> After emerging from icy conditions into drier air they have to make sure they turn off the engine anti-ice system, which heats the inner barrel of the engine pod so that ice doesn’t build up.
> If they fail to do so, the system can quickly overheat the carbon composite material and damage the structural integrity of the engine pod.
> The problem is there’s no alert or indication to the crew that the system needs to be turned off. They just have to remember to do it.
> If they forget, or are distracted by other tasks, the overheating can begin to damage the structure after just five minutes.
This is all you need to know to pass judgement on Boeing Management. Whatever happened to Boeing's "Engineering Excellence" ?
More details are in the book "Flying Blind" [2]. It shows how Boeing's culture of Engineering Excellence was gradually replaced with MD's rotten parasitic culture through the process that is better described as "reverse acquisition". Formally Boeing acquired MD, but in reality MD took over Boeing.
An uncle worked for McDonnell Douglas, then Boeing, on military planes (C-17). The tales of the culture of utter corruption on the military contractor side he told were chilling.
Boeing management's attitude reminds me of this passage from the novel "The Sea-Wolf by Jack London".
“Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. He was worth nothing to the world. The supply is too large. To himself only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself. He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss. Don’t you see? And what have you to say?”
In the erstwhile third-world countries the moniker "Boeing" was synonymous with all Aeroplanes and a symbol of American Technological Might. Every kid knew of "The Jumbo Jet" and families would make weekend picnic trips to the Airport to see one up close and if allowed, enter the cabin for a tour. You were "somebody" if you had traveled in a Airplane and bazillion times more-so if it was on a "Jumbo Jet".
It seems Boeing is now set on destroying all reputation and goodwill earned over decades and by extension making American Technology and Management a laughing stock in the World.
I've heard Boeing folks suggest that the 1997 acquisition of McDonell-Douglas (who was having serious financial difficulties at the time) ironically resulted in the latter's MBA-heavy management taking over Boeing leadership. The result has been a less profitable company with a now poor and getting worse safety record:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...
So is the FAA going to ground these planes now or do what they did the last time? At least no one died yet this time around.
For those who still do not understand what unchained captialism looks like. This is a taste of it. The phrase "the market will correct itself" may be true eventually but ignores the hundreds of people that have die before that happens.
I don't think airline manufacturers are a great example of unchained capitalism. They're a god-awful example actually, being heavily chained to nations and in many cases directly supported, protected, and owned by them. There's a reason high-level diplomats are involved in many aircraft sales and you'll see the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia or wherever announce preliminary sales numbers before even the manufacturer does. Airline manufacturers are essentially immune to free-market forces, because their respective governments would never let them fail. Not to mention that - unlike aviation - many other industries don't even have their own dedicated government agencies to regulate them.
Also the airline industry as a whole also has a stellar safety record, Boeing's issues notwithstanding.
That's not to say that your core thesis is necessarily wrong, but airline manufacturers aren't a great vehicle to argue that point.
No way that they are going to ground them now.
Last time they were delaying the grounding as much as possible even after the second fatal crash.
They grounded it only after a lot of other countries already did it.
you're using one of the most regulated and government lobbied industries as an example of "unchained capitalism" ? Boeing would have went bankrupt years ago if it wasn't for their sweetheart government contracts and favors given due to lobbying
What would it need so the US government takes over the company and puts the engineers in charge? Hadn't NASA been run like that at least until some point in the 80s or so? I don't know about those contexts at all, would just like to wrap my head around what was and is possible or not in the US.
I just don’t think that would happen. The government seems impotent to do anything that is for the greater good if there are corporate interests (not capitalist but corporate, i.e. this Q bonuses > long term business value).
I also remember reading about the damage from that acquisition. I wonder if it would have eventually occurred anyway as that level of short-sighted thinking is so pervasive in industry now.
I hope one day engineering students will study the MAX 7 and learn from the Boeing culture that has killed at least 346 people so far. So many issues (and related cover-ups) stem from the massive compromises made so Boeing could quickly launch a flawed modified plane instead of a new design because Airbus scared their management.
This needs to be in *management* ethics. It was the *management* that ignored warnings. The "compromises" were demanded by *management*.
Boeing is not an engineering culture, it is an MBA culture. This is the result.
It is clear, by deadly example, that Boeing *management* is not capable of running a company that produces a safe plane. It is, after all, difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
All the engineering ethics in the world does nothing against the greed of Boeing's management.
"All the engineering ethics in the world does nothing against the greed of Boeing's management. "
Sure managers are guilty.
But managers did not write the code. "Engineers" did.
As long as there are engineers writing that code (also see VW and #Dieselgate) there will be managers who do this. Engineers need to take a stand and don't do everything. Like professionals. "He made me do it" is not an excuse for hundreds of dead people.
I've seen fiduciary duty to shareholders in publicly traded companies and how it force managers to chase unsustainable immediate gains repeated as cliche, template, criticisms in this types of topics. Privately owned companies of course aren't much different OTOH, so personally it feels to me that incentive design that rewards ethical corporate behaviors is an open question passed from the modern era to the post-modern world(or is that one label behind this one? I'm totally out of my depth).
Agreed. I only mention engineering students as my only experience with ethics classes are in that domain. However it's still a good example for engineers, particularly how the design failures resulted in deaths, the role of whistleblowers and how disastrous self-certification can be.
The same MBA-ization of Boeing has been happening in other companies as well, including in the IT sector. Seriously, how can we allow non-engineers to lead aerospace or tech companies at all?
Same, and I wonder if it'll share a chapter with Tesla's prematurely shipped autonomous features, related deaths, and the dishonest messaging surrounding it.
Considering the MCAS[0] failures were largely software defects in an autonomous system, seems plausible to me...
In the case of Tesla they make the argument that the safety features have saved far more than they have injured/killed. Inexplicably, there is no federal agency that actually checks these things.
In this case I don't see how you could make the same argument, clearly the new planes were not safer than the old ones or they wouldn't have been grounded.
What are you talking about, Tesla doesn't ship any autonomous features. Driver assist features do not make a car autonomous. Tesla has always plainly said you must monitor the car at all times autopilot is engaged, the exact same way that turning on cruise control in any other car doesn't make the car autonomous even though the car is managing the speed.
Its not Airbus. The Chinese Comac C919 and Sukhoi SJ100 are the two main aircraft placing enormous pressure on Boeing internationally. FAA approval is a slam-dunk for them in foreign markets as it renews confidence in the brand and allows them to compete against newcomers that are arguably just as good or better than the max series of widebodies and come in at a fraction of the cost.
Boeing management --and their flat-out inability to out-innovate the competition at cost-- are the real reason behind the push to certify at all cost.
That's simply untrue. The Sukhoi SJ100 is a different type of plane (<100 passenger capacity), comparable to an Embraer E190. Neither it nor the Comac C919 are "widebodies".
The C919 is a decent plane, but by most accounts a decade behind in tech and efficiency. And for short-haul operations, efficiency is the most important thing.
The only real competitor to Boeing today is Airbus. Comac can be one 10-20 years down the line.
FAA approval is a slam-dunk for them in foreign markets
FAA approval is only a slam-dunk because it is recognized internationally as a steward of quality and reliability. By asking the FAA to start certifying sub-par planes, Boeing will not only destroy their own brand but will bring the FAA down with them.
Normally when I read a comment like the above on an internet forum, it's blowing some issue way out of proportion. In this case, I think it's a fair comment.
Today I learned that my refrigerator has a more complex anti-icing control that the engine inlet on the 737 Max (by virtue of having a $10 snap switch in the circuit).
It wasn't clear to me if Boeing was asking for a exception such as "allow the planes to fly, but beat the pilots about turning the 'melt engine' feature off until we can design and build out a fix for this" or a "let's never fix it and pretend it won't happen".
The first almost is reasonable, the second is kinda batshit.
Yeah I'm surprised they are still cowboying around after the max scandal. Do they really need to put more lives at risk before the message becomes clear that safety trumps profit?
What's not clear from the article is how likely this failure mode actually is to occur, even if the pilots happen to forget to disable the anti-ice.
The fact that this issue is present in the existing 737 Max variants, and none appear to have actually experienced a structural failure, suggests the probability is low.
It is easy for a bunch of keyboard warriors here on HN to insist that only zero risk is acceptable. In the real world, everything is a continuum and without knowing quantifiably where on the risk continuum this issue is, any discussion is meaningless.
> The fact that this issue is present in the existing 737 Max variants, and none appear to have actually experienced a structural failure, suggests the probability is low.
The fact that the space shuttle flew 60 times without SRB o-rings being a problem suggests that the probability of their failure was also low.
> "it cannot be shown that the EAI [Engine Anti-Ice] system meets the probability requirements applicable to this regulation."
In my understanding, Boeing is asking for to be excluded from the risk assessment entirely. They know there is a possibility that the structure could be weakened enough to fail during normal flight.
> "the nacelle inlet structural temperatures during EAI operation may cause the inner barrel to lose sufficient strength such that capability to carry limit and ultimate loads may not be maintained."
> "analysis and engineering flight testing showed there is a potential for structural damage."
Their entire justification for why the risk is acceptable is that no one has had parts fly off yet and surely pilots will follow the flight rules to turn off the deicer:
> "737 MAX has been in service since 2017 and has accumulated over 6.5 million flight hours. In that time, there have been no reported cases of parts departing aircraft (PDA) due to overheating of the engine nacelle inlet structure".
> "Operators [Pilots] must adhere to the mandatory AD [Airworthiness Directive], mitigating the potentially unsafe condition."
Oh, and they petition relief from some of the human factors requirements as well. Which indicates they don't want to be judged based on the probability that pilots will not turn off the EAI.
This is also a trivially true statement and meaningless for real-world decision-making.
In a large enough dataset and given enough time, a meteor will eventually hit a plane in-flight and destroy it. Should regulation require the airplanes carry anti-meteor armor?
Your qualitative judgement that these conditions described occur all the time actually suggests it's not a big deal, because the currently-flying Max 8 and Max 9 variants have the same issue, and none have experienced a structural failure.
The scenario here is that, if the pilots forget to turn off anti-ice, the nacelle will eventually overheat, weaken, and possibly fail. But clearly that is not guaranteed to happen, or happen immediately. What I'm saying is that actual decision-making here depends on what the statistics of this possible failure actually are, given that the pilots forget to turn off the anti-ice.
The 737 MAX has been in service since 2017 and has accumulated over 6.5 million flight hours. In that time, there have been no reported cases of parts departing aircraft due to overheating of the engine nacelle inlet structure,” the filing states.
That's your rationale?
Have we forgotten when NASA management discounted concerns about O-rings in part because one hadn't catastrophically failed yet? (Until Challenger)
Given Boeing's recent horrendous safety record with knowlingly allowing unsafe systems to fly, and the failures of such resulting in catastrophic crashes, the FAA would be out of their mind to consider the proposal.
Readit News
> If they fail to do so, the system can quickly overheat the carbon composite material and damage the structural integrity of the engine pod.
> The problem is there’s no alert or indication to the crew that the system needs to be turned off. They just have to remember to do it.
> If they forget, or are distracted by other tasks, the overheating can begin to damage the structure after just five minutes.
This is all you need to know to pass judgement on Boeing Management. Whatever happened to Boeing's "Engineering Excellence" ?
McDonnell Douglas happened [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas
More details are in the book "Flying Blind" [2]. It shows how Boeing's culture of Engineering Excellence was gradually replaced with MD's rotten parasitic culture through the process that is better described as "reverse acquisition". Formally Boeing acquired MD, but in reality MD took over Boeing.
[2] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind...
Management by accounting ... cost of paying death settlement is cheaper than building a proper airplane.
And they have the temerity to call those societies which still practice "Blood Money restitution" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_money_(restitution)) as "savage, backward and uncivilized".
“Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. He was worth nothing to the world. The supply is too large. To himself only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself. He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss. Don’t you see? And what have you to say?”
Dead Comment
Suits.
MBAs took over, that's what happened. A story as old as capitalism.
It seems Boeing is now set on destroying all reputation and goodwill earned over decades and by extension making American Technology and Management a laughing stock in the World.
I've heard Boeing folks suggest that the 1997 acquisition of McDonell-Douglas (who was having serious financial difficulties at the time) ironically resulted in the latter's MBA-heavy management taking over Boeing leadership. The result has been a less profitable company with a now poor and getting worse safety record: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...
For those who still do not understand what unchained captialism looks like. This is a taste of it. The phrase "the market will correct itself" may be true eventually but ignores the hundreds of people that have die before that happens.
Also the airline industry as a whole also has a stellar safety record, Boeing's issues notwithstanding.
That's not to say that your core thesis is necessarily wrong, but airline manufacturers aren't a great vehicle to argue that point.
- Today - "Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid-air window blowout" (47 comments, so far): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38889774
Boeing is not an engineering culture, it is an MBA culture. This is the result.
It is clear, by deadly example, that Boeing *management* is not capable of running a company that produces a safe plane. It is, after all, difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
All the engineering ethics in the world does nothing against the greed of Boeing's management.
Sure managers are guilty.
But managers did not write the code. "Engineers" did.
As long as there are engineers writing that code (also see VW and #Dieselgate) there will be managers who do this. Engineers need to take a stand and don't do everything. Like professionals. "He made me do it" is not an excuse for hundreds of dead people.
The MBA program should include more ethics courses and perhaps an adapted version of the Hippocratic Oath.
--> MBA Oath : https://mbaoath.org/
I would hope that is also taught in management schools, as they appear to be the ones making these decisions.
I fear that wouldn't matter, because they could end up working (indirectly) for stockholders that find that dollar-to-lives tradeoff desireable.
Considering the MCAS[0] failures were largely software defects in an autonomous system, seems plausible to me...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Au...
In this case I don't see how you could make the same argument, clearly the new planes were not safer than the old ones or they wouldn't have been grounded.
Boeing management --and their flat-out inability to out-innovate the competition at cost-- are the real reason behind the push to certify at all cost.
Comac C919 - First flight: 2017, introduced 2023, number built: 10 (3 in service?)
Sukhoi Superjet 100 - First flight: 2008, introduced 2011, number built: 229
Boeing 737 MAX - First flight: 2016, introduced 2017, number built: 1,376
Airbus A320 NEO - First flight: 2014, introduced 2016, number built: 3,092
They're not even in the same ballpark. It'll take Comac decades to make those inroads and Sukhoi is done for.
The C919 is a decent plane, but by most accounts a decade behind in tech and efficiency. And for short-haul operations, efficiency is the most important thing.
The only real competitor to Boeing today is Airbus. Comac can be one 10-20 years down the line.
FAA approval is only a slam-dunk because it is recognized internationally as a steward of quality and reliability. By asking the FAA to start certifying sub-par planes, Boeing will not only destroy their own brand but will bring the FAA down with them.
Guys from Boeing, here's a free piece of advice: don't. Just don't.
Today I learned that my refrigerator has a more complex anti-icing control that the engine inlet on the 737 Max (by virtue of having a $10 snap switch in the circuit).
The first almost is reasonable, the second is kinda batshit.
Deleted Comment
fall off I heard that before.
[Senator Collins:] Well, I’m not saying it wasn’t safe, it’s just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones.
[Interviewer:] Why?
[Senator Collins:] Well, some of them are built so the front doesn’t fall off at all.
I did it on Twitter tho: https://twitter.com/chx/status/1743343104906686673
"The aircraft is a 737 Max 9 and received its certificate of airworthiness on October 25, 2023."
The fact that this issue is present in the existing 737 Max variants, and none appear to have actually experienced a structural failure, suggests the probability is low.
It is easy for a bunch of keyboard warriors here on HN to insist that only zero risk is acceptable. In the real world, everything is a continuum and without knowing quantifiably where on the risk continuum this issue is, any discussion is meaningless.
The fact that the space shuttle flew 60 times without SRB o-rings being a problem suggests that the probability of their failure was also low.
Low probabilty is much too high for this domain, of course. The question is, how low?
In airplane design, almost all catastrophic failures happen only the first time.
Presumably you meant airliners specifically?
> "it cannot be shown that the EAI [Engine Anti-Ice] system meets the probability requirements applicable to this regulation."
In my understanding, Boeing is asking for to be excluded from the risk assessment entirely. They know there is a possibility that the structure could be weakened enough to fail during normal flight.
> "the nacelle inlet structural temperatures during EAI operation may cause the inner barrel to lose sufficient strength such that capability to carry limit and ultimate loads may not be maintained."
> "analysis and engineering flight testing showed there is a potential for structural damage."
Their entire justification for why the risk is acceptable is that no one has had parts fly off yet and surely pilots will follow the flight rules to turn off the deicer:
> "737 MAX has been in service since 2017 and has accumulated over 6.5 million flight hours. In that time, there have been no reported cases of parts departing aircraft (PDA) due to overheating of the engine nacelle inlet structure".
> "Operators [Pilots] must adhere to the mandatory AD [Airworthiness Directive], mitigating the potentially unsafe condition."
Oh, and they petition relief from some of the human factors requirements as well. Which indicates they don't want to be judged based on the probability that pilots will not turn off the EAI.
There are ~100 000 flights per day worldwide. I'd say the conditions described occur all the time
In a large enough dataset and given enough time, a meteor will eventually hit a plane in-flight and destroy it. Should regulation require the airplanes carry anti-meteor armor?
Your qualitative judgement that these conditions described occur all the time actually suggests it's not a big deal, because the currently-flying Max 8 and Max 9 variants have the same issue, and none have experienced a structural failure.
The scenario here is that, if the pilots forget to turn off anti-ice, the nacelle will eventually overheat, weaken, and possibly fail. But clearly that is not guaranteed to happen, or happen immediately. What I'm saying is that actual decision-making here depends on what the statistics of this possible failure actually are, given that the pilots forget to turn off the anti-ice.
That's your rationale?
Have we forgotten when NASA management discounted concerns about O-rings in part because one hadn't catastrophically failed yet? (Until Challenger)