Internal FAA Review Saw High Risk of 737 MAX Crashes (wsj.com) 38
U.S. regulators decided to allow Boeing's 737 MAX jet to keep flying after its first fatal crash last fall even after their own analysis indicated it could become one of the most accident-prone airliners in decades without design changes [Editor's link: the link may be paywalled], the Wall Street Journal reports. From the report: The November 2018 internal Federal Aviation Administration analysis, released during a House committee hearing Wednesday, reveals that without agency intervention, the MAX could have averaged one fatal crash about every two or three years. That amounts to a substantially greater safety risk than either Boeing or the agency indicated publicly at the time. The assessment, which came the month after a Lion Air crash in Indonesia, raises new questions about the FAA's decision-making in the wake of that disaster, along with what turned out to be faulty agency assumptions on ways to alleviate hazards.
In the wake of the analysis, the FAA took steps to put short-term and permanent measures in place to combat hazards, but Wednesday's hearing started off with challenges to some of those decisions. "Despite its own calculations, the FAA rolled the dice on the safety of the traveling public and let the 737 MAX continue to fly," said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee. The FAA's intervention proved inadequate after a second fatal MAX crash, in Ethiopia in March, led to the global grounding of the fleet and sparked an international controversy over the agency's safety oversight.
In the wake of the analysis, the FAA took steps to put short-term and permanent measures in place to combat hazards, but Wednesday's hearing started off with challenges to some of those decisions. "Despite its own calculations, the FAA rolled the dice on the safety of the traveling public and let the 737 MAX continue to fly," said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee. The FAA's intervention proved inadequate after a second fatal MAX crash, in Ethiopia in March, led to the global grounding of the fleet and sparked an international controversy over the agency's safety oversight.
Time for justice! (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's time to really punish the board of directors. Force them to take those $50 million severance packages with perhaps only a moderate $20 million bonus for tanking the stock. Oh, and for killing those people or whatever.
Re:Time for justice! (Score:5, Insightful)
Take those $50 million severance packages and pay every penny to the families of those who died in the second crash. Those in the FAA who knew about this should also have to contribute.
Re:Time for justice! (Score:5, Insightful)
It is easy to point fingers at Boeing, but what responsibility does the FAA and the Trump administration hold in this case, since they let Boeing move ahead into commercial service KNOWING that they would see fatal crashes?
The November 2018 internal Federal Aviation Administration analysis, released during a House committee hearing Wednesday, reveals that without agency intervention, the MAX could have averaged one fatal crash about every two or three years.
Re:Time for justice! (Score:4, Insightful)
Since you seem to have a reading comprehension problem, this is solely regarding WHY the 737 MAX 8 were NOT TAKEN OUT OF SERVICE EARLIER
>>The November 2018 internal Federal Aviation Administration analysis, released during a House committee hearing Wednesday, reveals that without agency intervention, the MAX could have averaged one fatal crash about every two or three years.
Sounder the TRUMP administration, the FAA had determined that wrecks would continue to happen and NOTHING WAS DONE ABOUT IT!!!
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Trump had nothing to do with it, all the certification work was done in 2016 and it received its certificate 5 weeks after Trump took office. You can't really blame Obama, either - it's not like the president personally authorizes aircraft certifications, and the FAA had been operating this way for maybe 40-50 years.
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Politicians receive campaign contributions at every level to help grease a pig through an approval process. By the time the contributions are large enough to gain presidential attention (maybe $500,000 as your staring bid) you're dealing with really large pigs, and the worst possible lube.
If the pig might explode, you need to screen that pig carefully.
So what presidents end up liking is a fat contribution to tilt the appointment of a s
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Insufficient. This is bad enough that significant jail-time is needed for all that had a say in these decisions and everybody that would have been obligated to stop this but did not. This includes Boeing leadership, parts of its engineering and test people and, most certainly, those responsible at the FAA.
Re:Time for justice! (Score:5, Insightful)
And what of the FAA? The FAA is also complicit here, as this report says - they identified a heightened level of risk and essentially ignored it until they no longer could. The FAA even dragged their heels when it came to grounding the MAX after the second crash - they were the last major authority to ground it.
The MAX saga has identified three main issues with international aviation:
1. An internal lax safety culture within Boeings engineering departments, reflecting all the way up to the board in terms of culpability.
2. A broken regulatory body in the case of the FAA, with numerous failings being cited in subsequent investigations.
3. A broken system of trust between major international regulatory bodies - the EASA and the FAA have long just accepted the other parties certification for aircraft, and essentially signed off on their own certification on the basis that the other body is doing it right. The MAX issues have shown this to be an issue in a couple of ways - the fact that the FAA signed off on a dangerous aircraft in the first place, and the fact that the EASA has been bullied into accepting the FAAs sign off of the fixes (when they are finally approved).
If the FAA was doing its job, it wouldn't have allowed the MAX to enter service in the first place - they weren't, so the spotlight isn't just on Boeing here, its wider than just them and until we fix the whole thing this will keep on happening.
Re:Time for justice! (Score:5, Interesting)
Full Article (Score:5, Informative)
The article is posted at:
https://www.marketscreener.com... [marketscreener.com]
The word "damning" does not even BEGIN to describe the evidence of Boeing's willful incompetence.
Re:Full Article (Score:5, Insightful)
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Look up "regulatory capture". It's a long-established practice.
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This is what happens when an industry is allowed to "self-regulate" on safety.
No, you don't understand. In a Libertarian paradise people would just choose to fly on different aircraft.
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If you think Boeing is bad it gets worse when you get into military. Because they don't even have to pretend to cater to the FAA and if someone dies. "That's what they signed up for" (literal quote from my first day of work.)
Boeing got caught with their hand in the cookie jar because two entire planes went into the ground.
GE's engines shred themselves:
https://www.adn.com/nation-wor... [adn.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
American Aerospace is terrifying.
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The word "damning" does not even BEGIN to describe the evidence of Boeing's willful incompetence.
The term you are looking for is "criminally negligent", followed by "homicide" and a count of 346.
Fox Guarding Henhouse (Score:4, Informative)
This continues to be a problem letting the FAA act as both safety oversight as well as encourage aviation activity and development. The entire aviation industry is big business, so in the latter case the higher-ups in the FAA often turn a blind eye to safety violations from the airlines and the aircraft manufacturers, not to mention its own development of air traffic systems and its contractors (the problems with the air traffic ERAM system are well-documented).
From a safety perspective the solution is simple - separate safety oversight functions from the FAA and create a separate entity that doesn't have the blatant conflict of interest that currently exists within the FAA.
But then it's obvious that's never going to happen so unfortunately these sorts of affairs are going to continue to occur and people are going to continue to die.
Re:Fox Guarding Henhouse (Score:4, Interesting)
They ignored the 737 MAX's safety concerns even after there were fatalities, refusing to ground it even after the second crash. The day after other countries started grounding the aircraft, the FAA issued a "Continued Airworthiness Notification to the International Community" stating that they considered the 737 MAX safe to fly. They only grounded the aircraft two days later after pretty much the rest of the planet had already grounded the thing.
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The phrase "Regulations are written in blood" fits, but it nearly always fits.
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The problem is that the general public has a very short memory. The regulations may tighten for a while, but it won't be long before the industry and the politicians start whining about "onerous" regulations that "stifle innovation" and incur "costs" that make them "less competitive", and so on and so forth. A good portion of the population buy that hook, line, and sinker every time and elect those politicians, who in turn will remove/replace those regulators and we're back to square one. Lather, rinse,
Re:Fox Guarding Henhouse (Score:4, Informative)
The current arrangement goes back many decades and has produced many reliable airplanes. Actually, also, the FAA does have authority to review everything and deny everything. Certification involves a lot of things like really expensive stuff like building wind tunnels and carrying out other expensive tests that cost a fortune. Boeing pays for it all. Bringing certification under the FAA means that FAA would have to pay for all those things, which would not be fair to taxpayers. FAA has people who look over all of Boeings certification activities and can review all of it to make sure it is all being done according to standards.
I think what should be done is hire some more engineers into the FAA and post them at Boeing to review what is going on there and allow the FAA to move engineers to Boeing HQ as needed based on concerns that something bad may be going on.
The primary cause of the failures was a change of culture in Boeing that occured in the late 1990s. This is the real problem that needs to be addressed. Its a knee jerk reaction that fits popular narratives to place all blame on the FAA and the regulatory regime. But the fact is Boeing is not being properly managed and that is the core problem so what is needed is an internal change oin corporate governance in side of Boeing.
As punishment, Boeing should be forcibly reorganized requiring a new board of directors to be instituted which consists of 40% engineers, 35% manufacturing workers, 15% military, and 10% marketing and finance.
New rules need to be institution requiring full disclosure of everything about the airplane, including all plans and source code, to the FAA. An anonymous whistleblower website for employees to the FAA should exist.
Out of the question is not re-approving 737 Max. It has to fly again. It is actually can be made a safe plane and before grounding many hundreds of successful flights were made with no complaint. So, its not a fatally flawed plane and the problems are fixable. It takes 10-15 years to make a new airplane. Not approving means Boeing, Southwest and many part suppliers possibly go bankrupt and Airbus does not have capacity to take up the slack anyway.
ironically, adding more paperwork to FAA certification would cause that to be drawn out even further, which would not improve safety since it would impair the ability to do a new clean sheet design which is the long term solution for Boeing to move away from the 737 to a new clean sheet model that can take on Airbus better and should have been done a long time ago. Its because of the regulatory regime that it was cheaper to put bandaids on the 737 rather than to go with a clean sheet.
Boeing should be required to develop a 737 replacement right away. Certification needs to be safety focused but more bureaucracy is not always the answer. In fact ways should be looked at to accelerate a 737 replacement certification if it can be done smartly to improve safety and which would work together which governance changes at Boeing.
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An anonymous whistleblower website for employees to the FAA should exist.
There are several anonymous whistleblower-type safety reporting systems including websites within the FAA. For some employees there is the "Aviation Safety Reporting System". Plus there is the "FAA Hotline Reporting System". Finally (at least for now) any government employee is entitled to whistleblower protections, including anonymity.
The problem is that the reports from those programs are largely ignored making them obviously ineffective.
In addition in accidents the NTSB often suggests procedur
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A 737 replacement would take 10 years to develop and certify, cost $20Billion and only be slightly more efficient than the A320NEO or MAX is currently, meaning Airbus has an aircraft only slightly less efficient but without a huge debt hanging over it.
Your plan would eliminate Boeing from the narrow body market.
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Your plan would eliminate Boeing from the narrow body market.
You say it like it's a bad thing.
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A duopoly is bad enough, a monopoly is worse. Right now, Boeings widebodies are in a bad shape (787 is working off a $20billion debt, 777X is delayed by several years and not bringing in any money in, 777 is ending, 767 is low rate for freighters and low rate for KC-46, 747 is low rate), and it’s main money maker is grounded. Force Boeing to invest in a narrow body replacement program now and it might just exit the market completely.
Imagine the "Safety" of the Starliner (Score:3)
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Sure, what laws were broken? (Score:2)
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We have generic laws for reckless endangerment of other people . But they are usually only applied to young poor people. There is also gross negligence for people in a position where it is their job to protect lives.
Wow - just wow (Score:2)
Money talks (Score:2)
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Kind of have to wonder, how much money it took for another government agency to look the other way?
It's (probably) not up-front money. But if the FAA Administrator appointee and other higher-up FAA lackeys obfuscate and ignore problems to put themselves into favor with the aviation industry when they leave the FAA they can use it to leverage lucrative positions in the private sector.
In hindsight (Score:2)
I flew on a 737 MAX and I remember on one of the flights, the plane nosed down sharply before what felt like afterburners kicking in and the plane lifting to altitude at a pretty damn impressive clip. At the time I played it off as cowboy pilots hand-flying the crazy fun air route that is my local airport. Looking back I wonder if this was MCAS, and I wonder who else, here on Slashdot, may have experienced the effects without realizing it. How chilling is it that it's possible the pilots weren't sure eit