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Comment by laydn | Hacker News Reader

So the findings in this Senate report are just going to be ignored? ( https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/18/22189609/faa-boeing-737-... )

To quote: ""Boeing “inappropriately coached” some FAA test pilots to reach a desired outcome during the re-certification tests, and some were even performed on simulators that weren’t equipped to re-create the same conditions as the crashes. ""

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“In one particular FAA test performed on the right simulator, a whistleblower says Boeing officials were present and told the test pilots when to hit the switch that killed MCAS.

When these actions were reported by whistleblowers, they were often ignored or retaliated against, according to the report.”

Boeing can’t seem to help itself from disaster

> Boeing can’t seem to help itself from disaster

It obviously can. As long as it has regulators and legislators on a leash all this will always just be the cost of doing business.

Except if another plane crashes.

When another plane crashes.

It's just another expense. If US authorities have shown anything so far it's that they're very forgiving especially with companies with government contracts.

Cash strained airlines that aren't looking for another disaster are not going to be so forgiving.

I was not planning to fly on a 737 Max for at least a few years without crashes, just because there's no point taking what still seems to be a risk when there are so many alternatives.

Reading the Verge article and the senate report findings (linked in laydn's comment) just confirms that there is still cause for caution.

What are a few hundred lives compared to millions of dollars? /s

Boeing cares, first and foremost, about the bottom line. It doesn't surprise me that money beats safety for them.

I would have preferred Boeing to be required to redo the test, and be dinged by the airlines for the delay, just to make it clear that this sort of nonsense is not tolerated.

The fact is, however, that everyone going into the test was aware of what the issue was, so it could only give information about best-case response times (which is not useless information, at least if done on suitable simulators.) For a while, every Max pilot is also going to be primed about this issue.

I still don't understand why the pilots of ETH302 weren't primed about this issue. I seem to recall it being common knowledge within the aviation community that there was a likely trim system fault that downed LNI610. With that backdrop, I'd expect anyone sitting in the front seats of a 737-Max to be aware of the recent crash of the type and reasonably fresh on the systems procedures/memory items to remedy.

It's certainly true today, but I suspect it was also true on 2019-03-10 and being primed wasn't enough.

Boeing just didn’t care about them. The risk of having to re-certify pilots was considered greater than the risk to the passenger’s lives, at least from Boeing’s perspective.

Emergency Airworthiness Directive 2018-23-51 was issued in between the two crashes, essentially at Boeing’s request. That does not strike me as “just didn’t care about them”.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/12/06/2018-26...

The pilots were inexperienced. The right seat guy had less than 250 hours total time in any airplane. At that level of experience, he’s lucky to remember where the landing gear controls are. (He didn’t have 250 hours in the 737, but less than 250 hours in any airplane!) Even the captain had fewer hours than an average United first officer. At those low levels of experience, it’s just unrealistic to expect them to be that good with non-standard situations.

That can't be right, can it? That's the equivalent of me doing my job for 6 weeks.

Here, looks like the legal minimum is 1500:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_certification_in_the_Uni...

ETH302 was not operated by a US airline. There's a reason why I'll blindly get on a US major and make more checks and be more choosey about boarding airliners operated by countries with far looser training standards.

Even prior to 2013, you could be an SIC ("first officer") for a US operator with just 250 hour minimums required then by the ATP certificate. Colgan Air 3407 ended that.

The left seat was 8000 hours.

I believe the captain was primed - IIRC, did he not, in his position as a senior captain, write a memo to other pilots of the airline about the issue?

Again IIRC, and reading between the lines, I think the Boeing/FAA response to LNI610 was to remind pilots of the existing trim runaway procedure, in keeping with the story that no significant change had been made to the aircraft handling. They were still being cagey about the existence of MCAS, let alone its power and its dependence on a single sensor on any given flight, and the people writing the airworthiness directive were apparently unaware that the power of MCAS had been increased after initial flight testing. Did the directive even mention that, unlike the behavior in previous versions, using the yoke switches to countermand a system-driven trim change did not stop it, if that system was MCAS? It would seem to have worked, but then MCAS would do it again.

I believe the crew had trouble manually re-trimming on account of the load on the stabilizer jackscrew, which in turn was due to how far MCAS had driven it out of trim. I think someone (Blancolirio on Youtube?) said that training rarely, if ever, got that deep into the issue.

At least two things have changed since then: the power of MCAS has been reduced, and pilots have been fully primed about it.

The issue of the second pilot's inexperience in some countries is an issue that goes beyond the Max, as it means that the captain effectively has to deal with emergencies single-handedly, at least if they go 'out-of-book' like this.

Yet another American institution/system that has failed. The FAA has demonstrated that they care about Boeing profits above passenger safety, and Congress has lost the ability to actually use their branch’s prerogatives to bring the executive to heel.

Congressional hearings rarely make a difference on policy. They are bully pulpits used to inform or persuade the public at large.

Your question is more appropriately directed at us, air travel consumers. Are we still going to board Boeing planes, knowing what we now know?

I would have no hesitancy to fly on a 737-Max operated by any of the US-majors.

Edit: I was incorrect

But not only the FAA recertified the plane and the MCAS cutoff seems to be more robust regardless

> So the findings in this Senate report are just going to be ignored?

They certainly are relevant for litigations and judgements against Boeing relating to the accidents.

Did you even look at the link? The Senate report in question concerns the recertifications.

You're right, my bad. I had understood it differently from reading this elsewhere

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