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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

#161

Post by f6v »

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…

Like, how many new major passenger planes do they have to test every year? 0.1 on average?

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

#162

Post by tibbydudeza »

FAA outsourced it responsibility to Boeing - basically just a rubberstamp - no wonder the European and Chinese air safety folks wanted to do their own testing.

Never happened before as the FAA used to be the gold standard for safety - looks they have been gutted by the govt.

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

#163

Post by jmnicolas »

refurb wrote: post #69
steveBK123 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There's a reason when you deal with people senior enough in any big organization that everything is verbal...

“Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink, never wink if you can do nothing.”

It reminds me of Lenin signing lists of people to be executed and when asked later about it, saying that his signature was just to show he had read the list not to approve of executions.

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

#164

Post by dsq »

It is important to note that Boeing settled for 2.5 billion in which it is agreed that "...the misconduct by its former employees was “neither pervasive across the organization, nor undertaken by a large number of employees, nor facilitated by senior management". (https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-reaches-2-5-billion-sett...).

So remember, when push comes to shove, the technical lead always gets thrown to the wolves while management goes "we don't know about that technical stuff".

Not to detract in any way from what he is culpable for.

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

#165

Post by dehrmann »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #63
systemvoltage wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any downsides to this?

Loss of institutional memory encoded in the destroyed records.

In a broad sense, not specifically related to not retaining data as a legal protection, institutional memory is somewhat overrated because of how much low-value content is retained and how it was a snapshot of how a different world was understood.

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

#166

Post by nickff »

lazide wrote: post #109
maxerickson wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The defeat devices were designed to detect dyno conditions and reduce emissions, it wasn't a case of a regulator trusting a computer output. They were uncovered by doing road tests.

Which a competent regulator would surely be doing randomly across the industry no? If all they are doing is trusting what the regulated folks are saying they are doing, that isn’t what I would call effective regulation.

Most regulators don’t verify much, (the SEC almost never actually looks at bank account balances,) they just look for inconsistencies in the information they receive.

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

#167

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

f6v wrote: post #161
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…

Like, how many new major passenger planes do they have to test every year? 0.1 on average?

Or, more precisely: How many new major passenger planes a year that are trying to imitate the same type rating as an older aircraft do they have to test a year?

In that specific case probably the important parts to review are the bits that try to make the new airframe handle the same as the old one.

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

#168

Post by rdiddly »

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…

None of those are unfixable problems at the FAA though. It all just boils down to a hiring problem. (If there were a will to actually have a functioning government.)

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

#169

Post by yason »

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…

FAA could facilitate smoketesting and focus on parts they deem the most suspicious/experimental/new in a new airplane. And then outsource the actual tests to a third party.

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

#170

Post by lazide »

tw04 wrote: post #131
lazide wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like they are knowingly incompetent? If a utility regulator had no one on staff who knew how utility scale power transmission/generation/whatever worked, that’s what we’d call it for sure. And aerospace engineers are dirt cheap. What sort of clown show is the FAA running?

> That sounds like they are knowingly incompetent? That sounds like they are knowingly underfunded, which they are. > And aerospace engineers are dirt cheap. They are? Where are all the airline startups? I assume they measure in the hundreds with all this dirt cheap talent running around.

Aerospace engineers have as much to do with airlines as software engineers have to do with data entry companies. Which is to say pretty much nothing.

Aerospace requires lots of capital expense and is very ‘large customer’ driven and aerospace engineers play second (or third) fiddle to that, unlike in software.

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