Anybody else get the exact opposite of a warm fuzzy feeling about the specific wording choice used by Boeing there?
In other words, they don't understand what they did wrong, but people more powerful than them are forcing them to change. "We are being coerced into expending unnecessary resources."
They think it is an engineering problem that can be solved by engineers and not a management problem that must be solved with a change of culture, namely a change to managements inability to take responsibility for the current state of Boeing.
When this inevitably fails because the core problem (culture) is not acknowledged or addressed, the engineers will be blamed, and management will continue to avoid responsibility.
The people most at fault for the state of Beoing will probably cash out with enough money to get spoon-fed caviar for the rest of their life while their progeny will never have to work a day in their life.
Of course not. Wouldn't it just open them up to legal liability and additional lawsuits if they admitted wrong doing? It seems like saying "we have updated our plan and will now focus on an engineered solution" is exactly the kind of language I would expect from a large corporation that has made such visible failures as to be very vulnerable to lawsuits. I am not even sure they might have current pending lawsuits against them right now which could be made worse if they admit wrongdoing.
That's not even a paraphrase of what they said.
They said:
> we are confident that the proposed time-limited exemption for that system follows established FAA processes
When we know that:
1) The established FAA processes resulted in a variation of this aircraft that crashed.
2) The established FAA processes resulted in a variation of this aircraft that had part of the hull pop out mid-flight.
3) The established FAA processes resulted in Boeing doing their own certification of their own aircraft.
We know also know:
4) They asked for a safety exemption for the new variation of this aircraft under the 'The established FAA processes'.
slow clap...
If we're talking about investor and consumer confidence and bland corporate HR talk, they could have phrased this in any number of other ways (like saying literally what you said) that didn't draw attention to the fact that they continue to de-prioritize safety.
What they actually said does the opposite of the intended effect of 'we're focusing on safety' and instead says (to me at least) 'we continue to think we can ignore the FAA safety rules for our aircraft until a senate committee makes a fuss about it'.
Well, time to do so I think. Good call.
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
Ah, happy to see Patty Murray is already on it, but wish she was doing more
- https://www.murray.senate.gov/murray-statement-on-seattle-ti...
I have a feeling they'd be much more concerned about not messing up and protecting their reputation if they weren't the only domestic player in town.
Cancelled orders should have the necessary affect on stock price to scare leadership in the right direction.
Emphasis mine.
Boeing literally said they won’t seek an exemption and will instead engineer a solution.
“we are confident”
It they don’t think it’s necessary that means they don’t think it’s important or needs to be executed well.
Reading between the lines external pressure seems to be their justification. As “we are confident” but they aren’t going to do X.
Boeing’s statement doesn’t say that.
Your dissent from techno-neo-feudalism has been duly noted, and added to your Equifax file.
They continue to have massive layoffs and lean into outsourcing over preserving knowledge workers and draining those that know the hopes and why's of correct processes.
The irony is the 707 replaced then De Havilland Comet 4, which is much like the 737 MAX today. The difference being Boeing is a strategic defense contractor that is "too big to fail". There are enormous pressures on the FAA to let Boeing slide with a stern warning again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet#Square_wind...
It isn't. Or at least the max isn't. It's a big change from the original 737, a change that makes the type IMHO unairworthy beyond repair.
But that is not even the biggest issue, its the fact that boeing thinks they should withold essential information (such as the existence of an MCAS) from the pilots, who ultimaltely bear the responsibility of the safety of hundreds of passagers. Even now, in the light of what happened, apparently boeing still hasn't changed policy.
I mean, airlines obtain new types all the time and pilots get trained to fly them. If it were so onerous, selling new aircraft would be practically impossible. (Yes, I know many Airbus share a type classification.)
It feels like there's an historical truth that's now no longer the case, especially when you consider all the associated compromises and, now, the resulting safety & engineering concerns.
[disclaimer: former chief dispatcher for a large regional US airline]
This means that if you have a hardware issue, you can't swap the plane without also swapping the flight crew.
Don't overvalue the airship in the equation. (And I've done this job. I know what levers we can pull and how often it comes up.) Show me your data.
It’s interesting that FAA avoided naked corruption case with pushing this through, but they were unable to simply reject exemption either. Somehow, external pressure was required to avoid worst case.
Sometimes it feels like the decision process at Boeing is:
- How big of a problem $this can be?
- Disaster like
- Go for it.
Maybe someone with aviation industry knowledge can reply, but my guess is adding a trivial timed shutoff would have triggered an elaborate FAA approval and certification process. That’s probably where the savings were.
Source to backup the claim of the scale of worldwide airline fuel usage: https://www.statista.com/statistics/655057/fuel-consumption-...
Source to give you an idea of how much US airlines pay for fuel: https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/us-airlines-january-2023-fuel-c...
But, like someone else said this here, I would love someone with knowledge about this to chime in.
Um, no. Absolutely not “ie plastic”. Composite material in the case of aircraft means it’s made of two or more materials. In the case of modern aircraft, it often is carbon fiber, but can also mean fiberglass and Kevlar (aka aramid fibers).
This is all a sad, ugly mess. A glimmer of hope does give me a warm fuzzy feeling actually.
At least they do not handle the people involved, the media or anybody who raise there is a problem … there is still some hope in non-chinese system.
> "I'm expecting a gold watch from Boeing at the end of my presidency, because I know that I'm on the list of top salesmen at Boeing," Obama deadpanned in 2013.
https://www.wprl.org/npr-news/2024-01-19/cozy-relationship-b...