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

271–280 of 347 posts

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

#271

Post by jefftk »

FabHK wrote: post #265
93s6oz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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)

> European agency EASA. FWIW, the Brazilian regulator (whose name I don't remember...) did not rubber-stamp the FAA's type certification of the 737 MAX, and required some differences training for MCAS, IIRC.

Very curious whether the additional Brazilian MCAS training would have helped, given how strange its behavior appears in practice.

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

#272

Post by OneWordSoln »

bitreality wrote: post #245
ssss11 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From Boeing's standpoint, it's actually even worse than this. The families of the people who perished pose a risk to their business. The company doesn't want these people drawing attention to the incident, and they want to minimize any legal recourse. It's about finding a balance, pay them a reasonably small amount to get them to shut up and go away. Capitalism, baby!

>> Capitalism, baby!

I know what you are saying and fully agree but would like to put a finer point on it: the problem is with unfettered capitalism, especially after 100 years or more of the lawyers writing the laws for the wealthy, who own the vast majority of the corps.

What we need is a balance between the entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism and governments that enforce corporate responsibility to its human workers and our communal environment. The corps have very effectively massaged the legal systems of the world into removing almost all notions of corporate responsibility. And here we are.

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

#273

Post by dsfyu404ed »

robbiep wrote: post #23
bambax wrote: post #15

It's now fairly obvious MCAS was at the root of those two crashes. But, did it save lives in other circumstances? Meaning, was there ever a case where the nose went up so much, because of the bigger motors and their different location on the wings, that the activation of MCAS prevented a stall? I'm surprised no one seems to talk about this. It's also surprising the MCAS was implemented at all, instead of an alarm. Ye…

You’re missing the point of why MCAS was implemented in the first place - for type certification & to avoid retraining. Essentially it was an emulation layer to make what is effectively a new plane behave like an old plane. And now 300+ people are dead.

Calling it an emulation layer is more than slightly disingenuous. MCAS just sits and watches until a specific set of circumstances occur. Only then does it try to trim the nose down. Did they implement it well, no. Is that an "emulation layer", no.

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

#274

Post by JshWright »

jayalpha wrote: post #269
ptidhomme wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must say I disagree with this stance. It's not so much a matter of ressources than of specifically engineering excellence. There's plentiful examples of a much better product that was created with less ressources than the shitty existing competition (this must be commonplace for HN members). I'm convinced the safest plane is not the most expensive, it's the one designed through sound and clear-sighted engineering.

Since there won't be an ultimately and best product for ever, there is always a way to improve things. Then time and financial restrains come into place again. Are you an engineer? Your argument sounds naive. Or to give a counter example: In the Soviet Union there were likely more accidents (normalized) compared to the west. Yet, they did not focus on maximizing profits.

How is that a counter example? Just because you're not focusing on profits doesn't mean you are focusing on rigorous engineering.

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

#275

Post by icebraining »

mtgx wrote: post #256
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…

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's Accountable Capitalism Act seems like a great step in the right direction to make this more clear. https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...

"Sorry, a potential security risk was detected in your submitted request. The Webmaster has been alerted."

Holy crap, should I be on the lookout for black helicopters?

For someone having the same problem: https://web.archive.org/web/20190402011933/https://www.warre...

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

#276

Post by phkahler »

>> We're taking a comprehensive, disciplined approach, and taking the time, to get the software update right.

If only you had done that the first time.

>> This update, along with the associated training and additional educational materials that pilots want in the wake of these accidents, will eliminate the possibility of unintended MCAS activation and prevent an MCAS-related accident from ever happening again.

From what we've read, your company thought that cost too much the first time around. Maybe it's time to reconsider the costs of NOT doing the work up front. Boeing used to be better at this.

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

#277

Post by baq »

ionised wrote: post #240
BurningFrog wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economists don't disagree on most things, but people who don't like to adjust their beliefs according to Economic science often like to think that. To be fair, Public Choice theory is certainly on the more controversial half of the subfields. And of course you shouldn't blindly take some random post on this forum as complete proof of how the world works. That would be a foolish gullibility. Then again, completely rej…

'Economic science'? When has economics ever been a science?

as much as psychology and history are sciences, depends who you ask.

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

#278

Post by hyeonwho4 »

munk-a wrote: post #62
hyeonwho4 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible show of confidence. What are the chances that the next plane to have an accident is carrying the CEO? What is the average expected punishment to the CEO for getting it wrong? It's probably less risk than BASE jumping. I would rather there be guaranteed liability: have the execs set up a legal system to refund the entire order book and voluntarily plead guilty to federal charges in the event of anoth…

I haven't seen any mention yet specifically, are they being held liable for the deaths and forced into some financial penalties or has this case been relegated to the right-wing "The free market will adjust and discourage consumers" sort of liability?

My impression is that the relevant laws for crash liability are those of Indonesia and Ethiopia. So nobody professional is clamoring for it. The silence of the pundit class is curious; I guess we will find out how political this in the next few days.

That said, it seems likely that in the US Boeing is liable to their customers (airlines and aircraft owners) for fraud. In theory, the entire organization could be disbanded under RICO, but Boeing is a defense contractor, so more likely they pay to settle damages. I could see them getting away with paying for the costs of repairs, retraining and the lost revenue for planes already delivered in the US.

It also seems likely that Boeing is spending incredible amounts of money on PR to control the fallout. I expected the release of this report to be near the top of Reddit, but on reddit's /r/news the BBC report on this was sitting at only 21 net upvotes after 3 hours. (As of 8 hours ago.)

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

#279

Post by markdown »

pauljurczak wrote: post #174
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…

Yep, it is full of bullshit corporate PR and crisis management. This story has just begun. FAA and Boeing hopefully will be held responsible. I don't hold my breath to see criminal charges for Boeing management, but this time, I wouldn't be completely surprised, if it happens.

> I don't hold my breath to see criminal charges for Boeing management, but this time, I wouldn't be completely surprised, if it happens.

I'd be very surprised if it did happen. "Lucky" for Boeing, it was mostly brown people in a third world country that died. Had it instead been two American planes that went down, Boeing and their executives would be in significantly deeper shit.

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

#280

Post by ptidhomme »

jayalpha wrote: post #269
ptidhomme wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must say I disagree with this stance. It's not so much a matter of ressources than of specifically engineering excellence. There's plentiful examples of a much better product that was created with less ressources than the shitty existing competition (this must be commonplace for HN members). I'm convinced the safest plane is not the most expensive, it's the one designed through sound and clear-sighted engineering.

Since there won't be an ultimately and best product for ever, there is always a way to improve things. Then time and financial restrains come into place again. Are you an engineer? Your argument sounds naive. Or to give a counter example: In the Soviet Union there were likely more accidents (normalized) compared to the west. Yet, they did not focus on maximizing profits.

I am, and I have experienced many times what I'm talking about.

A simpler yet effective design (may it be initial or rework) comes at a much lower cost than a flawed one, which inevitably aggregates irrelevant complexities.

Post reply on HN