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I was amazed at that. Boeing used to be known for overdesign for safety. The B-747 had four redundant hydraulic systems. Here's a 787 doing aerobatics at the Farnborough air show to show that it can operate way outside the normal passenger aircraft flight envelope.[1]

Boeing used to be an engineering-first company. HQ was at Boeing's own airport near Seattle. Then they got new management and moved corporate HQ to Chicago.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzr313wSY_Y

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I have noticed “safety fade” can happen in projects and organisations.

In particular when you are doing something for the first time, uncertainty creates a space for a safety culture to operate.

Design, process and safety emphasis lead to operational success.

Over time the original designers and engineers leave, new staff join. Field experience shows that most of the safety problems that were anticipated in design never happen. The organisation starts to become complacent.

All the safety features and procedures start to be considered, psychologically, as a “safety margin” or a kind of budget that can now be spent by taking more risks. Triple or quadruple redundancy just starts looking like extra weight.

Within the org, pressures to lower costs and deliver faster start to win out...

You have independently discovered a phenomenon that is known as the normalization of deviance. It has been seen in many engineering failures, such as both Space Shuttle crashes, the Deepwater Horizon explosion, etc.

https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/normalization-of-devian...

> Over time the original designers and engineers leave, new staff join. Field experience shows that most of the safety problems that were anticipated in design never happen. The organisation starts to become complacent.

This lifecycle pattern can be found at other organizational scales, including countries, e.g. soldier -> law -> artist -> merchant -> warlord -> soldier ..

Where does this soldier -> lawyer etc formulation come from? Interesting idea!

Inspired by this John Adams quote from 1780, which covers the first three phases, https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L178005...

> I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

FWIW "Boeing Field" is known as that because it just happens to be named after William Boeing, not because it was owned or operated by Boeing. It's owned by King County. In fact, the real name is King County International Airport.

I was at Farnbourough in 2014 and the A380 was even more amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew_kzgqCD2k

And the military A400M -- 4 engine turbprop -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voK2o62KpqI -- quite amazing to see when you are used to those tiny regional turboprops.

That A380 take off is very impressive. Pity in 10 years time we will probably feel similar to it the way we feel about Concorde today. Thanks for posting.

Yeah that take off roll is crazy short for such a huge aircraft.

Impressive performance with the plane empty and probably only an hour or two of fuel.

Ignorant here, why will we feel about A380s the same way as the Concorde? What is happening to it?

Airbus have scrapped it.

Not quite - they're still manufacturing A380s until 2021. Those will probably still be flying for at least 15 years. It won't be a distant memory like the Concorde for 25-30 years.

I was driving past on the motorway and remember nearly crashing in shock at the aggresive maneuvering of something so big - first time seeing either an airliner do a display, or the A380.

Similar video with a test pilot pushing a 707 pretty hard. Includes a barrel roll, which isn't hard on the aircraft, but unusual to see with a passenger aircraft.

https://youtu.be/Ra_khhzuFlE

The 707 was pretty similar to the 737...same main fuselage dimensions, similar pax capacity, etc.

Love the 4k footage.

Ah, well, it is from 1955.

Tex Johnston, the test pilot on that flight, did that off his own back and left president of Boeing fuming as it really wasn't part of the plan.

I believe they fired him for it - though then hired him back after 24 hours and the realisation that it was a stunning piece of advertising.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/60-years-ago-the-f...

All of that changed when McDonnel Douglas merged with Boeing.

Why do you pin it there?

When Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997 essential McDonnell's management moved into Boeing's c-suite.

What essentially was a very engineering driven culture was replaced by finance and marketing geeks that very much moved away from this approach (and moved Boeing's headquarters to Chicago in 2001 and in the process management away from engineering and construction).

Sadly (and arguably) culminating in the two crashes we read about recently.

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