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Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

spiegel.de

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Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#21

Post by afterburner »

FabHK wrote: post #13
linuxftw wrote: post #7

It's obvious to me neither the FAA nor Boeing attempted to accurately replicate the first crash scenario, because this could have wholly averted the second crash. As soon as the planes were grounded, we were getting all sorts of reports about the stablizer being too hard to move and basically an unrecover situation. Jail time is the only outcome I will accept.

How is it obvious to you that they didn't investigate the first crash sufficiently? I'd say some time after the first accident it was reasonably well understood what had happened, and the FAA (and many others!) concluded that it was still safe to fly the plane, as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain by doing the right thing quick (as the pilots on the Lion Air flight preceding the accident flight had…

Jailtime for those in management who are responsible for cover-ups and cut corners. Not jailtime for those who actually design and handle the equipment.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#22

Post by meristem »

FabHK wrote: post #9

> What's more, over the course of his 55 years in the profession, he [lawyer Marc Moller] [has] learned that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause. I don't know, that strikes me as nonsense. It's precisely the interplay of many factors that lead to an accident - and if any one of them had been different, the outcome might have been different. See Reason's "swiss cheese" model of accidents - a…

For decades accident analysis stopped at the component part. Nowadays it may extend to organizational issues. Even more recent safety paradigms stretch to complex links between product, organizational, business, governmental contexts. Depending on how Moller has worked in the past he could mean a lawyer's language of culpability or an outdated view of safety.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#23

Post by the_duke »

FabHK wrote: post #9

> What's more, over the course of his 55 years in the profession, he [lawyer Marc Moller] [has] learned that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause. I don't know, that strikes me as nonsense. It's precisely the interplay of many factors that lead to an accident - and if any one of them had been different, the outcome might have been different. See Reason's "swiss cheese" model of accidents - a…

I also wanted to mention this after reading the paragraph, but it is a pretty unimportant side note in the article.

The framing here is obviously from a lawyers perspective. A lawyer that has been very successful at extracting money from companies.

Making the issue appear simple and traceable to a single problem seems like a great way to convince a jury.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#24

Post by afterburner »

xvector wrote: post #17
lisper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could be wrong. You're not :-) The 737 still has direct mechanical linkages to the control surfaces. Changing that would require completely redesigning the aircraft.

What's the motivation for this? Regulatory, I get that. But why use direct mechanical linkage in an era where fly-by-wire would probably be faster/safer/etc?

Cost. Not just cost of manufacture/design, but billing it as cheap because you won't have to retrain all your old 737 pilots.

Not training the pilots properly was a feature (cheaper for the airlines), and Boeing deliberately wanted to avoid saying they would actually need the training because that was their whole selling point and the reason for all these weird decisions.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#25

Post by the_duke »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #2

> By the end, the planes had gained so much speed and were descending so steeply that the pilots would have had to possess superhuman strength to counter the pressure on the horizontal stabilizer trim. I thought these systems were all fly-by-wire now? Edit: Don't downvote for asking an honest question, guys. Thanks to the people who actually answered.

The article explains this further...

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#26

Post by privateSFacct »

linuxftw wrote: post #7

It's obvious to me neither the FAA nor Boeing attempted to accurately replicate the first crash scenario, because this could have wholly averted the second crash. As soon as the planes were grounded, we were getting all sorts of reports about the stablizer being too hard to move and basically an unrecover situation. Jail time is the only outcome I will accept.

Wow.

We have an drug problem that kills 40,000+/year from overdoses. Over a million people die driving in the world PER YEAR.

A small bit of perspective.

Plane flying used to be much MORE dangerous before the "corrupt" FAA got involved with the airplane companies to regulate things more closely. The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots. The record of safety in aviation in the last few years within the US has been extremely strong.

Just interesting that big pharma walks free, but Hilary Clinton and the FAA are getting the "lock them up" chants.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#27

Post by salawat »

mieseratte wrote: post #18
FabHK wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably. Goes to show that the lawyer representing the victims and the safety folks (NTSB etc.) trying to make sure an accident does not repeat have very different goals, incentives, ways of thinking, etc.

Given how vague the language is, I don't know that we can necessarily draw a conclusion. That "single item" might be the component-failure, that which fell through the aligned holes in the swiss-cheese, or it could be "the single layer of the system that was left out" that would have mitigated or otherwise precluding the class of failure. One could castigate Boeing for not having a more redundant use of sensors the M…

The single simple cause he may be alluding to is greed.

Lawyers aren't interested in the technical minutiae except in as much as it can be useful in communicating intent to the jury.

"Why did you decide to only use one sensor to feed such a critical system?"

"Why did it not occur to anyone to reevaluate the safety rating when the software was changed?"

"Was there any pressure to not do as thorough an analysis as possible?"

What I would do as an attorney is cross examine everyone involved to establish that there was a clear and present intent to put the completion of the product on time ahead of completing the project in total compliance with federal regulations. It's proving intent to the jury that matters. Not arguing over the finer points of aircraft design. In fact, I'd be surprised if anyone with an aviation background would even make it passed voir dire unchallenged.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#28

Post by [deleted] »

barkingcat wrote: post #11
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #2

> By the end, the planes had gained so much speed and were descending so steeply that the pilots would have had to possess superhuman strength to counter the pressure on the horizontal stabilizer trim. I thought these systems were all fly-by-wire now? Edit: Don't downvote for asking an honest question, guys. Thanks to the people who actually answered.

The plane in question is the 737 Max, which is the renewed version of the 737 series that started production in 1968. The whole family of planes does not have fly-by-wire.

[deleted]

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#29

Post by markbnj »

xvector wrote: post #17
lisper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could be wrong. You're not :-) The 737 still has direct mechanical linkages to the control surfaces. Changing that would require completely redesigning the aircraft.

What's the motivation for this? Regulatory, I get that. But why use direct mechanical linkage in an era where fly-by-wire would probably be faster/safer/etc?

I'm not a pilot, but from what I have read many pilots actually prefer mechanical linkage to the control surfaces. Sullenberger even indirectly blamed fly-by-wire systems (in this case the lack of a link between pilot and copilot controls) for the crash of Air France 447: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/air-france-flight-447s-lessons-...

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#30

Post by salawat »

privateSFacct wrote: post #26
linuxftw wrote: post #7

It's obvious to me neither the FAA nor Boeing attempted to accurately replicate the first crash scenario, because this could have wholly averted the second crash. As soon as the planes were grounded, we were getting all sorts of reports about the stablizer being too hard to move and basically an unrecover situation. Jail time is the only outcome I will accept.

Wow. We have an drug problem that kills 40,000+/year from overdoses. Over a million people die driving in the world PER YEAR. A small bit of perspective. Plane flying used to be much MORE dangerous before the "corrupt" FAA got involved with the airplane companies to regulate things more closely. The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots. The record of safety in aviation in the last…

So... You're not keeping up with the news are you?

If there's anything that's causing the pharma controversy to stall, it's that the cross section of companies involved have significant non pharmaceutical revenue bases to pull from in funding their defense.

Also, to be quite frank, pharma is getting legislative, not just judicial attention as well. There is a reckoning in the works for quite a few industrial verticals.

However, where things are different with aviation is that every last person on each plane had absolutely no ability to influence what ended up happening. The documentation around the process is also far better and more auditable than the collective sales activity of every actor in the pharmaceutical industry.

Give it time. These things require proof, and proof takes time to collect and sift through.

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