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US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

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Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#31

Post by nerpderp82 »

rkangel wrote: post #23
dmurray wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockbroking, cinema, accountancy, law, life insurance, financial planning, nuclear power, real estate, medicine, advertising, media...[0][1] Self-regulation (especially at the industry level rather than delegating to individual companies) doesn't seem completely broken. Actually it can work quite well. You keep some oversight, and reserve the right for the state regulator to step in if the SRO goes bad. The people w…

An industry regulating itself is different from an organisation regulating itself. Self regulation of the industry is common as you say. It tends to involve one central body enforcing the standards on the members, and acting as a central point for agreement of the standards. This is not the case with the Aviation regulation. The FAA is the regulator, and has delegated the testing to the people it is meant to be regul…

Self regulation would mean that the org should face much stiffer penalties for failing in its regulation related duties. The increased agency needs to also come with increased responsibility.

Something like notaries, guilds or unions that can speak the truth without retribution ...

No, we need independent regulation. We don't have the societal norms to pull off self regulation.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#32

Post by keenmaster »

dmurray wrote: post #17
brink wrote: post #6

What other industry is allowed to inspect itself? It completely ruins the point of an inspection. It's like being the judge and jury in your own trial. I'm amazed this is a thing in the first place.

Stockbroking, cinema, accountancy, law, life insurance, financial planning, nuclear power, real estate, medicine, advertising, media...[0][1] Self-regulation (especially at the industry level rather than delegating to individual companies) doesn't seem completely broken. Actually it can work quite well. You keep some oversight, and reserve the right for the state regulator to step in if the SRO goes bad. The people w…

Self-regulatory bodies are usually centralized and separate from any individual corporation. They also tend to answer directly to a government agency and cannot be disciplined by a corporation. While there can still be issues such as a strong revolving door and potential indirect pressure to be nice to the regulated entities, it’s not as terrible as what Boeing and other airplane manufacturers get to do (inspect themselves in lieu of regulatory inspections). That’s strange, because lives are literally on the line, more so than some other industries with more independent examinations.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#33

Post by pleasantpeasant »

dmurray wrote: post #17
brink wrote: post #6

What other industry is allowed to inspect itself? It completely ruins the point of an inspection. It's like being the judge and jury in your own trial. I'm amazed this is a thing in the first place.

Stockbroking, cinema, accountancy, law, life insurance, financial planning, nuclear power, real estate, medicine, advertising, media...[0][1] Self-regulation (especially at the industry level rather than delegating to individual companies) doesn't seem completely broken. Actually it can work quite well. You keep some oversight, and reserve the right for the state regulator to step in if the SRO goes bad. The people w…

SRO sounds like a middle-man in this process. And like all middle-man industries, they suck out money from both sides that they deal with.

We can easily publicly fund over-sight committees to oversee these industries instead of relying on SROs who take tax-payer money and are in the perfect financial and power position to do some really corrupt and immoral things.

Look at the National Association of Realtors, another SRO— On October 31, 2023, a federal civil jury found that the NAR had conspired to inflate commissions paid to home-buyers' real estate agents, and determined that NAR and its codefendants owed damages of almost US$1,800,000,000.

Zillow and NAR have anti-trust lawsuits coming their way too. Relying on SROs is just asking for corruption, imo.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#35

Post by jncfhnb »

rkangel wrote: post #23
dmurray wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockbroking, cinema, accountancy, law, life insurance, financial planning, nuclear power, real estate, medicine, advertising, media...[0][1] Self-regulation (especially at the industry level rather than delegating to individual companies) doesn't seem completely broken. Actually it can work quite well. You keep some oversight, and reserve the right for the state regulator to step in if the SRO goes bad. The people w…

An industry regulating itself is different from an organisation regulating itself. Self regulation of the industry is common as you say. It tends to involve one central body enforcing the standards on the members, and acting as a central point for agreement of the standards. This is not the case with the Aviation regulation. The FAA is the regulator, and has delegated the testing to the people it is meant to be regul…

That’s largely fine though because the stick to enforce good diligence is the threat that the ability to self regulate is removed. As is being seen.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#36

Post by mardifoufs »

game_the0ry wrote: post #5

Finally, after a couple of plane crashes, fantastic investigative journalism, and a door blowing off mid flight (thankfully that was caught on video and shared). Too little, too late. We should regulate the regulators, bc I don't trust them either.

The plane crashes had nothing to do with inspection. You could've inspected a 737max down to every single bolt back in 2017 and not have prevented the crashes that happened after that.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#37

Post by tuetuopay »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #9
gmerc wrote: post #4

What’s there to consider even - political connections?

Does the faa have enough qualified staff and budget to review boeings planes? Does anyone other than Boeing have them, since noone else does it? Legitimate question. Would you poach a bunch of engineers from the airlines/military?

hire airbus to inspect boeing, and hire boeing to inspect airbus?

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#38

Post by josh_carterPDX »

brink wrote: post #6

What other industry is allowed to inspect itself? It completely ruins the point of an inspection. It's like being the judge and jury in your own trial. I'm amazed this is a thing in the first place.

The FAA is bad, but I would say the FDA is worse.

Any industry in which you have companies actually writing the text of the regulations used to oversee them is a recipe for disaster.

Sadly it usually takes a tragedy to highlight these egregious systems that exist in our country. We also need to get lobbyists out of Washington so that the real impactful work can begin to separate the government agencies from the companies they're meant to regulate.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#39

Post by jillesvangurp »

voakbasda wrote: post #3

Dear regulators, Do it. Do it now. Sincerely, Everyone

Easier said then done. Inspecting planes is job that requires a lot of skill and knowledge. Most of those people aren't cheap and they tend to work for airplane companies that need their skills and can pay their salaries. Which in the US means Boeing basically employs all the best people for this.

IMHO, the system actually works just fine. Accidents are extremely rare and companies tend to learn from them.

A better fix would maybe be to just make it really expensive for Boeing to cut corners here and put mechanisms in place to verify that they aren't. And you could argue that is the case already. Their reputation suffered and it probably shows in their order books. So, I'm guessing they are very eager and well incentivized to move on from that.

And looking at the Airbus and Boeing stock price suggests that Boeing stock has never recovered from that. Both stocks went down a lot at the beginning of Covid. But the Airbus stock has basically recovered from that and Boeing hasn't.

Even the mere threat of regulators getting more strict is probably making investors really nervous. That could end up being more effective than any actual inspections.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#40

Post by throwup238 »

brink wrote: post #6

What other industry is allowed to inspect itself? It completely ruins the point of an inspection. It's like being the judge and jury in your own trial. I'm amazed this is a thing in the first place.

Clinical diagnostics, for example. Any time you take a blood test and send it off somewhere (Quest, LabCorp, etc.) to get assayed, chances are it goes to a self-regulated and self-inspected lab. These labs hire FDA certified "lab managers" as consultants or employees who are then responsible for all QA/QC procedures and certifying that the lab is capable of doing what they claim. They can be held criminally liable and have quite a bit of authority (a bit like professional engineers) but it's still a cozy employer-employee relationship.

The FDA steps in when something goes really bad but I've never seen them do official spot checks without cause.

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