Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 884 posts

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#481

Post by Symmetry »

g9yuayon wrote: post #402
throw0101d wrote: post #29

Good book describing the cultural change from engineering-focus to business-focus of Boeing: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55994102-flying-blind * https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind...

A friend of mine works in Boeing as a data scientist. His team has 10 people. Two of them can write code for analytics and models. The other 8 "manage projects", whatever that means. They spend their days creating processes, managing tickets, enforcing specific formats of tickets and stories and what not. Yet, none of the eight knew how to write product specs nor could be bothered with basic things like understanding…

That would be a very efficient way of running things under a cost plus military contract. For a single contract win they're able to spend four times as much money on salaries and therefore earn four times as much profit.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#482

Post by game_the0ry »

The only remedy at this point is to hold executives financially and morally culpable.

Anyone opposed to seeing the entire C-suite and board of directors having their bonuses clawed back and sent to jail? I'm not.

Let the guillotine come out, I want to see heads roll.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#483

Post by cco »

samtho wrote: post #216
olig15 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah you’re right. They’re not design flaws, just manufacturing issues, so sign me up for the first flight when the max flies again… People falling out the sky because the wing falls off because someone forgot to bolt it on aren’t going to care if it’s a design issue or a manufacturing issue. Boeing is doing both, so the blame lies with them either way.

The statement pointing out that it’s a manufacturing error (I’m guessing) was not intended to be solution to the problem. It pointed out that those problems have less to do the certification of the design and more to do with a manufacturing defect. If the manufacturer created parts that were up to specifications, these things would have not been a problem. This is a very important distinction because a design flaw is…

> It pointed out that those problems have less to do the certification of the design and more to do with a manufacturing defect.

You might really enjoy a book called the The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. He covers your comment here in detail.

One of his key insights is that "human error" are far too often weasel words that prematurely end a conversation (or investigation) into root cause. He goes on to detail a whole tree of "human error" so we can speak about mistakes, lapses, and errors that humans make.

The meat of his point is that some types of human error are very hard to design out of your system, but _many_ types of human error can and should be expected by the designer (or engineer), and appropriately handled.

In this instance, if a human (or perhaps a few) can make a single error when affixing the door plug to the aircraft, like improperly torquing a bolt. And that simple error risks a catastrophic loss of the airframe, then you probably have a _design_ issue and not a "manufacturing issue caused by human error".

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#484

Post by rtkwe »

owisd wrote: post #454
rtkwe wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand how much of the things Google has built/bought and grew today we enjoy could exist without the firehose of money that ads represented? I'm not sure Youtube happens without the ad money.

Google had enough 3rd party ad revenue before they bought DoubleClick (2008) to buy YouTube (2006).

I'm mostly wondering if they could have kept it as open as they do to non revenue generating users or would they have had to do something like Vimeo where after a certain number of views they come asking for money or would have had to limit the quality/quantity of uploads from small creators due to the costs of storing and serving their videos with limited ad returns.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#485

Post by Nextgrid »

mrandish wrote: post #35
intunderflow wrote: post #2

At least Airbus seems to be competent in building safe aircraft. I would not be surprised though if Boeing's sales drop if the US government brings in tariffs or etc to try and force companies to buy their flying coffins.

> At least Airbus seems to be competent in building safe aircraft. Prior to new models released in the last ~10yrs-ish, Boeing made the safest planes in the sky (as measured by passenger miles). Many of those planes are still flying and still doing great. For me the interesting question is what changed in Boeing's design, testing and/or manufacturing processes which is apparently resulting in worse safety performance…

> what changed in Boeing's design, testing and/or manufacturing processes

My theory is that this is not limited to Boeing or even aircraft design, it's a much deeper and systemic problem affecting all kinds of fields. We've had a lot of industrial accidents lately.

When aircraft manufacturing was an emerging industry there were tons of undocumented safety margins and "slack" in the design and production pipeline.

Over time, the beancounters start optimizing stuff, so these undocumented safety margins are eroded in the name of efficiency/profit (and sometimes even documented safety margins too).

Furthermore, workers back in the day had a much better life when it comes to purchasing power (especially when it comes to property), and so could actually "give more fucks" about the job than they do now which is a compounding factor. You used to get a lot of implicit quality assurance back then which you don't get now.

We've now reached a stage where these undocumented safety margins have been eroded enough that it actually starts to cause issues, and the safeguards that are supposed to catch them aren't good enough, either due to 1) they've never been good enough but just weren't really needed before or 2) they too have been eroded in the same way for the same reason.

This also applies to software - software quality nowadays has gone down the drain for the same reasons, and even brands that were built on quality and polish (Apple) are now churning out shit (see the endless calls for another "Snow Leopard" bugfix-only macOS release).

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#486

Post by dang »

Recent and related:

Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid-air window blowout - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38889774 - Jan 2024 (324 comments)

Alaska Airlines 737 Max makes emergency landing due to depressurization - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38887840 - Jan 2024 (330 comments)

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#487

Post by tavavex »

SoftTalker wrote: post #348
cellis wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would triangulation of that small of an item be done?

They'll know from flight data recorder the exact time the decompression occurred. They'll know where and at what altitude the airplane was in the sky at that time and in which direction and speed it was moving. It's nearly a high school physics problem at that point to calculate where the door landed.

Eh, considering wind speed and direction (and its differences at different altitudes), varying pressure and inherent aerodynamic properties of the door plug itself, it's hardly a high school problem. They'll find a decent estimate, but they'll have to search some area unless a person on the ground finds it first.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#488

Post by game_the0ry »

g9yuayon wrote: post #402
throw0101d wrote: post #29

Good book describing the cultural change from engineering-focus to business-focus of Boeing: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55994102-flying-blind * https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind...

A friend of mine works in Boeing as a data scientist. His team has 10 people. Two of them can write code for analytics and models. The other 8 "manage projects", whatever that means. They spend their days creating processes, managing tickets, enforcing specific formats of tickets and stories and what not. Yet, none of the eight knew how to write product specs nor could be bothered with basic things like understanding…

> One has to ask: where did the cost cutting go?

Stock buy-backs, executive compensation, and lobbying. That's where the cost cutting goes.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#490

Post by sundvor »

throw0101d wrote: post #29

Good book describing the cultural change from engineering-focus to business-focus of Boeing: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55994102-flying-blind * https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind...

Thanks, had credits that needed burning so picked up an Audible version of that.
Post reply on HN