Hacker News Reader

Comment by mannykannot | Hacker News Reader

The conclusion, "nobody did anything wrong, in a strictly technical sense" is too generous to Boeing and the FAA, given that MCAS did not have the redundancy that its classification as 'hazardous' required.

It would probably take either an inquiry like those into the space shuttle accidents, or a whistleblower, to know whether anyone was raising concerns. I can believe it is possible that everyone was convinced by the "in the worst case, it is no worse than ordinary trim runaway" argument (which does not excuse the failure to meet the redundancy requirement), but then the Ethiopian Airlines crash, and its crew's inability to manually re-trim, might raise the question of whether trim runaway on any 737 model is more of a risk than had been supposed (to be fair, trim runaway has not caused 737 crashes in the past, AFAIK.)

View on HN

I think that it was criminally negligent by Boeing to not pull the plane after the Lion Air crash.

They were the only ones, who really knew the inside details and they were the only ones to know how to (possibly) fix it before a lot more people had to day.

Instead of being completely fortright and transparent they published an apparently completely worthless checklist. And all in the name of greed and corporate profit.

That they still smear the pilots and throw them under the bus despite all the facts that came to light leaves me speechless.

The technical details seem correct. (I have seen 0.8 degrees elsewhere as the original amount of correction MCAS could apply per activation, not the 0.6 here. Doesn't matter much.)

The conclusion is most charitably described as fanciful. There are strict rules about an automated system being able to apply more "authority" than the pilot can counter, which every engineer and manager involved knew well.

There are strict rules about a single sensor failure that can make the plane unflyable, which all knew well.

This is not a case of simple negligence to check documentation. This is a case of deliberate coverup of known risk factors to dodge rules specifically intended for airframe changes of this kind.

It was the process of dodging these rules which kept the MCAS design from being reviewed competently.

I just saw this [1] (though it was published a week ago), supporting everything you are saying, particularly about a two-sensor version of MCAS being rejected because it might require simulator time. Information showing culpability is leaking out.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/a-lac...

Not surprising boeing a multi billion dollar corp hires an influential PR, to push out these types of articles.

Really? My takeaway from the article was to never, ever get into a 737 MAX plane, regardless of what hack they manage get approved. And that their quality control has gone completely secondary to profits.

I don't see why Boeing would pay to have this published.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com