"What we need is less regulation" source, UK government, HN comments, etc
We do have regulations, even quite strict ones in this case, yet it happened. Making already highly illegal actions more illegal is hardly going to help.
I do get that you dislike deregulation, but this comment completely misses the topic at hand.
Regulation isn't stiffer penalties alone, it's oversight.
If I have to pass 2 checks vs 1, the incentive to fuck around decreases.
[0] "Excessive certification requirements made parts far too expensive, which made people willing to take the risk on counterfeit parts." - Note that I do not think we should deregulate aircraft parts, but this would be a valid point.
Then we get things like the Horizon Deep oil spill.
No, it doesn’t.
Greater regulation happens more often with regulatory capture, because then the purpose of regulation is creating barriers to entry.
What is left out here: How regulation mandated quality standards and reduced the supply of substandard parts (so low they're headline making outliers)
There was other Gov interference that brought us here: "AOG last month was ordered by a London judge to hand over records to help identify additional suspect parts"
epilogue: Both major biz and major Govs harmfully prioritize their desires above public wellbeing. Of the two, however, only Gov has a built-in duty to care for the public. One result of that is that Gov abuses are recognized as failures to be corrected - while Biz abuses are commonly regarded as successes to be rewarded and amplified.
I've seen a lot of dystopian capitalist thinking and reasoning on here over the years, particularly recently with self driving vehicles and ML regulation. A large proportion of users wish to get away with what the hell they like at whatever cost to society that may have as long as they get their VC funding. This peaked recently in a discussion about acceptable deaths in self driving vehicles, the comments of which made me seriously worry about my fellow citizens.
The article here is a peek into a scenario which has been proven to occur when that mindset is acceptable and normalised. I can see a VC backing a second source market of unregulated aircraft parts and the justification of the corners cut because quite frankly a lot of people have no idea what they are doing and don't care about the consequences as long as the cargo cult has good marketing.
This is backed up by some of the comments on this thread being a shit show. Perhaps the guidelines should regulate opinion a little better rather than comment brevity. Or HN ends up like X.
Notably you can tell how healthy a community is when someone signs up a throwaway account to make a comment reminding people of the rules.
A thorough, sober investigation of the facts should be done before attempting to attribute motivations, and maybe not even then. What truly matters is the outcome; was anyone hurt? were the uncertified parts found? is the system working to keep people safe?
The motivations of the airline come in a distant second to those.
Maybe a previous lurker specifically made an account so they could post on your comment?
All of the paper work and liability reduces competition and results in much higher prices for literally the same exact part.
Why would they be the same parts? Why would their manufacturer go through extensive testing if they have no incentives in doing so?
Somehow people here seem to believe that “documentation” is expensive, but most of the expense doesn't come from the paperwork itself but from the things that you are required to do by these pieces of paper. And if you want to save costs, you're gonna save costs on the manufacturing process, not just on the paperwork.
If you are buying a replacement part you would want to buy one with the same specs as the part you are replacing.
>Why would their manufacturer go through extensive testing if they have no incentives in doing so?
Manufacturers will test their parts so that buyers can see if the part is usable for their needs.
But without the paper, you cannot know for sure if the spec is the same (you can't see the difference between aviation grade screws and regular screws with naked eyes for instance).
> Manufacturers will test their parts so that buyers can see if the part is usable for their needs.
Manufacturers want to sell their parts, they don't want buyers to “see if the part is usable for their needs” (if the buyer doesn't buy, that's a missed sale).
I mean have you never buy anything? Sellers want you to believe their product is good so you buy it and they make money, that's how it works. And customers being disappointed by false marketing promises is routine stuff, including in the B2B sector.
That’s paperwork and an ink stamp as the only difference.
There are other cases now where NDT is used on high-grade bolts and Heim joints. Parts coming off the same line are sold with a -M suffix (“this bolt was individually magnaflux tested and can go on an aircraft”) or not (“this part can go on a tractor”).
Where no failures are ever found in NDT, I think most practical engineers would agree that the parts are physically identical.
Wait, of course they are identical… unless there is a defect!
But that's the point of testing: when you can tolerate 1% defect then you can just sample your production line, but if your “safety demonstration”[1] relies on the fact that no screw is going to fail catastrophically under load because there's a defect, then you have to check them all. It's not “That’s paperwork and an ink stamp as the only difference”, exhaustive testing vs statistical testing. The work needed for the testing process is actual work, it's not about filling the paperwork.
[1]: not sure this terminology exists in English, I'm just doing a literal translation of a nuclear Engineering concept I know in French only.
Yeah, true.
Stops people from dying though, so who’s to say if it’s good or not.
No.
What do you think “fake” means in this context? That the part is really a Loony Toons sketch of the real thing, stickytaped to the surrounding engine? No, it means it’s essentially an outwardly identical part without the appropriate QA/QC processes undertaken to certify it as genuine and to spec.
This may for example include destructive and nondestructive testing of parts, or it might include tracking the manufacturing process parameters to ensure correct outputs. For example, a cast component has sufficiently low levels of porosity, inclusions, etc. that might in time lead to premature failure. Or it might mean that there wasn’t sufficient record of the brew of the metal going into the casting or the casting process itself to confirm the part has the requisite material properties. In all but the most dire circumstances, it’s nearly impossible to verify whether any of that was done correctly just by looking at the part; for all intents and purposes, it’ll look identical to a real part.
In the case that the OP references regarding Virgin Australia [1], the parts were a low-presssure turbine blade and a high-pressure turbine nozzle seal. Both of them would fall into situations similar to the above. If cast, the turbine blade would need to prove what I outlined, amongst much more. If machined from billet, it’ll still need proof the ingot itself was manufactured correctly which mirrors a lot of the above. In the case of the seal, there’s similar processes to prove that the non-metallic material is to spec so that a Challenger-style failure doesn’t occur, except within expected operating parameters.
The link I provided regarding Virgin Australia gives much more detail about the core issue at play. This isn’t a situation where manufacturer B is stamping its parts as made by manufacturer A. It’s where manufacturer B says it can make a part compliant with the specifications, same as manufacturer A, but then does not have the required documentary evidence that it meets those specifications.
1: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/two-virgin-aircraf...
In the 60s and 70s, there was a lot of crossover between automotive and piston aircraft parts. In particular, Cessna used the same voltage regulator as Ford. Ford used millions of these and Cessna tens of thousands. They were all made on the exact same production line and all got a Ford part number.
Relying on statistical process control, Ford demanded a certain percentage of their parts get extra, manual QC inspection. Cessna demanded 100% inspection of their parts.
Solution: make all the parts on the same line, divert enough for the greater of (Cessna production plus spares) or (Ford’s SPC needs), QC that amount and stamp those inspected parts with a Cessna number (in addition to the Ford part number).
Ford and Cessna can each get parts cheaper than if they were handled separately.
Now, the question comes up: if there are no QC failures detected, are the Ford-only parts as safe as the Ford-or-Cessna parts coming off the line?
They absolutely fly entirely successfully (and legally) on E-AB aircraft (experimental-amateur built) using the same engine/alternator that Cessna uses.
Anyone who has spent time in less developed countries knows what a difference strong government regulations on the market make. People in Western Europe, the US and other developed areas tend to take for granted that the food they buy in the grocery store is what it says on the package. That doesn't just happen by itself, and it's not a safe assumption everywhere.
But just to make it clear… “weeded out of market after the parts fail” involves a billion dollar aircraft with hundreds of humans on it. And just to be more clear, delta is the fourth airline to report these parts.
So when does natural competition start? Because the goal is of course to prevent anyone from getting hurt due to problems that may occur on ~100 jets.
It's kind of disingenuous to dismiss a free-market solution because it is on some level reactive. For all we know, in the absence of government, when planes were invented and accidents started happening, people got together and started doing this on their own.
Sure we could argue "something something greedy profits", but even then, we have to assume action on the part of consumers, companies, intermediaries, etc. It's a valid business model to provide a "certification" service, and there are many examples out there of just such a thing if you squint.
Further, we really can't discount the "laziness" and "apathy" that is caused by over-reliance on government and what it purports to do.
Waiting for enough plane crashes that customers demand certification through a free market process might work but will certainly result in more deaths. More deaths is basically the thing society decided governments should stop.
> For all we know, in the absence of government, when planes were invented and accidents started happening, people got together and started doing this on their own.
Thousands of people had to die until we arrived at the regulation we have today. As the saying goes, every rule is written in blood.
If you just keep making rules you end up like Europe.
But there are MANY nuances: 1. Are you making sure everything you value is being priced in? For example, a free market will find you a very efficient price for an assassin to get rid of your spouse. But without external regulation it won’t factor in whether or not getting rid of your spouse is actually a good thing for society or not.
2. Is all the information available to all participants? This is extremely difficult to achieve and in a sense the entire financial system is a hundreds of billions of dollar industry whose goal is to improve information transparency marginally.
3. The word “free” doesn’t mean what a lot of the people who go on and on about “free” markets think it means. It means markets where information is freely available and buyers and sellers can participate freely. The “free market” propagandists, on the other hand, insist free means free from government regulation, when in fact to achieve a real free market where buyers and sellers can bid freely and information is easily available to all, regulation is a prerequisite. And in a democracy the regulation is likely to be government regulation.
if it's not going to improve the stock price the who cares?
source: worked for a lot of very large, healthy F500 companies that were clusterfucks most of the time
Any properly working oversight that wasn't heavy influenced by conflicts of interest between the FAA and Boeing would have prevent the second plane from flying.
The first crash was an accident that could have been prevented the second is proof of what de-regulation and "free market capitalism" looks like.
Likewise with the messy spacex launch… regulation is happening in response.
That's the thinking of bureocrats who see the world in terms of rules and enforce, but fail to see the bigger picture that it's easier for everyone to just relax the rules.
Capitalism is buyer, seller, and marketplace, with "enough" regulatory feedback to stabilize the system.
Regulation becomes a bugaboo when too many people make their living stomping on the brakes to keep everything tidy.
Regulation is a "Goldilocks" challenge.
But at the end of the day, both extremes are not helpful so we should be promoting regulatory balance not extremist positions.
> with "enough" regulatory feedback
that seemed to meet with disfavor.
Capitalism is “a small elite possess the means of production”, what you are describing is “market economy”, those two concepts have been muddled by cold war propaganda but they aren't the same thing.
Crony capitalism, monopolies and regulatory captures are all features of Capitalism, but they work against the goals of a market economy.
(also, given many of today's restaurant and shop are independent vs subsidiaries of global corporations, this argument is a little bit obsolete).
Also, the mods seem testy on this thread.
Rejecting their wisdom leads to the economic cratering we see about us.
A fantastic game is talked, but Emmanuel Goldstien always manages to tube things. Always...
It matters who and what you're regulating. I generally believe most laws and regulations should apply directly to corporations and governments in order to check their power. The activity of individuals shouldn't need much regulation beyond a basic framework for civilized society.
Someone unlawfully ignoring exist regulation does not make a great argument for more regulation...
Your statement is a strawman.
And it would appear your using that as an argument than more regulation is good and that all existing regulations are optimal.
Seems like a very weak argument overall.
Ever.
Please don't strawman here, or I'll have to call you a Redditor.
I mean, I've been in medical instruments rather than aviation, and so I've been under the FDA rather than the FAA, but I suspect the level is the same or higher for airlines.
Airlines do safety checking because they don't want their customers to die. That's bad for business.