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Comment by nocturnial | Hacker News Reader

And how are they going to be held accountable?

They already have several contracts which states victims can't sue the company. Maybe not everyone signed, but then it's about how much they can pay their lawyers.

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Even if they manage to dodge civil liability (which is unlikely), a number of nations could bring criminal charges for the deaths caused by the two crashes. In addition most major nations have the option to bring criminal charges against Boeing for endangering the lives of their citizens.

Cessna nearly went bankrupt due to liability lawsuits. The consequence was not safer planes, but fewer planes.

I think the right way to go here is (proactive) regulation and certification, not (reactive) law suits.

I think the scale of economies between Cessna and Boeing are going to be hard to compare.

Scale is irrelevant to the dynamic of "a good stops being provided when the assigned liability is out of proportion to what the provider can reasonably control". Cessna was hit with vindictive, overreaching lawsuits that somehow succeeded, which had the effect not of safer airplanes, but more expensive ones without meaningful changes to safety.

"Boeing's bigger so I don't have to care about that dynamic" is not the right way to react to that concern.

I’m not sure what Cessna’s case was but Boeing and the FAA’s negligence is absolutely horrible here. I’d give them a begrudging pass with some fines slapped on if they’d grounded the fleet and disclosed their deception after the Lion Air crash. But after that and knowing what they knew, people need to go to prison for this.

By forcing them to fully certify the MAX, they will take a massive hit in sales and further losses in legal suits from the airlines that have already purchased planes they can't fly.

This will also add a serious line item to the various civil lawsuits regarding the loss of life as a government level entity has now said 'this was a different plane, Boeing lied.' It will be extremely hard for Boeing defense attorneys and likely lead to triplicate damages settlements.

Really, all you need is for the CEO and perhaps the board of directors to lose their jobs. Sure, they'd get golden parachutes and it wouldn't seem sufficient, but people in positions of power don't like losing their position. If you did that, it would be sufficient to make the next CEO (and board) think twice about doing something similar.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be happening.

We like imagine a big conspiracy, or pressure from the top because of corporate greed. And sure, CEOs and the board called leaders for a reason, and ultimately they're responsible, not just for culture, but the whole operation.

While I can't speak for the aviation industry, in my experience lower and middle management is just as much at fault, if not more. That's often where the real cowards sit, tyrannizing downwards and lying upwards. I'm not saying upper management is faultless, but presumably they aren't the only ones.

Upper management sets the cultural expectations. If they prioritize shipping over safety, the middle managers will follow the incentives.

Middle managers don't have the power to drive institutional change in a hierarchical organization. Cultures flows from whomever can fire your ass.

I don't buy it; at the end of the day everybody has some moral responsibility when human lives are involved. Not to Godwin the argument, but I would have hoped WW2 would have taught us that much. But I'm not familiar with US work culture. Again, clearly upper management aren't blameless either, but the fact remains responsibility cannot or should not be so easily passed on.

The way Europe handled Volkswagen is... nothing, but Vw directors are being arrested one by one when they transit through US jurisdictions, and jailed.

Perhaps we’ll ser the same: Europe arresting and trialling Boeing officials one by one as they ser foot in Europe. Perhaps there are already negociations on immunity for Vw against immunity for Boeing.

It could happen. But, while the U.S. took the lead, Germany did eventually charge the VW Chairman of the Board: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/volkswagen-...

Martin Winterkorn (CEO of VW at the time) was charged by prosecutors in Germany in April.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-wint...

But the us is the empire. So they still make the rules...

From 2012-2016 the EU was the biggest economy in the world. The UK leaving changes that somewhat, but in terms of soft power the EU packs a gargantuan punch.

> They already have several contracts which states victims can't sue the company

Contracts with whom? A member country EU court with a dead passenger could presumably make life very very uncomfortable for senior Boeing management.

I wrote victim and not dead passenger as you falsely implied.

The contracts are with the surviving familing members. If you don't consider them as victims then give me another word for it.

edit: If you downvote me at least give me a chance to defend why I chose the word victim. The reply gizmo is there.

The definition of victim implies the same as "dead passenger". The families of dead passengers would be stretching the definition, at the very least it's not the most obvious definition in this case

>a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action

"Victim's family" is how people would normally refer to them.

Ok fine "victim's family". I stand corrected. It's not like when we change the words to describe it, is going to change how they feel.

Losing a family member definitely qualifies as harm.

Why would an aircraft manufacturer have contracts with the families of victims of an air crash?

You’ve taken that in a different direction than I meant. I’d absolutely agree surviving family members are victims too (albeit I’d call them victims’ families for clarity), but none of this will stop say a well motivated prosecutor from arguing that these contracts were signed under duress, bad faith, or include some kind of “unfair term” (which would invalidate a contract in the UK at least)

First, recertification will not be cheap.

Second, it will hurt sales. No airline wants to buy a plane they can’t fly, but they also don’t want to buy more old planes that use more fuel. My bet is that companies like Southwest will half all orders and see what happens.

Finally, it’ll drive companies that straddle the Boeing airbus decide deeper into Airbus’ arms.

It's worse than that for Boeing. The Comac C919 is now flying. This is China's answer to the 737 Max. Three prototypes are flying now. Volume production in 2021. 800 orders already.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919 [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-14/boeing-73...

The problem with Southwest is that their entire fleet is 737s. So the 737MAX was a big thing for them: they could stick with that same crappy old airframe, but get better fuel economy, and not have to retrain pilots. They don't want to switch to Airbus because that means they can't standardize on a single model and manufacturer, and they'd have to retrain so many pilots too.

I agree but isn't there enough evidence now for Southwest to sue Boeing to make them pay for all the training (after there is a real fix)?

Generally speaking:

1. These kinds of contracts don't come with provisions for compensation for every foreseeable contingency.

2. You can sue anyone for anything in America. But it's going to cost you.

3. You can also make future purchases conditional on how these contingencies were handled in the past.

So, it's likely that a lot of negotiation between Southwest and Boeing will happen. Possibly even some arbitration. If the two firms ever end up in court over this, that would indicate a colossal failure in all the processes that lead up to that moment. (As litigation is incredibly expensive.)

Well I'm hoping it'll go to massive litigation between many different parties and Boeing, and Boeing goes bankrupt. They can't be trusted ever again.

They’re probably stuck retraining their pilots one way or the other at this point, but I agree they’re in quite the pickle now.

Southwest only has 34 737MAX planes in their fleet of 750 737s.

"crappy old airframe"

It's actually an incredible good design with a proven history. What exactly makes you think its such a "crappy" design?

It's a crappy old airframe because it's designed specifically to be low down to accommodate airstairs, meaning it won't fit modern large engines. It's anachronistic design and has to make tradeoffs in order to stay relevant (even before the MAX, the NG had those weird squished engine nacelles).

Doesn't mean it a bad airframe...

If you have to do crazy workarounds to make a design stay relevant and usable in modern times, then it is by definition a bad design.

The crazy workarounds are maybe bad designs, but an airframe design that's still in demand after 50 years and been built 10,000+ times isn't a crappy design.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone familiar with aviation agree that the 737 is a poorly designed airframe...

It's only in demand because of inertia. This is like claiming that Windows is great for no other reason than because so many people use it, or that the US government is a great idea just because it hasn't collapsed yet.

If you think it's so great, then why don't you explain why you can't put today's large high-bypass turbofan engines on it in the normal position without them hitting the runway? How exactly is that a "great design"? It may have been a great design in 1967, but it isn't now, just like a 1967 Mustang chassis may have been OK then, but is totally inadequate now.

I think you misunderstanding what an 'airframe' is...

No, I think you are. The 737's airframe includes landing gear designed for using ladders instead of jetways, and wings that are thus too low to the ground, which is why they placed the new nacelles the way they did, causing this problem in the first place.

Not sure what contacts you are talking about, but the civil lawsuits have started to roll in... https://in.reuters.com/article/ethiopia-airplane-lawsuit/fre...

If they have made agreements with victims that means they have been held accountable. Unless they've been represented poorly, these people likely are better off to the tune of well over a million dollars each. Of course they are also dead.

If they cannot be held accountable in the legal sense they might in the financial sense. Stopping 737MAX sales would hinder their operations quite a bit.

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