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Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

reuters.com

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Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#21

Post by reaperducer »

jonplackett wrote: post #14
Judson wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if the link originally pointed to NYT, but the currently linked reuters report adds a bit more context to the messages. >Forkner said in one text message, “I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly).” The other employee responded that “it wasn’t a lie, no one told us that was the case” of an issue with MCAS. >Forkner responded soon after: “Granted I suck at flying, but even this was egregious.”

I don’t really understand the context of these messages. The one about MCAS running rampant is clear enough but what does he mean saying that he sucks at flying? What is egregious?

I read it as self-deprecation. Something people do to take the edge off of bad news.

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#24

Post by WJW »

jacquesm wrote: post #18
nostromo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison: our solution to every problem.

I'm normally against prison as a deterrent because it is used against people where it wouldn't work as a deterrent. In cases such as these it might actually work if the execs of such companies were simply jailed for a very long time as though they were about equally responsible as a regular bus driver would be if they were negligent at their job and killed a bunch of people. It just might have a positive effect the n…

I would support this sentiment usually, but in this case I don't really see a way to determine the chain of responsibility. Who do we force into prison in this scenario? The engineer(s) who made MCAS? Just the one that wrote the lines of code that monitor the airflow sensors? Do we also imprison the QA people that signed off on this? Why not also their managers? Who of the C-suite? Probably the CTO and maybe the CEO, but isn't their behavior influenced by financial pressures from the CFO. Maybe we should just put them all into jail? The FAA was supposed to monitor this stuff but didn't. Should they be jailed as well? How about any congress people that cut the budget for the FAA? The list goes on. There are negative modifiers as well: what if the person who made MCAS was a very junior engineer in his/her first week? Are they still culpable? What if the CTO can prove they were never involved?

I don't think it's all that easy who is responsible.

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#25

Post by privateSFacct »

atonse wrote: post #6
privateSFacct wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing has designed planes that have an INCREDIBLE safety record, particularly when flying in US regulated airspace. Interesting that prison time is demanded here when a much more simple explanation is that this was an oversight by the pilots in the sim who didn't fully understand the issue was MCAS related. Millions killed from opioid epidemics, thousands killed from violence and various preventable diseases, huge n…

So you want to use their historical record as some kind of justification for their dismal record with the 737 MAX, as if one is related to the other? Cold comfort to the 300+ lives, and families destroyed. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2tuKiiznsY This isn't just some "oops, these were badly trained pilots" – the whole premise of MCAS is seriously screwed up and smacks of non-engineers running the…

There record is not dismal with the 737MAX.

If you look at where fault lies part lies with boeing and part lies elsewhere in the safety chain. In contrast to many other areas - the evidence of ill intent is relatively weak here. Even without prison Boeing is facing major financial impacts as a result of this issue (as it should).

It's looking like evidence from the airlines that proper maintenance was done may have been faked.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-15/pictures-...

We know lots of maintenance issues unaddressed and repeated warnings by the plane itself that there were sensor issues were not properly addressed.

We know response was not ideal on pilot side which overlaps with some training and other items around stab trim cutoff and/or automation dependency.

These factors are partly why there have been no accidents in 737MAX in US despite lots of flying.

Yes - boeing should design a totally safe plane. Part of that is going to be designing plans to accommodate a wider range of pilot skill (what they are calling "future pilot populations") and to better accommodate maintenance and ground handling training assumptions to allow for greater risk of problems there. This is already being implemented.

Ironically, one element may be to REDUCE the reliance on pilots as a key flight safety control and then increase automation and redundancy in the automation.

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#26

Post by luckylion »

Gpetrium wrote: post #16
atonse wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want to use their historical record as some kind of justification for their dismal record with the 737 MAX, as if one is related to the other? Cold comfort to the 300+ lives, and families destroyed. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2tuKiiznsY This isn't just some "oops, these were badly trained pilots" – the whole premise of MCAS is seriously screwed up and smacks of non-engineers running the…

What op seems to imply is that airplane incidents rates actually have a stronger track record as opposed to the opioid epidemic, road fatality, etc. And that if society believes that this individual/group should go to prison based on this mistake and in hindsight, without account for all the other factors that were a part of the decision making process, then society should start reconsidering the way it treats opioid…

Has anybody argued that nobody else should be punished, ever? Otherwise "but there's drug addiction and car accidents! We shouldn't pass judgement on Boeing until everything else is perfect" is a really strange argument.

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#27

Post by privateSFacct »

Gpetrium wrote: post #16
atonse wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want to use their historical record as some kind of justification for their dismal record with the 737 MAX, as if one is related to the other? Cold comfort to the 300+ lives, and families destroyed. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2tuKiiznsY This isn't just some "oops, these were badly trained pilots" – the whole premise of MCAS is seriously screwed up and smacks of non-engineers running the…

What op seems to imply is that airplane incidents rates actually have a stronger track record as opposed to the opioid epidemic, road fatality, etc. And that if society believes that this individual/group should go to prison based on this mistake and in hindsight, without account for all the other factors that were a part of the decision making process, then society should start reconsidering the way it treats opioid…

I'm making the point that for for US flying (with US levels of maintenance / pilot training etc) boeing and even the 737MAX has a safety record that is incredible.

Not only that, it beats almost all other regulated modes of transit and even other regulated hazards (OSHA controlled worksites etc).

As always, it could be better - but it's actually amazingly good already - these planes are incredible safe in a challenging environment (miles, landing cycles, tolerances etc).

The demand for prison time here, when we have so many many areas where prison time can be MUCH more closely and immediately linked to bad actions (and goes unpunished) is misguided.

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#28

Post by mattlondon »

jonplackett wrote: post #15

What’s the implication here? That it’s these pilot’s fault? Surely their job is just to report what they experience during a flight sim and it’s someone else who would have decided to hide that.

The implication is that people at Boeing knew there were problems with MCAS before the crashes happened. I am not saying these particular guys are at fault.

The transcript (https://tmsnrt.rs/2OZl4Ic) shows them specifically talking about MCAS doing weird stuff in simulators and they they didn't know what was going on, or what the expected behaviour was. Interesting that it happened in a simulator where I presume that sensors don't sporadically break or deliberately give duff readings in what is probably a lot of highly controlled tests... perhaps a pure software error?

Did this problem just get lost somewhere in the noise of development? Was it "unreproducible" (in the bug sense)? Was it willfully ignored by "the management"? Who knows - but we now do know that some people at Boeing involved in development were aware of problems before the crashes.

Pretty sad really.

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#29

Post by sz4kerto »

jonplackett wrote: post #14
Judson wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if the link originally pointed to NYT, but the currently linked reuters report adds a bit more context to the messages. >Forkner said in one text message, “I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly).” The other employee responded that “it wasn’t a lie, no one told us that was the case” of an issue with MCAS. >Forkner responded soon after: “Granted I suck at flying, but even this was egregious.”

I don’t really understand the context of these messages. The one about MCAS running rampant is clear enough but what does he mean saying that he sucks at flying? What is egregious?

He was joking, as if you'd be a professional F1 pilot and when testing a new car you would say "I suck at driving but this thing loses grip in the corners".

Re: Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

#30

Post by jacquesm »

WJW wrote: post #24
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm normally against prison as a deterrent because it is used against people where it wouldn't work as a deterrent. In cases such as these it might actually work if the execs of such companies were simply jailed for a very long time as though they were about equally responsible as a regular bus driver would be if they were negligent at their job and killed a bunch of people. It just might have a positive effect the n…

I would support this sentiment usually, but in this case I don't really see a way to determine the chain of responsibility. Who do we force into prison in this scenario? The engineer(s) who made MCAS? Just the one that wrote the lines of code that monitor the airflow sensors? Do we also imprison the QA people that signed off on this? Why not also their managers? Who of the C-suite? Probably the CTO and maybe the CEO,…

It's super simple:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_passing#%22The_buck_stops...

If the CEO's are held responsible for the deeds of the companies they lead you can bet that there would be an instant improvement of corporate accountability.

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