Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by PhantomGremlin » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:38 AM UTC

tastygreenapple wrote: post #15

magtux wrote: post #6

I always had great respect for aerospace and thought they'd put safety above all else but seeing all this, Boeing seems like a fucking travesty.

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.

Companies like boeing should be managed by engineers not salespeople.

Dennis Muilenburg, the Boeing CEO, is an engineer.[0] And he apparently doesn't even have an MBA. It's hard to know exactly how and when he became seduced by the dark side.

Here's a summary (which I've posted before) of his egregiously bad behavior:

   Oct 29, 2018 Lion Air crash, 189 dead

   Nov 10, 2018 pilots already talking about Boeing
   emergency airworthiness directive related to MCAS[1]

   Mar 10, 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash kills 157

   Mar 11, 2019 Boeing CEO "confident in 737 MAX safety"[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Muilenburg

[1] https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/614857-indonesian-aircra...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/ethiopia-airplane-boeing-ceo...

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

#62

Post by bgorman » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 3:25 AM UTC

cafard wrote: post #53

bgorman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Southwest doesn't even fly the 787. The article never mentioned that plane.

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

#63

Post by village-idiot » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

xvf22 wrote: post #59

village-idiot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I call these strategies "bonuses today, bankruptcy tomorrow".

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

#64

Post by tastygreenapple » Tue, Apr 30, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #61

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.

Companies like boeing should be managed by engineers not salespeople. Dennis Muilenburg, the Boeing CEO, is an engineer.[0] And he apparently doesn't even have an MBA. It's hard to know exactly how and when he became seduced by the dark side. Here's a summary (which I've posted before) of his egregiously bad behavior: Oct 29, 2018 Lion Air crash, 189 dead Nov 10, 2018 pilots already talking about Boeing emergency air…

The last CEO, James McNerney, was some Yale B.A dude with a Harvard MBA. The 737 MAX is fruit of the poison tree.

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

#65

Post by CamperBob2 » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:43 AM UTC

robocat wrote: post #57

CamperBob2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sin…

1. Add MCAS system to artificially make airplane fly as if it were a different airplane.

2. Drive MCAS with only one AOA sensor.

3. Don't tell MCAS to look for (or even think about) bad AOA data or AOA disagreements.

4. Equip airplane with two AOA sensors as usual, but make the AOA disagree warning light a "value added option" that customers have to pay extra for.

5. Don't actually bother to tell pilots that they don't have AOA disagree warning lights.

6. Don't bother to tell pilots that MCAS exists at all.

7. Don't test MCAS subsystem to see what it actually does with bad AOA data.

8. Give MCAS a ridiculous amount of control authority, operating cumulatively over repeated applications to exceed what the pilot can manually override.

Now, exactly what items on this list are the responsibility of non-union labor in a South Carolina assembly plant, or whatever other mistuned horn you're tooting? Once again, in the absence of gross engineering malpractice, a broken AOA sensor is no big deal.