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Boeing Employees Mocked Lion Air Staff For Seeking 737 Max Training, Calling Them 'Idiots.' A Year Later 189 People Died When One of Their Jets Crashed (bloomberg.com) 223

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Indonesia's Lion Air considered putting its pilots through simulator training before flying the Boeing 737 Max but abandoned the idea after the planemaker convinced them in 2017 it was unnecessary, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter and internal company communications. From the report: The next year, 189 people died when a Lion Air 737 Max plunged into the Java Sea, a disaster blamed in part on inadequate training and the crew's unfamiliarity with a new flight-control feature on the Max that malfunctioned. Boeing employees had expressed alarm among themselves over the possibility that one of the company's largest customers might require its pilots to undergo costly simulator training before flying the new 737 model, according to internal messages that have been released to the media. Those messages, included in the more than 100 pages of internal Boeing communications that the company provided to lawmakers and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and released widely on Thursday, had Lion Air's name redacted.
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Boeing Employees Mocked Lion Air Staff For Seeking 737 Max Training, Calling Them 'Idiots.' A Year Later 189 People Died When On More

Boeing Employees Mocked Lion Air Staff For Seeking 737 Max Training, Calling Them 'Idiots.' A Year Later 189 People Died When On

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  • hindsight is 2020 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @10:42AM (#59619154)

    This the year of looking back and wondering what they were thinking at the time.

    • The bottom-line?

    • Re:hindsight is 2020 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by segedunum ( 883035 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:21AM (#59619310)
      This is not hindsight, this is gross incompetence. People need to go to prison for this.

      • The corporate cowards will hide behind procedure and buck passing and it doesn't seem like anyone in the US government is minded to prosecute anyway.

    • Engineering versus finance (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:32AM (#59619380)

      This is another example of a company that had a strong engineering culture being taken over by financial wizards. Other examples include AT&T (back when it was the phone company), electric & gas utilities and HP (or whatever it's called now).

      Back when engineers were in management, they had a long-term view of the business, not just quarterly profit and bonuses. And they were product and quality focused. (Yes there are a few exceptions to this.)

      Now you kids get off my lawn.

    • Sadly, the sim training would not have helped, since the MCAS was not in the manuals or training materials.

      • Re:hindsight is 2020 - Useless anyway (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @12:21PM (#59619576)

        It may well have helped, since MCAS is implemented in the simulators. Presumably they didn't have a simulator scenario for MCAS activating when it's not supposed to and driving your plane into the ground, but it's quite possible the pilots might have noted the trim doing unexpected things while doing high speed stall recovery practice and at least become aware of it's existence.

        Maybe that's why Boeing didn't like the idea.

  • Corporations are people? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dog-Cow ( 21281 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @10:49AM (#59619170)

    If corporations have the rights of citizens, they should have the responsibilities. If a singular person had caused the number of deaths that Boeing has, he would be in jail on multiple counts of negligent homicide. Boeing should not be free to carry on business as usual. It should be "jailed" for the same duration as an individual in the same circumstances.

    • Re:Corporations are people? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MitchDev ( 2526834 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @10:57AM (#59619188)

      Agreed, corporations get a free pass on crime. The CEO and board of Directors get huge bonuses and such even though they do little of the actual work, jail them for the company's actions. ANd you want to say "Well, the shareholders demand profit", then lock up the shareholders

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        >ANd you want to say "Well, the shareholders demand profit", then lock up the shareholders

        Does that include everyone with ownership through a pension plan, or an index fund in their 401(k)?

        • Corporate imprisonment (Score:4, Funny)

          by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:36AM (#59619386)

          Sounds good to me. The most equitable way to do it would probably be to assign culpability in proportion to how much of the corporation you own.

          Corporation is sentenced to the equivalent of consecutive life sentences for 189 counts of negligent manslaughter (~250 years in practice)? Then every shareholder gets 2.5 years in prison for every 1% of the corporation they own. In practice that would generally mean a few shareholders would serve several decades, many more would serve a few years, and the millions of people whose pension plan includes some stock would get a minute or two.

          You'd probably want to have some cuttoff point so that the administrative costs don't get outrageous - e.g. if your share of the sentence is less than a day you're let off the hook. Of course you'd want to make that decision *after* the sentence has completely propagated through all corporate stockholders to human individuals, otherwise you'd rapidly see the 1% owning millions of shell corporations which collectively own their stock, so that any individual shell almost certainly falls below the safe threshold.

          • Oops, that should be "Corporation is sentenced to the equivalent of 10 consecutive life sentences "

          • Here's an idea. Suppose someone puts $1,000 of their savings into Boeing (and $1,000 each into lots of other companies). If Boeing does well, they can expect to get about $100 gain. If Boeing does something very bad, how about the shareholder could lose up to $1,000, instead going to jail for a few minutes.

            The more share you have of profits, the more your share of penalities if the company does wrong.

            In total, people have invested about $200 billion in Boeing, so $200 billion is the total penalties you c

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rjmx ( 233228 )

        Damn. Where are mod points when you need them?

      • "lock up the shareholders".... that's potentially EVERYONE with any 401K retirement account and any pensioners - police, fire, teachers... ya, lock 'em all up..

    • Re:Corporations are people? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:06AM (#59619216)

      You do realize that the individuals in the corporation do face criminal responsibilities and the corporation also faces civil damages and fines. So, you may not put a corporation in jail, but you CAN put the people who made criminal decisions for the corporation in jail.

      Now it is sometimes hard to determine exactly who made the criminal decision, and sometimes you cannot fairly asses who's to blame, but in clear cases of criminal behavior and decision making it's possible for individuals to be held criminally liable for the actions of the corporation. Which, if you think about it, really is the fairest and most sensible way to do this.

      • Re:Corporations are people? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:10AM (#59619248)

        You do realize that the individuals in the corporation do face criminal responsibilities and the corporation also faces civil damages and fines.

        Individuals in the corporation can face criminal responsibilities. But they rarely do. And those civil damages and fines are almost universally a pittance compared to the profit realized through the actions that triggered said fines.

        • That assertion will require you to provide actual facts to back up your opinion.

          Corporate officers and employees OFTEN face criminal charges despite your misinformed opinion. I can think of many examples of individuals who make decisions for a corporation and where criminally responsible for those decisions. Famous corporate malfeasance (say like Enron) resulted in both the destruction of the company AND with employees and officers being held criminally liable for the company's crimes. I personally know o

          • Re:Corporations are people? (Score:4, Informative)

            by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @02:04PM (#59620098)

            I don't think your anecdotes do much in the face of data (Not to mention Enron was 20 years ago):

            Federal white-collar prosecutions have declined by nearly 50 percent since the peak years of President Barak Obamaâ(TM)s administration, according to figures compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.

            In the first 11 months of FY 2019,the government launched 4,973 prosecutionsâ"most of them cases of fraud by wire, radio or televisionâ"a drop of 8.5 percent since the previous year.

            Compared to eight years ago, the 2019 figures so far represented a drop of 46.6 percent, TRAC said.

            https://thecrimereport.org/201... [thecrimereport.org]

            Five thousand cases, most of them probably minor bullshit, is nothing in a country this big.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        Yes, that poor CEO having to resign with ONLY $62 million. How is he even going to live on that when a halfway decent yacht costs $100 million?

    • Put them into 26 and California!

    • Even if you could hold corporations to account the same way using their *fictional* personhood, the *actual* people who did the crime would still get away with it. The CEO wold escape with his golden parachute, and the rest of the management team would either carry on or find jobs at other corporations looking for people who will do anything to make a quarterly earnings target.

      The only way to deter corporate crime is to have the make *humans* who actually do it worry about the personal consequences.

      Boeing

      • Even if you could hold corporations to account the same way using their *fictional* personhood, the *actual* people who did the crime would still get away with it.

        There's no need for a false dichotomy here.

        * Boeing should have their corporate charter revoked for three years. This will create incentive for shareholders. If they want to reorganize as a Partnership without corporate protections, that may be allowable.

        * Individual Professional Engineers should have their license revoked for life. This will

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          I think it would be great if Boeing could face the corporate equivalent of the death penalty. The reason that will never happen is that Boeing designed itself so that you can't contain the effects to shareholders and employees.

          In a nutshell, Boeing protects itself with human shields.

      • No (Score:2)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        No, I disagree. The liability should be with the owners of the company, just like it is with small companies.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          I agree it *should* be. The problem is containing the consequences to the owners. The difference between Boeing and some small company is that *meaningfully* punishing it also punishes local economies across the country and in some cases entire geographic regions.

          If that were the *only* way to address this, I'd say, sure, that's better than nothing. Another possibility is what happened with GM; you basically seize the company's operations and sell them to a new set of owners.

  • Looks like the 737 max will prove to be Boeing’s Pinto or Corvair

    • Re:Will we need a Ralph Nader for aircraft? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Randon ( 982444 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:12AM (#59619258)
      Nader's already gotten involved---his grandniece was killed on one of these.

    • Looks like the 737 max will prove to be Boeingâ(TM)s Pinto or Corvair

      I'm sure Boeing, at least to some extent, hopes it will be. I note that Ford and GM are both still around and both rank among the largest car manufacturers.

    • Except that the Pinto was no more dangerous than competitors' cars of the same size, it was only famous due to Ford's inept public relations. GM's PR handling of the Corvair was equally bad if not worse. Boeing has worse than just bad PR and a lot more people died in the two MAX crashes than Pintos or Corvairs.

  • As more documents come out, they need to be punished hard for this. Being forced to convert the 800 or so 737 MAXes they've built into regular, boring 737s and sell them at appropriately lower cost would probably be a good start.

    • It will be easier for Boeing to scrap them.
      Wouldn't be the first time, like with that 767 tanker.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 )

      It will never happen. Boeing is too powerful. It is able to lobby government for preferential policies for itself. That old "let the free market decide" stuff doesn't work here. There isn't a free market. Boeing is balls-deep in the federal government and nothing will happen here. They will get a slap-on-the-wrist fine and any jail time will be served by low-level scapegoat employees.

      If high-ranking company officials went to prison, it would be the end of the American system of elite ingroup prefere

  • Could Lockheed please get back into the airliner business?

  • They intentionally mislead both regulators and their customers regarding the operation and safety of the 737 Max. As a result 346 people lost their lives. At what point does our Federal government take a stand and criminally prosecute a large corporation in this country? And I mean real prosecution - not the deferred prosecution agreement nonsense they use to slap companies on the wrist.

    • As both planes were not operated by US airlines ... the US government probably does nothing. Except of course wafing a finer and ask politely to check the next planes better.

  • This is the problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sugar and acid ( 88555 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:18AM (#59619294)

    This is the problem in a nutshell, sales and marketing of the 737 max desperately trying to hold onto the a selling point, that it was almost equivalent to previous generation 737s so it didn't need expensive pilot training. It was key to the lockin of the 737 family boeing had in many airlines (eg southwest, ryanair, lion in this case). It is a key selling point for low-cost airlines particularly and also creates vendor lockin for boeing.

    1. It was why MCAS was created, to hide some nasty differences in how the max handled under certain conditions.
    2. It was why MCAS was downplayed in it's functionality to the FAA, so they wouldn't demand extensive testing.
    3. Because of point 2 it was half assedly implemented.
    4. It was why MCAS was NOT mentioned to the pilots or airlines.
    5. And it was because of all the above points that the 2 planes that crashed started handling erratically and the pilots involved didn't have a clue what was going on or what to do so they crashed.

    The truth is, Boeing could remove MCAS, and bring in an extensive training regime for the new flight characterisics of the MAX and it would be then safe to fly. But it probably would need a lot of expensive training, and quite possibly a separate type rating to previous 737s so pilots don't have to continually change flying styles as they swap between 737 generations. But that KILLS the 737 max as a swap in and out replacement for earlier 737 jets in a mixed fleet. At that point the companies running 737 may as well move over to a320's.

    So boeing plows on trying to make MCAS work and get approval for it again so they can keep a consistent type rating with previous 737. All to keep the business model of some of their biggest customers viable and lock them into boeing. The amount that this will cost Boeing in the end would have paid for the development of a completely new and modern replacement for the 737 that would out perform the max and a320 neo, and set them up for the next few decades. Instead they've lost reputation, money and stuck in a development dead end for that market segment.

    • They can't remove MCAS. The plane has fundamental aerodynamic issues that it was masking.

    • All of what you wrote is true and Boeing should be punished. But we also need to keep an eye on low-cost carriers shirking on pilot training, and maintenance. For instance, the doomed Lion Air plane had the failed angle of attack sensor replaced right before the last flight. The "new" sensor was also defective, and there was no evidence that it had been tested on the ground. There is an entire chain of events that lead to the accident, and it starts at Boeing, but if the Lion Air crew had properly replaced

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bobby ( 109046 )

      I generally agree with you, but I think there's a popular misconception that the MAX variant (mostly bigger engines mounted forward and up) causes a gross problem. I have a little piloting experience in small planes and 1.5 hours FAA flight log doing many many takeoffs and landings. Keeping a plane level, or proper pitch angle, is job #1. Well, there are many job #1s, but pitch control is much of your focus.

      From what I've read, and from what experience I have, I just can't imagine that the MAX is that di

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kvan ( 30429 )
      That's why the only proper response from authorities is to require a separate type rating. Boeing has already said they will now recommend training, but a type rating would make it mandatory and probably more extensive than what Boeing will end up recommending.

    • The amount that this will cost Boeing in the end would have paid for the development of a completely new and modern replacement for the 737 that would out perform the max and a320 neo, and set them up for the next few decades. Instead they've lost reputation, money and stuck in a development dead end for that market segment.

      That seems to be how most short term bridge strategies end up. Far too many companies skimp on engineering / R&D and then wonder why they lose in the marketplace. Boeing seems to be among them sadly.

    • Re:This is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)

      by scamper_22 ( 1073470 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @02:52PM (#59620392)

      No, there is only one problem.

      A bad implementation of MCAS.

      There is absolutely nothing wrong with MCAS or how it was intended to be used. MCAS itself was only meant to be active in a very rare circumstance to avoid a stall. MCAS would normally not even be triggered. MCAS is and was supposed to be just a minor tweak in edge cases to help pilots handle it better. A lot of aircraft have computer assisted flight.

      Now was Boeing's implementation of MCAS absolutely terrible? Yes. There is no question about that. But for reference, Boeing has previously used MCAS in other aircraft without issue.

      https://qz.com/1718506/boeings... [qz.com]

      Things like pilot input overriding MCAS as well as multiple sensors. If these were in the 737 MAX MCAS, no one would even know MCAS existed.

      Why didn't Boeing use the military like behavior of MCAS? That's something for an investigation to find out. I would seriously doubt it was to save money or ask customers for an upcharge.

      If I were to bet money, it's just plain old incompetence and rushing to market.

  • If it's Boeing, We Ain't Going (Score:3)

    by speedlaw ( 878924 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:22AM (#59619314) Homepage
    Really, if you see 737 max, or whatever the marketers re brand this turkey as, I and others will find another flight. BTW, Turkeys CAN fly, just not far....

  • Did the simulation cover the failure mode of the angle-of-attack sensor that caused the crash of the airplane? From what I've read, it would not have, as Lion Air did not purchase the feature that would have alerted the pilots that there was a sensor malfunction. So, more training probably would not have made a difference.

    Also, according to the article, the pilots weren't well trained by the airline to begin with. They had to look up emergency procedures while in the air. This is not the purview of Boeing,

    • While I'm sure Boeing sales and executives like their overseas sales, I have to imagine there's a fair amount of grimacing on the pilot training and selection standards in a lot of third world airlines, especially if they are "discount" airlines and not blue-chip brands oriented towards Western passengers.

      I'm not meaning to let Boeing off the hook here, but American airline pilots I've talked to say they think that LionAir training was probably not great and that third world airlines depend heavily on autom

  • Who's the idiot now? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:32AM (#59619374)

    Can't they just call people idiots at the water-cooler, like the rest of us, instead of leaving a paper trail for the judge?

    • Re:Who's the idiot now? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:48AM (#59619432) Homepage Journal

      Calling people names, even *other* people, enforces group-think. You don't want to agree with *those* people, or the rest of *us* will think you're an idiot too.

      As childish as that sounds, it's powerful if enough people around you are doing it. People are social animals, even people who think of themselves as individualists. Belonging feels good, and being shamed for being different is one of the most painful emotional experiences you can have. It's a rare person who is comfortable being seen having attitudes outside the norm in a group, and by in large they are at a disadvantage over people who can appear more accommodating when it comes to advancement.

      This is why a dysfunctional corporate culture is dangerous in a company that does something important. It's unfortunate if a game development company has a toxic culture; you should work somewhere else. But if a hospital or an airline manufacturer is like that you can't contain the consequences to the people who work there.

      • Boeing was NOT like this 15-20 years ago. Problem is, that MBAs took over and pushed non-technical ppl into technical positions. As such, Boeing went from the best of the best to being loaded with peter principle. WHat is needed now, is to break Boeing up vertically, into 2-4 different companies, in which they each have the same equipment, etc. In doing this, they return to competition, and hopefully, if any of them put MBAs back in charge, that one will fail.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Water coolers were removed to improve workers' efficiency.

  • Haven't people heard of e-discovery in 2020?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:51AM (#59619444)

    This is yet another example, for those who don't know yet, that shows email, chat, texts, etc. are discoverable in legal proceedings. Companies' legal departments should be doing everything possible to beg employees to stop using these communication methods to gossip. All those stupid memes you put on your Slack channel have the potential of being seized on by some defense attorney later on to prove employee incompetence.

    All that aside, this whole discovery exercise is a good example of what happens when employees disengage. I've worked at places where everyone's just stopped trying because it's quite evident that doing so won't get you anywhere with whatever management climate is blowing through. It sounds like Boeing is experiencing something like this. Especially as an engineering type myself, I can definitely see having conversations like these engineers are.

    We don't all have to be rah-rah corporate cult members and have a work culture like all the LinkedIn thinkfluencers seem to indicate every company should have. (I wonder how much that #hustle guy gets every single time some MBA-wielding middle manager clicks on one of his videos.) But I can tell you from experience...if you remove any potential for people to get ahead and do a good job, people will just coast. I've read story after story about Boeing gutting their engineering culture, offshoring, moving the company to cheaper places, etc. all while executives rake in more money. If I were working there and saw that, and had a family to support, I'd go into "bare minimum" mode too.

  • I am not stating that pilot training is unnecessary, but when you look, you will notice a familiar pattern of pilots being blamed for what turns out to be a mechanical, or in this case, a software problem. The fighter cockpit windscreen that wouldn't open, the F22 crashes from the lack of breathing air, and others were all blamed on the pilots. The 737 Maxes are still grounded for mechanical/software reasons, so why blame the pilots?
  • with a $62M severance package too.

  • Designed by clowns ... (Score:3)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @01:09PM (#59619788) Homepage

    Internal memos from Boeing also shows that employees mocked the 737 MAX, rightly saying that it was designed by clowns, supervised by monkeys [fortune.com].

  • Email (Score:3)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @01:12PM (#59619802) Homepage

    I don't know about you guys but the one guaranteed way to create merry hell is by putting something in an email that the company don't want a record of.

    It's the one way that things turn from "Oh, you don't need to worry about that" to "We have recorded your concern and are going to do the following to act upon it."

    Of course, they hate you for that, but equally they can't sack you easily, for just expressing such a concern officially, when they KNOW that they have to respond to it and you're in the right to mention it. That's prima facie evidence of constructive dismissal if they do.

    Are companies really that stupid that, in email, they are not recording official responses to concerns and people are just dropping that paper trail midway without doing anything about it?

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