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MaupitiBlue

BS! Which of these was done by the accountants?

1. Drive MCAS with only one AOA sensor.

2. Don't tell MCAS to look for (or even think about) bad AOA data or AOA disagreements.

3. Don't actually bother to tell pilots that they don't have AOA disagree warning lights.

4. Don't bother to tell pilots that MCAS exists at all.

5. Don't test MCAS subsystem to see what it actually does with bad AOA data.

6. Give MCAS a ridiculous amount of control authority, operating cumulatively over repeated applications to exceed what the pilot can manually override.

7. Change how the trim stab switch has been wired since 1966 and not tell pilots.

It’s not the accounts or union stewards that should be facing criminal charges, it’s the engineers. At a minimum, any PEs should be yanked.

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While your message has surface truth to it, if you've done any type of engineering before, you'd know that your designs #1 shaper is your time and financial constraints.

Engineers told to "make it happen" while all safety backdrops they have get undermined by from the top business mandates end up having to make bad decisions.

I'll accept that the engineers involved had the chance too say no. I won't, however, accept the assertion the business/sales people do not share some level of blame for not realizing that they were making impossible demands, and that the resistance from engineering was not just something to be worked around by busting the union, or misleading customers and regulators.

Your #2 implies multiple sensors (see #1). My understanding is that one AOA is default, and you could purchase additional sensors (I read somewhere that Southwest did).

Sounds like the typical stupid idea suggested by a marketer or accountant that engineers beg and plead not to do.

Frankly, the whole thing reeks of profit at the expense of engineering, safety, and security.

So a Professional Engineer, who would understand the implications of a single AOA sensor much better than an accountant, signed off on the design anyway?

It sounds like we need to find out who that person was and arrest them.

Well, engineers and scientists are known for bowing to the wills and whims of management. They build the devices, and let the salespeople and management peddle the product as they see fit. Car manufacturers would make wheels optional if the could get away with it.

If you were following the articles then you'd know that various people did those on criteria set by management, independently in a non-communicating and problem oppressing organization structure created by the management.

So in short: all of those were caused by the accountants....

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the...

“One of the people familiar with MCAS’s evolution said the _system designers_ didn’t see any need to add an additional sensor or redundancy because the hazard assessment had determined that an MCAS failure in normal flight would only qualify in the “major” category for which the single sensor is the norm.

but that was when MCA's limit was 3 or something degree. its authority was increased after that statement. it's a huge mess and there isn't a single accountant Vs engineer root cause, it's cross sectional within the company culture

I can easily see how any of these items could be explained by "pressure to deliver" and "reduction of costs".

>I can easily see how any of these items could be explained by "pressure to deliver" and "reduction of costs".

Can you point to where in the PE Code of Ethics it says that cutting corners due to "pressure to deliver" is okay? The whole purpose of the PE designation is to avoid circumstances like that.

Why Engineers Must Remember the Kansas City Hyatt Tragedy

https://www.enr.com/articles/38400-why-engineers-must-rememb...

“Many false theories persist about the cause of this fatal collapse. The failure was not due to poor workmanship, shoddy materials, a rushed schedule, swaying from dancing, “harmonic vibrations” from the music, poor contractor communication or design changes that did not receive proper review.

As documented in the official investigation report, two professional engineers issued sealed design drawings without performing critical calculations to determine whether sufficient load capacity existed.”

The design of the plane was a financially motivated one and lead to the MCAS system being required in the first place. And your note on lack of redundancy and not providing additional training - surely the costs there are obvious?

MCAS wouldn't have been required if they retrained pilots, but that would've made the entire endeavour of re-using the 737 design pointless.

The fact that MCAS was required was not a failure to design a safe plane. Rather it was a failure to make the plane behave like the 737.

4 and 7 were the raison d'être for MCAS in the first place. Clearly above engineer level.

FTA “Boeing considered the mcas feature to be so minor that it removed mention of it from the 737 max’s pilot manual.“ The accountants don’t write the pilot manuals.

I’m pretty sure that’s the post-facto explanation, but in reality it was kept out of the manual because putting it in and trying to explain the way that it operates would have been a blaring alarm siren of how horribly fubar the system was designed.

I would agree. Also this CEO of 34 years is an engineer.

>BS! Which of these was done by the accountants?

HackerNews, generally, has a hate on for "business people", who are seen as evil, ne'er-do-wells, while the "engineers" are innocent employees, merely following orders.

I think it's because most people here see themselves as the engineer type, and this mindset allows them to feel better about the work they're doing, be it emissions scandals, ad-tech, building the surveillance state apparatus or phony medical devices: "don't blame me, I'm just following orders!"

The story here was unfolded by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and perhaps more uncovering and analyzing the facts and events.

These are not the typical engineering biased organization if you ask me... but still they put very strong blame on the organizational and company culture changes created by 'accountants' allowing ineffective and in many cases oppressed situations, leading to repeated disasters!

Do not try to misdirect this very serious story into primitive occupation bias please!

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