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Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Addresses the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Report

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

#281

Post by neuronic »

ncmncm wrote: post #190
ncmncm wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. We have seen that there was another problem only noticed because of the extra scrutiny. We have a saying in the software business: two is an impossible number.

That said, the Air France Airbus dive into the ocean was caused by an equally stupid design decision that should never have shipped. Pilot and copilot were applying opposite force on the joystick, and instead of a siren going off, it just averaged them. Have they even fixed that yet? It was in ever Airbus.

> it just averaged them

As opposed to Boeing's "lets pick one and hope to dear God that it's the correct one"?

How would you handle opposing input where any of the two pilots might give the incorrect input?

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

#282

Post by cal5k »

tmd83 wrote: post #135

Corporate irresponsibility and getting away with it is something I have mostly gotten used to at this point. But this particular incident is still really getting to me specially after the press release. I was just trying to read up a little about sings of sociopath. It seems to me that a big chunk of major corporate big brash could be considered extreme versions of sociopath.

What exactly does “getting away with it” mean in this context? Boeing will get sued from many different directions, their share price will suffer, and likely they’ll have lost orders for their aircraft.

Let’s say we wanted to get really punitive... who do we blame? The engineers that worked on it? The Boeing CEO for not personally verifying every piece of software on all of their aircraft?

Do we throw someone in jail? How does that help improve safety culture exactly?

Boeing & Airbus are largely responsible for the massive improvements in flight safety over the last 40 years. It’s incredible that flying is as safe as it. Yes the deaths are a tragedy, but every time I get in a plane I accept the fact that the physics of flying could ultimately kill me, and I trade that off against the convenience of getting somewhere quickly.

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

#283

Post by icebraining »

ptidhomme wrote: post #280
jayalpha wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're talking about the cost of the product, but what about the cost of redesigning in itself? Including the opportunity cost of delaying the product to keep reworking the design.

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

#284

Post by ionised »

baq wrote: post #277
ionised wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

They are humanities, not sciences.

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

#285

Post by jayalpha »

JshWright wrote: post #274
jayalpha wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

rigorous engineering comes for free?

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

#286

Post by woofcat »

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…

Sure, however BA is part of the S&P500. I would wager almost every American who has retirement savings owns a chunk of BA. As well as most people in the Western world.

As much as we would love to having Boeing stock plummet, it will impact most people even if they're not aware that they own it.

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

#287

Post by caconym_ »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #214
caconym_ wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you think I wouldn't be aware of those well-known facts about the 737. I'm also not sure why you'd reply to my comment when you clearly either haven't read it or have no interest in actually replying to the substance of it.

I get that you're rightfully upset at Boeing for trying to skip the proper regulatory testing processes. I am too. But you are not meaningfully contesting my point, that a fixed 737 MAX is a safer aircraft to be flying in. What would you suggest? Mothballing the MAX line for a wholly new aircraft? Arguably the MAX has significant flight testing time in production, to which one defect was found and is being remedied.…

> What would you suggest?

I would suggest a fine-toothed audit of every single change made in the MAX aircraft, with particular attention paid to whether said changes were made solely in the interest of skirting regulations to sell more planes faster.

Because that is the point: Boeing's decision-making process is now highly suspect. It is pretty clear that the MCAS would not exist in anything like its current (flawed) form if Boeing hadn't been trying to avoid the pilot retraining requirement.

This is not a typical life-cycle for an engineering defect/flaw.

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

#288

Post by jayalpha »

ptidhomme wrote: post #280
jayalpha wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"aggregates irrelevant complexities"

Who decides this? This is not a trivial question.

The F-35 fighter is a good example. Trades many disadvantages (not fast, not good in dog-fighting, tremendous long maintenance time, low payload etc.) for one advantage. The F-35 may or may not be invisible to an able opponent. But this decision is a tremendous difficult one. Based on your argument, it would be better to stick with a simple design. This was worked for the Soviet Union in WW2 (don't build the best tank, build a decent one, build many).

You may like this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)

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

#289

Post by phire »

ams6110 wrote: post #112
makomk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason this preliminary report is so damning is that it's evident that the pilots on flight 302 knew this - they realised what was happening, took the necessary steps to disable MCAS, and still couldn't stop the plane from crashing and killing everyone on board.

Read the narrative in the report. Why do you suppose that after they got the same initial signs of trouble that the Lion Air flight had (stick shaker on left side, disagreement in airspeed values, etc. immediately after takeoff) that the captain tried to engage autopilot and instructed the first officer to retract flaps and inform controllers they were proceeding to climb to FL 320 (32,000 ft). Why not instead turn b…

With hindsight, we know that retracting the flaps was a bad idea.

But check Boeing's MCAS bulletin, which is the only official information pilots received about MCAS at the time of the flight.

http://www.b737.org.uk/images/aoa-bulletin.jpg

It makes zero mention of flaps. It doesn't recommend avoiding retracting them or trying to land as soon as possible.

Trying to land as fast as possible is typicality a bad idea. Planes which have just taken off are almost always over their maximum landing weight. Even if you ignore that, the extra stress of trying to land as soon as possible could cause the pilots to make more errors.

Procedures for issues on take off are typically focused on continuing to climb to gain as much altitude as possible to give the pilots time and space to assess the problem before dumping fuel and landing. The more altitude you have the more time you have to recover.

And unfortunately, climbing through 5000 feet requires retracting the flaps.

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