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
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.
hindsight is 2020 (Score:5, Funny)
This the year of looking back and wondering what they were thinking at the time.
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I am pretty sure it's been a loss for that.
Re:hindsight is 2020 (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure the sales guy got his bonus before the planes crashed.
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But the poor CEO who signed off on this got nothing but the door hitting his ass on the way out. And by "door" I mean "$62m severance package" and by "ass" I mean "bank account".
Re:hindsight is 2020 (Score:5, Insightful)
They won't of course (Score:3)
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)
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.
Re:hindsight is 2020 - Useless anyway (Score:2)
Re:hindsight is 2020 - Useless anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
injury attorneys will have an field day with this (Score:3)
injury attorneys will have an field day with this
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If they were greedy why would they not want to sell a training program alongside every airplane?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because you want to sell the airline a dozen models. If they have to go to training classes, then that will delay the purchases.
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The problem is we found these threats are easy way to bate people into doing what they want.
While browsing YouTube there was a video on a topic that got my interest.
Apparently it was made by some Fox News reporter, There was a point early on the video where they guy said something like "Yes I am a Fox News reporter, are you open minded enough to listen to what I am about to say" At this point what went thew my mind. "Yes, I am willing to listen to opposing views, I am willing to listen." Then my rational m
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just moving from the old 737 to the upgraded 737
It's a completely different aircraft. This is Boeing's trick - keep calling it the same and that way you don't have to get it re-certified.
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How is it not Boeing fault?
The upgrade created changes in the flight workflow for the pilot with different emergency routine.
If you are making a piece of software that took the users AD Login, then you added a secondary authentication to the program and pushed it to the end users, then no one can log in. Because you didn't give any training material on how to use secondary authentication, you/your company is still at fault for the software not being accessible, even if it was a minor upgrade to the product.
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And this was no minor upgrade. It's essentially a new model of plane, that they just kept the same name for.
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Dude wtf? This isn't even a hypothetical. Two fucking planes went down in flames where pilot training would have most likely averted it.
Just because you wish Boeing wasn't at fault doesn't make it true.
Re:hindsight is 2020 (Score:5, Insightful)
Damnit if we can't edit comments I wish we could at least delete them within a certain window. What I meant is that it would be ridiculous for an American or European fleet of pilots to need this extra simulator time just moving from the old 737 to the upgraded 737. Unless there is something specific to southern asia requiring some kind of rote memorization of tasks that should be understood at a fundamental level, this isn't Boeing's fault.
Or the Lion Air pilots that were sent to do the initial acceptance testing were concerned that the MAX flight characteristics differed significantly enough to warrant additional simulator training. It's not about the quality of their pilots it's about the quality of the aircraft.
Re:hindsight is 2020 (Score:5, Informative)
Wow. This whole mess is about a) Boeing building a plane that needed pilot retraining and b) Boeing not wanting to require that training so patching it with faulty engineering.
The fact that Lion Air wanted more training for their pilots suggests they had some suspicions about Boeing's assurances. If American and European airlines didn't do that as well... huh.
Certain sitations require pilots (of any nationality, race, ethinicity, sex, gender or species) to respond essentially from muscle memory. And I mean "require" in a legal sense. That's why they spend time in simulators, and have certain in-flight training requirements as well. Stall recovery is one of those.
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No. US airlines ordered an indicator light to show there was a disagreement between sensors. If you think an indicator light is a suitable replacement for proper pilot training, well, I guess unfortunately Boeing is probably not hiring at the moment.
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You're wrong, as both I and others have pointed out to you. Two angle of attack sensors are standard on the 737 MAX, and no option exists to add more.
You can see the measurements from both sensors in the released black box data from the LionAir flight: https://avherald.com/h?article... [avherald.com]
Re:hindsight is 2020 (Score:5, Informative)
Damnit if we can't edit comments I wish we could at least delete them within a certain window.
That's what "Preview" is for. The system was set up to prevent people from saying something popular, getting voted up, and then changing it to something unpopular, defamatory, or just wrong. Replies always are to the exact text you see, and you can be sure it hasn't been ninja edited.
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Corporations are people? (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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
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Does that include everyone with ownership through a pension plan, or an index fund in their 401(k)?
Corporate imprisonment (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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Oops, that should be "Corporation is sentenced to the equivalent of 10 consecutive life sentences "
Great idea. Instead of 3 minutes in jail (Score:3)
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
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> Are they in a position to demand profits?
Would YOU put your retirement savings in something that isn't going to grow? Yes, investors expect profits.
> My kneejerk reaction was only those with voting rights should be liable.
Every shareholder has voting rights. Most shareholders don't bother to vote directly, but rather sign a proxy, which allows somebody else to vote on their behalf.
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Not really true. Boeing is a major military contractor, so every investor expected them to help kill people. And investors flock to companies that they think can get away with breaking laws (Uber, etc).
Ok, then unintentionally kill people. If someone needs to die for higher profis, that's another matter.
Seriously though, I think the actual solution is the opposite. The shareholders should sue the managemetn for fucking up so horribly. Through negligence and lax attitutde to safety not only did they cause these unnecessary deaths, but also grounded the entire fleet and put under threat the entire project, which is otherwise a great airplane and would've brought billions to the company.
I only own a few doze
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THIS.
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Damn. Where are mod points when you need them?
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If you have voting stock, YOU are partially responsible for what the company does.
You want the profit without ANY of the responsibility, that needs to stop.
Re:Then 2 million people go to jail? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well the way it currently works, and has since ancient Rome as far as I know, is this:
You put $1,000 of your saving into Boeing (and $1K each into many other companies).
If Boeing does well, you stand to gain $100.
If Boeing does very bad, you stand to lose your $1,000.
So in any given year your maximum penalty is about 10 times as much as the gain you'd expect if they do well.
That's the system we have now, as opposed to putting most US adults in prison because somebody they don't know did something bad.
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Re:Then 2 million people go to jail? (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, so you round up the 2 million people who have Boeing in their 401k and bring them into court. What next?
Some countries already have that sorted out. In China, for example, every company has a role called the Legal Representative. This role is usually served by the CEO/General Manager/Chairman, but can be a different designated person. This person will sign all contracts on behalf of the company and go to jail if the company commit a crime. For example, the General Manager of the company in the milk powder scandal was sentenced to life.
Re:Then 2 million people go to jail? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not quite as simple as that. The legal representative can't be prosecuted for something s/he wasn't aware of. If they can credibly show that they were unaware of the criminal activity, then they have to decide whether the company was hiding things from the legal representative (CEO/board can be prosecuted), or the legal representative wasn't doing their job (legal representative can face charges of dereliction of duty).
The legal representative is obliged to do what they can to stop criminal activity: if it's happening at a low level, escalate it; if it's happening at the top level, warn them and if it doesn't stop, report to authorities; if it you can't stop it, resign and make it public.
(I'm the legal representative for a very small Chinese financial services company. I'm not a Chinese citizen or resident though.)
Where is the PE with the license on the line? (Score:2)
Where is the PE with the license on the line?
Do need Software PE's with licenses for stuff like autopilot software?
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Only if you also give them legal protections for refusing. I have seen programmers fired because they told their boss something was a bad idea, horrible security problem etc and the boss would just fire them and get someone else to do it.
If you want to assign responsibility you also have to assign power to ensure that responsibility.
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Where is the PE with the license on the line?
Interesting you brought up topic of registered licensed engineers but that mindset is mainly about civil engineers (if you don't have a PE in this field you will not be much respected by other CEs). It is interesting to note one cannot call themselves an engineer unless they are registered with the state. Same as you cannot call yourself a physician unless you are licensed by the state. But then consider just what is an engineer? Some say it is one with a college degree and lots of math on their transcript
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It would probably swiftly remove personhood rights from corporations? Either way it's a win.
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Re:Corporations are people? (Score:4, Interesting)
It already does. Corporations aren't held collectively to all laws, but they are to some. Canada just had a big scandal because an engineering company was bribing people in Libya to get contracts. They were charged under Canadian anti-corruption law, but the government pressured the attorney general to use a recently enacted "deferred prosecution" law, which is basically a negotiated settlement. The AG refused.
That company just plead guilty to the charges, and will suffer the punishment: being banned from bidding on government contracts.
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Can we say "Logical Fallacy" three times?
No, but if you have an evil dark voice it sounds interesting for the new sounds of the electric cars.
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I know! Making the owners and executives of a company, the people ultimately responsible for the company's actions, legally responsible for those actions? The horror! Class warfare! Class warfare!
Re:Corporations are people? (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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.
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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)
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.
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Put them into 26 and California!
The solution is personal responsibility. (Score:3)
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
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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
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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)
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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.
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Citizens United https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The Court held that the free speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political communications by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.
The decision has had knock-on effects far and wide, the implication being that if freedom of speech applies to corporations, then corporations must have legal rights associated with personhood. After all, nobody trots out the right to due process before a non-person like a cow is executed.
Will we need a Ralph Nader for aircraft? (Score:2)
Re:Will we need a Ralph Nader for aircraft? (Score:5, Informative)
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I didn't believe you, so I looked it up. You're correct. That's quite a coincidence.
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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.
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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.
Next Boeing crash should be their stock value (Score:2)
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.
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It will be easier for Boeing to scrap them.
Wouldn't be the first time, like with that 767 tanker.
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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
no competition leads to arrogance like this (Score:2)
Could Lockheed please get back into the airliner business?
Boeing is a criminal enterprise (Score:2)
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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)
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.
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It's not the centre of gravity. The engine cowlings are bigger and further forward, so they produce more lift forward of the centre of gravity at high speed and high angles of attack. The flight characteristics are only different in that one specific part of the envelope, which is why MCAS was designed to only activate in that particular (unusual) situation.
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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
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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
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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)
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)
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Oh the humanity!
Re:If it's Boeing, We Ain't Going (Score:4, Funny)
As God as my witness...
Simulation (Score:2)
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,
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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)
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)
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.
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Water coolers were removed to improve workers' efficiency.
Haven't people heard of e-discovery in 2020?? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Cheap to Blame the Pilot (Score:2)
And yet, the boss got off scott free (Score:2)
Designed by clowns ... (Score:3)
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)
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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