Can't you just stop buying airplanes from them? Edit: Do the downvoters also want to throw the executives in jail for life?
Ah yes, the magical invisible hand of the market will solve this. Now when going on holidays, I need to be factor in the safety standards of the planes that will be servicing my route. Or you know, get a government regulator to regulate airplane manufactures like normal countries.
Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
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Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#82I know these comments are kind of frowned upon on threads talking about an issue like this, but very interesting use of imgur. Effectively a blog post focused on images, which is a very good way of thinking about posts I feel. People love images rather than only words. Has imgur been looking at this? Trying to push it as another big use for its platform?
I thing it works great, and I much prefer it over videos because I can take my time, and videos tend to gloss over the details. My only issue with Imgur is that on mobile the images are very low-res, so zooming in to see details doesn't work.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#83> Instead, Boeing tried to claim that flight 427 crashed because a pilot had a seizure and depressed the rudder. NTSB investigators dismissed this as ridiculous. > Boeing had no choice but to carry out the changes, but the company never stopped trying to deflect blame. While the investigation was ongoing, it adopted a philosophy of trying to avoid paying out damages to families of crews because this could be legally…
I do not wish to diminish how serious any tampering with the evidence would have been, or of Boeing's more general attitude of dismissing signs that there was a problem with the equipment, but it is not entirely clear from the article that someone from Boeing removed the Colorado Springs PCU spring and end cap. The article says the item had apparently been in the possession of United Airlines and valve designer/manuf…
Having worked in software for decades, I've noted a particular sort of bias in myself and other developers. We tend to feel that our creations are like our children, and we are far too ready to blame the user. I've caught myself doing this. I've been caught out by QA doing this. I've caught fellow developers doing this, where I am in the position of the user. On that last count, I'm still surprised at the unrealistic levels of incompetence and/or malice ascribed to me in support of those face saving theories.
Emotions are a tricky thing. Do not formulate theories in the heat of them. If you care about being truthful, be especially mindful of your incentives in those moments.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
People don't buy planes though, other corporations that are doing the same thing buy them. Southwest has probably pushed as much on making these things not as clear or as helpful as they could be to avoid having to retrain for a new type. And when this is said and done, they are going to buy more airplanes and people are going to continue to buy flights from them because they are cheap.
Why single out southwest specifically in this hypothetical scenario? If any airline seems 'people focused' I'd think it would be them..
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#85> Instead, Boeing tried to claim that flight 427 crashed because a pilot had a seizure and depressed the rudder. NTSB investigators dismissed this as ridiculous. > Boeing had no choice but to carry out the changes, but the company never stopped trying to deflect blame. While the investigation was ongoing, it adopted a philosophy of trying to avoid paying out damages to families of crews because this could be legally…
That would require more evidence than it sounds like there is. And that's assuming that you subscribe to the motivations put forward in this article. I generally follow Hanlon's razor - "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence". I have a hard time believing that a cover-up in Boeing was orchestrated over several years by a group of people all who didn't care about loss of life.…
I don't see that that should be applied as a rule of thumb to investigations involving civil liability and possible criminal liability.
We have a situation where there are literally piles of dead bodies, massive civil and possible criminal liability, and key evidence goes missing when in the possession of the party that was in the end found to be at fault, who more than anyone else would have realized that the evidence that disappeared was a smoking gun. It's reasonable to assume that malice might have been a factor in such a scenario and it's a reasonable hypothesis to investigate.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand this. Each of these scandals is a mortal danger to Boeing. One of them might someday finally put it out of business. Whereas if they reacted to each case by being committed to finding the problem whatever it is, they could greatly reduce their liability by reducing the ultimate number of fatalities due to any one problem.
People don't buy planes though, other corporations that are doing the same thing buy them. Southwest has probably pushed as much on making these things not as clear or as helpful as they could be to avoid having to retrain for a new type. And when this is said and done, they are going to buy more airplanes and people are going to continue to buy flights from them because they are cheap.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#87Did Boeing executives go to jail for this disgusting cover up? I hope that the diesel cover-up of Volkswagen and the people that went to jail will motivate governments to pursue criminal charges against Boeing and/or Airbus if similar things happen. Fighting blame by lying and deflection at the risk of death should be a criminal offense. It's mass murder.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#88Although the links to the Times articles are broken, it might be possible to extract the articles from the Wayback Machine using the known URLs if anyone is interested.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#89> Instead, Boeing tried to claim that flight 427 crashed because a pilot had a seizure and depressed the rudder. NTSB investigators dismissed this as ridiculous. > Boeing had no choice but to carry out the changes, but the company never stopped trying to deflect blame. While the investigation was ongoing, it adopted a philosophy of trying to avoid paying out damages to families of crews because this could be legally…
That would require more evidence than it sounds like there is. And that's assuming that you subscribe to the motivations put forward in this article. I generally follow Hanlon's razor - "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence". I have a hard time believing that a cover-up in Boeing was orchestrated over several years by a group of people all who didn't care about loss of life.…
I was thinking a more likely explanation is that once the original issue that ultimately was found to be the cause was dismissed, and after more and more fatalities built up, the consequence of admitting the problem may have been perceived as game over for Boeing. As in the financial and legal consequences would be unrecoverable. So basically like the web of lies problem - once they passed a certain point they couldn't go back.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#90Now I’m not sure if he meant that literally and there’s a number in the Boeing employee handbook, but he had a point. He said they could make planes cost twice as much and save a few lives that will be lost one day, but no one would be able to afford flying.
This case definitely seems like that mentality gone wrong, but it’s interesting to realize yes, cost was spared in making your plane/car/boat/train as safe as possible