless recovery procedure which didn't work in this case. They let a deadly plane fly for 5 months after they were aware of it, and after the second crash they were phoning Trump to keep it in the air.
From documents I've seen (which I cannot find the links to now), it appears that the FAA let Boeing themselves do some of the certification work and sign offs.
Putting the foxes in charge of the hen house, so to speak.
This is some Challenger O-ring type of shitshow. Accidents are one thing; incompetency or, worse yet, callous indifference is absolutely unacceptable.
I wonder if the European agency (don't remember the name) will stop trusting the FAA from now on and do their own tests. I'd thank them for that.
(According to what I read here, the European agency doesn't do exhaustive tests because they mostly trust whatever the FAA says; maybe that's false)
To me, it all comes down to to Boeing being able to self-certify their aircraft, and they knew they were sneaking the "fix" known as MCAS as a way to prevent loss of sales to A320. Super shady in my opinion.
MCAS should be disabled at this time and this is confirmed further in the report.
> At 05:40:41, approximately five seconds after the end of the ANU stabilizer motion, a third instance of AND automatic trim command occurred without any corresponding motion of the stabilizer, which is consistent with the stabilizer trim cutout switches were in the ‘’cutout’’ position
the crash happens full three minutes later.
The other is that they make a convincing case that the problem is resolved. I don't know if that's possible given today's default hate for big corporations, we'll see. They've done it before with the 737 and the rudder problem it had in the 1990s or so. That problem led to a few fatal crashes, but I'm not sure it ever got the attention that this story is getting. The news cycle was different then.
I would absolutely fly on one once the problem is corrected.
The problem is Boeing, not the MCAS system.
I don't think Boeing can be fixed.
When CEO said "We're taking a comprehensive, disciplined approach, and taking the time, to get the software update right.", I wondered if they would characterize their initial design the same way.
It's shameful to even try to pin it on software. The fundamental problem is that they didn't want to do the right thing by admitting and teaching pilots that this plane has different flight characteristics and they need to train for flying a similar, but different plane.
As long as this MCAS software even exists on the plane, I'll never fly on one again. If they take MCAS out, certify, and train properly then I'll fly on them. Otherwise, no.
There has been the mention that the customization of planes in a certain way exposed this error - that's the bullshit part. Planes are complicated, the testing of them is complicated, allowing your marketing/sales team arbitrarily inject feature flags into your life or death machine to maximize profits is silly.
Make a thing and prove it is safe, if you wish to modify said thing, then prove the new version is just as safe - and don't allow corners to be cut with something as dangerous and expensive as a plane, these things aren't cheap and they don't need to rapidly iterate versions, they can move slowly and safely and be held to a standard of provable safety that I agree would be unreasonable for software like windows or instagram.
As an aside, I would offer more leeway to Cessna, given their focus on the individual consumer market and emphasis of customization, if someone ordered the plane equivalent of the small pizza with half sausage no cheese and no sauce[1], but not too much more leeway due to the danger these planes can have on others.
[1] http://www.thesneeze.com/art/loose_art/dom8.jpg
I would rather there be guaranteed liability: have the execs set up a legal system to refund the entire order book and voluntarily plead guilty to federal charges in the event of another > 10 MAX deaths. But frankly, if Boeing is at fault for 340 deaths they should already be doing that.
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Risk = probability x impact.
Even if probability has reduced (who knows by how much), impact is the near-certain death.
Avoid.
There's obviously a lot of concern and outrage. But I wonder if Boeing's share price would have been higher than last year if the two crashes were in first world countries specially US.
This stands out to me, and I have severely lost trust in Boeing and the FAA.
This plane should have not allowed to fly after the first crash, and Boeing knows this!
What a disaster - I will refuse to fly in any if these MAX planes going forward. I will not step my foot onboard.
Through WW2 and the proliferating age of defense contractors, the government (mostly defense department, but also civilian agencies) stood almost on equal footing with contractors in their ability to design, scope, and evaluate big projects.
You would see scientists and in-house advisers at these departments able to expertly evaluate proposals/designs by contractors with sufficient background knowledge and tools to do so. They even worked closely with contractors to lay out the requirements and designs for systems, or products.
But, through the decades, a couple factors eroded this equal footing of the government / regulatory experts:
-- Shrinking of government budgets for (or unwillingness of the public to stomach) the ranks of Washington "bureaucrats" who represented this expert class of people (what harm is there in cutting "fat" from public servants who don't seem to produce anything tangible?)
-- More attractive pay, career potential, prestige, etc. of working in the private sector
-- Political distaste for being seen as working too closely with contractors
So what happened is that gradually but surely, government lost the tools to do these things themselves, and by sheer need to still have things approved, shifted the work onto industry.
What can you do when industry comes to you with new complicated designs for things, and you have no one who can assess (and no budget to pay for assessments of) whether those designs are safe? You ask the person proposing to critique themselves, and in many cases, they seem to know more than you anyway.
Of course, what in part probably led to our current situation.
As I said in the beginning, the pros and cons of operating a system in this way should be looked at.
As a society, my question is, how do we make it possible to choose to do these things in the way that produces the right outcome? For a start, I think we need to stop asking everyone to make uninformed votes about certain detailed things we don't understand, yet rely on every day. That definitely produces bad consequences for many issues.
Claims aren't evidence. But testimony is evidence. How compelling that is depends on their credibility, qualifications, and whether there's corroborating evidence.
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/04/709431845/faa-is-not-alone-in...
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Meaning, was there ever a case where the nose went up so much, because of the bigger motors and their different location on the wings, that the activation of MCAS prevented a stall? I'm surprised no one seems to talk about this.
It's also surprising the MCAS was implemented at all, instead of an alarm. Yes, the point of MCAS is to make appear the MAX is the same plane as earlier models (when in fact it's not), but if pilots need to learn how to deal with MCAS malfunction, isn't it the same as learning to deal with unexpected stalling during take-off? The whole reasoning sounds kind of circular.
Essentially it was an emulation layer to make what is effectively a new plane behave like an old plane. And now 300+ people are dead.
Quite the feat, Boeing.
The plane is not airworthy.
They are liable for the deaths. The real question now is what is a human life worth to a corporation? (i.e. payout).
Next Steps: + BA should be heavily fined. +scrutinize ties and lobbying with FAA. + Fire head of FAA, and teams involved in approving MCAS.
Regulations are that "(1) The stick force vs. g curve must have a positive slope at any speed up to and including VFC/MFC; and......(a lot of other text)......During the approach to the stall, the longitudinal control pull force should increase continuously as speed is reduced from the trimmed speed to the onset of stall warning."
The Max's aerodynamics are such that as you approach a stall angle, at a certain point the force inverts and the aircraft "pitches nose up" reducing force against the stick close to the stall angle.
An alarm thus fails to meet the stick force requirement. The intention behind the MCAS is to push force against the stick throughout the approach to the stall angle to meet the requirement.
(Which obviously created a whole host of failure modes that everyone seems to have entirely missed).
Which anybody who claims that MAX is safe without MCAS is ignoring: without properly working MCAS the plane effectively starts to misbehave exactly when it shouldn't (when it's harder to save it).
Unfortunately, with improperly working MCAS, the way it was designed (non redundant single sensor which is blindly trusted by MCAS and which is in effect stronger than the pilots fighting against it) there were already two crashes.
"The Boeing 737-300 was on approach to Bournemouth Airport following a routine passenger flight from Faro, Portugal. Early in the ILS approach the auto-throttle disengaged with the thrust levers in the idle thrust position. The disengagement was neither commanded nor recognised by the crew and the thrust levers remained at idle throughout the approach. Because the aircraft was fully configured for landing, the air speed decayed rapidly to a value below that appropriate for the approach. The commander took control and initiated a go-around. During the go-around the aircraft pitched up excessively; flight crew attempts to reduce the aircraft’s pitch were largely ineffective. The aircraft reached a maximum pitch of 44º nose-up and the indicated airspeed reduced to 82 kt. The flight crew, however, were able to recover control of the aircraft and complete a subsequent approach and landing at Bournemouth without further incident."
https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/aar-3-2009-boeing-737-3q8-g-...
If that had happened in a Max, without MCAS, would it have ended badly? We'll never know, but it seems possible.
Let's say Boeing ships a new airliner, where in 1/1,000 flights, the wings fall off for no reason.
Would you be asking the question of: "But did the wings save lives in other circumstances?"
Of bloody course, they did. Doesn't mean that they should have ever shipped an aircraft, where the wings fall off for no reason!
MCAS was a hack around a redesign of the plane. If the plane would have crashed at an even higher rate, without that hack, then the conclusion is not: "WOW, MCAS saves lives."
The conclusion is: "That airplane should never have been shipped, because it is a deathtrap."
If it would have crashed at a lower rate, without MCAS, then no, MCAS was not a net life-saver.
Boeing chose to redesign the place, making it more dangerous to operate. To mitigate the danger, they added MCAS, which was also dangerous to operate. It doesn't matter whether or not a MAX with MCAS, or a MAX without MCAS is more dangerous. What matters is that a MAX with MCAS is dangerous. Nobody put a gun to their head, and made them redesign their plane.
Reading the other comments it seems the answer is yes.
That said, it's unclear that a Max with MCAS is dangerous: the danger comes from pilots not being aware of it / trained for it. Which, again, doesn't disculp Boeing in any way.
The execs at Boeing probably felt the A320 was a gun to their head. The A320 was set to eat their lunch, and they made a decision that ultimately has resulted in 300+ deaths. Was it a malicious decision? I give them enough credit to say that they honestly believed they solved the problem with MCAS. Was it a malicious decision to lie about pilots not needing to re-train? I'm leaning towards yes.
It's a bandaid fix for an airframe issue. So yeah it probably saved lives, but ones which shouldn't have been at risk in the first place.
The whole thing wasn't kosher - re-using an old airframe to save costs even though its not really compatible with new engines to rush something to market with reduced certification requirements. The bandaid coming off shouldn't be where the focus should be
Culturally move fast & break things shouldn't be how aircraft go to market
Let’s not forget MCAS only exists to protect Boeing’s profits by avoiding a new type certification.
Very possible. The question is, should you use a plane with an unstable design in civilian air transport? AFAIK, a stealth bomber can't fly without the help of a computer to keep in in the air. But for a civilian aircraft this should be a very conscious decision and nothing that is hidden under band aid.
Simply put, commercial imperatives overtook solid engineering practices.
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https://www.avm-mag.com/faa-issues-emergency-ad-for-boeing-7...
"An erroneous AOA input can cause some or all of the following indications and effects:"
"IAS DISAGREE alert."
The whole "what to do" is then:
"Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are moved to CUTOUT."
We know now that the pilots performed what was there laconically written, and that even these actions couldn't save the plane.
Which means either:
- Boeing never actually tested how to really handle the situation described then or
- Boeing indeed tested that and knew that IAS DISAGREE procedures would also be followed and which would guarantee to make the plane uncontrollable (for details see here: https://leehamnews.com/2019/04/03/et302-used-the-cut-out-swi... how one pilot recently reconstructed that and made a video about it, which was later withdrawn on the demand of the pilot's company -- note a single pilot here did what Boeing, which is supposed to sell hundreds of billions USD worth of these planes didn't want to do), but bet on "it won't happen soon enough, we can get away with it."
I can't find that anybody can excuse either of these.