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FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

theregister.com

111–120 of 121 posts

Re: FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FAA has a budget of USD ~23,000m. Surely you can fit in some experts there. EASA fills a similar role on a budget a 100 times smaller (in USD it's ~300m), paying for ~800 personnel. The main difference is that EASA doesn't handle ATC, but it shows that the aspect of the FTC's duties we are talking about here really can't be that expensive. If you'd 10x the budget of the FAA, it would have the same budget as the e…

> If you'd 10x the budget of the FAA, it would have the same budget as the entire EU or 4x Airbus/Boeing's revenue. That's ridiculous. 10x is a bit ridiculous but I'm not sure it's that ridiculous for the FAA to have more expenditures than Boeing. Sure, FAA (requested) budget is 22 Billion [1] while Boeing's revenue is 66 Billion [2]. However, United Airlines revenue is 57 Billion [3]. The FAA doesn't just manage Boe…

This thread was not discussing the FAA's ATC duties.

I was trying to take the ATC component of the FAA out of the equation and illustrate why that is necessary. We should be looking specifically at the arm that certifies aircraft and try to figure out which order of magnitude we're dealing with. Luckily their European counterpart exists, which does not do ATC and thus allows us to get a better idea.

In fact if you look at the FAA's budget request breakdown you can see that the requested budget for their entire AVS services arm is less than 2B[1] (still much more expensive than EASA, but not too terrible).

While your comment is interesting, it's only tangential to what is being discussed.

[1] https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2025-05/F...

Re: FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like you are just a racist trying to pin things on black people. Mr. Racist, here's a little fact check from chatGPT. You are still blaming people for their skin color - have some shame. 1. No "2013 airframe scandal" like that exists. Boeing has had multiple controversies (e.g. outsourcing of 787 Dreamliner parts, later the 737 MAX crisis), but none that match this story. In the 2000s and early 2010s, Boeing di…

It's not really worth replying to racists, but I can't trust a ChatGPT rebuttal to be anything resembling factually correct. In future, I'd advise pointing out the bigotry, rebutting the things you know to be false, and then ending the comment there.

I think this is the wrong method to deal with racist people. You’re talking to someone while criticizing the other and hoping the message will be read, this can be construed as passive-aggressive.

More importantly, by aiming for a strict exclusion, you make it into a us-or-them stake. Without discussion, they’ll just have to get rid of you, or you of them, but no entendre is possible. In this day and age, I think we should rather listen to each other and try to work on a centrist solution rather than leading to the current situation, which we’re all paying.

By being closed-minded, you miss informing yourself about racism prevention. By doing this, you do not try to resolve the problems, but create your own opponent.

Fourth, it may very well happen that GP became racist after a rape, for example. By segregating victims, you help criminals reproduce the crimes. As a matter of fact, if you chose racism, like the one made by your political leaders when they used race in their criteria to filter the location of the jobs, to derive the strategy of Boeing, and it mades planes crashes, and you cover it up with your accusations, it makes more planes crash.

Re: FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

#113
post #77
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're wondering - hey, that sounds terrible, why doesn't the FAA do anything about it? Answer, because it practically can't without maybe a 10x or more budget boost that's practically impossible. You're correct in that the FAA can't (or at least, it would be wildly impractical) have a staff of in-house experts that equal or exceed the experience of the manufacturer engineers on every possible topic. But, that's…

> It can be done by enforcing that the company must establish and document the processes to ensure quality You have no ideea. It's sooo extremely easy to fake everything! I'm working with ISO15189 right now. I could just fill paperwork saying I did things that I didn't really do. Nobody could tell the difference. Sometimes there's an audit. It's announced months in advance and they only just look at the paperwork. I'…

> It's sooo extremely easy to fake everything!

The consequences part that I mentioned is where it's at, if one wanted to design a functioning system.

If there's an incident and the investigation reveals an engineer signed off on something that was contrary to process, they lose their license and get to switch careers to something else.

If it turns out management pushed the engineer to do that, personal liability on management means they get to do some long jail time.

With those two enforcement points, you cut out nearly all the cheating.

Re: FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

#114
post #99
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government money will never run away.

Elections matter

To a company like Boeing? I think their tendrils are deep enough into government that it doesn't matter who the administration of the day is.

The number of people who work in government and the military and aren't subject to elections is orders of magnitude greater than the number of elected politicians.

Re: FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

#115
post #104
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes, no paperwork, I completely forgot about that. It's even more common than fake doing stuff. Don't be so confident that falsification can be spotted. It usually can't. Or require very time-consuming cross-checks that I never saw happen in my entire 20y career, such as comparing the number times an internal control was run vs. the quantity of consumables used in the process that were bought. In case of Boeing,…

But when the plane finally crashes, wouldn't it be obvious in the investigation? Wouldn't that lead to further inspections of other planes?

But the procedure/QC already failed - those people are dead...

Re: FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

#116
post #113
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It can be done by enforcing that the company must establish and document the processes to ensure quality You have no ideea. It's sooo extremely easy to fake everything! I'm working with ISO15189 right now. I could just fill paperwork saying I did things that I didn't really do. Nobody could tell the difference. Sometimes there's an audit. It's announced months in advance and they only just look at the paperwork. I'…

> It's sooo extremely easy to fake everything! The consequences part that I mentioned is where it's at, if one wanted to design a functioning system. If there's an incident and the investigation reveals an engineer signed off on something that was contrary to process, they lose their license and get to switch careers to something else. If it turns out management pushed the engineer to do that, personal liability on m…

Personal liability on management never happens. If it did, they would find a way to transfer it somewhere else: a contractor from 3rd world country, a discardable subsidiary, etc. Nothing will stand in the way of profits, not even bad publicity - they would just sell / be bought, rebrand, and do it all over again.

Re: FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

#117
post #115
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But when the plane finally crashes, wouldn't it be obvious in the investigation? Wouldn't that lead to further inspections of other planes?

But the procedure/QC already failed - those people are dead...

Yeah, but sometimes "if your negligence kills these people we will put you in jail" is exactly how you get people to pay attention. The vital part is closing the loop.

Re: FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

#118
post #117
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the procedure/QC already failed - those people are dead...

Yeah, but sometimes "if your negligence kills these people we will put you in jail" is exactly how you get people to pay attention. The vital part is closing the loop.

I disagree. That's not how it works. Responsibility is a product of education and environment, not a product of fear. Fear makes people avoid responsibility, not assume it.

Re: FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

#119
post #118
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but sometimes "if your negligence kills these people we will put you in jail" is exactly how you get people to pay attention. The vital part is closing the loop.

I disagree. That's not how it works. Responsibility is a product of education and environment, not a product of fear. Fear makes people avoid responsibility, not assume it.

Fear is a phenomenal backstop to responsibility, and in fact most aviation safety relies on the fact that pilots don't want to die.

Paperwork should be regularly audited and discrepancies investigated. The other nice thing about fear is that it should be very specific - people should know exactly what they have to do to not feel it.

Re: FAA is granting Boeing “limited delegation” to certify airworthiness

#120
post #116
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's sooo extremely easy to fake everything! The consequences part that I mentioned is where it's at, if one wanted to design a functioning system. If there's an incident and the investigation reveals an engineer signed off on something that was contrary to process, they lose their license and get to switch careers to something else. If it turns out management pushed the engineer to do that, personal liability on m…

Personal liability on management never happens. If it did, they would find a way to transfer it somewhere else: a contractor from 3rd world country, a discardable subsidiary, etc. Nothing will stand in the way of profits, not even bad publicity - they would just sell / be bought, rebrand, and do it all over again.

> Personal liability on management never happens.

Oh, of course it'll never happen. I'm just responding to the thread that if a government actually wanted to create an effective quality mechanism, it's possible.

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