Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/19/senate-report-boeing-and-faa-manipulated-737-max-re-approval-tests.html
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Jail time for execs. It’s the only thing that will have any meaningful impact on future behaviour.
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Because of course they did.
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Fly Delta. They don’t own any of these deathtraps.
(This is a public service announcement. I do not own Delta stock.)
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Because Boeing is so large and has it’s finger involved so deeply (civilian, military and aerospace), and they seem to be one of those companies that are thought of as “to big” to be held responsible for their actions, wouldn’t it make sense to consider them a form of monopoly and break them up into smaller segments? It seems to me you could then deal with smaller elements and hold them accountable for their actions, and it may even breed some competition amongst the smaller entities?
And pigs will fly. Probably Boeing pigs.
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Wow; this was a fantastically stupid thing for them to do. I personally was only ambivalent about flying on a 737 Max, in the future, but this seals the deal; I’ll never set foot on one again.
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The part that most shocks me is that the behavior is being met with a ‘damning report’; rather than congratulations all round for a robust public/private partnership that bypassed burdensome regulation and unaccountable bureaucrats to expedite the recertification.
My current suspicion is that, in areas not directly related to ethnic nationalism, knowing which parts are the quiet parts and which parts are to be said out loud remains a bipartisan capability.
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Because it’s not. It’s putting lives in danger.
There are actual people working for us who do give a shit (AOC, Bernie, Katie Porter, etc). We need to elect more people who are representing us rather than their own narrow self-interests.
It strikes me that our own cynicism is part of the problem here. The more we just shrug our shoulders and declare it just another Tuesday instead of demanding that the power of the federal government be used to actual ensure we are not subjected to the whims of corporations, the more we’re fucking ourselves over.
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“The airlines can regulate themselves” must be the last few regulations on them causing all these problems. /s
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Won’t someone please think of the shareholders!?
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The 737 max cannot be fixed. The only way for it to go back into service, is for the rules to be fudged.
The core problem here, is the same thing that lets prosthetic implant makers avoid recertification. Getting new designs certified is an expense that needs to be baked into the commercial process, and not treated as an optional expense to be kicked down the road.
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Sad to say, but the other part of the problem is people don’t see a lot of negative consequences. If there were frequent incidents traced back to this type of “regulation” the public’s attention might focus on it long enough to force changes. When there aren’t a lot of incidents, their attention shifts to other things.
On top of that, those who recognize the issue and that something should be done now have to deal with increasing numbers of citizens who have become contrarians. No matter what the problem, they’ll say it’s no big deal and the rest of us are making a mountain out of a molehill. If those in government who are under corporate control believe the folks willing to overlook problems are in the majority, nothing will change.
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Not shocking when the FFA’s stance toward certification has been basically, “ok, we’ll take your word for it.”
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Except it has been recertified and is back in service already.
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US aviation regulator issues safety bulletins over flaws in software updates for Boeing 747, 777, 787 airliners
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The problem then is that designing, testing and building an airliner is too expensive for any company who is not already an aerospace giant. So there are Airbus and Boeing; Airbus already gobbled up Bombardier’s airliner business, and Brazil’s Embraear nearly became part of Boeing.
Everyone else is an also-ran; there is the shambolic United Aircraft Corporation in Russia which has struggled to produce anything that rivals 30 year old Western designs, and some Chinese makers who are wholly dependent on the West for turbines and avionics.
Break them up and you will end up with the same situation that confronted the UK aerospace industry in the 1960s - too many underfinanced companies chasing the same market share.
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This is what happens when MBA’s take over an organization that became successful on the merits of the work and decisions of engineers. Similar to failures leading to the Challenger disaster, business calls trumped well understood engineering knowledge and concepts.
This were at least two main tragic decisions here - one, the idea that larger engines could simply be grafted onto an existing air-frame that was not designed for them to be in that far forward position, and two; the specious notion that the performance problems of such a bad aircraft design chosen to skirt re-certification headaches could simply be compensated by implementing software (MCAS) effectors that run counter to pilots training, experience and expectations.
Any controls engineer should have been able to see that without clear information feeding back to the pilot an uncontrolled oscillation could occur as the operator and computer system fight to the literal death, but they deliberately hid that to avoid re-training. The people that signed off on that should absolutely be prosecuted.
We’ve known a lot of this stuff for at least three quarters of a century, human factors engineering became a discipline to architect the layout and form factor of dumb physical controls to avoid mishaps:
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