So, they plead guilty to criminal fraud that got people killed, and nobody goes to jail ever? And they pay the fine of 0.4% of their annual revenue? That's not even a slap on the wrist, that's more like hand-kissing. "Soft" doesn't even begin to describe it.
Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes
571–580 of 611 posts
Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The U.S. is not going to shut down Boeing. It's a monopoly. Just break it up. > How many jobs would be lost if that happened "We don't negotiate with [economic] terrorists." > especially in this economy? $77b annual revenue. Positive quarterly growth rate the last 8 out of 12 quarters. Two global wars we refuse to negotiate peace in and Boeing is a major weapons supplier. Then again, if you kill and scare enough pe…
> "We don't negotiate with [economic] terrorists." This is just so silly. Shutting down a company results in people losing their jobs. No terrorists involved.
There is two aspects to a company :
- one that benefits a few private people, mainly the share holders and high level manager/executives
- one that benefits the society as a whole, mainly through the company production/services and the salaries of its employes
There is an option to punish the first aspect while limiting the damage on the second one : the nationalisation of the company, with limited compasation to its shareholder. Strangely it seems to only be done or considered to save "to big to fail" business, such as bank, in time of crisis, not as a tool of law enforcement.
Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
FYI their coffee is still just as hot, but they changed their cups.
> FYI their coffee is still just as hot, but they changed their cups. This doesn't even make sense—water that hot destroys the flavor of the coffee. Why do they not just make and serve the coffee at a temperature people actually expect? Is it so hard to not be an asshole to your customers?
I believe the general consensus is that if they served the coffee cooler, by the time take-out customers got around to drinking it, it would be cold. Erring on the side of too hot maximizes customer satisfaction because the number of customers who would be upset at cold coffee is greater than the number of customers, buying coffee at McDonalds, who have sophisticated coffee tastes.
Anyway, Starbucks also serves their coffee about as hot as McDonalds. Turns out, coffee hot enough to cause horrific injury is rather common.
Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes
#574From the article: Paul Cassell, a lawyer for victims’ family members, said he plans to ask the federal judge on the case to reject the deal and “simply set the matter for a public trial, so that all the facts surrounding the case will be aired in a fair and open forum before a jury.” Hard to disagree
Juries can be manipulated. Allowing this to go to public trial risks the danger of Boeing getting off lighter or not facing punishment at all.
When it comes to corporate malfeasance, juries seem more inclined to punish malfeasance than judges alone. Most corps try to avoid jury trials.
Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes
#575Seems an extremely soft ball approach: • Under the deal, Boeing agreed to pay a $243.6 million fine and for an third-party monitor to be installed to monitor the company’s compliance. ~$240M seems pretty low for an industry where billions are commonly thrown about. • The deal spares Boeing from a trial just as the planemaker is trying to turn a corner in its safety and manufacturing crises. Sparing them from a trial…
There must be some standard calculation going into that number. US law forbids proportional fines (i.e., scaling with income).
Not really, they are allowed as long as they have an upper and lower limit in absolute amounts.
Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
> FYI their coffee is still just as hot, but they changed their cups. This doesn't even make sense—water that hot destroys the flavor of the coffee. Why do they not just make and serve the coffee at a temperature people actually expect? Is it so hard to not be an asshole to your customers?
I believe the general consensus is that if they served the coffee cooler, by the time take-out customers got around to drinking it, it would be cold. Erring on the side of too hot maximizes customer satisfaction because the number of customers who would be upset at cold coffee is greater than the number of customers, buying coffee at McDonalds, who have sophisticated coffee tastes. Anyway, Starbucks also serves their…
> Turns out, coffee hot enough to cause horrific injury is rather common.
So much for litigation as a way to incentivize behavior....
Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
No they are not! You are responsible for what you sign off on/seal. If you don't want that responsibility then join another profession.
Importantly here, Boeing doesn’t require licensed engineers because they operate under an industrial exemption.
Sounds like it's time for that to go away
Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes
#578Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The media has covered the training (or lack of it) extensively. I've never seen it in the media. Not knowing what the stab trim cutoff switch does is a massive failure either on the part of the pilot or the training. Not reading the Emergency Airworthiness Directive is a failure of the pilot. > It seems like you want to point to a singular cause Au contraire. It seems that everyone but me wants to blame a singular…
"Boeing" is not a cause. Things like their safety culture can be a cause, or lack of good process control can be a cause. The reason why Boeing is catching a lot of flack is because they deviated substantially from best practices. This is related to your other comment so I'll just respond here. There is a general hierarchy when it comes to controlling hazards (remember, Boeing already identified MCAS as hazardous): r…
"redesigned the airframe" means designing an Entirely New Airplane. Boeing didn't do this because designing an entirely new airplane would have been:
1. an absolutely enormous cost, like a couple orders of magnitude more
2. several years of delay
3. pilots would have to be completely retrained
4. the airlines liked the 737 very much
5. mechanics would have to be retrained
6. the inherent risk of a new, untried airframe
There was nothing at all inherently wrong with the concept of the MCAS system, despite what ignorant journalists wrote. What was wrong with it was it was not dual path, had too much authority, and would not back off when the pilot countermanded it. These problems have been corrected.
Pilot training - there have been many, many airplane crashes because pilots trained to fly X and Y did the Y thing when flying X. The aviation industry is very well aware of this. Boeing has been working at least since 1980 (and likely much earlier) to make diverse airplane types fly the same way from the pilot's point of view. This is because it is safer. And yes, it does make pilot training cheaper. Win-win.
> You claim "it's not hard". Sorry, this is just a bad mindset.
Yet it's true. Read about the first MCAS incident, the one that didn't crash. There were 3 pilots in the cockpit, one of which was deadheading. The airplane did some porpoising while the pilot/copilot would bring the trim back to normal, then the MCAS would turn on, putting it into a dive. Then, the deadheading pilot simply reached forward and turned off the stab trim.
And the day was saved.
I've seen your points many times. They are all congruent with what journalists write about the MAX. Next time you read one of those articles, I recommend you google the author to see what their background is. I have done so, and each time the journalist has no engineering degree, no aeronautical training, no pilot training, no experience with airline operations, and no business experience.
You can also google my experience. I have a degree in mechanical engineering with a minor in aeronautics from Caltech. I worked for Boeing for 3 years on the 757 stabilizer trim design. (It is not identical to the 737 stab trim design, but is close enough for me to understand it.) At one point I knew everything there was to know about the 757 trim system. A couple dozen feet away was the cockpit design group, and we had many very interesting discussions about cockpit user interface design.
I'm not a pilot myself, but other engineers at Boeing were, and they'd take me up flying for fun. Naturally, airplanes were all we talked about. My brother and cousin are pilots, my cousin was a lifer engineer at Boeing, my dad flew for the AF for decades in all kinds of aircraft, with an engineering degree from MIT. I inherited his aviation library of about a thousand books :-/ Naturally, airplanes were a constant topic in our family.
I've talked with two working 737 pilots about the MAX crashes.
I've read the official government documents on the MAX crashes, and the Emergency Airworthiness Directive.
That's what I "hang my hat" on. So go ahead, tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. But before you do, please look up the credentials of the journalists you're getting your information from.
P.S. "Aviation Week" magazine has done some decent reporting.
P.P.S. Amazingly, the "Aviation Disasters" TV documentary is fairly decent in its analysis of various accidents, lacking the histrionics of other treatments. But it's rather shallow, considering it's a 40 minute show.
Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Boeing" is not a cause. Things like their safety culture can be a cause, or lack of good process control can be a cause. The reason why Boeing is catching a lot of flack is because they deviated substantially from best practices. This is related to your other comment so I'll just respond here. There is a general hierarchy when it comes to controlling hazards (remember, Boeing already identified MCAS as hazardous): r…
"redesigned the airframe" means designing an Entirely New Airplane. Boeing didn't do this because designing an entirely new airplane would have been: 1. an absolutely enormous cost, like a couple orders of magnitude more 2. several years of delay 3. pilots would have to be completely retrained 4. the airlines liked the 737 very much 5. mechanics would have to be retrained 6. the inherent risk of a new, untried airfra…
>designing an entirely new airplane would have been:
1. an absolutely enormous cost, like a couple orders of magnitude more
2. several years of delay
3. pilots would have to be completely retrained
Yes, this is the same case I was making. They took a higher (or unknown) risk for business (profit) motives. That's why they deserve a large chunk (but certainly not all) of the blame.
There was nothing at all inherently wrong with the concept of the MCAS system
My claim isn't that the concept was inherently wrong, it's that the execution was wrong. Their own process documents say so and they also belie the fact that they didn't understand their airframe. The damning part of it is that they were likely wrong for the reason of increasing profit. (Still, even if MCAS isn't inherently bad, we still have to acknowledge it's not the best solution...see the discussion above about hierarchies of controls).
>You claim "it's not hard"...Yet it's true.
This is exactly the wrong way to think about this. Just because a mitigation works some of the time doesn't mean it's the best mitigation. Can I still design a car with a coal-fired steam engine and cat-gut brake lines and drive it safely? Sure. But by modern standards, it's still a sub-par design and the likelihood of safe operation is lower because of it. That likelihood is the entire reason there is a hierarchy of controls. You are advocating against well-established best practices in safety and reliability.
>You can also google my experience. I have a degree in mechanical engineering with a minor in aeronautics from Caltech. I worked for Boeing for 3 years
Please don't do this next time and argue the points rather than appealing to (relatively weak) authority. I'm familiar with your points and can usually set a clock by the time it takes you to either bring up your experience at Boeing or some story about your daddy in these discussions. But you aren't the only one with aerospace experience. I've been an airframe mechanic. I also have an ME and additional engineering degrees to include a PhD and published aerospace-related research. I've worked in NASA for many more years than you worked for Boeing. I filled roles in aerospace, quality/safety, reliability, and software engineering related to both software and hardware design. I've worked alongside Boeing on crew-rated space systems. I've also piloted aircraft (although my ratings are no longer current). I've had dinners and discussed similar issues with pilots and astronauts with thousands and thousands of hours of flight time. But parading out your credentials doesn't make your points any stronger and tends to be the bastion of those without much else to rely upon. This isn't a pissing contest, so please make an argument based on its own merits rather than relying on credentials.
Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes
#580Earlier quoted context omitted.
What absolutely weird replies. You clearly are the victim of the world, sir. Nobody has worse problems than you! None of this was a competition, super strange to make it so and not just recognize not everyone can quit their job today, nod your head and agree. Because that is a fact.
> None of this was a competition You tried to invalidate their position by making this about personal experiences. When they counter with personal experiences, you don't get to cry foul and claim they made it a "competition". And your first paragraph is just making shit up. Come on.
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