Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

Post by fgonzag » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

rkangel wrote: post #42

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…

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.…

Post by __s » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

jdsully wrote: post #122

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.

Post by peteradio » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

BoorishBears wrote: post #112

peteradio wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by notahacker » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

jdsully wrote: post #122

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.

Post by jplayer01 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

mbostleman wrote: post #89

rkangel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Agreed. The implications of the story make a good movie script, but it's hard for me to imagine how this could play out practically across so many people and so many years. I mean whole careers started and ended in this saga. 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…