US Regulator Considers Stripping Boeing's Right To Self-Inspect Planes (ft.com) 159
After a 737 Max door panel blew out over Portland, Oregon, last week, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the temporary grounding of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft until emergency inspections were performed. "Alaska and United Airlines, which operate most of the Max 9s in use in the United States, said on Monday that they discovered loose hardware on the panel when conducting preliminary inspections on their planes," reported the New York Times. Now, U.S. aviation regulators say they may strip Boeing of its right to conduct some of its aircraft inspections. The Financial Times reports: Mike Whitaker, FAA administrator, said the agency was "exploring" its options for using an independent third-party to oversee inspections of Boeing's aircraft and its quality controls. "It is time to re-examine the delegation of authority and assess any associated safety risks," he said. "The grounding of the 737-9 and the multiple production-related issues identified in recent years [at Boeing] require us to look at every option to reduce risk."
The regulator also said it plans to immediately increase its oversight of Boeing's production. The FAA opened an investigation on Thursday into whether the planes Boeing builds match the specifications it has laid out. The FAA said it will audit the 737 Max 9 production line and its suppliers "to evaluate Boeing's compliance with its approved quality procedures," with further audits conducted as necessary.
Washington Senator Maria Cantwell sent a letter (PDF) yesterday to the FAA questioning the agency's role in inspecting aircraft manufactured by Boeing. Cantwell said she asked a year ago for an audit of certain areas related to Boeing's production, and the regulator told her it was unnecessary. "Recent accidents and incidents -- including the expelled door plug on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 -- call into question Boeing's quality control," she said. "In short, it appears that FAA's oversight processes have not been effective in ensuring that Boeing produces aeroplanes that are in condition for safe operation."
The regulator also said it plans to immediately increase its oversight of Boeing's production. The FAA opened an investigation on Thursday into whether the planes Boeing builds match the specifications it has laid out. The FAA said it will audit the 737 Max 9 production line and its suppliers "to evaluate Boeing's compliance with its approved quality procedures," with further audits conducted as necessary.
Washington Senator Maria Cantwell sent a letter (PDF) yesterday to the FAA questioning the agency's role in inspecting aircraft manufactured by Boeing. Cantwell said she asked a year ago for an audit of certain areas related to Boeing's production, and the regulator told her it was unnecessary. "Recent accidents and incidents -- including the expelled door plug on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 -- call into question Boeing's quality control," she said. "In short, it appears that FAA's oversight processes have not been effective in ensuring that Boeing produces aeroplanes that are in condition for safe operation."
people died due to there cost cutting they should (Score:5, Insightful)
people died due to there cost cutting they should be sued or maybe even jailed for there negligence
Ask yourself this (Score:2)
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Re: Ask yourself this (Score:2)
Exactly, and no one who matters boards the Air Force One. Case rested.
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Recall that Boeing is also responsible for the plane(s) designated as Air Force One.
It's not just manufacturing, it's operations. And the personnel chosen from the USAF for work on Air Force One may be of a different capability than hose chosen by Alaska Airlines.
USAF also does some supervision of manufacturing for the Air Force One "fleet".
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Only chance for a change would be if the Boeing board of directors would die in a 737-MAX accident.
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Narrator:
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane:
Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator:
You wouldn
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Your company still builds cars with "rear differentials"? /s
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The term is "negligent homicide". Boeing is clearly guilty in a few 100 cases by now.
Different crashes (Score:4, Interesting)
If the CEO paying for the Ferrari (Score:3)
Specifically it was some extra instrumentation needed to prevent the pilots from getting disoriented under certain conditions, which is what caused both crashes.
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It wasn't the pilots who got disoriented. It was the MCAS that thought the plane was stalling and put it into a dive. The upgrade read more information and didn't freak out in the fatal manner. It should never have been an upgrade,to get this, but instead a standard feature of the MCAS system.
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No it would be Ferrari's fault for providing you a car missing a legally required safety equipment. Ferrari are the experts, they are the ones who should know in detail the is required, especially if they are self certifying their own vehicles. Also from https://www.continentalautospo... [continenta...sports.com] the cheapest new Ferrari is $243,360, $3000 is a 99% discount I don't think Boeing was selling their planes at 99% off.
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It was a blowout sale.
Re: Different crashes (Score:2)
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Not as simple as that. It had to do with the redundancy in a novel system. It would be akin to whether you have the upgraded multi-camera system for lane keeping assist, or one that used a flakier camera that might freak out and turn the steering wheel hard right.
It wasn't a case of not buying seat belts, it was a case of something the buyer almost certainly could not know of the consequences, and they chose not to buy the "upgrade."
Re: people died due to there cost cutting they sho (Score:2)
Boeing is responsible in the same way a car manufacturer is if a car is sent out with defective parts. Aren't the plugs supposed to stay in. Car owners aren't expected to disassemble their car doors or engines to verify everything is in place. Which car exploded when rear ended? That's not the buyer's fault.
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The Ford Pinto. It had a gas tank positioned right behind the rear bumper.
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Which was the standard position for a lot of cars up until the Pinto was the poster child for that design choice.
Re:people died due to there cost cutting they shou (Score:4, Insightful)
Getting sucked out by explosive decompression would have certainly killed someone.
> I know there was a software mistake... But honest question, not every engineering mistake is made because of cost cutting.
I assume you are referring to MCAS, designed to kick in when the plane went into a pronounced nose-up attitude. Caused by the newer engines being mounted forward and higher on the wing. MCAS being implemented to avoid the plane being recertified. To save money.
> What innovation do you expect if the threat of making a mistake on your job is that severe?
I fail to follow your thought processes.
> These inspections should be conducted by the operator anyway. Imagine how many Boeing planes there are. Thats a lot of inspections for one company.
Not when they're known for faking engaging in fraudulent and deceptive conduct [bbc.com].
Re: people died due to there cost cutting they sho (Score:2)
Nobody has ever been or ever will be sucked out of a plane. B,own out of plane for sure, but never sucked.
Re: people died due to there cost cutting they sho (Score:4, Insightful)
On another note, why is Boeing responsible for doing the inspection?
Boeing is not "responsible" for doing the inspection. It is "authorised" to do the inspection on its own, that the regulator is responsible for. The regulator outsourced the job of overseeing Boeing to , whom ? Yes, to Boeing.
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Re:people died due to there cost cutting they shou (Score:4, Insightful)
>People make mistakes, and they do happen. What innovation do you expect if the threat of making a mistake on your job is that severe?
Leaving bolts loose does not overlap with my own definition of innovation,
Keeping aviation as safe as possible has been key to its commercial success.
rivets (Score:2)
All they had to do was use rivets. Nothing new for aviation.
Re:rivets (Score:4, Funny)
Flex Seal wouldn’t blow out at 30,000 feet!
Re: rivets (Score:2)
Re: rivets (Score:2)
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Behold, rivets everywhere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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That is really nonsense. All they would have had to do is actually tighten the bolts and then inspect them to make sure they were. They failed at the very basics of putting screws into things.
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You are exactly right actually, they should use rivets because bolts can loosen (whether you put them in right or not).
https://aviation.stackexchange... [stackexchange.com]
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You do realize that bolts are used in a lot of places on a modern airplane and that preventing them from loosening is understood tech?
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Are you familiar with castle nuts? Have you used any yourself?
https://www.securitylocknut.co... [securitylocknut.com]
The nut has to be aligned to the hole in the bolt where the cotter pin goes through. In practice, and depending on technician, achieving that alignment at the proper torque can be tricky. A loose nut will eventually cause the cotter pin to fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Please stop the nonsense. You are clearly clueless as to the application scenario. Rivets are not even an option and the bolts used are 10mm or thicker. Seriously. All you losers that cannot admit you are wrong are getting on my nerves.
They still allowed this after MCAS? (Score:3)
Whichever regulator it was who made the decision to allow Boeing to continue self-inspecting after the MCAS fiasco should have to work remotely from a plane seat next to one of the door plugs in question until their grievous error is corrected.
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This! There's a proper case to be made for self certification and self inspection. But that case does not include allowing a company who has recently demonstrated grievous failures in this aspect to continue operating in this way. You can say what you want about Boeing but the FAA is complicit here.
We do have a reasonable explaination. (Score:5, Informative)
This came from a commenter at the aviation subreddit.
> The much older 737-900 shares the same door plug assy as the 737-9MAX. No other models do.
> Spirit says they "semi-rig" the door plug before shipping. To me this means it's not fully installed. The reason is because the door plug assy is removed upon receipt to gain an additional access point for final assy work.
> However, I bet that's only true for the 737-900 and that for the 737-9MAX the final assy work is completed without ever removing the door plug.
> The Spirit planner copied over the semi-rig task from the 737-900 to the 737-9MAX. The Boeing planner didn't add a final rig task because the door plug was never removed and they assumed that meant fully installed.
This also would explain something that many find hard to understand - why only the 737-9MAX is grounded pending inspections, not the 737-900 which has the same plug door. Every 737-900 had the door opened and then sealed by Boeing engineers.
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Some good points.
It's possible that this whole incident could come down to poor task planning between Spirit and Boeing. Who does what and when. And who is responsible for making sure it gets done somewhere. So it may be a failure in the management process. Something that the FAA has been very hesitant to get involved with.
Not Isolated (Score:2)
Whatever the cause of this particular incident the frequency of serious problems suggests there is something systemic
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Well, if this is the story, it sure sounds like an example of bad management!
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It's consistent with various facets of the MAX problems.
MCAS fiasco was friven by mandate that the plane needs to pretend as much as possible to fly like it's predecessor, despite the different engines and configuration. Faulty engineering work done to gloss over a transition to a new model.
The door plug wanted to reuse as much as possible the previous design, yet potentially some other cost cutting measure caused a step to be skipped.
Poor management and trying to change things while trying to pretend they
Re: We do have a reasonable explaination. (Score:2)
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Sounds plausible. Still means there was no final inspection and the whole process did not get any competent review.
Symptom rather than disease. (Score:2)
Boing (Score:3)
Anyone else think they should rebrand their company name as "Boing"?
DERs must be independent! (Score:5, Interesting)
During the early oughts I worked at a small avionics company, and we heavily relied on FAA-certified DERs (Designated Engineering Representatives) to help us ensure we took all the right steps to get our products certified by the FAA, extremely reliable in use, and trusted in the market. The CEO of our company went out of his way to hire "professional assholes" (perfectly nice people paid to be perfectionists) to hold our feet to the fire, to inspect our processes, to inspect the results of using those processes, and to ensure our processes were reliable and repeatable.
Our DERs HAD to be totally independent. Sure, we hired them (for a very pretty penny), but we also worked them hard. And as a small company, we needed our product certifications to go through without any hiccups, as do-overs were expensive and slow. We needed our DERs to give us as much bad news as possible, so the FAA would have no reason to give us any.
Even back then, we were very concerned that Boeing relied on DERs who were company employees, rather than truly independent contractors or consultants. The conflicts of interest were unavoidable, no matter what Boeing claimed, since as employees they'd tend to act in ways that let them keep their jobs!
I've spent hundreds of hours, perhaps a thousand, with certified and independent DERs. They made me a far better engineer, a benefit I've taken with me and used at every job since.
I can't imagine what's in store for Boeing's in-house DERs. They likely were doing their best in a bad situation, though I hope an outside investigation is done to see how they were unable to (or failed to) detect and prevent errors like these.
Mandatory retirement (Score:2)
FAA should force Boeing to retire that unsafe museum piece of a rattletrap airframe and build something decent. And this time please try putting in a flight control system more powerful than a child's quadcopter toy.
That I don't question (Score:3)
What I question is why they had that right in the first place. You allowed a corporation to policy itself? It's a miracle that the few incidents that happened were the only ones.
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Hire them from Airbus. I bet you get them very cheaply, if necessary sponsored by Airbus.
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As for heating Russians are descen
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Money talks. There is very likely a ton of bribes behind this, with some probably legal.
The 737 Max 9 ios also grounded indefinitely (Score:2)
Don't think that was reported here. The FAA seems to have realized they need to save their own neck on this now as their constant screw-ups have made the dangerous (in fact murderous) business practices of Boeing possible in the first place.
fox and hen house (Score:4, Interesting)
More than just a Boeing issue, though. (Score:2)
Airbus is (kinda) going through the same thing with certification of the A321XLR long-range single-seat airliner. That's why both the FAA and EASA are very carefully scrutinizing the the A321XLR, especially with its wingbox integral fuel tank, out of fear of what happens if the plane has to make belly-up landing on a runway due to landing gear issues.
Re:Return merit as a virtue (Score:4, Interesting)
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I remember reading about a company, concerned about them not hiring enough women, decided the problem was that the bosses were biased against women and weren't selecting them for interviews and such.
So they went through a lot of work to anonymize all resumes from gender or race indicators.
They actually made the problem worse. If you were to make the system into a sort of point basis, being female was something like a 20% bonus. When those selecting who to interview couldn't tell who was female, well, it w
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There can be biases that we don't realize and yet affect the hiring decision. An interesting example concerned the hiring of musicians by the Boston Symphony in 1952. Supposedly placing a blind between musician and listener didn't help to prevent bias, because heels make a distinct sound. The bias disappeared when the musicians walked in without shoes. There are doubts expressed about this result but it has been cited often.
At this time, there are those arguing against blind auditions because diversity g
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Well, in the case I cited, it was pretty much proved that the "managers" weren't biased against interviewing women - they actually demonstrated a measurable bias TOWARDS interviewing them, the opposite of the theory the higher-ups had. For the symphony in 1952? I can easily see a bias against women.
The overall problem was actually both simpler and much harder to address: There just wasn't enough female engineers, and they lagged considerably behind their male counterparts in experience and working hours.
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I've had to review redacted resumes. It's a pain in the neck, and (in my opinion) creates as many problems as it ostensibly solves.
To pick one example - I had a resume for a person that looked like they might be an decent fit. However they had a recent gap (~ 2 years) in their employment history. There was a line - blacked out - above that gap, which might have been explanatory to why the gap existed. If I could have seen the line, and it was something that made sense (dealing with serious illness, taking a
Re:Return merit as a virtue (Score:4, Insightful)
all I could go on was that the person hasn't been able to hold a job for a couple years
A gap in the record can have many reasons. That you choose a default makes you a sketchy employer anyway.
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So rather than talk to the candidate (interview) who looked great on merit and fitted the job description you decided to reject them based on something you agree may have a perfectly reasonable explanation.
You are so bad at hiring people you could make a HR drone blush. I sincerely hope for other people you are not in a position to do this often.
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However they had a recent gap (~ 2 years) in their employment history. There was a line - blacked out - above that gap, which might have been explanatory to why the gap existed. .....Since the experience I could see was no better than that of a half-dozen other applicants, off into the reject bin it went.
In my experience, some people will load up their resume with complete crap..."10 years experience with Windows Server 2022" are the easy ones, but the more insidious entries are the ones that are "Techncially correct". "10 years of experience with Windows Server" could mean 10 years of logging into a domain-joined PC, or it could mean "core competency", and it's the interview that is supposed to determine which is which.
I've known people whose mindset was "be a rock star on paper and fake it til you make it
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I can think of a compelling success story for blinding job applications.
When orchestras switched to having the person auditioning behind a curtain, more women got hired. They'd been failing auditions if people knew they were women, but passed them if judged only on their music.
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Indeed. Any critical roles _must_ be merit only. No exceptions.
Re:Return merit as a virtue (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that "affirmative action" is the problem here. The business majors taking over is. I'd say "the accountants", but my parents are accountants - they can price in the costs of accidents and shit, and realize that running a safe operation is definitely cheaper than this crap.
Basically, when Boeing bought McDonnell-Douglas, the latter executives took over and brought their non-safety non-engineering culture over and took over Boeing. Like a Cordyceps fungus with an ant.
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Indeed, it is not the accountants, at least not the good ones. It is the bright-eyed business majors that do not understand anything but "more money good!" and that, at the same time, have huge egos.
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You mean *years* after the fatal MAX accidents and the billions of dollars of fines and lost business?
No, Boeing's safety woes did not start in 2022. If there *were* any effect of that incentive structure, we would likely not even see it yet.
The incentive plan change was liekly a hollow PR move to try to recover from all the bad press over the disastrous MCAS implementation.
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A culture and reward system of climate/DEI does not provide that same pushback.
Boeing doesn't have a climate/DEI culture, they have a "shareholders need money" culture.
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It's time FAA and congress make it illegal for any company that creates safety-critical hardware to hire people based on anything other than race-blind, gender-blind, cold, hard, merit.
Do you know something about the composition of the plane inspection department at Boeing? Did they get rid of all the white men? When the Peregrine Lunar Lander failed my first thought was DEI. DEI will get you every time.
Move away from safety, and you expect? (Score:2)
It's time FAA and congress make it illegal for any company that creates safety-critical hardware to hire people based on anything other than race-blind, gender-blind, cold, hard, merit.
Do you know something about the composition of the plane inspection department at Boeing? Did they get rid of all the white men? When the Peregrine Lunar Lander failed my first thought was DEI. DEI will get you every time.
History shows that both employees and execs respond well the incentives, rewards. In short companies get what they reward, Reward bug fixes, "Wally" goes off to code himself a new car. Metrics for rewards are a hard thing to get right.
"... a screenshot that showed a proxy statement from Boeing filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Beginning in 2022, the aircraft manufacturer changed its incentive plan from giving executives bonuses based on passenger safety, employee safety, and quality to
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The big fatal accidents were over 4 years prior to 2022. I don't think you can blame those on intiatives that happened four years after.
Late last year:
"The request comes after the manufacturer discovered two aircraft with missing bolts in the rudder control system, raising concerns about faults across all aircraft."
That one applied to all the 737 MAXs, again, predating 2022 changes. Very similar sort of problem as the apparently unsecured door plugs.
No, this is about cost cutting, likely trying to recover
Re:Return merit as a virtue (Score:5, Informative)
I take it you were watching Fox News this morning. Minorities or transgender people had nothing to do with Boeing’s failures. Take a look at what Boeing employees had to say about the 737 Max before it started impersonating a pile driver. https://amp.theguardian.com/bu... [theguardian.com]
JFC what is wrong with you? (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't actually woke, just paid to act woke (Score:2)
this has *nothing* to do with the engineers. It's entirely up to corner cutting by the CEOs. Or do you think our ruling class has gone "woke"?
It's not that they are necessarily woke themselves, but they are being paid/rewarded to be woke, at least according to SEC filings. If you tell a CEO they get zero extra dollars for safety, but many extra dollars fro climate/DEI, where do you think CEO time and influence is going to be spent?
"... a screenshot that showed a proxy statement from Boeing filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Beginning in 2022, the aircraft manufacturer changed its incentive plan from giving executives bonuses b
Re:They aren't actually woke, just paid to act wok (Score:4, Interesting)
Fun narrative, but it conveniently misses the fact that 2022 was entirely after the whole MCAS fiasco, after the losse rudder control bolts were done (found in 2023, but in airframes made before 2022). If it *could* be true, it could only *possibly* related to the plug door fiasco, however it is very similar to older Boeing quality issues, so it seems your anti-DEI tirade is irrelevant to the situation at hand.
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this has *nothing* to do with the engineers. It's entirely up to corner cutting by the CEOs.
Pretty much. Actual engineers resign when they see crap like tis done, because they understand what can and likely will happen.
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An MBA probably raised the concern too (Score:2)
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I know none, but I know plenty of management that will ignore advice and tell you to do something you know is wrong and stupid, bog you down in useless bureaucracy stopping you doing what is important, buy crappy outside software, while not allowing you to implement something properly.
Look I don't know if its because of woke hiring practices that resulted in bad engineers, or even back to selecting less capable student to even complete the course. Or because of cost savings introduced buy a CEO, but the CEO
You get what you reward (Score:2)
I know none, but I know plenty of management that will ignore advice and tell you to do something you know is wrong and stupid, bog you down in useless bureaucracy stopping you doing what is important, buy crappy outside software, while not allowing you to implement something properly. Look I don't know if its because of woke hiring practices that resulted in bad engineers, or even back to selecting less capable student to even complete the course. Or because of cost savings introduced buy a CEO, but the CEO is ultimately responsible no matter the reason.
It's really simple. You get what you reward. People will generally do what they are rewarded to do even if they know it's "wrong". Quality being compromised by rewarding people to "work faster" happens all the time. And Boeing CEOs are literally no longer reward for safety and quality, their attention, their rewards to those below them, are now focused elsewhere.
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Well, it has *something* to do with the engineers (btw, in the MCAS case and the rudder control bolts case, those happened *before* this "Oh it's DEI" BS argument you were trying to make, so while "nothing" was an overstatement, it was in reaction to an even more stupid theory).
However, the CEOs say "Engineers, you need to give us rationailzation to tell the FAA no new training required for pilots", or "rework the process to shorten man hours with finishing off these new airframes" causing them to figure ou
Re:Return merit as a virtue (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time FAA and congress make it illegal for any company that creates safety-critical hardware to hire people based on anything other than race-blind, gender-blind, cold, hard, merit.
Do you have any evidence that the failures had to do with incompetent diversity hires? Or is it just your instinct to blame everything on women and minorities.
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It's time FAA and congress make it illegal for any company that creates safety-critical hardware to hire people based on anything other than race-blind, gender-blind, cold, hard, merit.
Do you have any evidence that the failures had to do with incompetent diversity hires? Or is it just your instinct to blame everything on women and minorities.
Is it your instinct to disregard moving the CEO's focus away from safety and quality? Is it your instinct to believe that moving away from a bonus system based on safety and quality to a bonus system based on something else won't affect safety and quality?
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Two sides of the bigot's coin (Score:2)
We get it: you're anti-woke. Let me guess: you blame the Challenger disaster on woke people, too? Surely, it couldn't possibly be the fault of some MBA type white person, right?
So you are a bigot. You mind stuck in a 1950s representation of an MBA. Guess what, non-whites, women, LGBTQ, etc represent a majority of MBAs today. Scientists and engineers also represent the majority of MBAs today,
The coin of bigotry has two sides, your just the other side of the coin of those you hate. Both of you are "the problem".
Re:Return merit as a virtue (Score:4, Insightful)
I then observe that Boeing et al. are attacking the concept of technical merit in favor of social science bullshit
You have observations, share them. Show us that that horrible black trans person Boeing hired lacked the qualification for the job and was responsible for the policy changes that allowed for failures in QA/QC processes to occur.
You can't, because you're talking out of your arse in your hate for "other" people. The reality is the kind of failures that Boeing are experiencing has nothing to do with any people, any competence, qualifications, or what's between their legs. It is a top down cultural problem, one of failures of systems which are normally designed to cope with human error.
Even if some incompetent diversity hire caused these mistakes, the root cause still remains with the systems which didn't catch the fault, and those systems are the responsibility of the leadership - a group of people who couldn't be any whiter and cisgendered if they wore clan outfits to work.
So go take your anti-woke bullshit and shove it up your arse. But not too high, you may like it and decide gender bending is for you, and we wouldn't want you to hate yourself all your life.
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To further your point, the timeline doesn't line up. The "evidence" trotted out to "prove" DEI was a factor was something from 2022. Boeing's problems were mainfesting well before 2022.
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And I'm just asking you to prove the causality. An executive belief doesn't translate into the specific people being involved in the problems being one of those people you seem to hate. Show us that the executives hired someone based on DEI rather than someone qualified and that this person was involved, or STUF and take your anti-woke horseshit elsewhere.
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My first-order approximation is to suspect whether the highly technical failure mode was influenced by failures in the technical process. That condition couldn't have arisen without some amount of engineering-related failure or oversight. That was true too for MCAS and this is part of a pattern.
And both are explained by Boeing buying McDonnell Douglas and then getting taken over by McDonnell Douglas's managers [qz.com].
I then observe that Boeing et al. are attacking the concept of technical merit in favor of social science bullshit that can only harm the rigor of engineering processes.
Where are you getting that? That Twitter video the other person posted where they had a bunch of female employees walk out together? You've never seen marketing before?
35% of their workforce is minority [boeing.com], so they're more white than the general population of the US [census.gov] (I assume they're counting Hispanic or Latino white as minority to goose the numbers). And just like other big companies those maj
WTF do you mean "return"? (Score:2)
People like you redefined profit as "merit." So here we are.
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If your safety process relies on having people who don't make mistakes or who are top 1%, your products are unsafe.
There is no evidence that hiring was the issue here. And what are the chances that the bosses who are actually responsible for cutting back engineering to make a profit are white guys anyway?
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And what are the chances that the bosses who are actually responsible for cutting back engineering to make a profit are white guys anyway?
Non-whites, women, LGBTQ, etc represent a majority of MBAs today. Scientists and engineers also represent a majority of MBAs today, And its been that way for over a decade.
Here's a different thought. What are the chances that safety will suffer when the corporate reward systems moves away from rewarding for safety and quality and begins rewarding for other metrics?
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Number of qualifying MBAs does not translate to number of people making these decisions. You can see that by simply looking at Boeing's board of directors, who are almost all white guys.
To answer your question, we know because it's already happened. Boeing rewarded cost cutting and profit maximisation, and fatalities ensued. If you are implying that hiring did have something to do with this, do you have any evidence?
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If you want them to understand, you need to fine the executives and the board.
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Not enough. This needs to get personal or Boeing will continue killing people. The only reason they did not this time was that the bolts were a tiny bit looser than they could have been. Half a turn more and this would have happend at altitude and people would have died.
Engineers who used to run things had MBAs too (Score:3)
Too many MBA's running the show now and too few engineers with any real say in things.
Yes and no. The engineers who used to run things also had MBAs. MBA programs don't turn you into some sort of uber accountant. MBA programs don't dive deep into anything, they are a survey of numerous disciplines within in organization. The purpose of the MBA is to learn enough about all the other pieces of the company so you can effectively communicate and understand their perspective. You go into an MBA program an engineer or a scientist, you come out an engineer or a scientists, but one who can explain m
Re:Engineers who used to run things had MBAs too (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is not "people with an MBA". The problem is "people with an MBA but no engineering degree and experience". Engineers get taught things like reliability, redundancy and engineering failure. In fact, a rather large part of any reasonable engineering education is teaching people to be careful, to not rely just on intuition but to make sure, how to make sure and how dangerously off you can be if you do not.
My take is that it is really simple: Expect care on the level of an experienced engineer of all decision makers that have influence on the tech side (direct or indirect). If things fail, check whether they were careful on that level. If not, send them to prison and impound their personal fortune for the damage done. That means that yes, you can have non-engineers in those positions, but anybody volunteering for that who is a non-engineer is a fool. The problem is Boeing "leadership" is not accountable for the people they kill and that has to stop. At the same time, honest mistakes can happen, but cost cutting like no redundancy in some sensors or an unsuitable plane body for the engines used or missing safety inspections on critical parts are things no good engineer will ever sign off on, because they understand what can, and likely will, happen.