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Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

bloomberg.com

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Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#11

Post by goldcd »

I've read a few stories, with different 'takes' on 'what went wrong'

They're all obviously coloured by the sources/reporter as obviously (in this case) if your pilot/simulator was impacted by cost cuts, then you're going to pin those dead passengers on your pilot/simulator changes. I'm fine with that. I'd do the same myself.

What scares me though, is that even now the story is still a pile of anecdotal tumble-weed.

What do we know? 1) Enough passengers died for the planes to be grounded. 2) These deaths happened due to: 2.1) Larger engines being bolted onto an old airframe 2.2) Plane not being sufficiently updated to compensate 3) FAA being a bit too cozey with Boeing in certification.

"Mistakes were made"

What I'm not hearing is Boeing going through the stages on this.

Where did they make the mistakes? What should they have done? What have they put in place/restored to ensure it never happens again? etc etc

Boeing needs to try to own what it'll take to get their planes flying again. And that requires them to engage with the bazillion people they've pissed off - to defend why this particular cost-cut wasn't why people died.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#12

Post by itronitron »

daddylonglegs wrote: post #2

Two things really struck me in this article. The first was the graph of sales over time. The current boom in sales is the biggest and longest - only the boom from 1985 to the mid-90s comes close in duration. All the other booms seem to have ended in a sharp drop in sales. The second is the continuing trend - in both private industry and government - to atomise organisations by outsourcing important work. The immediat…

>> outsourcing important work.

That reflects the management trend of seeing themselves as the customer and not the developer (of the company). What better way to reduce the number of opinions that must be considered than to turn your employees into service providers?

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#13

Post by petilon »

MaupitiBlue wrote: post #7

I'm sorry, but what does squeezing jobs have to do with: 1. Drive MCAS with only one AOA sensor. 2. Don't tell MCAS to look for (or even think about) bad AOA data or AOA disagreements. 3. Equip airplane with two AOA sensors as usual, but make the AOA disagree warning light a "value added option" that customers have to pay extra for. 4. Don't actually bother to tell pilots that they don't have AOA disagree warning lig…

You missed the big one that even made MCAS necessary:

0. Reposition the engine forward on the wing such that the airframe is inherently unstable and needs software for stabilization.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#14

Post by perl4ever »

fzeroracer wrote: post #6
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #5

I hate the "everything must be a profit center" MBA attitude. Boeing is a profitable company because they make machines that fly people from place to place safely and efficiently. Part of that is having training, support, service, replacement parts, sales, manufacturing, IT, R&D, and all the other things required to make things fly. It's easy to sit in a conference room and say "gee, IT hasn't made any money, instead…

You have to keep in mind for these companies keeping the customer happy is not the intent. It's merely a coincidental side effect of any potential profit seeking they do. The only people they really care about and are accountable to are the shareholders and investors. And they want infinite profit at the sake of everything else. If you want to solve this problem then you need to remove them from the equation entirely…

Shareholders by definition are not short term investors. Short term investors own bonds, short term ones to be specific. So it makes no sense that shareholders are scapegoated for everything. Even if someone trades in and out of Boeing stock in a millisecond, the existence of someone to sell to depends on people having an indefinitely long view of the company.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#16

Post by pcurve »

yummypaint wrote: post #8
fzeroracer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to keep in mind for these companies keeping the customer happy is not the intent. It's merely a coincidental side effect of any potential profit seeking they do. The only people they really care about and are accountable to are the shareholders and investors. And they want infinite profit at the sake of everything else. If you want to solve this problem then you need to remove them from the equation entirely…

All publicity traded companies are the same. The only distinction is the means they use to make money at first. Making money is the only goal, and shareholders demand growth quarter over quarter. This is why the fate of successful public companies is to become broader in scope while leveraging anti-competitive practices. The possible end results are either that the company is killed off, or that it effectively become…

"Making money is the only goal, and shareholders demand growth quarter over quarter"

I think shareholders of Boeing would also expect stable growth through sound risk management

Nickel and diming on safety features and training is playing with fire.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#17

Post by mseidl »

petilon wrote: post #13
MaupitiBlue wrote: post #7

I'm sorry, but what does squeezing jobs have to do with: 1. Drive MCAS with only one AOA sensor. 2. Don't tell MCAS to look for (or even think about) bad AOA data or AOA disagreements. 3. Equip airplane with two AOA sensors as usual, but make the AOA disagree warning light a "value added option" that customers have to pay extra for. 4. Don't actually bother to tell pilots that they don't have AOA disagree warning lig…

You missed the big one that even made MCAS necessary: 0. Reposition the engine forward on the wing such that the airframe is inherently unstable and needs software for stabilization.

Plus if I remember they didn't mention the MCAS anywhere?

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#18

Post by markus_zhang »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #5

I hate the "everything must be a profit center" MBA attitude. Boeing is a profitable company because they make machines that fly people from place to place safely and efficiently. Part of that is having training, support, service, replacement parts, sales, manufacturing, IT, R&D, and all the other things required to make things fly. It's easy to sit in a conference room and say "gee, IT hasn't made any money, instead…

That's what Capitalism does, to make as much money as possible. And it's up to the government to regulate them, and it failed to do so.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#19

Post by mopsi »

markus_zhang wrote: post #18
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #5

I hate the "everything must be a profit center" MBA attitude. Boeing is a profitable company because they make machines that fly people from place to place safely and efficiently. Part of that is having training, support, service, replacement parts, sales, manufacturing, IT, R&D, and all the other things required to make things fly. It's easy to sit in a conference room and say "gee, IT hasn't made any money, instead…

That's what Capitalism does, to make as much money as possible. And it's up to the government to regulate them, and it failed to do so.

> That's what Capitalism does

Not so fast - scroll through it, to 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_accidents_and_inciden... Be sure to expand sub-articles.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#20

Post by bumby »

MaupitiBlue wrote: post #7

I'm sorry, but what does squeezing jobs have to do with: 1. Drive MCAS with only one AOA sensor. 2. Don't tell MCAS to look for (or even think about) bad AOA data or AOA disagreements. 3. Equip airplane with two AOA sensors as usual, but make the AOA disagree warning light a "value added option" that customers have to pay extra for. 4. Don't actually bother to tell pilots that they don't have AOA disagree warning lig…

In broad terms, I think the intent of the article is to point out the potential for quality to suffer when duties are outsourced, in part because an organization relinquishes some level of process control as a trade off to save money.

The same argument could be extended to the FAA oversight functions being “outsourced” to Boeing which may have had a direct impact on all those items you listed

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