Is it just me or a lot of big names in various industries are dropping the ball on QA? From exploding Nike shoes to crashing Beings, to faulty MacBooks.
Big difference between a poorly glued shoe, a crappy keyboard, and 150+ dead per crash.
Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
111–120 of 368 posts
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#112I worked under a CEO who had worked at Boeing before, and he said before that at times there was a number that a life was worth when making decisions while he worked there, in a conversation about diminishing returns in quality. Now 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 th…
Sounds like something a CEO would say to cover up for shitty management and cost cutting R&D.
He was a a great CEO, and invested in R&D greatly for a startup that self funded, and more importantly for me, a good person and someone I still consider a friend.
Kind of rude if you to jump at the throat like that.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#113Aside from this specific issue, all of aviation works like this. E.g. the reason the 747 was decommissioned from passenger flight in the US when it was is because they flew it right up to the day that the FAA mandated that they couldn't fly it anymore. The reason was that they didn't have then-mandatory fuel tank inerting. For something like a decade there were a bunch of planes in the air carrying people that were k…
Do you mean a specific variant 747? Because 747s are still definitely flying passengers in the U.S. They are still making new ones.
747s are not flying any passengers in the US. They are flying passengers to the US. No US carrier still operates the queen of the skies, though that's mostly due to fuel efficiency. Some US carriers had the 747-400 until a couple years ago when United ditched their last one. I loved flying that bird! A few foreign carriers (Korean, Lufthansa) have the much newer 747-8i, which is a lovely plane but hasn't done well commercially due to those same fuel efficiency concerns.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#114I worked under a CEO who had worked at Boeing before, and he said before that at times there was a number that a life was worth when making decisions while he worked there, in a conversation about diminishing returns in quality. Now 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 th…
Sure. But the Ray Miller quote suggests that the issue was not that a modification to make the rudder mechanism more reliable was itself prohibitively expensive from an engineering point of view. Rather, the concern was that making such a modification could open up liability issues, as it would be an acknowledgement that the plane was faulty, and the FAA and Boeing were anxious to avoid being held liable.
That is what I think people find offensive.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Boeing's more general attitude of dismissing signs that there was a problem with the equipment 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, whe…
That's why dogfooding is so powerful. The best way to first hand experience the shortcomings of your product is to use it. This makes me wonder if anyone at Google is using G-Suite themselves.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#116Earlier 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..
Southwest was one of the first airlines to come out with a strong response, declaring full confidence in the MAX 8s.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#117I had heard of the history of the "rudder hardover" problems with the 737 but have never heard that Boeing was actively subverting the investigation. Assuming it's true, I'd agree that it's appalling behavior, but this post alone doesn't convince me. A lot of complex systems can fail in unlikely ways and it doesn't imply malfeasance that the company was wrong about the cause. How many times have you investigated a we…
I have never hindered any investigative agency, internal or otherwise, attempting to discover flaws in systems I have built. Doing so would be morally abhorrent, and hopefully someday illegal
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#118Can't you just stop buying airplanes from them? Edit: Do the downvoters also want to throw the executives in jail for life?
It seems to be a duopoly: Boeing and Airbus. There was Embraer, but Boeing is acquiring (acquired?). There's also Bombardier, but Airbus has some partnership deal with them.
There are 4[1] manufacturers of commercial jets today: Boeing (American), Airbus (European), Embraer (Brazilian), and Bombardier (Canadian).
Embraer's Boeing deal is being termed a "joint venture" rather than an acquisition, with Boeing getting 80% of most of Embraer's business. Important to note it has been rejected by regulators and shareholders on multiple occasions, and still hasn't gone through.
Bombardier recently was pushed to make a deal to sell its popular new CSeries jet to a JV majority owned by Airbus to get around some anti-competitive trade maneuvering by Boeing to add unfair tariffs on it in the US. That said, important to note they are still an independent company with their own jets in other series. Bombardier CRJs are frequently used as regional jets in the US.
[1]: Technically there are also Russian and Chinese manufacturers but nobody would willingly buy from them today. On the tiny turboprop end of the spectrum there are a few more European manufacturers that make plans like the popular ATR72.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#119I imagine that Boeing engineers are decent people who want to be able to look at themselves in the mirror and be able to sleep at night. So I find it hard to believe in an active conspiracy, but the propensity for groupthink and self-delusion seems extraordinarily high.
If you've spent your career at a company, who can fire you for not parroting the company line, in a field as small as aviation, chances are you'll not get hired elsewhere, and you'll do as your indirectly expected to.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. No orchestration is needed. Managers only need to look with disdain to anyone that brings the issue. If your company does not put a lot of resources to make it transparent it is going to be opaque by default. Transparency is hard to achieve when humans are so good r…
No orchestration is needed. Managers only need to look with disdain to anyone that brings the issue. Networks and social media extend the reach of these kinds of disdain, and take these mechanisms beyond the walls of the office and organization. In the present day climate, where accusations causing outrage tend more easily to become viral, one need not be someone's manager or even have a close relationship to exercis…
It’s not really social pressure when managers have so much direct power not just in major events like a lay off or promotion, but also day to day tasking. This generally results in people becoming hypersensitive to their boss’s disapproval.
Social networks on the other hand have far less direct impact which results in less socially accepted statements becoming common.