Ethiopian Airlines Crash; Another 737 Max

Kurt Zierhut said:
Well, it was a few days ago, but Boeing finally came out with what I have been saying for a while. Both crashed 737 MAX crews failed to follow procedures. If I don't follow memory items in a 61.58 check, they will fail my hiney. And these guys get checked every 6 months.
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Not really. What he said was that crews failed to completely follow procedure.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/29/investing/boeing-annual-meeting/index.html

I wonder if that wording and the backtracking from his previous statement of "we own it" had anything to do with this...

https://www.seattletimes.com/busine...ar-to-oversee-fallout-from-fatal-max-crashes/

I also wonder if he mentioned the fact that the manuals for the Max were not even correct.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/28/boe...ty-feature-on-737-max-was-turned-off-wsj.html
 
Piperonca said:
The MCAS issue seems like a slow moving train wreck. This will take time to play out, much like the rudder problem on 737 aircraft years ago. What is revealing (if you believe the accounts) is the extent to which Boeing resisted admitting there was a problem and fixing it.

https://imgur.com/a/5wcFx8M

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19389983
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And the same thing is going on now. If the WSJ is to be believed, the AOA alerts were supposed to work on the Max, just like the 800s, even on fleets that didn't have the "optional" safety package installed. Boeing realized later (before Lion Air) that the alerts weren't working in the Max, and then decided... "meh, we'll just tell them that they're disabled because they didn't order the extras."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing...-year-before-telling-faa-airlines-11557087129

For those behind the paywall:
Boeing didn’t share information about a problem with a cockpit safety alert for about a year before the issue drew attention with the October crash of a 737 MAX jet in Indonesia, and then gave some airlines and pilots partial and inconsistent explanations, according to industry and government officials.

It was only after a second MAX accident in Ethiopia nearly five months later, these officials said, that Boeing became more forthcoming with airlines about the problem. And the company didn’t publicly disclose the software error behind the problem for another six weeks, in the interim leaving the flying public and, according to a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, the agency’s acting chief unaware.

The length of time between when Boeing realized the problem and when it shared that information hasn’t been previously reported. The problem kept a safety feature found on earlier models from functioning on the MAX, though it isn’t clear if the feature would have prevented either crash.

Senior FAA and airline officials increasingly are raising questions about how transparent the Chicago aerospace giant has been regarding problems with the cockpit warnings, according to people familiar with their thinking.

The growing scrutiny could pose new challenges to Boeing’s efforts to shore up confidence in the 737 MAX, solicit regulatory support around the globe and get the MAX fleet, grounded after the second crash, flying again.

Meanwhile, as part of a criminal probe into whether Boeing misled regulators or customers, investigators as recently as last week were asking questions about how the MAX jets gained approval for flight and about Boeing officials involved in the process.

On Sunday, Boeing said company engineers in 2017 identified that the alerts weren’t operating as intended due to a software error. Boeing said that at the time it relied on standard internal procedures and conducted an internal review by engineers and managers that determined that the problem didn’t “adversely impact airplane safety or operation.” Senior Boeing leaders didn’t learn about the issue until after the Oct. 29, 2018, Lion Air crash, the company said.

The conclusions were shared with midlevel FAA officials after the Lion Air crash, according to Boeing and the FAA. An FAA spokesman said midlevel agency officials analyzed the issue of the inoperable alerts from November 2018 to February, and concluded emergency action wasn’t required.

Boeing, according to industry and government officials, told different airlines months apart from one another that the cockpit alerts—intended to warn pilots about certain sensor malfunctions—didn’t work on most of the global MAX fleet as originally designed, due to a software error. The same feature—called angle-of-attack disagree alerts—is to be made standard on all 737 MAX jets as part of an impending software fix aimed at getting the grounded fleet back in the air. The alerts warn pilots if sensors measuring the angle of a plane’s nose are sending errant data.

Such alerts offer an extra safeguard for pilots in the event a separate stall-prevention system called MCAS misfires, a situation that led to the Lion Air crash and the March crashof an Ethiopian Airlines jet. The crashes took a total of 346 lives. It isn’t clear whether functioning alerts, supplemental to the MCAS system, would have made a difference in either accident.

At the company’s annual shareholder meeting on April 29, Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said the company was focused on safety and that the plane maker would look for ways to improve how it develops airplanes.

Mr. Muilenburg said later that the alerts “will be standard on all the 737 MAXs,” hours before the plane maker disclosed it had actually intended the safety features to be standard.

Boeing said it realized the alerts weren’t operating several months after the first deliveries of the model, which was certified to carry passengers in March 2017.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines Co. , the largest MAX customer, said Boeing told the carrier about the inoperative alerts after the Lion Air crash. Southwest learned about the problem with the alerts by late November, and began installing additional cockpit indicators late last year.

Over the weekend, a spokesman for United Continental Holdings Inc., another major MAX operator, said Boeing first told the airline about the software error toward the end of March, four months later than Southwest, in the wake of the Ethiopia crash, which took 157 lives. United had believed the alerts were part of an optional package it declined, before eventually learning its MAX aircraft actually had the feature but it wasn’t working, the carrier’s spokesman said.

WestJet, a Canadian carrier, has said it wanted its 13 MAXs to have the warning for when the two angle-of-attack sensors disagree, just as its older 737s do. A spokesperson for the carrier said Saturday the airline learned about an issue with the alerts “earlier this year with further clarifications in the months after.”

A House Transportation Committee investigation, among other things, is looking into why the FAA and Boeing didn’t publicly disseminate information about the nonfunctioning sensors, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, questioning continues in the federal criminal investigation into the suspect MCAS system, and how the jetliner was certified.

As recently as last week, two prosecutors and federal special agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Transportation inspector general’s office interviewed a former Boeing employee and asked broad questions about the manner in which the suspect flight-control system was developed, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

An initial probe into the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 found that the pilots followed emergency procedures. Investigators went on to recommend that the MAX fleet stay grounded until authorities validate changes that Boeing has made to the aircraft.

During the interview, which was conducted near Boeing’s facilities in Everett, Wash., the prosecutors and agents asked questions about how the system underwent official technical reviews covering potential hazards, this person said. Prosecutors and agents asked about specific Boeing executives and pilots involved in the MAX program, this person said, adding that investigators appeared to have already gathered at least one internal Boeing email.

An FAA spokesman said the agency was set to issue a world-wide special safety information bulletin when the Ethiopian crash intervened and the planes were grounded. Boeing’s statement confirmed that it worked with the FAA to develop a plan to resolve the alert problem as part of a broader software fix.

The FAA also said that Daniel Elwell, the agency’s acting chief, didn’t learn about the inoperative alerts until The Wall Street Journal published an article on the topic April 28. The agency is reviewing its procedures for sharing information among various levels of management, as well as about safety evaluations of new models, the spokesman said.

Some senior FAA officials expressed concern that Boeing didn’t directly make them aware of the problem sooner, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Boeing didn’t publicly disclose that the alerts didn’t work until the next day, when it released a statement indicating “the feature was not activated as intended.”

For its part, the FAA said that “timely or earlier communication with the operators would have helped to reduce or eliminate possible confusion.”
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midwestpa24 said:
The thing to realize is that Boeing is forced to cut costs, because the airlines are cutting costs, all because John C. Public demands cheap airline tickets. Everyone is fine with cutting corners to save a buck until the bodies start to pile up.
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Of course, "twice as safe", at any cost, is nearly impossible, especially in the US. Still, the amount saved by charging extra for this or that on an airplane of that price will turn out to have been negligible.
 
midwestpa24 said:
The thing to realize is that Boeing is forced to cut costs, because the airlines are cutting costs, all because John C. Public demands cheap airline tickets. Everyone is fine with cutting corners to save a buck until the bodies start to pile up.
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BS. It costs what it costs, and virtually no business should cut corners when it involves safety. Life and death.
It doesn’t matter what John Q Public WANTS to pay, or what you think they want to pay. Profit is not the end all and be all.

Boeing wanted to compete with Airbus,and tried to do it on the cheap, disregarding safety and their duty. We seem to have a classic management situation where they don’t know wha they are doing and are basically beam counters looking for most profit, instead of diligently making a superior product.
 
LongRoadBob said:
BS. It costs what it costs, and virtually no business should cut corners when it involves safety. Life and death.
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It is easy to say that, but any value engineering can be characterized as corner cutting by some shrieking person with an agenda. There are always trade-offs. Your airplane, car, house, and everything else you own or use has been value engineered to some point and viable, but costly and limited benefit safety features have been omitted in the course of the hard decisions that must be made to bring products to market.

This is why Cessna, Piper, and Beechcraft continue to sell piston engined aircraft while more reliable (safer) turbines are available to do to the job. The buyers (generally) can't afford the turbine upgrade.
 
kyleb said:
It is easy to say that, but any value engineering can be characterized as corner cutting by some shrieking person with an agenda. There are always trade-offs. Your airplane, car, house, and everything else you own or use has been value engineered to some point and viable, but costly and limited benefit safety features have been omitted in the course of the hard decisions that must be made to bring products to market.

This is why Cessna, Piper, and Beechcraft continue to sell piston engined aircraft while more reliable (safer) turbines are available to do to the job. The buyers (generally) can't afford the turbine upgrade.
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It still isn’t up to the mythical John Q. Public. Trade offs, up to a point, but it isn’t like the public can demand under price. Or the airlines. Competitive, to a point but safety costs.

We can all “demand” an automobile that costs 399.00 new, but it doesn’t mean it will happen. Or could.
 
I still think we are missing some of the logic when it comes to designing reliable systems. Does anybody remember why we have twin engine airplanes? Or even 4 engine planes? Does anybody remember why we spend SO MUCH time in training with one-of-two engines failed? Everybody acknowledges that "at some point in time" one of those engines will fail. So we design systems and train pilots to deal with it. Is anybody here suggesting that we need to have aircraft systems with "many nines" of reliability? Such planes would be extremely expensive and probably wouldn't fly as there were so heavy.
 
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Greg Bockelman said:
Exactly. A 100% safe airplane will never exist. Everything is a compromise.
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I used to work for a small company owned and operated by a "salesman". We were arguing one day about a product we were getting ready to release. He said, "You engineers want everything perfect when it just has to be 'good enough'."

He was right. But the art is all in calculating the limit for "good enough".

Aircraft aren't autonomous yet. Until then they will need pilots to fly them. I would also suggest that the more automation we add to make them safer, the more likely there will be some sort of failure that's never been seen before. The more safety and automation we add, the more we will have to rely on pilots to be able to think on their feet. That's going to be a problem for some airlines or cultures that think pilots should be not much more than systems monitors.
 
One might be inclined to ask, however, in all this finger pointing between Boeing, investigative reporters, airlines and customers: Where was the regulator?

They seem to be quite happy to remain out of the spotlight. Where were they when a safety system was designed with a single point failure mode? Or training materials were developed that barely discussed MCAS?

I’m not advocating for over zealous FAA oversight of the industry. But I think it is a fair question whether the FAA even met their minimums on the Max.
 
WillFly4Food said:
One might be inclined to ask, however, in all this finger pointing between Boeing, investigative reporters, airlines and customers: Where was the regulator?

They seem to be quite happy to remain out of the spotlight. Where were they when a safety system was designed with a single point failure mode? Or training materials were developed that barely discussed MCAS?

I’m not advocating for over zealous FAA oversight of the industry. But I think it is a fair question whether the FAA even met their minimums on the Max.
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Just as when ValuJet crashed, the FAA will take some heat, and deservedly so. The challenge for them is they have a mandate, but will certainly tell you they don't have the resources (i.e. budget) to properly execute their mandate. I know how bureaucracies work - no matter what, they always need more funding, but I can certainly imagine an underfunded regulatory bureaucracy letting "trusted" partners in industry self govern to some extent.
 
kyleb said:
Just as when ValuJet crashed, the FAA will take some heat, and deservedly so. The challenge for them is they have a mandate, but will certainly tell you they don't have the resources (i.e. budget) to properly execute their mandate. I know how bureaucracies work - no matter what, they always need more funding, but I can certainly imagine an underfunded regulatory bureaucracy letting "trusted" partners in industry self govern to some extent.
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This is a trend at the moment in the fight against basically all regulations. They eliminate regulations, and cut the funding and manpower, and this is the result, letting a profit driven entity “govern themselves” and it is totally wrong headed.

Are there regulations that are too stringent, or just plain dumb, or that have the opposite or unintended consequences? Sure there are and they ought to be changed, reviewed, etc.

But pretending any entity can regulate itself is doomed from the start. Besides being a conflict of interest (which used to be a thing we seemed to understand) which is in itself a bad thing, it is also failure on the part of the regulators to do their job. This seems to be intended, as if the governing body is now being sabatoged into being toothless and weak.

Where I live, it seems this is also happening. Standing in an elevator noticing that the last time it’s been inspected was seven years ago is not very comforting. Restaurant inspections, all of it...seems to be down prioritized.
 
well....it could totally be the right thing to do, just like every other private company, if Boeing is up to owning their product. Let the legal system punish them. This happens everyday with most profit driven industries. They are driven to safety by fear....fear of being put outta bidness. The day the gummint stops coming to it's rescue is the day it will be stronger and safer. A US competitor could help also.....
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
well....it could totally be the right thing to do, just like every other private company, if Boeing is up to owning their product. Let the legal system punish them. This happens everyday with most profit driven industries. They are driven to safety by fear....fear of being put outta bidness. The day the gummint stops coming to it's rescue is the day it will be stronger and safer. A US competitor could help also.....
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I don’t agree. For one thing it is too late by the time any correction via lawsuits kicks in. For another the evidence is in and has been for over a century. You cannot depend on even big companies not fudging. In today’s world more than ever, because of stockholders expectations and the nature of it, companies are more short sighted than ever.

Conflict of interest is the bottom line. It’s always been a powerful temptation. It’s the get-there-itis for corporations.
 
LongRoadBob said:
It still isn’t up to the mythical John Q. Public. Trade offs, up to a point, but it isn’t like the public can demand under price. Or the airlines. Competitive, to a point but safety costs.
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Sure it is. There is a margin below which airlines will not be able to secure capital to buy planes. And there is a price above which consumers will not buy sufficient tickets to drive that margin. These are market constraints on how much "everything" Boeing can put in planes. There's bo such thing as perfect safety, and beyond a certain point the costs likely rise logarithmicly.
 
LongRoadBob said:
It still isn’t up to the mythical John Q. Public.
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But it is. In a true capitalist, free-market economy it is the consumption of these services and goods by John Q. Public that solely drives it. There are hundreds of examples of this. Take aviation. Up until the Deregulation Act in the late 70s which removed direct federal oversight, mainline aviation was very closed, somewhat profitable, and only available to those with means. The rest of the public could only afford trains and buses. After Dereg aviation took off. It became safer and more widespread where even those John Publics at the lower economy levels could afford a plane ticket now. And just look at Spirit or JetBlue. The public flies them because they offer a service at a cheap price vs. the flag ops. Are they any less safe? No.

But don't confuse regulation with risk-management/mitigation either. Regulations provide only minimum standards. The rest of how an industry operates is managed by them and at a profit. In my opinion, the increased use of automation over the past decade has caused the risk-management side of most industries to back off previous principals. Unfortunately, as automation becomes mainstream the human side does not follow and becomes complacent and at times can't not handle the situation when the automation fails. Just look at this accident, or the Deepwater Horizon spill.

However, if you think more regulation will "solve" this problem you are mistaken in a free-market economy. Just look what happened after the Deepwater Horizon where the oversight regulatory burden of the offshore industry increased 10-fold and decimated it as it was no longer profitable--which in turn decimated the support service companies to include the 3 major offshore helicopter companies to go Ch 11. So now 1 million people globally are without work or working in very distressed surroundings. Maybe ask them if they think more regulation made them safer?

Bottomline, in a free-economy, allowing entities to self-govern works. But as with anything where humans are directly involved in the end result you can have incidents and accidents. Nothing is 100% safe. But just as John Q Public makes the decision to fly SW or JetBlue or Delta, SW/JetBlue/Delta make a decision which aircraft to buy: Airbus or Boeing. If the Airbus doesn't provide a product which the airlines want or can afford they buy Boeing and visa versa.

So in your opinion, where should we start with the new regulations? If you start at the airlines, like back before Dereg, then most likely SW and JetBlue won't be around much longer and John Public is not happy. If you start at the manufacturer, then you create a more expensive aircraft which causes the airlines to up their prices or drop services and once again John Q Public is not happy.

Even as something simple as requiring every Part 121 pilot to receive 5 hours of manual flying every year as recurrent training would probably bankrupt a number of airlines or rise tickets prices and once again make John Q Public unhappy. However, of all the options out there, I personally believe this is the route most prudent to take.

While you might not agree with this explanation, there are tons of data/studies/articles on how regulation and risk-management affect a free-market to the point where risk-management/mitigation has become its own industry in the last 20 years. It's not regulation that has driven the global economy to its present level but self-governing risk-management.
 
Another thing about regulations - who does it? Boeing sells to many airlines in many countries. FAA and US Federal regulations stop at either our border or wherever a US flagged aircraft happens to be (I think that's how it works). Other countries set their own. The example above, "Even as something simple as requiring every Part 121 pilot to receive 5 hours of manual flying every year...", would only apply the US.
 
Matthew said:
I think that's how it works
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When an aircraft is certified and the host country is part of a bi-lateral aviation agreement--like the US, France, UK, Germany, Canada, and others--the other countries accept the host country certification as their own and in some cases will issue a separate type certificate document within their native CAA system. But on the operations side, it is usually dependent on the country of registration's CAA regs how that aircraft is operated/maintained except in some cases of aircraft operating in foreign countries like an N reg operating in Bolivia which would have to follow some of their rules also. This is also demonstrated by the 361 hr SIC in this case who wouldn't have been allowed to fly in other countries aircraft like the US where it had been 500 hrs, then was moved up to 1500 hrs after the Colgan accident.
 
Bell206 said:
When an aircraft is certified and the host country is part of a bi-lateral aviation agreement--like the US, France, UK, Germany, Canada, and others--the other countries accept the host country certification as their own and in some cases will issue a separate type certificate document within their native CAA system. But on the operations side, it is usually dependent on the country of registration's CAA regs how that aircraft is operated/maintained except in some cases of aircraft operating in foreign countries like an N reg operating in Bolivia which would have to follow some of their rules also. This is also demonstrated by the 361 hr SIC in this case who wouldn't have been allowed to fly in other countries aircraft like the US where it had been 500 hrs, then was moved up to 1500 hrs after the Colgan accident.
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OK, thanks. I know there are lots of State Department treaties and rules that get involved in regulatory things like this.

Your point to the operations side is important - 1500 hrs vs any(?) The SIC in Ethiopia had roughly 100 737 hrs, that leaves 200 or so for everything else - like maybe a beat up PA28 for initial training. How does Boeing control any of that?
 
Bell206 said:
They can't.
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That was the point I was trying to make - eventually, there is a point where the manufacturer is out of the loop. The claim that Boeing is cutting corners to save a buck runs out of steam when a country, or an airline, allows (arguably) unqualified flight crews to operate the equipment.
 
Bell206 said:
But it is. In a true capitalist, free-market economy it is the consumption of these services and goods by John Q. Public that solely drives it. There are hundreds of examples of this. Take aviation. Up until the Deregulation Act in the late 70s which removed direct federal oversight, mainline aviation was very closed, somewhat profitable, and only available to those with means. The rest of the public could only afford trains and buses. After Dereg aviation took off. It became safer and more widespread where even those John Publics at the lower economy levels could afford a plane ticket now.
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How did deregulation make air travel safer? Correlation, not causation.

Deregulation didn't do anything to make air travel safer. Around the time of deregulation, the two things that were causing trouble with airliners were hijackings and wind shear. Deregulation did nothing for those - We beefed up security and we eventually learned what microbursts were and what caused them and how to avoid them, and we haven't had nearly as many crashes since. But that had nothing to do with deregulation.

But don't confuse regulation with risk-management/mitigation either. Regulations provide only minimum standards. The rest of how an industry operates is managed by them and at a profit.
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Right... Regulations provide minimum standards. So should we get rid of them, and have no standards, and go purely free-market?

I believe if we did that, it would bring down the entire industry eventually. Corporations' sole reason for existing is to make money, and they will do anything that they think will cut costs or increase revenue. I know, my job for nearly the past decade has been finding those things and shining a light on them.

Profits will never increase safety. You may think that people would be more likely to buy tickets from a "safer" airline... But let's say there were no regulatory bodies involved in aviation. Boeing does their thing, and Lion and Ethiopian crashes still happen. Everyone will hear about the accidents, nobody will hear about the fix, and nobody will fly on a 737. Southwest is forced to pickle their entire fleet and buy A320s in an attempt to remain in business, but the massive capital cost means they're unable to remain competitive - They have to cut wages to their employees, their legendary service begins to crumble, and a million press releases and ads don't reach the number of people that bad news does. Within two years, they're out of business, along with any other airlines that used 737s exclusively.

The biggest airlines absorb the hit initially, but eventually another crash happens in another type, and all of air travel begins to be seen as unsafe. Ticket sales tank. Airlines cancel routes. Only a few of the largest cities have enough people left who are willing to fly, and it either becomes only "available to those with means" or it goes away entirely in favor of bullet trains, hyperloops, or just today's technology and a resignation to travel being slow like it used to be.

"Minimum standards" are enough, if the standard is set in the right place and adhered to. Instead of the doom from above, what's likely to actually happen is that Boeing will develop a fix, the FAA will bless it, the airplanes will be brought up to "minimum standards", people will accept that they are now safe because the government is now doing its job, and life will go on with very little change except the Max will be safer.

However, if you think more regulation will "solve" this problem you are mistaken in a free-market economy.
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I don't think anyone is asking for more regulation. They want existing regulations to actually be enforced.

Just look what happened after the Deepwater Horizon where the oversight regulatory burden of the offshore industry increased 10-fold and decimated it as it was no longer profitable--which in turn decimated the support service companies to include the 3 major offshore helicopter companies to go Ch 11. So now 1 million people globally are without work or working in very distressed surroundings. Maybe ask them if they think more regulation made them safer?
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Well, we could instead have a pure "free market economy" where the Deepwater Horizon folks would have just said "Oops!" and moved the rig and drilled another hole. Meanwhile, oil would continue to leak and coat all the beaches in the Gulf, decimating the tourism industry and leaving a lot more than a million people out of work.

Minimum standards matter.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
How did deregulation make air travel safer?
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It opened up monies that were used to upgrade fleets, technology, and their subsequent support infrastructure that were not there before.

Instead of each airline being the "same" under regulation now each airline could develop and market their own identity to the flying public. And in order remain on top each airline would look for and buy larger and faster aircraft. It took the human skill set side a little bit longer to catch on but if you look a any number of studies or safety data, airline level flight ops began their turn around on the safety side due to these corporate investments into the flying market that were not possible prior to Dereg. The OEMs followed with more reliable and modern aircraft and they continued to upgrade these aircraft in meet the ever growing need of the airlines and the public. And safety got better.

flyingcheesehead said:
So should we get rid of them, and have no standards, and go purely free-market?
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Not at all. My reply was to a comment that implied more regulation was the answer to fixing these problems. I disagree. Every industry need a minimum standard to keep things on a level field. Raising the field does not work. As I mentioned above, it didn't fix the offshore oil industry, it hasn't fixed the medical industry, nor helped the environment. In most cases it had the complete opposite effect.

The gist of my comments was to reply that John Q Public does rule in a free market economy. Not to remove or lessen regulations. But using regulations to correct issues in a free economy can have severe complications especially if those regulations are not directed at the true core issues.

flyingcheesehead said:
continue to leak and coat all the beaches in the Gulf,
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FYI: The oil was contained a number of miles offshore for weeks by oil company crews and contractors and would have remained offshore for the duration of the event. That was until the EPA showed up with their rules and regulations book and took control of the operation. Within 72 hrs oil started to hit the marsh and beaches under their control. Remember the government works on a lowest bidder principal whereas private entities do not as every day it can't work is lost revenue. While there was fault on the industry side for the blowout, had the government followed the the industry's playbook vs their antiqued rule book the vessel probably would not have sunk nor oil make it to shore.
 
As the thread drifts...

I, too, am under the distinct impression that Dereg and increased airline safety are mutually exclusive. And, my opinion, say what you will about Unions (a four letter word to some), they seemed to be the greatest driver of safety after dereg. Yes, yes, companies want to be safe, but risk is acceptable, too. Unions fought with both fists to change what is acceptable risk. (So did self regulating companies) Thankfully, culture has changed, and I tend to believe that a welcoming regard towards safety is the corporate norm. To whom to give credit, however, another thread on another board.

https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1993100800 a quick read for those who are interested.
 
Bell206 said:
The gist of my comments was to reply that John Q Public does rule in a free market economy. Not to remove or lessen regulations. But using regulations to correct issues in a free economy can have severe complications especially if those regulations are not directed at the true core issues.
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There, we are in complete agreement. Since my expertise is in data, I see a lot of data and how it is used, and I see behaviors driven as a result of that data.

For example: If you ever go through a chain fast food drive through and they ask you to pull forward and they'll bring your food out to you - It's likely because "corporate" is measuring (and rewarding) the speed of service at the drive-through, often with a sensor in the pavement. They get you to pull forward, and the system logs the transaction as complete in a short amount of time. Meanwhile, the store in the next town over might have a more honest manager, and might actually be serving people faster, but guess which one gets the reward at the end of the year?

Another example is the rewards cards that you see at retail outlets, restaurants, etc. Management is using the data from those cards to learn your buying patterns and try to sell you more stuff. But if you don't use a card, they can't track you and it's much harder to sell you more stuff! So they tend to incentivize cashiers for swiping a rewards card. What do the cashiers do? Get a rewards card for themselves, or use one that was left behind by a customer. Then they have 100% on their swiped rewards cards, but they've not only not bothered to get more customers to sign up for a rewards card, they've introduced a bunch of terrible data into the system.

It's not easy to design a system to measure what you really want measured. It takes smart people and a lot of work. That means $$$... And all too often, it gets half-assed and the company ends up with a completely different outcome than they were really looking for. Sadly, those messages generally don't get to the right people. The person behind the project would rather take credit for saving $40,000 by half-assing it than the $25 million in monthly revenue they could have picked up by whole-assing it. And that's why I'm not a huge proponent of a purely free-market economy as we have it right now. Our larger corporations are often even less efficient than the government, and there's just as much politics involved. Our version of a free market (which really isn't) rewards consolidation and ever-larger corporations, and chokes out the small businesses that really do tend towards helping both the economy and the citizens in it. :(
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
well...how much of the Fortune 500 is regulated like Boeing?
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All of them involved in food production. The medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturers andndistributors are regulated much more so.

--Hank
(former) medical device engineer
it's easier here in industrial manufacturing . . . .
 
Heard a little while ago they think the second 737 crash was caused by a bird strike!
 
LongRoadBob said:
This article goes into the timeline, but also business decisions, and reasons for those decisions.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/an...hy-boeing-should-never-make-another-airplane/
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The media sure gets caught up in "self certify" Fact is that just about every US major aircraft and aircraft parts manufacturer has held these capabilities for over a decade. Heck there are even major aircraft maintainers that hold similar capabilities. The media has been jumping all over themselves to point it out, well before the investigation was even really started.

I'm not sure how it works in the automotive industry but I would bet automotive design and manufacturing is similar.
 
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JOhnH said:
Heard a little while ago they think the second 737 crash was caused by a bird strike!
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That came out shortly after the DFDR data was released. The bad AoA readings from the left AoA sensor are consistent with a detached vane.

The portion of the vane assembly that is under the aircraft skin has a counterweight to balance the weight of the vane external portion of the vane. Shortly after liftoff the AoA reading when to full-scale high which would happen if the outer portion of the vane was detached and the counterweight pulled the sensor down. Later in the flight they had some negative-g events during which the L-AoA reading dropped due to the counterweight pulling in the opposite direction due to negative-g.

I don't know if they've found any direct evidence that it was a bird which hit the vane but it would be unusual for the airplane to be hit by an object other than a bird just after liftoff.
 
Larry in TN said:
That came out shortly after the DFDR data was released. The bad AoA readings from the left AoA sensor are consistent with a detached vane.

The portion of the vane assembly that is under the aircraft skin has a counterweight to balance the weight of the vane external portion of the vane. Shortly after liftoff the AoA reading when to full-scale high which would happen if the outer portion of the vane was detached and the counterweight pulled the sensor down. Later in the flight they had some negative-g events during which the L-AoA reading dropped due to the counterweight pulling in the opposite direction due to negative-g.

I don't know if they've found any direct evidence that it was a bird which hit the vane but it would be unusual for the airplane to be hit by an object other than a bird just after liftoff.
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If the counterweight detached internally, for whatever reason, and the vane itself wasn't damaged, the AOA sensor input would be reversed? So there would be a way to determine if it was the vane that detached from the counterweight or the counterweight detached from the vane?

Somewhere earlier on this thread I asked about how often an AOA sensor fails, I think I got a "they don't" answer. For 2 different airplanes from 2 different airlines, I wonder what's common - maintenance, rough ground handling?
 
I'm mildly amused by the "criminal" investigation;l seems to me that the most criminal aspect of this whole situation rests with the crew of the Lion Air flight prior to the accident flight. From what was reported to the MX people, not even sure you can throw any shade on them for not effectively fixing the problem.
 
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