Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#81

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #27

mieseratte wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poss…

Yes. He's certainly not going to approach this like an engineer going bug hunting.

The goal will be to establish that the problem was cultural and political. An avoidable cascade of engineering failures and regulatory misrepresentations was the result, not the cause.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#82

Post by WalterBright » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

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…

> that strikes me as nonsense

It is nonsense. It takes multiple failures to bring down an airliner, and the NTSB accident reports recommend fixing all of them. It's why airliners are so safe today.

The 737MAX issue is no different.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#83

Post by linuxftw » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

nraynaud wrote: post #42

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.

I would not be so hard on the investigation of the first crash, they take time, and the second crash happened before the end of the first one.

Nope. They should have grounded the literally brand-new, undocumented-feature aircraft immediately.

But the FAA and Boeing are worse than useless.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#84

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #44

jellicle wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never quite understood that argument that only little people benefit from jail time and important people do not. Surely if we can put someone in jail for a year for having a forbidden plant in their pocket then we could put someone in jail for - how about a week? Three days? An hour? - for choosing to cut corners on safety and smashing two planes full of people into jelly? The root cause here is "Boeing manageme…

This idea that there's one guy or set of people to be found whose fault it is that you have a systemic problem is so uniquely American. In this case you're proposing to punish the smallest cog in the machine, some middle-manager or executive at Boeing. It would be just as logical to throw every single American in prison for around 45 minutes (~1 person dead in 737 MAX crashes for every million Americans, 80 years (le…

The simple answer is to make the entire C-suite criminally liable - collectively and individually.

Because the usual argument is that the C-suite and especially the CEO are personally responsible for the successes of a company.

So it's not unreasonable to hold them personally responsible for the failures too - especially when those failures amount to suspected criminal negligence.

This is not the same as assuming guilt. Due process should still apply.

But the risk of personal liability should absolutely be present as a deterrent.

And if some executives don't want to operate in that environment - that's absolutely fine. The system should encourage responsible actors, and allow the removal and punishment of those who prefer to act irresponsibly.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#85

Post by darknoon » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

I saw this documentary about issues with the 787 back in 2014, and it was clear that something was massively wrong at Boeing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os

The engineers doing the work know what it takes to make a good airplane. Let them do their jobs.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#86

Post by linuxftw » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #51

simion314 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO yes, but even if US pilots are in average 10x better there still was a chance that you would fly with a 1x pilot and because he would have followed the checklist and crash the plane. Do you have facts that say that the probability of this happening in US was 0 ?

I don't think anyone insinuating that the probability of this happening in US was 0 but the fact remain that the number of crash so far is 0.

Well, except for the major airlines, Boeing, and the FAA were saying pretty much that after the first crash, with absolutely no technical basis for saying it.

Those parties continued to assure the public that the aircraft were completely safe until the entire rest of the planet ground the aircraft and the US President ordered the FAA to ground the aircraft.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#87

Post by effnorwood » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:49 PM UTC

They don’t. Where is Airbus made again?

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#88

Post by tempguy9999 » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

privateSFacct wrote: post #80

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a human being (that happens to be a US citizen), I find OP's comment really disturbing. The whole comment is whataboutism, so maybe this was just an intentional red herring.

If you think folks who have a record in the US (where they can enforce regulations around maintenance, training, ATC, airport design) should be in JAIL for creating a system which has an incredible safety rate among ALL modes of transit I find that disturbing. Seriously - we need MORE folks attracted to public service, not going to jail because armchair quarterbacks on the internet are upset. The safety chain in the…

Pick this apart why don't we. (edit: that came across rude, sorry)

> If you think folks [...] should be in JAIL

Who is 'folks' here - the entirety of the FAA and boeing? Or more likely just the very few at the top who messed up; those in the FAA who didn't do their job (maybe, maybe not) or those at boeing that took advantage of self-certification to cut corners?

Top boeing executives probably earn millions a year, basically they are paid to make the right decisions. That's key. Seems they didn't.

FAA probably less. Now you mention it, it seems likely FAA's share of the blame is the lesser, maybe.

> which has an incredible safety rate among ALL modes of transit

True, and still does, but we now have a case of 2 planeloads of people dead, and a very major US manufacturer that's... well, I don't know but having 5,000 orders frozen for an unknown time can't be good. If that could have been avoided then it should have.

Those responsible, should there be a penalty? If so, in your view, if not jail then what? There are plenty of people in US jails far more trivial things. Can this be right?

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#89

Post by jschwartzi » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #38

CivBase wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those are teething issues, I'm scared to find out what you'd consider to be a serious problem.

Per TFA QA wasn't definitively being done not because they were too stupid to want it done but because of coordination issues with the suppliers because it was a new plane and they didn't have the process down yet. That is almost by definition teething issues. It takes some serious mental gymnastics to say with a straight face that coordination issues with suppliers when a product is first being made are not "teethin…

The problem is expecting suppliers to do QA and judge whether something is fit for your purpose. Regardless of whatever indemnity the supplier provides it will always be your name on the product, and you should be solely responsible for ensuring the product meets your requirements.

I do consider it evidence of organizational incompetence to state that you're staking your organization's reputation on some other organization that you don't own.

Re: Boeing's Crashes Expose Systemic Failings

#90

Post by atoav » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #52

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me a great deal of cynicism here. I suspect that a more accurate statement is "he learned that it works well for him to argue that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause." We don't ask lawyers to do surgery. We don't ask them to design bridges. And we don't ask them to do root cause analysis. We leave all of those things to those who actually know what they're doing in those areas.

You don't need to be able to analyze causes in order to count them.

No, but if you want to prevent future incidents, it usually helps to have a more systemic view of failure. E.g. questions like: “what kind of management lead to decisions that made such misbehaviour possible?” are usually completely uninteresting for a lawyer, as they either play a legal role or not.

In real life a incident may be the emergent behaviour enabled by complex circumstances and a certain culture, all culminating in one crystalized point of failure. Think of causal chains: Managment pressures engineers and fires experienced older engineers, engineers are clearly not up to task, do something. Qualitt control might catch it but is circumvented by other managers who fake documents. The thing is not up to speck but wouldn’t have failed if the pilots... etc.

This is what I mean by systemic emergent behaviour. All of these things were wrong or wreckless, but pinning it to one cause isn’t doing reality a favour here.