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Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

justice.gov

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Re: Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

#141

Post by landemva »

dboreham wrote: post #82
pdonis wrote: post #65

While I don't have any sympathy for this pilot, I also find the FAA's excuses here to be less than convincing. Basically, their position is "Well, we trusted this Boeing employee to tell us the truth about the new flight controls, and he didn't." But if the regulators had actually done their job and independently evaluated the new flight controls, they wouldn't have had to take the word of any Boeing employees. I rea…

How were they supposed to do that? They'd have had to either review the source code and somehow notice that it had too much control authority over the horizontal stabilizer, or run the flight control system in a simulator that reproduced the failure conditions found in the field. These seem _possible_ but not exactly easy. It'd have been much easier for the Boeing engineers who designed the thing so badly to have had…

FAA could have looked at how the fans were upsized and pushed forward to avoid dragging on the runway, and called for a new type certification. The FAA failed by allowing Boeing to not get a new type certification, which would have required greater scrutiny of the new airframe.

Re: Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

#142

Post by WalterBright »

ummonk wrote: post #125
atdrummond wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t flag replies like this; thankfully I was able to vouch for Walt. For some background, Walt and I are routinely brigaded with downvotes on 737 MAX threads. What he and I have in common, compared to those who engage in such behaviors, is that unlike those we typically are replying to, we both have extensive backgrounds in the aviation field, especially on the programming side. Back on topic, the takeaway t…

Why are you bringing up Lion Air pilots when the discussion is about the Ethiopian Airlines flight?

The first LA crew was not aware of the existence of MCAS, nor did they have the benefit of the Emergency Airworthiness Directive. But they worked the problem and solved it and landed safely.

Re: Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

#143

Post by dhx »

jetrink wrote: post #136
dhx wrote: post #130

Internal Boeing e-mails between various Chief Technical Pilots and other Boeing staff are available at [1]. It shows that there was an overarching requirement for the program to to ensure that 737 pilots could fly the 737 MAX with minimal "Level B" training (e.g. no need for hours of simulator training). Per [2], MCAS was poorly designed and exhibited a failure mode (e.g. AOA sensor failure) that required immediate p…

One note: 'Yours truly' is typically used to refer to oneself, so it seems that you are claiming to be the indicted pilot.

Thanks for the correction :)

More background on usage at: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/166332/how-did-y...

Re: Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

#144

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

landemva wrote: post #141
dboreham wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How were they supposed to do that? They'd have had to either review the source code and somehow notice that it had too much control authority over the horizontal stabilizer, or run the flight control system in a simulator that reproduced the failure conditions found in the field. These seem _possible_ but not exactly easy. It'd have been much easier for the Boeing engineers who designed the thing so badly to have had…

FAA could have looked at how the fans were upsized and pushed forward to avoid dragging on the runway, and called for a new type certification. The FAA failed by allowing Boeing to not get a new type certification, which would have required greater scrutiny of the new airframe.

the airframe was fine. the problem was that mcas was implemented in a totally shitty way. If it had just replied on 3 sensors instead of 1, wet likely wouldn't be talking about it now.

Re: Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

#145

Post by WalterBright »

buildsjets wrote: post #105
WalterBright wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Aviation Disasters" did a much better episode on it than Frontline.

The Frontline episode on PBS is 50% teary-eyed emotional testimonials from the victim’s families, interspersed with 25% stock footage and 25% poorly summarized, and in many cases technically incorrect explanation. The Smithsonian Channel Episode “Ten Steps to Disaster” is far more technically accurate, and also deep dives the technical, business, and regulatory decisions that lead to the disaster. https://www.smithso…

Thanks for the reference. I'll look at it later. I was pretty disillusioned by Frontline. I always knew they were biased, but thought they made an honest attempt to present the facts.

No more.

Re: Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

#146

Post by r3trohack3r »

dataflow wrote: post #111
user_7832 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you talk about the FAA doing thier own testing and validation is (unfortunately) almost impossible. Back in the 90s, a senior FAA official (I think a Director) had said something along the lines of “The FAA does not and cannot check everything, we just see that companies are doing their tests.” The FAA would require several times more manpower to be able to actually audit or test everything, and that is assuming…

It wouldn't require several times more manpower for the FAA to figure out there's something called MCAS that didn't exist before, would it? (Note that I'm talking in the current world we live in, not in a hypothetical world where Boeing would be a mortal enemy of the FAA doing everything within the stretch of human imagination to hide MCAS.)

Out of curiosity, how confident are you that there aren’t any other novel systems that didn’t exist before on a similar level as MCAS?

Having not had a public debacle around them, how much effort would it take for you to personally certify that MCAS is the only novel system of its caliber on these aircraft?

Re: Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

#148

Post by dataflow »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #146
dataflow wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't require several times more manpower for the FAA to figure out there's something called MCAS that didn't exist before, would it? (Note that I'm talking in the current world we live in, not in a hypothetical world where Boeing would be a mortal enemy of the FAA doing everything within the stretch of human imagination to hide MCAS.)

Out of curiosity, how confident are you that there aren’t any other novel systems that didn’t exist before on a similar level as MCAS? Having not had a public debacle around them, how much effort would it take for you to personally certify that MCAS is the only novel system of its caliber on these aircraft?

> Out of curiosity, how confident are you that there aren’t any other novel systems that didn’t exist before on a similar level as MCAS?

Me? What makes you think I would have information on this?

If I had to hazard a random guess, I would think that, if you're talking about the MAX 8, there have been enough leaks and testimonies and whistleblowers that any comparable system would have probably been mentioned somewhere. I have no idea either way, I haven't read everything that's gotten out. But I don't see why a regulator couldn't use various means to figure stuff like this out with reasonably high confidence.

Re: Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

#149

Post by jaycroft »

smnrchrds wrote: post #120
user_7832 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you talk about the FAA doing thier own testing and validation is (unfortunately) almost impossible. Back in the 90s, a senior FAA official (I think a Director) had said something along the lines of “The FAA does not and cannot check everything, we just see that companies are doing their tests.” The FAA would require several times more manpower to be able to actually audit or test everything, and that is assuming…

I don't think this style of regulation is limited to FAA. FDA does not independently test all drugs either. They just review and ensure the drug companies' tests are acceptable.

And FINRA is made up of brokers and banks but overseen by the SEC. The EPA doesn't directly monitor every factory. The NTSB sets general testing guidelines and standards and seems to have greatly increased auto and aviation safety, but they can't police everything and at least to the public seem to regulate after the fact.

The general term, I believe, is self-regulatory-organization. The theory, I guess, is that the government sets the laws and says very generally, "no fraud", and "you have to write your own rules and make sure they're good", but offers little technical guidance otherwise. I think this could work well if there were very heavy penalties for failures to self-police, but in practice the revolving door between government and industry incentivizes slap on the wrist style punishment. It's a hard problem and I don't think we're doing well over the last few decades.

Re: Former Boeing 737 Max Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

#150

Post by picsao »

user_7832 wrote: post #94
pdonis wrote: post #65

While I don't have any sympathy for this pilot, I also find the FAA's excuses here to be less than convincing. Basically, their position is "Well, we trusted this Boeing employee to tell us the truth about the new flight controls, and he didn't." But if the regulators had actually done their job and independently evaluated the new flight controls, they wouldn't have had to take the word of any Boeing employees. I rea…

What you talk about the FAA doing thier own testing and validation is (unfortunately) almost impossible. Back in the 90s, a senior FAA official (I think a Director) had said something along the lines of “The FAA does not and cannot check everything, we just see that companies are doing their tests.” The FAA would require several times more manpower to be able to actually audit or test everything, and that is assuming…

They could sample statements sporadically and thus have some checks instead of none?
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