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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

#121

Post by BoorishBears »

jfk13 wrote: post #114
BoorishBears wrote: post #90

I 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 wha…

I think that’s also extended from the same mentality of treatingives as numbers, but I read it as Boeing didn’t want to fix it because of cost and the fact they’d be admitting there was a problem, and the lack of payouts was due to not wanting to accept legal liability separately of admitting there was a problem. Which honestly is Ben worse, adding insult to the families of the people their actions killed.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#122

Post by jdsully »

BoorishBears wrote: post #90

I 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…

The NHTSA has a similar number, I believe its in the realm of $2 million per life. Its based off of medical costs and a few other "organic" numbers to estimate what the population as a whole values a life at.

Its morbid but it has to be this way or transportation would be unaffordable.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#124

Post by mindslight »

gnud wrote: post #11
howard941 wrote: post #5

FWIW the rudder hardover described in this very interesting link doesn't appear to be related to the Max 8 issues near MCAS.

The articles says that since the valve was redisigned, there has been no more accidents. I think the point here was to show how Boeing has responded to issues in the past.

Of course the flip narrative is that even though things appear to be bad, they're actually getting better.

For this PCU issue, it looks like Boeing was able to derail the issue for years, even throughout several crashes. This time, Boeing was basically able to subvert the FAA for two days - the pressure of disagreeing with other country's regulatory bodies simply became too great.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#125

Post by marcosdumay »

Aviation has an well known acceptable risk level at around 10^-9 for each issue. That's the number that leads government intervention, pilot procedure designing, aircraft designing and everything else. It's expected to lead to a less than 10^-6 chance of accidents per flight. (Somebody calculated the B783 Max odds on 4*10^-6 yesterday, what is a crazy high level.)

That number has been higher in the past, and is moving into 10^-10 per issue with 10^-7 overall risk right now, with large airplanes in scheduled flight very near that level.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#126

Post by duxup »

argd678 wrote: post #98

This is why we have the NTSB, prioror to it’s existence manufacturers were the primary investigators of their planes’ accidents with predictable results like above.

They write such great reports. Technical, but also accessible. I'm not a pilot and I find them interesting to read.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#127

Post by argd678 »

duxup wrote: post #126
argd678 wrote: post #98

This is why we have the NTSB, prioror to it’s existence manufacturers were the primary investigators of their planes’ accidents with predictable results like above.

They write such great reports. Technical, but also accessible. I'm not a pilot and I find them interesting to read.

Agreed, the CSB has great reports too.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#128

Post by lostlogin »

matz1 wrote: post #59
usaphp wrote: post #13

> 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…

> Should not there be some criminal charges? That depends on whether you can convince the court.

Don’t those facing charges get brought to the court, guilt being decided by the court? Does the court press charges anywhere?

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#129

Post by rootusrootus »

JackFr wrote: post #72

I 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.

I imagine some of it has to do with not wanting to be wrong. And especially not wanting to be wrong when that means you have caused/contributed to someone's death. That is a powerful motivator to find alternate explanations.

Everyone here is probably intimately familiar with that attitude, since it permeates software engineering (and probably every other technical field).

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#130

Post by karlkatzke »

sleepybrett wrote: post #44
gnud wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The articles says that since the valve was redisigned, there has been no more accidents. I think the point here was to show how Boeing has responded to issues in the past.

Of course they haven't, no different than car manufacturers doing the same types of deflections and cover-ups. See also tesla autopilot problems, or any of dozens of other such scenarios. A problem is found with a design after a fatality (or near fatality), manufacturer deflects, blames the operator, etc until someone proves that they are 100% at fault. Eventual recall.

Takata airbags, Ford Explorer tires, GM Cobalt ignitions...
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