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Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

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Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#81

Post by tigershark »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #79
oska wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I'll be boycotting the Max just on principle, regardless of what extra safety measures are implemented to get it re-certified. I'm hoping (and kind of expecting) that people will build simple apps or websites to check whether an advertised flight is on a 737 Max. It should be quite easy for people to avoid/boycott this plane.

> regardless of what extra safety measures are implemented to get it re-certified. To be fair, after this the Max is likely to be one of the most intensively studied and prepped planes in existence for pilots who might have to fly one. Pilots don't want to die either.

How can all the study and preparation of a pilot help in a catastrophic mechanical failure caused by some likely design flaw that still is not apparent?

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#82

Post by vinay427 »

beefield wrote: post #76
tigershark wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here on hn, on the other hand, there are plenty of people that say that they don’t see any problem in flying on the max once it is again in service. From my point of view I’ll happily let them be the guinea pigs while I’ll avoid at all costs to fly on that death machine.

To be fair, flying in MAX was/would still be orders of magnitude safer than pretty much any other transportation method outside flying. (No, I don't think I still want to fly that, either)

Sure, though many people aren't deciding between flying a 737 MAX and driving or taking a bus. They're often deciding between flying on a specific flight that uses a 737 MAX and flying at a different time and/or on a different airline that doesn't use a 737 MAX.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#83

Post by fooker »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #31
admax88q wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably internal employees are familiar with the design process of planes. Or do you suspect they make statements like this for every plane during th early stages?

I have no idea. I doubt anybody commenting in this thread does either, given the complete lack of context. Given Boeing’s proven track record, you could potentially speculate that the comments are actually in reference to some serious failure. But the quote as it’s presented doesn’t provide any meaningful information.

The 'proven track record' is pretty much non existent at this point.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#84

Post by tigershark »

beefield wrote: post #76
tigershark wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here on hn, on the other hand, there are plenty of people that say that they don’t see any problem in flying on the max once it is again in service. From my point of view I’ll happily let them be the guinea pigs while I’ll avoid at all costs to fly on that death machine.

To be fair, flying in MAX was/would still be orders of magnitude safer than pretty much any other transportation method outside flying. (No, I don't think I still want to fly that, either)

From my back of the envelope calculations at the time of the second crash they had worse safety than a car. Did you run the actual numbers?

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#85

Post by ReptileMan »

kortilla wrote: post #52
thaumasiotes wrote: post #3

Geez. > "Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn't," says one employee to another, who responds, "No." > Peter DeFazio, [D-Oregon], called newly released documents "incredibly damning" That's hard to argue with. You'd like to think this kind of thing would... leak. Who said conspiracies involving hundreds of people are impossible?

Two things: 1. You would be surprised at how normal talk like that is in huge corporations due to internal politics. People bad-mouth other projects that are getting limelight, taking away resources, etc. A more benign example is how often Google employees rag on the GCP engineers as being inferior, which has more to do with the money flowing into GCP than merit. 2. People are irrational about safety, despite data sh…

In pilot lingo there are four levels of trust in a pilot (ascending order):

1. I won't fly with you 2. I will fly with you 3. I will fly with you and take my shoes off during take off 4. I will let my family fly with you.

This phrase used verbatim means quite a lot.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#86

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

Pxtl wrote: post #9
shadowgovt wrote: post #2

Any internal correspondence can become public information in a disclosure proces. ~ first rule of corporate communications

Yup. Talk as much crap as you want in person, but what goes in email and web messages and pull-requests and code comments must be immaculate.

Heh, this reminds me: at a former employer, the eng team communicated exclusively by IRC (when Slack was already a thing) specifically because the CTO had previously experienced his communications being picked apart and taken out of context when his old company had ended up in the scope of a congressional investigation. So that's one way around it...

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#87

Post by ReptileMan »

dehrmann wrote: post #36
btmorex wrote: post #24

I think the only thing that can actually fix Boeing is bankruptcy, so I hope that people refuse to fly on the Max even after recertification and it ends up being too big of a financial blow to recover from.

How would bankruptcy fix Boeing? Bankruptcy is a process around restructuring debts (or winding down the company). It's also very likely to get a bailout (if it comes to that) since the world needs more than one major commercial aircraft maker.

Bankruptcy is also great time to fix corporate culture. People are malleable when no one is sure if the next paycheck will come at all.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#88

Post by markdown »

antpls wrote: post #65

Other quote from the reuters article ( https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-737max/designed-by... ) : “I want to stress the importance of holding firm that there will not be any type of simulator training required to transition from NG to MAX,” Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot said in a March 2017 email. “Boeing will not allow that to happen. We’ll go face to face with any regulator who tries to make that a re…

> Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot

He's one who really needs to go to jail. Why didn't they name him?

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#89

Post by smcl »

a1369209993 wrote: post #38
dannyw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing is saying the language used and sentiments expressed are bad. They're not saying that releasing a plane that employees were sounding safety alarms are about is bad.

This. Exactly this. They are literally saying: > [Sounding safety alarms is] inconsistent with Boeing values, and the company is taking appropriate [ie punitive] action in response [to prevent any alarms on the next unsafe design].

Boeing were dangerously incompetent w.r.t the 777 MAX, but I have to disagree here - this isn't about putting down whistleblowing or dissenting opinions. What they're saying is they are gonna slap some people on the wrist and issue company wide memo saying something to the effect of "Please don't say stupid embarrassing stuff like this in the company chat or over email".

However we are in agreement that this isn't a commitment to fix any of underlying issues that caused this mess.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#90

Post by mschuster91 »

Pfhreak wrote: post #55
btmorex wrote: post #24

I think the only thing that can actually fix Boeing is bankruptcy, so I hope that people refuse to fly on the Max even after recertification and it ends up being too big of a financial blow to recover from.

Or nationalization. Make success about safety and transport rather maximizing profit.

Boeing (and Airbus) are effectively nationalized: no matter what, their respective governments will bail them out due to their importance for military hardware.
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