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Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

That's a disingenuous headline (I blame the Telegraph).

> In an email from June 2018, before the first Max crash, one Boeing worker wrote: “Best part is we are re-starting this whole thing with the 777X with the same supplier and have signed up to an even more aggressive schedule.”

> Another member of staff warns about a relentless cost focus...

> Last September, the 777X suffered a setback when it failed a ground test of its strength, suffering an explosive decompression that tore the fuselage and blew off a passenger door.

None of those are what I would call the "Max problem," (I'd consider that to be MCAS) but there does seem to be a systemic problem off cost cutting and aggressive deadlines.

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I don't think it's a wrong characterization, imo. The problem with the MAX isn't necessarily the MCAS, but the culture and business/engineering processes that allowed MCAS to go all the way to production and allowed the company to convince their customers not to implement pilot training. There are multiple levels of failure beyond just MCAS being a thing, and the emails might suggest that (some of?) these systemic issues are also affecting the design of the 777x.

Honestly, yes. I let my brain interpret the headline, "shares Max problem" and this is exactly what I thought it meant, before I clicked through.

As a non-aviation technologist, I initially thought it would be more surprising if the headline meant any of the specific technical failures that I've come to understand (like MCAS) which I've heard about through the ELI-5 and above coverage of the issues plaguing 737-MAX.

The root problem is the culture of disregard throughout many levels of decision making in an organization, such as Boeing has apparently demonstrated; the lack of regard for engineering quality and craftsmanship.

Edit: OK, here is another thread that has also made the HN front page with perhaps a more direct or less questionable title:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22090998

> Boeing's safety vs. cost-control culture may be what sent out fatal aircraft (cbc.ca)

the problem with the max is that it has a tendency to crash. everything else is just a cause or symptom of that problem. If the 777X isn't going to crash, then it doesn't share the same problem.

when planes operate properly, nobody cares what business or engineering practices allowed that.

Why are the causes of that problem not really problems in themselves? Crashing could have multiple different causes; crashing is just a symptom.

They are problems for the people working on solving the crashing. They aren't problems for anybody else.

for passengers, airlines, and anybody other than Boeing, the only problem is the crashing.

Isn’t that a bit like saying the problem in medicine is dying, and other things like heart disease, cancer, etc. aren’t really problems for the patients, as death is the only real problem?

if you had cancer but experienced no symptoms, died in a car crash at age 95, and the cancer wasn't discovered until your autopsy, would you say it was a problem?

Of course it was a problem. If a person has diabetes but then they get shot to death, that doesn't make the diabetes irrelevant.

If 40% of people walking on the earth got cancer today, and it was asymptomatic, it would definitely be a problem, even if nobody saw it as their personal problem in this moment.

I read though all these emails and chat messages when they were first released. I'm pretty sure that those particular email quotes were from people working on developing the 737 Max simulator, not the aircraft itself. So maybe the 777X simulator program will have similar problems, but this doesn't necessarily mean the aircraft itself will. I don't have much confidence in Boeing at this point, but this does seem like scaremongering.

The parts about supplies completely ruin your simulator argument

So you have specifics? Because aircraft simulators are complex machines not just software.

Ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7iSlqpIHpw

The "Max problem" is not the specific engineering defect that happened to manifest with the 737 Max.

Instead, the "Max problem" is the set of organizational, cultural and managerial issues that cut corners, misled regulators and prioritized profits over safety.

MCAS defects are not the problem, they're a symptom of the problem.

And these messages about the 777X are more symptoms of the same problem.

Yeah the problem with the Challenger explosion can either be diagnosed as O-rings or NASA culture.

The former clearly was not involved in the Columbia accident, the latter certainly still was.

Yes, they try to imply that the 'Max problem' in the headline is the MCAS. We can conclude that with some certainty, because the headline is quite awkwardly written, to fit the quote in there. (However, it is of course entirely correct as written.)

This is a headline from a tabloid which is maybe a step worse than something like Bloomberg, maybe on par with Huffington Post or Buzzfeed.

MCAS is the dumb bandaid they invented to save money on pilot retraining. Turns out that bandaid was so poorly built it killed people.

In the 777x It's not exact same software system, but the exact same "cheapest option on the menu every time" mindset that seems to be pervading Boeing and causing lots of problems.

>MCAS is the dumb bandaid they invented to save money on pilot retraining.

No, the MCAS is to make the plane certifiable, full stop. It's less "handling characteristics of the previous model" and more "handling characteristics permissible on commercial aircraft".

I don't understand the distinction? Why is it important?

The distinction is important because if they could have forgone the MCAS and sacrificed the type rating, the story becomes about cutting small corners to pinch pennies. In actual fact, however, the MCAS was vital to the aircraft, which was rushed out to compete with Airbus - and so it becomes about cutting BIG corners, to save the company.

So you're arguing that we'd all be better off without MCAS? And that this whole thing is the fault of regulators?

If so, this line of thinking is utterly absurd.

I don't know where you got that from because it bears no relation whatsoever to what I was saying.

The point is you can't just take the MCAS out of a MAX and retrain pilots - it's a vital fix for handling characteristics that were unsafe to fly, full stop. Without the MCAS, it - quite rightly - wouldn't have been allowed to carry passengers at all. It's an important distinction with wide implications.

(However, it does strike me that an MCAS-like device, an automated trim to paper over the inability of the airframe to fly stably under all flight regimes, is a fundamentally unsafe device and should never have been allowed in the first place, let alone with such a poor sensor suite. The MAX is an irredeemably unsafe plane, a result of bolting new engines on an ancient airframe that was not designed for them, and the resultant pile of hacks.)

Still doesn’t fill me with reassurance about the safety of flying on one of these.

Cost cutting and aggressive timelines will always happen, and in a company as large as Boeing, someone will have made a comment like this about pretty much anything, so I have a really hard time telling if this is telling data or hindsight bias.

>Cost cutting and aggressive timelines will always happen, and in a company as large as Boeing, someone will have made a comment like this about pretty much anything, so I have a really hard time telling if this is telling data or hindsight bias.

Considering you accept that it's 100% certain it'll be be said it seems to be pretty telling data. I know we all laugh that management automatically fudges the numbers out of engineering, but mayhaps in Boeing's case the MBA logic of doing so is running into the issue of physics not being amenable to change just because management wants an earlier delivery date.

China's approach with its 737MAX competitor, has, ironically been the exact opposite of this. Their fear wasn't getting the price low enough to satisfy shareholders but not getting the airline approved by US and European regulators.

I was dubious before the crashes but after Boeing's reaction to the crashes I'm fairly sure I'd feel safer on their planes than Boeing's.

Given the current safety record of the 737 Max (2 crashes out of ~half a million flights), if you flew on one every day for the next 50 years there's about a 7% chance that you'd be in a crash. This is ignoring any improvements that might be made--to the plane itself or to pilots' knowledge and training--before it's allowed back into service.

If you flew, say, 10 times a year rather than 365.25, all on the 737 Max, it's a fraction of a percent chance.

Boeing's behavior was very poor and they have been rightfully taken to task for it. Aviation safety standards are incredibly high and the 737 Max didn't live up to those standards. The focus on cost cutting, selling critical redundant sensors as an upgrade to milk a little more cash out of buyers, mocking customers who wanted simulator training for their pilots, and more are all indicative of a bad corporate culture.

But the 737 Max is still a very safe plane. I have no qualms about flying on it.

I'm inferring that you believe that the regulators were wrong to ground it.

That's not what I was trying to say. I think grounding it was entirely reasonable. Boeing failed to uphold the aviation safety standards that we have chosen to expect and enforce, and there should be consequences for that. Those consequences can very reasonably include grounding the plane until we're satisfied that the problems have been fixed.

At the same time, I think we should recognize that our safety standards are extremely high. There's nothing wrong with that. But a plane can fail to meet our extremely high standards and still be very safe. In a parallel universe where we decide to accept a somewhat lower standard of safety, deciding not to ground the 737 Max would also be a reasonable decision.

'If you flew, say, 10 times a year rather than 365.25, all on the 737 Max, it's a fraction of a percent chance.'

This works out to around 0.2% (1 in 2000) which is spectacularly poor odds for modern aviation where the typical risk of a crash on a single commercial airliner is around 1 in 5 million (less than 1 in 100 000 for 10 flights per year over 50 years - so basically 50 times less safe).

Your math seems a little off there, or maybe just a typo--I get slightly under 1 in 10,000--but you are correct that the 737 Max crash rate (~1 in 250000) is much worse than other contemporary airliners. In fact the only modern airliner with a worse crash rate was the Concorde.

I'm not trying to defend the 737 Max or Boeing, I'm just trying to point out that even a plane which is dramatically worse than any other active airliner is still, in absolute terms, very very safe. Our safety standards are incredibly high and we are absolutely justified in enforcing those standards, but people shouldn't be scared to fly on the 737 Max when it comes back into service.

> But the 737 Max is still a very safe plane. I have no qualms about flying on it.

No, no it's not safe.

Your entire argument is complete nonsense.

When the AoE sensor is damaged, the chance of a MAX problem is 100%.

> But the 737 Max is still a very safe plane. I have no qualms about flying on it.

It's grounded world-wide, so you're the only one.

> When the AoE sensor is damaged, the chance of a MAX problem is 100%.

I believe you mean the AoA sensor.

> It's grounded world-wide, so you're the only one.

Yes I'm sure the reason it's grounded world wide is because, after a worldwide census, we determined that all but one person living on earth had qualms about flying on it.

If you want to disagree with me that's fine but don't make stupid arguments.

"we need more money and more time" is the refrain of every engineer, ever.

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