Live data from Hacker News

FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

bloomberg.com

251–260 of 354 posts

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#251
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but as a publicly traded company, its real business is making money for its shareholders This is such a tired argument. How much money do you think Boeing is going to make for its shareholders if its planes are crashing and fleet is grounded?

Mostly it doesn't happen. Shareholders might want to take risks. This time it gone bad. Next time it probably wouldn't.

> it probably wouldn't

if you cut corners on engineering to reduce costs and nothing bad happens, that good engineering actually

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#252
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think overall we should consider this process a very positive thing, FAA and Boeing (and Airbus as well) are all going to learn a lot from this process which will make air travel safer in the future. It's unfortunate that it took two tragedies to get us here but if you look at the history of aviation improvements this isn't the first and it won't be the last time.

This isn't some previously undiscovered issue in aviation. This is plain and simple Boeing prioritizing cost savings over human lives. It is as simple as that. There are no technical takeaways to be had from the two tragedies that took place. The only takeaway is that Boeing betrayed everyone but their pockets.

short term thinking vs long term consequences...

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#253
post #41

The FAA suffered a major loss of credibility in their handling of the first round of testing/accreditation of the MAX. The FAA can't afford another stuff up this second time around and as such I suspect they will be checking every aspect of the plane in very fine detail. That could spell more trouble for Boeing.

> they will be checking every aspect of the plane in very fine detail.

But is that really what is going on here? Are they equipped to do so any longer?

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#254
post #55
post #41

The FAA suffered a major loss of credibility in their handling of the first round of testing/accreditation of the MAX. The FAA can't afford another stuff up this second time around and as such I suspect they will be checking every aspect of the plane in very fine detail. That could spell more trouble for Boeing.

I think overall we should consider this process a very positive thing, FAA and Boeing (and Airbus as well) are all going to learn a lot from this process which will make air travel safer in the future. It's unfortunate that it took two tragedies to get us here but if you look at the history of aviation improvements this isn't the first and it won't be the last time.

> FAA and Boeing (and Airbus as well) are all going to learn a lot from this process which will make air travel safer in the future

Yeah, right. Until they start cutting corners again for economic reasons. There's absolutely no change in any of those organizations driven by this incident or by an increase in standards or by safety, there are no new regulations, it's all a dog and pony show driven by money and saving their asses.

"if you look at the history of aviation improvements this isn't the first and it won't be the last time"

And that's a great argument for just letting the next horrible accident happen in a few years. Until people start demanding that at least the goal of those organizations should be Total and Complete Flight Safety, the FAA and Boeing will cut corners because "accidents will always happen, this isn't the first and it won't be the last, so who cares". Accidents will stay a calculated risk for them, in stead of something that just should never ever happen.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#255
post #41

The FAA suffered a major loss of credibility in their handling of the first round of testing/accreditation of the MAX. The FAA can't afford another stuff up this second time around and as such I suspect they will be checking every aspect of the plane in very fine detail. That could spell more trouble for Boeing.

I still don't trust the FAA at all. They've been sourcing out their own work to Boeing since the 787 Dreamliner [0]. That's seven years ago. I don't think this will make them change their practices. The 787 fiasco certainly didn't. Personally I'd be happiest if the world just scrapped all the Max-es. Just scrap 'em, let Boeing go out of business, it's what they deserve now, they shouldn't exist anymore as a company.…

>because if people could see what happened they would never fly one of those things again.

They might not anyway.

As it is, people are irrationally afraid of flying. Plane crashes are a fetishized "nightmare scenario". Multiple crashes linked to the same plane (or company) will, likely, have terrible business consequences.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#256
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think overall we should consider this process a very positive thing, FAA and Boeing (and Airbus as well) are all going to learn a lot from this process which will make air travel safer in the future. It's unfortunate that it took two tragedies to get us here but if you look at the history of aviation improvements this isn't the first and it won't be the last time.

> FAA and Boeing (and Airbus as well) are all going to learn a lot from this process which will make air travel safer in the future Yeah, right. Until they start cutting corners again for economic reasons. There's absolutely no change in any of those organizations driven by this incident or by an increase in standards or by safety, there are no new regulations, it's all a dog and pony show driven by money and saving…

>There's absolutely no change in any of those organizations driven by this incident or by an increase in standards or by safety, there are no new regulations

How fast do you think this stuff can happen?

>And that's a great argument for just letting the next horrible accident happen in a few years.

The next horrible accident is going to happen in a few years, sorry to tell you.

>Accidents will stay a calculated risk for them, in stead of something that just should never ever happen.

I'm going to assume you're no engineer.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#257
post #251
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly it doesn't happen. Shareholders might want to take risks. This time it gone bad. Next time it probably wouldn't.

> it probably wouldn't if you cut corners on engineering to reduce costs and nothing bad happens, that good engineering actually

It's not necessarily good engineering, it could also be selection bias. It depends on how much risk is added by cutting corners. If too many corners are cut, but it didn't fail just due to luck, it's still bad engineering.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#258

As a web/game developer, one thing I never understood is the alleged complexity of these control systems. There is no image/voice recognition, no graphics engine, no rocket science. What are they even doing? Or is it all a big lie? Lines of code, from the internet[1]: Pacemaker: 100k Boeing 787: 5M Chevy Volt: 10M Modern car: 100M [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/millions-lines-of-code/

As a web/game developer, you forgot to include the OS and the drivers in the lines of code involved in executing the stuff you are writing.

The Linux kernel was 15M lines in 2013 [1], more than half of that was drivers. Windows XP was apparently 45M lines, the 2009 Debian distribution 300M lines [2].

So you're into millions of lines just to execute "Hello world" on a PC.

Simple control systems generally don't use an OS. E.g. Arduino is as simple as it gets, here [3] is a 30-LOC example snippet for a HTTP client. But if you dig down into the included libraries (most of it is on GitHub) you'll find that there's (quick estimate) 10-20k lines of code involved in executing those 30 lines. And you haven't actually _done_ anything yet, that's just the infrastructure to allow C code to interact with the hardware with a few standard libraries for math and IO.

Modern cars are complex enough to have OSes [4], with the corresponding code complexities.

In short, web developers vastly underestimate the code complexity of interacting with hardware in a low-level language because it's not something they deal with. The umpteen million lines of OS kernel and device drives are done by someone else, and for people who just _use_ a PC it (mostly) "just works", to the extent that even advanced users aren't aware of the complexity behind it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Codebase

[2] https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/111281/exploding-am...

[3] https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HttpClient

[4] https://www.quora.com/What-operating-systems-are-used-in-car...

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the FAA says "this is fucked" and and the EASA says "they're all good bro"[1], who do you side with? [1] feel free to flip flop regulatory agencies if you so desire.

The fact that they disagree is what is notable. The FAA lost credibility by being the last to ground the MAX. You side with the one that has a history of not being wrong.

>You side with the one that has a history of not being wrong.

A question for the arm-chair analysts in this thread: which one has a better history of not being wrong, excluding this data point?

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#260

This all points up the glaring conflicts of interest in the corporate business environment. Most of us think that Boeing is the business of building airplanes, but as a publicly traded company, its real business is making money for its shareholders, and aerospace is just a vehicle toward that end. The Boeing CEO's steadfast refusal to take responsibility for these two crashes are nothing more than CYA designed to lim…

I'm not sure I buy the risk/market trade-off. You could replace Boeing with any car manufacturer that still has publicly traded shareholder needs.
Post reply on HN