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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Boeing deserves to get pushback like this. They really let everyone down, but most problematic was not having public safety foremost in their design of this airframe. That is inexcusable.

It’s too bad there isn’t a better whistleblowing mechanism for these kinds of questionable design decisions for critical infrastructure.

I can only hope the certification process will become more rigorous and require the approval of multiple aviation regulators before it’s declared airworthy.

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The way MCAS handled its two sensor inputs is basically malpractice. It's mind boggling to me that someone developing that system thought it was an acceptable mode of operation.

Hopefully someone is successful in suing for discovery. It might not have been 'mind boggling' it might have been deliberate action by management to cut costs, reduce MTBF (because 2 sensors fails more often), or the fact that 'Boeing' didn't design the system so much as an amalgamation of cut-rate 3rd party contractors with a 'yes-person' 'project manager' at the helm vs an actual engineer.

>deliberate action by management to ... MTBF (because 2 sensors fails more often)

if that happens to be real case, it may become the textbook case of perverted metrics/cobra effect.

It’s actually an interesting concept. As a naive buyer I might think that lower MTBF is better and represents and improvement in product specs. However in this case it clearly comes at a cost of reduced reliability, since there is no backup. However “reliability” seems the same as “MTBF” to my naive brain, so I’m struggling to resolve this apparent paradox.

The main culprit is the FAA. Private companies should be expected to take shortcuts for short-term gain. That's why there is government regulation and oversight. It's the oversight part that failed here. Yes, Boeing also failed, but that's less worrying.

I think you're expecting too much of the government regulator in this case if you consider them to be the main culprit. They are a culprit but not the main one. They would need to have engineers and managers from the FAA in every meeting at Boeing from the beginning of the project to be considered a main culprit. In theory they should be overseeing and understanding every detail but if you work in any place where any sort of system is designed you know that a third party never knows as much as the makers do.

I don't think that is the case. Given the types of failure we are talking about, this would be documented as part of the design process.

All it takes is someone from the FAA to read it and think about it and act on it. That is the role of the FAA.

Now, if it wasn't on the design, then you may say Boeing is mainly to blame. If it was documented, but not rejected, then the FAA is mainly at fault.

Ultimately though, the FAA has the responsibility.

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