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Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

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Re: Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

#51

Post by tastygreenapple »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #27
tastygreenapple wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't always used to be this way - at one point Boeing delivered planes that were substantially safer than their competitors. Moving the HQ to Chicago was a terrible idea. Companies like boeing should be managed by engineers not salespeople.

It's hard to keep a mistress when she lives in the same city as your wife.

What does this even mean?

Boeing has one job - making airliners that don't fall out of the sky. People have been putting planes in the air for over 100 years, it should be getting safer and easier to do so each year but apparently not. Boeing is failing at their one job.

Re: Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

#52

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

tastygreenapple wrote: post #51
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to keep a mistress when she lives in the same city as your wife.

What does this even mean? Boeing has one job - making airliners that don't fall out of the sky. People have been putting planes in the air for over 100 years, it should be getting safer and easier to do so each year but apparently not. Boeing is failing at their one job.

Former CEO Phil Condit opened the Chicago office at least in part so he could have his secretary/mistress shack up in a company provided apartment.

Re: Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

#53

Post by cafard »

bgorman wrote: post #32
ilikehurdles wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing opened its South Carolina plant to avoid a unionized workforce, and that plant has been responsible for producing these horrific excuses they call airplanes. They had the benefit of a doubt before, but now it's clear that Boeing's leadership, like that of other public companies, values cheap labor over safety.

I'm pretty sure the 737 Max planes has been entirely assembled in Washington State, where the Boeing employees are unionized.

Perhaps, but the story is about 787s.

Re: Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

#54

Post by robocat »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #50
robocat wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, it is also a production issue because: "One whistleblower reported to the FAA that they had seen damage to the electrical wiring connected to the plane’s angle of attack sensor from a foreign object, which feeds data to the MCAS system so it can determine whether it needs to engage to prevent the plane from stalling. This wouldn’t be the first time Boeing’s manufacturing process reportedly had problems gu…

Stuff happens. The fact that damage to a single AOA sensor -- whether in the factory or in the field -- could cause this sort of event is strictly an engineering issue.

It is most definitely not "strictly" an engineering issue.

By that logic you can say it is a quality control, FAA or management issue (and not an engineering issue) - because the engineering problem was not caught by other systems.

Also "engineering" created the AoA disagree alert. Whoever decided to make that an optional feature should be "strictly" at fault? Maybe it is the fault of the airlines that decided not to have that feature installed?

Engineering is just one part of a complex system so why do you think engineering should be blamed 100% for failures that occurred due to the whole system?

Re: Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

#55

Post by cryptonector »

itsaidpens wrote: post #38
RankingMember wrote: post #35

For anyone interested in an insider's perspective on recent quality issues at Boeing, check out this short New York Times podcast wherein they interview whistleblowers. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/podcasts/the-daily/boeing... The excerpt that stands out to me the most related the story of one of the whistleblowers finding pieces of debris within a 787 aircraft (between the passenger compartment and the skin),…

These stories are from an acquired factory - it seems like they acquired a lot of problems when they bought Embraer.

Who knows. Maybe the problems where imposed on those factories.

Re: Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

#56

Post by CamperBob2 »

robocat wrote: post #54
CamperBob2 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff happens. The fact that damage to a single AOA sensor -- whether in the factory or in the field -- could cause this sort of event is strictly an engineering issue.

It is most definitely not "strictly" an engineering issue. By that logic you can say it is a quality control, FAA or management issue (and not an engineering issue) - because the engineering problem was not caught by other systems. Also "engineering" created the AoA disagree alert. Whoever decided to make that an optional feature should be "strictly" at fault? Maybe it is the fault of the airlines that decided not to…

Engineering is just one part of a complex system so why do you think engineering should be blamed 100% for failures that occurred due to the whole system?

Because that's the only way something this complicated can possibly work. Fault tolerance is optional only if failure is considered to be a valid option.

Getting back to what happened in this case: at some point, a Boeing engineer was asked to make MCAS work with input from only one AoA sensor. That person could have made all the difference by saying, "Lol no," and SPEEA would have had their back.

Re: Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

#57

Post by robocat »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #56
robocat wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is most definitely not "strictly" an engineering issue. By that logic you can say it is a quality control, FAA or management issue (and not an engineering issue) - because the engineering problem was not caught by other systems. Also "engineering" created the AoA disagree alert. Whoever decided to make that an optional feature should be "strictly" at fault? Maybe it is the fault of the airlines that decided not to…

Engineering is just one part of a complex system so why do you think engineering should be blamed 100% for failures that occurred due to the whole system? Because that's the only way something this complicated can possibly work. Fault tolerance is optional only if failure is considered to be a valid option. Getting back to what happened in this case: at some point, a Boeing engineer was asked to make MCAS work with i…

You should be rebutting my points. To rebut your new points:

I think failure is always acceptable engineering: a defining feature of engineering is finding compromises because we don't have infinite resources, infinite ability, or perfect materials.

> a Boeing engineer was asked to make MCAS work

That sounds like you are just making stuff up about a team of engineers. So your opinion is this is all the fault of a single engineer? Not engineering after all?

Re: Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

#58

Post by jpeter »

triangleman wrote: post #18
karlkatzke wrote: post #3

"If it's boeing I ain't going"

What an unfortunate blunder by Boeing. Until this episode I was deliberately looking for 787's and such when booking international flights, despite what I had heard about the batteries, because I thought Boeing had to be just that much better than Airbus and their unintuitive UI's that I heard crashed AF447. And now all that good will is gone.

AF447 was a pilot error

Re: Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

#59

Post by xvf22 »

village-idiot wrote: post #39
LeoPanthera wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many serious problems Airbus have that we simply don't know about because they haven't been caught.

Well, they designed their airframe to handle the larger engines properly, rather than patching it with software. So I'm going to wager that the answer is "a lot less".

Boeing shot themselves in the foot after the awful outsourced supply chain [0] and battery problems on the 787 which meant that they had less financial resources available to go clean sheet and instead they adapted an old design.

[0] https://www.consultancy.uk/news/297/outsourcing-main-cause-f...

Re: Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

#60

Post by dontbenebby »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #46
dontbenebby wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn that logic around real quick since Boeing also makes planes and other equipment for the US military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Defense,_Space_%26_Secu... You don't hate the troops after all, do you?

yep, "think of the troops" is just as emotive (and patronizing) as "think of the children". Unbelievable that people repeatedly fall for it.

I think it's valid to think about both. I just think sometimes people try to reduce risk to zero with no regard for the fact a zero risk society is one without civil liberties.
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