Such are the externalities of taking the opinion "It isn't illegal if you don't get caught."[1] It is interesting that had Boeing not pushed the edge on the re-training re-classification rules they would not have had the crashes, nor the spotlight on them, nor this "new" problem.
As a result I have no empathy for managers who are not getting their bonuses this year, or executives who get fired, or corporations who have to take loans on unfavorable terms in order to weather the storm of consequences brought on by trying to avoid following the rules and incurring the expense such rules incur in their execution.
I do feel bad for the engineers who were fired or moved out of the company by pointing out that management wasn't following the rules. I do feel badly for the employees whose livelihood depends on their working on building these amazing machines being put out of work because the consequences are playing out. And I feel a little bit bad for the airlines suffering from carrying a bunch of planes they can't fly. Hopefully people are learning life lessons in this process and the pendulum will swing back into a safer mode of rule following from the current risk taking behavior.
[1] This philosophy, sadly way too common in my opinion, is that "rules" are for idiots, and since we're not idiots we need only concern ourselves with the risks as we understand them of why the rule should be followed, and ignore said rules when we believe we have no risk of both getting caught nor having the "bad thing" the rule prevents happening (at least on our watch while it would reflect on us.).
They've grandfathered other parts of the aircraft design that aren't nearly as controversial, so Boeing's argument, while predictable, has a little more merit than it seems at first.
The normalization of deviance is a less cynical explanation (in the sense that it doesn't require the process to involve analysis of the risk of getting caught).
Illegal seems like the wrong word for this sentiment as it's legal status does not depend on being caught. If I were to rob a bank, it would be an illegal act whether or not I'm caught.
The phrase reflects on “illegal” being an act for which you are punished by a court or regulatory authority. There is never any question that laws or regulations are actually being broken. View the phrase as exercising poetic licence and using “illegal” as a shorthand for “leading to a conviction and causing the actor to face punitive action.” The backwards logic is that I didn’t face punitive measures therefore what I did is not illegal.
Thus in your example robbing the bank is technically illegal but you aren’t going to court if you don’t get caught.
For once, I think Boeing does have a point here. This is the same wiring used on the 737NG, which AFAIK is considered the safest (or one of the safest, at least) airliner ever. The point about rerouting existing wiring introducing it's own potential hazard also seems like an entirely reasonable consideration.
I know it's automatic that we assume Boeing is either nefarious or retarded in everything they do, but it's hard to see this as that big a deal when considering the bigger picture.
Not to be pedantic but I believe the Airbus A340 is actually regarded as the safest airliner ever, with zero fatalities over the course of its nearly 30-year operational history.
There are several airliners, including models from Boeing and Airbus, that have had no fatalities. But they are low production models like the A340. It's arguably impossible to come up with a "safest" if you don't have some way to account for the fact that 20 times as many 737NGs have been produced as A340s.
These rules existed at the time Boeing built and designed this plane, no? And thus the plane was subject to these rules and Boeing never attempted to file for an exemption, correct?
Tough--they should have to rewire the plane.
They cut the corner (or missed the corner) and got caught. Too bad, so sad. Maybe fire a bunch of executives this time and I might have some more sympathy later.
> For once, I think Boeing does have a point here. This is the same wiring used on the 737NG, which AFAIK is considered the safest (or one of the safest, at least) airliner ever. The point about rerouting existing wiring introducing it's own potential hazard also seems like an entirely reasonable consideration.
"Nothing happened before" does not obviate the analysis that caused the rule to be created.
Aerospace rules are generally written in blood. Ignoring them tends to spill more blood.
This is exactly the kind of issue where your reputation is crucial. If your reputation is sterling, then nobody would blink about cutting you slack in this single instance. If, however, your reputation is such that there are likely even more instances like this that haven't been found, then you should get held to the letter of the law.
It is strange to me that this article doesn't question the idea that Boeing and the FAA did not know before that the old wiring didn't meet current standards.
Of course they knew.
But it also seems that the old wiring design has been verified by the test of time and they have data showing the crashes weren't related to it.
So I think that ripping out all of the wiring on the planes and rushing to replace it with a new system, then rushing to test that new system, is the surest way to increase the likelihood of another system failure and possibly even kill off the Boeing brand if that happens.
Put it another way: do I rather fly with the wiring that was tested for 200M hours in the NG, or do I want the configuration that is retrofitted in a hurry to meet the standard? It’s not obvious that trying to “fix” this defect is a good idea.
Well they will say they can, if they are forced to. The question is: do I really think that the end result of that it is safer than something tested for 200M hours?
There is only one good “proof” of safety and that’s testing.
I’m seriously impressed that the distance between the source conductor, command conductors, and presumably return conductors is considered.
As a power systems and controls engineer we make
Some effort to separate wires carrying different voltages eg 24v and 480v, but positive and negative run in the same cables or conductors in the same raceway all the time with nary a second thought.
Those distances haven't been considered until real electrical shorts happened, safety standards are written in blood:
> The regulation was introduced in 2009 following study of two fatal crashes: TWA 800 in 1996, in which an electrical short is believed to have caused a spark in the fuel tank and an explosion; and Swissair 111 in 1998, when an electrical short caused a fire in the cockpit.
The FAA and its sister agencies around the globe are very good at root-cause analysis. Where a single fault could cost many lives, there's strong incentive to follow any failure all the way back.
I'm guessing that your systems don't experience anything like airplane levels of vibration, or have anything like airplane numbers of fatalities if the controls fail, yeah?
In the US, the NTSB does root-cause analysis and makes recommendations to the FAA.
There’s a separation of concerns. The NTSB is solely concerned with finding out what happened. The FBI handles criminal investigations. The FAA is concerned with running air traffic control, regulations, and research.
they are turbine generators in hydro electric power plants - they are live buildings; the floor and walls are resisting all of the torque from the generators and the forces exerted by the water flowing through the building, and the machines are vibrating at 1 mm/s velocity or about 4/1000" displacement. So it isn't completely stationary, everything is just kind of humming and rumbling - unless there is a short circuit out on the power system and then massive forces are exerted on the generator and power conductors, or if the machine becomes disconnected from the power system and has 10 MW coming in and 0 MW going out it tends to speed up quite rapidly and shake a bit more - but for the most part I can't imagine any conductors wearing through their insulation, ever. No wires are ever exposed to sharp edges.
Is there something to be said or considered for the fact that the wires are in a dynamic system that might vibrate or chafe away insulation? I feel like that's a big part of the consideration in the separation criteria here, but I'm not an aviation or electrical expert at all.
Since the wiring standard under discussion here was only introduced in 2009, an obvious question is: how many other aircraft models currently in service, besides the 737 (and not just the MAX), have a similar issue that has not been caught simply because no updated analysis of their certification was done after 2009?
> “There are 205 million flight hours in the 737 fleet with this wiring type,” a Boeing official said. “There have been 16 failures in service, none of which were applicable to this scenario. We’ve had no hot shorts.”
This is appalling as this company exhibits the same excuses as before "there was no problem yet". Persistence in unfit behaviour at its best.
> This is appalling as this company exhibits the same excuses as before "there was no problem yet".
Saying "there was no problem yet" about something that's only been in service for a relatively short time, yes.
Saying "there was no problem yet" about something that has been in service since the 1960s, not so much. If the FAA were to force Boeing to change this wiring on the 737 MAX, to be consistent, they would also have to change it on every single 737 of every model that is still in service--including many airplanes that have been in service for decades with no problem.
That's a very different argument from "the FAA skimped on the MAX before, so we shouldn't let them skimp on it again".
Whether this feature has been battle tested by a two hundred million hours running failure-free in production is beside the point. The point is to categorically eradicate the potential sources of failure in the aircraft's engineering. The point of regulation is not to arbitrarily erect hoops for manufactures to jump through. It's to ensure that aircraft are built as safe as possible. If one of my loved ones died due to this defect, as unlikely as that would be, I would not be satisfied with the explanation that "It never happened before in the previous 200 million hours, so no one deemed it worthy of fixing".
potential for an electrical short to move the jet’s horizontal tail uncommanded
I think this is a reference to the stabilizer, because the elevators are controlled by cable connected to the yoke and are hydraulically powered. Since stabilizer (trim) can overpower elevator force, uncommanded changes in this control surface could be really bad, depending on how a short manifests into control surface movements.
I can't assess the relative probabilities: a short happening vs the fix inducing some other problem. But I do wonder whether there's another way to mitigate it.
Today it's mitigated by the pilot. Runaway Stabilizer is a memory-item. [1]
This is the same memory item Boeing thought would mitigate MCAS, since that is essentially a runaway stabilizer trim, although in retrospect behaving in a very different manner making it much harder to diagnose.
Runaway Stabilizer / MCAS cases can be mitigated by the pilots (they can use cutoff switches and do manual trim), but not this kind of electrical short:
> Furthermore, the electrical power in that wire could circumvent the cutoff switches in the cockpit that, in the event of such a stabilizer runaway, are used to kill electrical power to the tail. Theoretically, the pilots could be unable to shut it off.
Since Boeing has taken the path of seeing what they can get away with the only appropriate response from the regulators is not to allow them the slightest deviation.
If the 737 Maxes can't be adequately fixed then send them back, refund the purchase price.
It's not enough to just regulate this on the 737 MAX. This wiring is the same on every single 737, of any model, that is in service. That includes airplanes that have been flying for decades with no incidents. Do you want to ground them all?
You're point is addressed already in the article when they stated that the original 737s were grandfathered in before the new regulation came into effect. So no, they've successfully gotten away with it on older models but I do agree with the GP that regulatory agencies need to set a firm precedent to deter other manufacturers from playi g fast and loose with the rules.
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As a result I have no empathy for managers who are not getting their bonuses this year, or executives who get fired, or corporations who have to take loans on unfavorable terms in order to weather the storm of consequences brought on by trying to avoid following the rules and incurring the expense such rules incur in their execution.
I do feel bad for the engineers who were fired or moved out of the company by pointing out that management wasn't following the rules. I do feel badly for the employees whose livelihood depends on their working on building these amazing machines being put out of work because the consequences are playing out. And I feel a little bit bad for the airlines suffering from carrying a bunch of planes they can't fly. Hopefully people are learning life lessons in this process and the pendulum will swing back into a safer mode of rule following from the current risk taking behavior.
[1] This philosophy, sadly way too common in my opinion, is that "rules" are for idiots, and since we're not idiots we need only concern ourselves with the risks as we understand them of why the rule should be followed, and ignore said rules when we believe we have no risk of both getting caught nor having the "bad thing" the rule prevents happening (at least on our watch while it would reflect on us.).
Illegal seems like the wrong word for this sentiment as it's legal status does not depend on being caught. If I were to rob a bank, it would be an illegal act whether or not I'm caught.
Problem seems like an apt substitute.
Thus in your example robbing the bank is technically illegal but you aren’t going to court if you don’t get caught.
Deleted Comment
I know it's automatic that we assume Boeing is either nefarious or retarded in everything they do, but it's hard to see this as that big a deal when considering the bigger picture.
Tough--they should have to rewire the plane.
They cut the corner (or missed the corner) and got caught. Too bad, so sad. Maybe fire a bunch of executives this time and I might have some more sympathy later.
> For once, I think Boeing does have a point here. This is the same wiring used on the 737NG, which AFAIK is considered the safest (or one of the safest, at least) airliner ever. The point about rerouting existing wiring introducing it's own potential hazard also seems like an entirely reasonable consideration.
"Nothing happened before" does not obviate the analysis that caused the rule to be created.
Aerospace rules are generally written in blood. Ignoring them tends to spill more blood.
This is exactly the kind of issue where your reputation is crucial. If your reputation is sterling, then nobody would blink about cutting you slack in this single instance. If, however, your reputation is such that there are likely even more instances like this that haven't been found, then you should get held to the letter of the law.
You missed the point. It's not about the money, it's that rewiring might actually be less safe.
Of course they knew.
But it also seems that the old wiring design has been verified by the test of time and they have data showing the crashes weren't related to it.
So I think that ripping out all of the wiring on the planes and rushing to replace it with a new system, then rushing to test that new system, is the surest way to increase the likelihood of another system failure and possibly even kill off the Boeing brand if that happens.
All they did was ensure their fix gets even more scrutiny and to require additional proof that it's safe.
There is only one good “proof” of safety and that’s testing.
The dilemma is real.
As a power systems and controls engineer we make Some effort to separate wires carrying different voltages eg 24v and 480v, but positive and negative run in the same cables or conductors in the same raceway all the time with nary a second thought.
> The regulation was introduced in 2009 following study of two fatal crashes: TWA 800 in 1996, in which an electrical short is believed to have caused a spark in the fuel tank and an explosion; and Swissair 111 in 1998, when an electrical short caused a fire in the cockpit.
I'm guessing that your systems don't experience anything like airplane levels of vibration, or have anything like airplane numbers of fatalities if the controls fail, yeah?
There’s a separation of concerns. The NTSB is solely concerned with finding out what happened. The FBI handles criminal investigations. The FAA is concerned with running air traffic control, regulations, and research.
This is appalling as this company exhibits the same excuses as before "there was no problem yet". Persistence in unfit behaviour at its best.
Saying "there was no problem yet" about something that's only been in service for a relatively short time, yes.
Saying "there was no problem yet" about something that has been in service since the 1960s, not so much. If the FAA were to force Boeing to change this wiring on the 737 MAX, to be consistent, they would also have to change it on every single 737 of every model that is still in service--including many airplanes that have been in service for decades with no problem.
That's a very different argument from "the FAA skimped on the MAX before, so we shouldn't let them skimp on it again".
In fact, similar statements are valued in the aeronautical industry (engine failure rates, etc).
The Max failed much earlier than those 200Mi hours.
I think this is a reference to the stabilizer, because the elevators are controlled by cable connected to the yoke and are hydraulically powered. Since stabilizer (trim) can overpower elevator force, uncommanded changes in this control surface could be really bad, depending on how a short manifests into control surface movements.
I can't assess the relative probabilities: a short happening vs the fix inducing some other problem. But I do wonder whether there's another way to mitigate it.
This is the same memory item Boeing thought would mitigate MCAS, since that is essentially a runaway stabilizer trim, although in retrospect behaving in a very different manner making it much harder to diagnose.
[1]: http://www.b737.org.uk/runawaystab.htm
> Furthermore, the electrical power in that wire could circumvent the cutoff switches in the cockpit that, in the event of such a stabilizer runaway, are used to kill electrical power to the tail. Theoretically, the pilots could be unable to shut it off.
If the 737 Maxes can't be adequately fixed then send them back, refund the purchase price.