Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

boeing.mediaroom.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 347 posts

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#201

Post by TrolTure »

pauljurczak wrote: post #180
bitreality wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the way litigation works, corporations will never admit blame for anything, since it greatly increases their legal risk. It's unfortunate, but their responsibilities lie with their shareholders, not the people who lost their lives on their planes.

> their responsibilities lie with their shareholders This is the "shareholder value" theory, modern economists successfully brainwashed the population with. It became popular during the 1980s, "greed is good" times. It's just an ideology disguised as a science. The purpose and structure of modern corporation hasn't changed in the last hundred years or so. In 1950s and 1960s the public good, among others, role of corp…

Somewhat hilariously it's also often claimed that CEO's are not allowed to lie due to then being liable for misinforming shareholders.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#202

Post by cmurf »

treis wrote: post #151
msbarnett wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At 05:40:44, the Captain called out three times “Pull-up” and the First-Officer acknowledged. > At 05:41:30, the Captain requested the First-Officer to pitch up with him and the First-Officer acknowledged. > At 05:43:04, the Captain asked the First Officer to pitch up together and said that pitch is not enough. Take a look at the chart of control column position deflections. They're jolting around like crazy at +10…

Data for "Column forces were incredibly high" would be the force on the column that the pilots experienced. Column position deflection isn't that. Column position deflection data is data that the column position was changing rapidly. Concluding that column position was changing rapidly due to "incredibly high" forces as opposed to say unpredictable forces is speculation.

Control column position is not a delta. On a 737 that position directly correlates to the position of the elevator in degrees. Elevator position, stabilizer position, and airspeed as they were we can infer a force; corroborated by their own words, it's reasonable that this situation is described in the "mistrim nose down" sketch about 1/3 of the way down here:

https://www.satcom.guru/2019/04/stabilizer-trim-loads-and-ra...

05:41:30 - PIC requests SIC to pitch up with him

05:41:46, 05:41:54 manual trim not working, that is absolutely a trim wheel hand crank attempt; fairly clear (to me) but not stated is that both pilots were not simultaneously cranking on the trim wheel, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that this exact configuration puts to much upward force on the jackscrew that it is difficult to impossible to turn.

05:43:04, PIC asks SIC to pitch up together says pitch is not enough

As for the noisiness of the control column position data, it could be partly the stick shaker, it could be light turbulence, the accel vert row at the bottom shows it's a bumpy flight, and pitch and roll attitude is also variable but less so than vertical accelerate. And accel vert gets noticably more perturbed as airspeed increases. I think it's light to moderate turbulence, but I'm not certain. A search for PIREPs and weather reports at the time could corroborate it.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#203

Post by CaptainZapp »

Stryder wrote: post #24
781 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then I'm irrational too, because I won't set foot in a 737 MAX after this shitfest. The FAA also lost a lot of trust, for rubber-stamping this. The first accident was maybe understandable. We all know that shit happens. But Boeing has zero excuses for not immediately grounding the whole fleet after, and for putting out that useless recovery procedure which didn't work in this case. They let a deadly plane fly f…

The integrity of engineering excellence should never be sacrificed for profit and/or conveniency in places where it involves human lives. Realistically and pragmatically speaking, you only ever get to have just one single shot at establishing and maintaining that kind of life/death level of trust. Fuck it up, and you're gone- quite literally, mind you. This is some Challenger O-ring type of shitshow. Accidents are on…

This is some Challenger O-ring type of shitshow.

I think it's worse.

The first crash can be compared to the Challenger shitshow. It was a (massive) engineering mistake, which lead to the Lion Air plane crashing. Looking at the history of the 737 in general and the 737-MAX specifically it was rekless, but I'm pretty certain not intentional or foreseen by Boeing.

That massively changed by the fact that they didn't immediately pull the plane after this crash and went into deep analysis mode to really evaluate the cause. Instead they smeared everybody but themselves, developed a completely useless checklist without really knowing or (apparently) caring if it's useful at all and let that deathtrap fly.

The second crash, in my opinion is corporate mass murder for profit. Maybe not legally, but morally most certainly.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#204

Post by Judgmentality »

TrolTure wrote: post #201
pauljurczak wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their responsibilities lie with their shareholders This is the "shareholder value" theory, modern economists successfully brainwashed the population with. It became popular during the 1980s, "greed is good" times. It's just an ideology disguised as a science. The purpose and structure of modern corporation hasn't changed in the last hundred years or so. In 1950s and 1960s the public good, among others, role of corp…

Somewhat hilariously it's also often claimed that CEO's are not allowed to lie due to then being liable for misinforming shareholders.

Are you saying it's okay to commit fraud?

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#205

Post by ssss11 »

bitreality wrote: post #154
ndespres wrote: post #55

I know better than to read between the lines on a press release like this, but can't help but notice that it falls far short of accepting responsibility for the problem. He admits that MCAS "activated in response to erroneous angle of attack information" but doesn't admit that this alone directly resulted in the crashes. Rather, he implies that this sets off a chain of events which the pilots are unable to deal with…

With the way litigation works, corporations will never admit blame for anything, since it greatly increases their legal risk. It's unfortunate, but their responsibilities lie with their shareholders, not the people who lost their lives on their planes.

I’m appalled by this point of view. Perhaps this is a weakness of capitalism.. primary responsibility should be to those who perished, not the shareholders.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#206

Post by CaptainZapp »

93s6oz wrote: post #43
781 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then I'm irrational too, because I won't set foot in a 737 MAX after this shitfest. The FAA also lost a lot of trust, for rubber-stamping this. The first accident was maybe understandable. We all know that shit happens. But Boeing has zero excuses for not immediately grounding the whole fleet after, and for putting out that useless recovery procedure which didn't work in this case. They let a deadly plane fly f…

>The FAA also lost a lot of trust, for rubber-stamping this. I wonder if the European agency (don't remember the name) will stop trusting the FAA from now on and do their own tests. I'd thank them for that. (According to what I read here, the European agency doesn't do exhaustive tests because they mostly trust whatever the FAA says; maybe that's false)

According to what I read here, the European agency doesn't do exhaustive tests because they mostly trust whatever the FAA says

That's true. The FAA had a stellar record as a certification agency, which, it can be argued, they fucked in three days (sure, the hole history of this sad debacle is more complex. But by keeping the plane in the air longer than any other certification body in order to not hurt their buddies at Boeing they completely ruined their reputation, which was built in decades of good work).

I can't imagine that any responsible certification body anywhere trusts the FAA anymore without a complete and significant shakeup.

It's a sad story, really.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#207

Post by jussij »

neverartful wrote: post #90
vkou wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, from a cursory reading of the report, it's not entirely clear that software updates are going to fix the problem.

Exactly. When CEO said "We're taking a comprehensive, disciplined approach, and taking the time, to get the software update right.", I wondered if they would characterize their initial design the same way. It's shameful to even try to pin it on software. The fundamental problem is that they didn't want to do the right thing by admitting and teaching pilots that this plane has different flight characteristics and they…

> If they take MCAS out

The problem is they can't take the MCAS out.

The MCAS is there to fix a design fault whereby the plane has a tendency to pitch up automatically (and hence have a chance of stalling) when accelerating, due to the oversize engines and their placement.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#208

Post by EngineerDude »

As a few posters mentioned, an interesting question is why the plane needs MCAS in the first place. I read somewhere that the max 8 got new engines which were bigger than engines on previous 737 series, and that makes the plane nose up. Any kid who ever made a model plane understands the idea of CG - if it pitches up you change something, maybe move the wings back. Is it possible that an industry leader shipped a plane that’s not even freakin balanced, tried to fix it in software(!) to avoid an expensive redesign, screwed up the software and maybe the safety analysis, and then didn’t even manage to mention to the pilots that this software hack even existed? This is hard for me to fathom. If the Ethiopian report is right, it might even be that the procedure to turn off MCAS didn’t even work. I hope I am misunderstanding something here.

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#209

Post by sorokod »

nutjob2 wrote: post #39
SilasX wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He could put his safety where his mouth is and vow to only fly on the MAX for the next two years. That would be a much stronger vote of confidence than whatever words his PR firm came up with.

Yes, and tobacco company CEOs smoke. Does that give you the confidence to do the same?

Genuanly curious - which one?

Re: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

#210

Post by bitreality »

Judgmentality wrote: post #204
TrolTure wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat hilariously it's also often claimed that CEO's are not allowed to lie due to then being liable for misinforming shareholders.

Are you saying it's okay to commit fraud?

They avoid making actionable statements. In this case, the CEO did not explicitly assign blame, so it would be difficult to call them a liar. Omitting is different from lying. Using vague terminology isn't lying. So you get stuck with all this corporate talk, where they act as if they're apologizing, but won't even really say what they are specifically apologizing for.
Post reply on HN