> The FAA cited a long litany of concerns, including a serious flight control incident during a test flight on Dec. 8, 2020, when the plane experienced an “uncommanded pitch event” — meaning the nose of the aircraft pitched abruptly up or down without input from the pilots.
Crikey. MCAS all over again. Something at Boeing is very, very out of control.
This is really a crucial point. I am a software developer in an engineering company. What is essential for my job is not only my programming skills, but also a decent understanding of the engineering I deal with. This can only be achieved by working long enough in the job, be it an engineer who picks up programming or a software developer who learns the engineering involved.
This is of course much more expensive than picking up any contractor, who might be brilliant at programming, but lacks the domain knowledge that only grows over time, but it is a good way of having more eyes spotting potential spec issues.
I really fail to understand the logic that may make someone to think a software engineer, however brilliant, can write software for a domain they don’t understand.
I wrote calibration software for an instrument used to test airframes. You work very closely with somebody who is a domain expert (the analog guy, in my case) and you explain stuff back and forth until you reach a shared understanding of the problem at hand and how the software implements a solution.
And you make damn sure that if either of you has questions or see something funny, you figure it out before you ship.
If this brilliance can be translated to understanding in other fields, which usually it can. This requires studying, which firms simply tries to avoid.
I am a software engineer now, but my major was mechanical engineering, I can barely remember any of my coursework, but I understand how physics work in general, and a small bonus on how to disect a system. Nobody can know everything in today's world and that's why common engineering/sense training is so important IMO.
Similar. I used to design automation equipment, but I've switched to software development. I'm still closely connected to the mechanical side though. More than once I've had to explain to someone who is a competent programmer that they can't accelerate mass x at rate y.
Total guess, some of those managers probably do appreciate what software engineering is, and what it needs, but they're pressured by their managers to cut costs and expertise.
As a QA person, I have to fight with management to get time slotted for exploration, research, and learning work. There's no point crapping out automation for a domain you can't even hold a conversation with SME with.
Anyone just handing off software that you know well, or just having another new person work in it. The rate of "Yeah I thought of that too but it's actually a terrible idea." type discussions are somewhere near 100%.
You'd hope you could communicate or document or something like that but exceptions are endless.
> I really fail to understand the logic that may make someone to think a software engineer, however brilliant, can write software for a domain they don’t understand.
This misunderstanding arises out of necessity to compensate for the lack of understanding of the value of nontechnical roles.
It's heartbreaking for BAs, POs, PMs, and every other flavor of functionary when they realize that, after some* years of experience, the programmers understand the business just as well as they do. And the programmers have countless other invaluable skills that the functionary could never understand if he studied for a hundred years.
*This length of time is variable. Depending on the business domain, it could be anywhere between 1 and 10 years.
> after some* years of experience, the programmers understand the business just as well as they do.
I don't push back on the premise that there are some incredibly dumb non-engineers. But of all the people I've had to work with, engineers were among the best and the worst. The latter has to do with their dysfunctional level of focus and utter lack of creativity - not just in an artistic way, but also in terms of general imagination.
Here's a very common scenario:
- non-engineer: let's improve this by 10%.
- engineer: that will cost 40%.
- non-engineer: I get that. But our current 90% is not competitive.
- engineer: but it doesn't make sense to invest 40% to get 10%.
That's what separates great engineers from the high-IQ/low-EQ ones: they have taste, imagination, and common sense. Incidentally, the latter group tends to have less self-awareness than the former, and tends to think they are the only non-idiots in the world.
> It's heartbreaking for BAs, POs, PMs, and every other flavor of functionary when they realize that, after some* years of experience, the programmers understand the business just as well as they do.
Why heartbreaking? That should make it easier for everybody to do their job, and to do it better.
> It's heartbreaking for BAs, POs, PMs, and every other flavor of functionary when they realize that, after some* years of experience, the programmers understand the business just as well as they do.
Shouldn’t be. Very few engineers want to move to BA/PM/PO or management track.
Boeing management used to be grown from engineers. The person promoted would have been practicing "engineering in the large." I don't know if that's still true.
I think the point is there shouldn't be BA/PM/PO type people. It should just be engineers all the way.
Engineers who understand those roles exist and should be given the reins. Call them whatever but an engineer with domain knowledge is what you need for just about everything.
We’ve had quite a bit of success moving to a product model for internal services. One thing I’ve observed though is that teams lacking strong PM/PO support tend to start looking inward to develop their roadmap rather than outward.
This ends up building little silos in which they are doing something and it’s generally executed well but when you explore their plans it can be hard to see how it connects to the larger view.
I've been tackling the opposite. Product specs their thing which is completely disconnected from the reality of what is actually needed. This creates massive levels of frustration for the end user.
And you can't easily get them that domain knowledge when you're only communicating via story descriptions or software requirements documents. They are looking at the problem through a thousands-of-miles-long tunnel.
It takes time and investment for other engineers to get to know you and feel comfortable explaining their thought process, including parts of the design they are afraid need extra testing.
You can't outsource the essential give and take of a correctly functioning cross-domain team.
I knew one of those. He insisted on remaining a contractor, I think for his particular tax situation.
He would have to leave the company every so often because of company rules (or labor law?) about how long the company could employee a contractor. Eventually he'd get hired back in, as a contractor.
Not sure if you're being serious, and while it hasn't been tried AFAIK for the flight software specifically, but cost-minimization and outsourcing has been credited as the major sources of Boeing's safety problems for the last decade (737 MAX, 787 Dreamliner, 737NG). Doing more of it would be neither a change of course nor an improvement IMO.
> Not sure if you're being serious, and while it hasn't been tried AFAIK for the flight software specifically, but cost-minimization and outsourcing has been credited as the major sources of Boeing's safety problems for the last decade (737 MAX, 787 Dreamliner, 737NG). Doing more of it would be neither a change of course nor an improvement IMO.
I hear you, but I suspect aperocky was criticizing that exact approach.
Makes sense, I was genuinely 50/50 about it being sarcastic, but I probably should have been more confident of it, and at the very least should have given more credence to that interpretation than "not sure if...".
I'm honestly confused that you give it 50/50. Even ignoring the context, the "we" in "what could go wrong if we" only works if it's a rhetorical question. And from there, analyzing it as a rhetorical question, it seems obvious to me that the implied answer isn't "nothing".
On HN, especially if there's talk of labor (or god forbid, unions), there are often some pretty extreme opinions. And I said I shouldn't have given it just 50/50 odds. I don't see the point in continuing this postmortem.
I just feel like the sentence structure doesn't make sense if they were suggesting that opinion. I'm not basing it on whether I think someone might actually have that sort of opinion. But if you don't want to elaborate on your thoughts then that's fine, have a nice day.
I suddenly became afraid of flying when I started working for one of the companies known for having some of the best software engineers in the world and seeing how many bugs made it into prod. I can't imagine who is programming the flight computers for Boeing and what they're being paid. It's gotten bad enough that I refuse to fly on any plane that was released in the last decade. At least the older planes have some decent trip statistics to back up their safety.
Of course, but the specifications are normally written by Boeing, and the implementation is outsourced. The reason is the system as a whole has to function, meaning the spec has to be written by the team that has knowledge of the whole system.
MCAS interfaces with quite a few other systems on the airplane.
Even a good team can convince itself, that it is right. It would have added a "second set of eyes", if the implementors of MCAS had their own expertise in aviation. No guarantee, but a chance of spotting the problems with the spec.
The programmers are just trying to patch what once again is likely a hardware problem. If it's like the MAX the real issue is the flight characteristics
Basically every modern jet aircraft with relatively large engines has some sort of MCAS system. If you raise the nose of such a plane the balance does shift. This isn't a form of an aerodynamic error, it is a consequence of having large engines hanging off your wings (a lot of classic airplanes have the engines in or very close to their central axis). If you want the appropriate feedback in the steering column, you have to compensate for the shift. Airbus does it as well.
Yes, it's the aerodynamic lift from the big engine fans that was the 737 Max issue, according to Aviation Week.
Fans have gotten bigger as engines have improved and the bypass ratios and fuel efficiency has gotten better.
Think of the engines as a big horizontal stabilizer but it's at the front, in front of the center of gravity. Normally it doesn't do much anything since the angle of attack is zero. But if you increase pitch, it will increase nose-up momentum.
For some reasons it's not common to put the engines further back. DC-9 style, on the sides of the rear fuselage might work. Or maybe over the wing and slightly to the rear, like Hondajet.
MCAS-like systems exist elsewhere, but MCAS specifically is worthy of criticism, as both an engineering failure and more importantly IMO a management failure.
Specifically with regard to the flight characteristics, MCAS is a band-aid on a problem created by cost-minimization -- the desire to avoid a hardware redesign (to properly accommodate the larger engines) and/or a re-certification.
Of course, the actual implementation of MCAS was a disaster. Especially, that they didn't deactivate it automatically on AOA disagree, that on top of that the screen signal for AOA disagree was not shown due to a separate issue and of course that late in development MCAS was given more control authority than initially planned.
My point just was, a complete redesign of the 737 still would have to deal with the same aerodynamic issues as the 737 MAX, as they are rather fundamental to this kind of jets. But indeed, it would have been easier to deal with it with a new design.
It is less mentioned, that shortly after the MAX crashes, Airbus mandated that in some planes the last rows were kept empty until some software updates were deployed. So they seem to have discovered some boundary conditions they were not happy with and decided to be rather safe till they augmented the software.
> late in development MCAS was given more control authority than initially planned
... without triggering re-evaluation of the seriousness/consequences of failure. That meant that failures of MCAS were considered unproblematic, which meant that lower levels of redundancy were deemed acceptable.
Well, technically the failures of MCAS should be unproblematic, as the stabilizer runaway protocol is well trained for any 737 pilot and would cope with a MCAS misfunction. The problem is: in the two crashes the pilots either completely failed to follow the protocol (Lion Air) or to late and failed to recover (Ethiopian Airlines).
That is wrong. First of all, the 737 MAX doesn't have flat bottomed cowlings, that was its predecessor, which did not have MCAS.
And the effect is fundamental to large engines. The effect which required MCAS would also happen if the machine had larger ground clearance and would be mounted more under the wings. Actually the way the engines are mounted on the MAX moves them closer to the longitudinal axis of the airplane and thus reduces and thrust-related tendency to pitch up.
The MAX does have flattened cowlings, though the effect is less pronounced than on the NG. Compare the MAX (right) to the completely round cowling on the A320neo's LEAP-1A:
The bonkers thing seemed to me to be having the notification and/or override as an opt-in feature you could buy. Southwest didn't want to train pilots and newly visible behavior requires new training. No surprise that airlines elsewhere in the world also skimped on the "optional" features to the doom of the passengers and crew.
The opt-in feature you mention was for a disagree alert for the plane’s angle of attack sensors.
But, MCAS was only ever using a single angle of attack sensor as its source of truth, so if there was a fault in that single sensor, MCAS could activate at normal attitudes.
But the real problem was that Boeing hadn’t documented MCAS, to avoid the requirement for pilots to obtain type certification for the MAX (so any existing 737 pilot could to fly it without additional training - and it wasn’t just Southwest objecting to this training), and to avoid a full FAA certification process for the MAX.
So on an MCAS activation, even if they had had an AoA alert, pilots would not know how to instinctively deal with it. (I don’t doubt an AOA disagree alert would give invaluable information allowing the pilots to rule out most failures, which when only a few thousand feet high would maybe have saved both planes.)
On the previous day to the Lion 610 crash, the incident aircraft suffered an MCAS activation and fortunately a pilot in the jump seat realised what was happening and what was needed to deactivate it.
It seems being sat behind the trim wheels (so he could see they were moving) and not wrestling to keep the plane in the sky at the same time was needed for that to happen. It must have been terrifying.
The difference is that all Airbus planes since the 1980's A320 are built around computerized flight commands, so the code paths involved are exercised constantly. MCAS only triggers occasionally, meaning if it has a bug, it only shows up at the worst possible time. Airbus planes also have double redundancy (three inputs and computers) for all those systems, where MCAS had none by default.
The main driver is the desire to make engines bigger, thus more fuel-efficient. The fuel savings of the newest engine generations are significant. If you hang engines from your wings (I assume that has practical reasons, it is easier to hang the engine than include it into the wing, it is also easier to maintain), larger engines mean engines further from the axis. That applies to all modern airplanes which share this configuration. A complete redesign of the 737 wouldn't have made this go away either. However the goal of keeping the same type rating made the especial design of MCAS necessary.
In 737 case, it means redesign of the landing gear system, fuselage modifications, recertification, retraining, new support system requirements eg. Higher stairs, cargo support equipment etc.
You also can't put longer main gear: as they fold inward, they have to attached at points separated by over twice the height. If you move them apart, you have to make the center fuselage as well as the root of the wings much stronger. That's a much bigger change than anything else.
I believe they altered the landing gear so it extends upon deployment, giving it a bit more height, but that's not enough. They can't just put longer legs, there isn't enough room. There's stuff there (cables, devices, bulkheads ...) and moving them requires a significant redesign. For the main gears, they would have to be attached further away from the center lest they bump into each other, which means the wings and fuselage would have to be stronger to accommodate for it. Very quickly you're just designing a new plane.
The thing is, this wouldn't have magically solved the issue. Larger engines hanging from your wing fundamentally affect the balance of an airplane. Take the thrust vector for example. The further you move the engine from the longitudinal axis of the plane, the stronger the angular momentum is, that is exercised from the engines onto the plane, especially when pitching up.
There's only so much room for the landing gear. Larger diameter engines require longer landing gear. Increasing the space given to landing gear requires changes to the wing box. Changes to the wing box is fundamentally a wing redesign.
Which is why the A320 is designed to be loaded with conveyors. This means it has no problem accommodating an even larger nacelle than the 737 in a regular position instead of the up and forward the 737 Max resorted to. Even the previous generation 737 was running into this issue and that's why they went with the distinct oval nacelles.
I always get a negative reaction for mentioning the Emergency Airworthiness Directive sent to all MAX pilots. Media accounts never mention it, either.
The Boeing Emergency Airworthiness Directive says:
"Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are moved to CUTOUT."
I also recommend the recent Aviation Disasters episode on it. While shallow, because it has to fit in 40 minutes, I was shocked that it was surprisingly accurate. Kudos to the Smithsonian channel. I wouldn't be surprised if AD waited until that report was released before doing the episode, so it would be using verifiable facts.
One out of 313 active AD's [1], 12 with no effective dates that seems to signify a different class of AD's because their issue dates are all over the map. I'm okay with 313 patches that I apply and the computer executes it from then onwards. Above a certain limit of number of AD's that should be memorized by pilots at all times, instead of entered into maintenance tracking systems for example, I'd like to hear from pilots why safety-wise that doesn't trigger a type re-certification.
I know that is expensive and time-consuming, but I certainly don't expect for example, my most senior ops team members to recall off the top of their heads more than a handful of critical procedures to execute on-the-spot without referring to the runbooks. Why does it appear that AD's are expecting pilots to apply a seemingly unbounded number of these "patches" like computers without re-training?
Your link is to Airworthiness Directives. The one I linked to is an EMERGENCY Airworthiness Directive.
This EMERGENCY AD was about an actual crash of the same airplane, and contained a 2 step procedure from recovering from the MCAS malfunction.
It's a whole two steps:
1. trim back to normal with the electric trim switches
2. turn off the trim system
Not only that, this is what they're supposed to know anyway. Recovering from stab trim runaway is supposed to be a memory item, meaning memorized.
If you were a MAX pilot, wouldn't you pay attention to this?
Are you saying the pilots should have been able to handle it? Training wasn't needed? Obviously you're trying to make a point but you aren't saying it, you're just presenting supporting details. So I'm asking you to clearly state what the take away from all that is supposed to be.
My understanding was that they’re trying to use software to make their new planes fly like their old planes (at least that was the reasoning for MCAS in the 737 MAX). In super basic terms, if the new plane doesn’t fly like the old plane, all the pilots need to be retrained. This is a significant expense that could make a serious dent in sales.
I don’t think it’s anything to do with size, there are larger planes than the 777X that are perfectly safe (and of course, the 737 is pretty small as far as airliners go).
Isn't there also some weird requirement that pilots only fly one/two airframes at a time? So training for a 777 means your can't fly 747 or something else anymore?
Retraining is costly not only in pure financial terms, time is also a major issue as at any time in the world there are only X available simulators to be used for retraining. If you have hundreds of pilots in need of retraining, using a sim for 20-40 hours while you only have 50 spots available it will take awhile before you can start flying your new fleet, downtime for these pilots in training is another major cost.
There is no level playing field here, if pilots were required to be retrained for new planes even if they are the same class it'd increase costs in general but it would, at least, level the field to avoid these shortcuts for certification.
Being hyper efficient has its costs, this is one of them, an airline can't stop flying some of their pilots because they are on the razor edge to keep their margins. It is in the design of a competitive market, we might have to take a second look on what's the net-positive of having that much "efficiency" forced by the lack of incentives in other areas such as safety.
More negative press for Boeing, which they probably don't need after all the 737 MAX issues. From the layman's perspective, I can't tell if Engineers have gotten lazy/complacent in their designs, OR if the FAA has gotten significantly better at screening for potential issues, OR if we're operating so close to the edge of the design envelope that these issues are inevitable. I sincerely hope it is number 2 or 3, but my gut feel is that cost cutting and efficiency are winning over safety and good engineering analysis.
First, Boeing doesn't prioritize safety anymore. Profit is the driving factor in their decision making. You can read about the issues they have assembling the 787 in South Carolina. It is so bad some airlines are refusing to take delivery unless the plane is validated by the assembly line in Washington.
Second, the FAA was caught being complacent with the 737 Max. It will take some time to fix that, but it is clear they don't want to make the same mistake. Also, the EASA is no longer just rubber stamping approvals following the FAA. Both agencies are combining to improve safety, which is highlighting the management problems at Boeing.
> Also, the EASA is no longer just rubber stamping approvals following the FAA
This to me speaks volumes about our regulatory environment. Once upon a time the US regulations were so thorough that other countries would just Me-Too certification if the US had certified something. That's no longer the case and the EU has rightly started to question everything.
The US is in rapid decline on all fronts as half our country stands in the way of anyone trying to fix the problems while ignoring our rapid erosion or blaming it on immigrants and leftists.
Having worked in large manufacturing facilities that cost billions, there is almost a comical and blatant tribalism that kicks in between workers/teams simply because they are located in different sites. The Chinese sites talk down on Vietnamese factories. Texas factories gawk at the ones located in Massachussetts. I think this happens in non-manufacturing industries as well (Microsoft org chart anyone?), but I've seen that the bonds between workers are stronger when they get together and build something like a giant aeroplane. Leadership has a hardtime navigating the waters, especially if something critical (safety) has been neglected. It is easy to look at this in union/non-union differences, but it's not so simple. I would question the leadership and the way they inspire people to build something together. I suspect this is what's lacking at Boeing and once the culture of not caring about quality kicks in, it is difficult eradicate toxicity from this culture.
There is almost an obsession to find out if your BMW was manufactured in South Africa or Germany, the latter being desirable, on BMW enthusiast forums despite of being made with exacting specifications and factory processes.
The culture of quality differs between sites at different auto makers. You can easily tell by just comparing interior trim fit between same model cars made in Japan vs southern us. Manufacturing sites do not share common value typically core sites favor quality and non core optimize for rate/cost
That is pure speculation. Seems to me the far more simple explanation is that Washington is the traditional home that had decades of buildup and engineering and tightly integrated. Not to mention massive amounts of engineering talent in the region.
While the South Carolina plant was probably set up in a place with far less history, far less integration with engineering, far less historical knowledge and far less engineering talent in the area.
And quite likely a much smaller overall labor pool willing to move there.
There are reports about the SC plant making the 787 from Al Jazeera [1] where they investigate exactly that. And the unionisation helps a lot in the Washington plant to allow employees to speak up with no fear of reprimands.
I do believe being unionised impacts a lot the work environment psychological safety, allowing employees of the plant to halt production if they don't think work is being performed up to their standards, in NC there is no such provision and the employees themselves are caught on video stating "I wouldn't fly on a plane made here".
Many of these issues are not directly related to unions. Its a question of company culture if they want that sort of feedback.
I was simply point out what to me seem clearly the most reasonable explanation. If tomorrow there was a union in the SC plant and no longer one in Washington I at least would still pick the Washington built plan every time.
And again, its a totally different question if union in SC would help. They might well improve quality, I still would much rather fly the Washington plane even if they had unions.
To not acknowledge the outsized effects of power dynamics in human hierarchies limits your analysis' scope IMHO. In some of my more dysfunctional clients, I've had to assiduously work to gain the trust of junior engineers to speak candidly to me so I could get the information I need to build my deliverables.
I didn't 'not acknowledge' anything. I simply pointed out what to me seems to be the most reasonable explanation.
I didn't present a complete analysis of the problem. And even if you do take into account 'power dynamics' to jump from that to 'therefore union' would not be correct. Company culture on how errors get handled is likely more important.
A Union worker might be safer from being fired, but that doesn't mean is actually listen to when he speaks up. A company with a strong union culture of workers vs might be separable exactly that.
To me this feel like point to the issue that you like. I'm simply saying that the the better explanation is that one place is the historic home of the company the other is a cheap manufacturing location.
Consider if SpaceX started producing rocket and rocket engine in South Carolina. Would you not consider it likely that the quality there would be worse then in Hawthorne? SpaceX employs are not unionized.
Now on the other hand, what if you had the workers in Hawthorne be non unionized and those in South Carolina be unionized. Would you expect the quality of the rockets/engines from South Carolina to be higher?
I certainty wouldn't bet on that. I much rather have non-unionized workers at a historic company head quarters where the whole engineering sits in a region with likely a 10x higher density of engineering talent and a 10x higher approval as a relocation destination then a far away manufacturing center selected for cheap land and labor.
The same goes for Boeing as well. If you told me I had to make 10000 flights in plane built by the unionized workers from South Carolina and the now no longer unionized workers in Washington. I would still pick the Washington plane every single time.
This is totally outside of if it would be a good idea for the South Catalina workers to unitized and if that might have a improved effect on quality. I think that reasonable argument, but to me its a far smaller factor.
True, but orthogonal and perhaps not as relevant in the modern era. Do you think the USG would let Boeing get into such a bad financial spot that Boeing would stop manufacturing planes? I don't.
Boeing was my first job out of college (BS in Aero Eng but I was hired as a software dev). I worked there for a few years in both commercial aviation and defense projects. I've since moved out of the aerospace industry entirely in favor of tech.
Boeing is a huge company and I saw just a small slice of it at my time there. So with that caveat, in my opinion the root cause of Boeing's problems are mismanagement. Mismanagement flows down from the top of the organization and impacts everything they do.
Here's just one example, off the top of my head: There is no "psychological safety" in the workplace. I wasn't aware of this term at the time, but it's crystal-clear with the benefit of hindsight and a decade more working experience. There is no good way to fix irrational or ineffective processes; or at least, I've never seen it happen. What I did see, several times, is course changes and "new approaches" that result in whole departments (dozens of engineers) getting pink slips. So as a result there was inherent mistrust of change, because "we're going to stop doing X and start doing Y" meant "everyone currently doing X needs to scramble to find a new project before the hammer drops". It is impossible to build a culture of continuous improvement and engineering excellence in such an environment.
Again, this is just one example. There's probably hundreds, thousands, more. It's mismanagement all the way down.
Psychological safety is that quality of culture that tends to empower people to do what's right, even if it goes against the grain.
Without it, people will not stick their necks out or call out problems. They won't tell you the truth or that they are having a hard time.
As someone new to the management sphere, but coming from an engineering background, it was the absolute first thing I've gone out of my way to establish.
> As someone new to the management sphere, but coming from an engineering background, it was the absolute first thing I've gone out of my way to establish.
The pattern recognition that has kicked in for me watching managers in many clients is the ones that can effectively lead because they've established this psychological safety within their teams and can stand up to pressure from above, are the ones that have also established a narrative upwards the management chain that they're practically nearly FIRE'd, and could essentially leave at any time without much adverse impact.
Empty nesters, on the home stretch towards retirement, working just because the missus wants a few more years at trade/career/profession/etc., whatever form the story takes, it immediately defangs any implicit threats of "do this with your team or else you're fired" that seem ever-present in higher hierarchy levels of many organizations. In fact, these leaders engender such strongly-cohesive teams, sometimes the implied threat goes the other way up the management chain: "if that manager leaves under a cloud, some/many/most/all of the most effective team members will follow them wherever they go at the same time".
Many of the FAA's comment point at Boeing trying to push the regulatory timeline along despite elements (specifically software/firmware/avionics) appearing to be not sufficiently complete. This isn't the same thing as the design being fundamentally bad, or even the implementation being fundamentally flawed - it's just not done.
What's not clear is why this is happening. To be clear, nearly all possible outcomes point at either a broken management, and/or engineering culture at Boeing, but all have different flavors. What points at it being a broken management culture (predominantly... this certainly doesn't rule out engineering problems) is this particular section:
> Citing a “lack of data” and the absence of a Preliminary Safety Assessment for the FAA to review, the agency’s letter declares that Boeing hasn’t even met its own process requirements.
> Boeing’s CCS “review dates have continuously slid over a year,” the letter notes.
This section indicates that someone told regulatory to start a TIA process with FAA despite having not completed a review of a vendor supplied critical component (ie, follow their own plan). This indicates that multiple areas within the company which should have been involved (engineering, quality, and regulatory, as well as areas of the company concerned primarily with internal development, and out-sourced systems) were likely all overruled. These are all areas of the company that are supposed to be setup to stop bullshit other areas getting through. All of them have slightly misaligned interests relative to each other that generally tends to keep stuff in check.
Quality is usually very very concerned with at the very least, following your own plan ('meeting its own process requirements'). No one at regulatory would have looked at these gaps (like not at least papering over missing their own process requirements), and thought that formally engaging would be a good idea.
As someone working in medical devices, this definitely smells like something that management rammed through. This doesn't absolve any of other parties/groups of responsibility though. It just means that you have a problem beyond just your documented process, or technical capabilities/competence.
> Within the FAA, the person said, “there’s a general feeling that Boeing has kind of lost a step,” referring to the slide away from a historic reputation for engineering prowess.
Unfortunately this hits at the development of a culture of complacency.
I don’t think it’s any of the above. I think management shortsightedness and greed are the primary culprits.
Safety and engineering excellence took the back seat for quarterly profits.
After 2 planes down, hundreds of deaths and a massive international backlash and shitstorm, Boeing tries to get a business-as-usual, rubber-stamp, paper-over-the-cracks, fastrack approval, and rightly gets shot down.
> Is this just the FAA getting tough because of all the scrutiny?
Hopefully this is just the FAA doing its job from now on.
Business as usual being propped up as news because the topic gets attention recently.
You test to find issues. You expect a certain sort and number of issues to come up in testing. Sometimes an issue comes up outside of expectations so you reset your expectations and test more.
The FAA has been doing its job and flying is incredibly safe. There were lapses, those things are being addressed.
>Boeing tries to get a business-as-usual, rubber-stamp, paper-over-the-cracks, fastrack approval
This is way over the top. It's a fun narrative because building up an enemy is a good passtime and it gets reader attention.
When you don't know anything about a topic, be hesitant to share your theories about how everybody is doing it wrong.
> When you don't know anything about a topic, be hesitant to share your theories about how everybody is doing it wrong.
In the real world people who aren't experts have opinions, and those opinions matter. If the narrative that is everywhere is wrong feel free to correct it, that's a useful undertaking IMO. If you think everyone who knows less than you (in your opinion) should just be a silent spectator to your expertise, I guess we have different views on a how a healthy society behaves.
If Airbus hadn’t made a detour with the A380, it would be almost comical how much better their product portfolio is now compared to Boeing. The A320neo vs the 737MAX and the A350 vs 777 and 787…
Boeing needs a win, quickly.
The A380 was a good example of getting the prediction of demand wrong. It looked good for the gulf carriers, but the US and European carriers moved to more direct flights due to consumer demand, for which the A380 is the wrong choice.
It appears to be an excellent plane, but it was the Concorde of its time. Or the F-35. Too large and complex to build and too few customers. The economic downturn and seismic shift in demand from hub and spoke as you point out was the nail in the coffin. I desperately need to go fly one of the “good ones” before they are all converted to 100% economy and then retired…
The biggest irony of the whole affair is, that the notorious delayed berlin airport was redesigned and rebuilt, to accommodate the A380 and when it was finally done, the plane was no longer relevant.
Yeah but the changes needed are not exclusive for the A380, but fit the 777 and 350 as well (I think. At least the 777 and of course the 747 which is more common)
Most airports came before the A380, you'd change one/two gates at most.
The original 777 had an option for folding wingtips. ISTR American Airlines asked for it so that they could operate out of some space constrained airports on domestic routes. The engineering was done, the avionics have options for folding wingtips, and then nobody ever ordered the plane with them.
The emirates first class on the A380 is a really special experience. It’s not the most polished F product out there anymore, but the shower is hard to beat.
Book the shower right before landing and step off the plane feeling nice and fresh. It’s always easy to spot the F pax from the unwashed masses.
A shame the A380 is given a good kicking generally over stuff like this ... it's easily my favourite plane in terms of flight experience ... I actually started enjoying flying again and when booking holidays or work flights, filtering flights specifically to make sure I got on the A380.
The A380 was a smooth ride, but oh so boring to fly on. But maybe I am weird for liking to fly on tiny things like ERJ135. In a A380 it's just 8 hours of noisy bus ride with way to many people.
8 hours of noisy bus ride? Weird, I never found the A380 like that and it's not as if I was up front or anything. Engine noice was minimal, fairly comfortable. Maybe just lucky.
Having said that, I recall a distinct difference between airliners. Qantas A380 wasn't as nice in comparison to the Emirates.
If it’s just pilots and peons in the plane during the test flights, it will only be about saving money.
They need to put an executive in every one of the test flights until it is fully certified. I assure you it will be the safest plane you will ever fly.
Even that wouldn't engender change. I could see change if it was selected from member of the board of directors, CEO, CFO, or COO, and random lower-level executive. And all their immediate families.
That we would even be discussing this is odd to me. I remember watching various old-timey 1940-1950's era American movies that depicted turn-of-the-century titans of industry proudly and aggressively using what their factories' products, and if it involved putting their lives on the line, so much the better to get more attention, validation, and sales. Don't know whether that happened at all in real life, but it made an impression upon me that the zeitgeist thought it entirely appropriate to depict in popular media.
Just as it makes an impression upon me that so few leaders of industry today will make it a point to truly randomly pick out their product and use it with gusto and pride. If they are caught on video doing any similar act, it is a thoroughly massaged "reality show" production carefully "handled" by PR, marketing and sales teams.
"Boeing has yet to satisfy the FAA that it has fully understood and corrected what went wrong that day."
This appears to be the heart of the problem, how come it's the FAA holding you up on this and not your own engineering department?
A solid foundation in design and engineering would require that if an event like this happened you'd rip down the whole structure until you got to the problem, from where you could confidently move forward knowing you know your systems.
“abruptly” ha! Gotta love the news. Given the size of 777X, I doubt it was really abrupt. That thing is huge!
On a more serious note, the message didn’t seem to clarify the “abruptness” of the pitch. That word did not need to be added.
Crikey. MCAS all over again. Something at Boeing is very, very out of control.