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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

#131

Post by phire »

tigershark wrote: post #73
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?

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.

As long as they give pilots proper training, I'd actually rather fly on the recertified MAX than certain other Boeing planes.

They have gone though the whole plane with a fine toothed comb, Identifying any other potential problems. It will probably be the safest Boeing in the sky.

This whole MAX situation has made me very nervous about flying on the 787 (built in the same era) or the 737 NG (while it lacks MCAS, something else could theoretically put the stabilizer massively out of trim, and this whole situation has proven pilots have problems recovering from out-of-trim stabilizers)

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

#132

Post by makomk »

If anyone is reading the original messages, this might provide some context for the comments mocking the competence and training of the FTC's AEG:

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/senat...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/faa...

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

#133

Post by acollins1331 »

makomk wrote: post #130
lgeorget wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I want to defend Boeing, but it's easy to play Nostradamus and predict catastrophies to then only dig up the prophecies if they turn up true. The article doesn't say how much the claims were substantiated and backed up by the concerned employees. Looking back, Boeing certainly should have investigated the claims more seriously but just from reading the article I feel we don't have a very clear picture of wha…

Also, this prophecy didn't come true. If anything it was completely ass-backwards - it's about the quality of the 737 MAX sim, not the plane itself, and it looks like Boeing's engineers believed internally that Boeing shouldn't have pushed so hard to release it given that existing 737 pilots didn't need simulator training on the MAX and felt safer flying on the MAX with pilots trained on the NG than they did about fl…

But that's the whole point. They literally made the MCAS system basically impossible to override just to not have their pilots do training.

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

#134

Post by svara »

morsch wrote: post #102
beefield wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Only per mile. Per journey it's the most dangerous transport typically used. Per hour it's about average. This doesn't matter if you have to make a specific trip (the number of miles is fixed), but that's not always the case. Whatever you do, don't walk, that seems to be the most dangerous common mode of transportation (unless motorcycles are common). "Aviation industry insurers base their calculations on the deaths…

Your point that accidents per journey might be more interesting than accidents per passenger-kilometer is a very good one, however it seems like the data in the table in the Wikipedia article you linked is a bit old ("The following table displays these statistics for the United Kingdom 1990–2000").

If you take a look at the "Fatalities per trillion revenue passenger kilometres" plot in the same article, it looks like flying got a lot safer since 2000 (maybe ~10x?).

The conclusion that flying isn't a lot safer than other common modes of transport when you compare by journey is still correct though... (But maybe it is a little bit safer, or similarly safe).

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

#135

Post by chopin »

rusk wrote: post #111
cm2187 wrote: post #106

I must say that seeing the SEC’s handling of internal emails in the Tourre affair taught me a lesson about internal corporate communications. Some personal emails which were unrelated to the affair were published in the SEC report (clearly for the benefit of the front page of newspapers). The extract contained jokes where the sentence had been edited to alter the meaning of the sentence. The published extract was “wh…

It amazes me in this day and age that people don't realise that anything they say on these systems can be dug out and read by anybody, anywhere at any time ...

You're not thinking about this with every keystroke even if you know this. I certainly don't.

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

#136

Post by [deleted] »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #113
cedivad wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VW wasn't nearly as bad. People need to go to jail over those deaths and their legacy used as a reminder for those that come next. Here is another damning Boeing message, follow the source for more: https://twitter.com/cedivad/status/1215558552229683200

Define bad. As a cyclist in Europe I breathe in fumes from VWs diesel engines on a daily basis. I'm wondering how shorter the lifespan for me and others like me will be in the long run. I'd say that's pretty bad but as the deaths are not instantaneous, the long term damage is difficult to quantify.

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by rusk »

chopin wrote: post #135
rusk wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amazes me in this day and age that people don't realise that anything they say on these systems can be dug out and read by anybody, anywhere at any time ...

You're not thinking about this with every keystroke even if you know this. I certainly don't.

I absolutely do. If I'm typing it I'm checking myself just as if I were speaking across an open plan office.

The only way you'll ever know what I actually really think about something controversial is if you ask me face to face, or maybe, on a phone call.

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

#139

Post by rsynnott »

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, but that's not really the choice, usually. You would in most circumstances have a choice between a MAX and an -800 or a320.

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

#140

Post by rsynnott »

seibelj wrote: post #10
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?

How many people in the government knew about the NSA spying on citizens before Snowden finally spilled the info? That was a massive effort involving many (thousands?) of people. Then when Snowden reveals it, his life is destroyed and he’s forced to live in exile. Sends a very strong warning to any other potential do-gooders considering telling the truth.

Eh. In that case, there _had_ been prior leaks, for years; they were just much less complete and taken less seriously. As far as I know, there was never a pre-production leak that Boeing employees thought the MAX was unsafe.
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