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Comment by joecasson | Hacker News Reader

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable.

The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

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You can test this, to some degree, by using custom date ranges on most of any search engine. Just exclude from the past several days and search for whatever. So for instance, I assume most people know that amongst numerous other issues, a Boeing also had a wheel fall off and cause damage to vehicles and what no on the ground below. So I searched for 'wheel falls off airplane' [1] while excluding the past few months. And yeah, every time it happened, even on relatively small planes, it received lots of coverage.

So it seems fairly safe to say that something has gone seriously wrong with Boeing, rather than there just being a big focus on them. I always thought the safest time to fly would be shortly after an airline had a major safety incident, because that's exactly when they're going to be checking everything ten times over. And I'm sure this is exactly what Boeing is still doing, yet they still can't seem to keep their planes in the air and in one piece.

[1] - https://search.brave.com/search?q=wheel+falls+off+airplane&s...

But for the planes that are in-service, any extra scrutiny in the wake of an incident would mostly fall on the airlines, not on Boeing.

There's databases that are going to make that a bit more precise.

https://aviation-safety.net/database/

https://avherald.com/ (has fulltext search)

This query returns some results about dropped wheels:

https://avherald.com/h?search_term=dropped+wheel&opt=7168&do...

Boeing being safe was the default, what we're seeing is the disillusion of this default. What's the alternative for the news; "plane lands successfully and without issue". As with any complex system things when things go wrong they go wrong in a myriad of ways with a great deal of uncertainty and randomness - which in and of itself makes them interesting. The erosion of the culture of safety at Boeing is a slow gradual process that has occured over several decades. Incidents that make it to the public are a lagging indicator, which suggests that there is much more to come. Culture is easy to destroy and very very hard to fix, like how cutting down a forest is much faster and easier than growing one. And a culture that has destroyed itself is very unlikely able to fix itself. So we could very well be witnessing a terminal decline. Boeing will make a ton of money providing drones for the US military so there is no real incentive to force leadership to do any course corrections - instead they will just have to act surprised each time a new Boeing issue pops up.

These issues are killing people in hundreds. You are right that national security is more important, but world is not binary. Current execs could easily say rot in jail while company keeps churning whatever hardware military wants, nothing mutually exclusive there.

Now what will happen with civilian avionics is another story, for me they lost my trust for good but I & my family choices are insignificant forces on the market.

I'm not suggesting national security is more important, just that Boeing's leadership won't learn any lessons from this as they'll keep getting bailed out with sweet MIC contracts. I would probably feel much safer if we didn't have a MIC that is constantly trying to play a nuclear game of chicken with political adversaries. 'Russia will not use nukes because Russia has not used nukes' - what kind of effed up logic is that. I feel very unsafe being governed by morons. I can easily avoid flying but dodging nukes is much more difficult.

I prefer the term "national insecurity". The use of "national security" usually makes more sense if you would add the in prefix.

Even with zero controls, and even if one or more of the various computers decided spontaneously to restart, I would expect the plane to continue flying the way it did before the incident rather than going into an (apparently) uncommanded descent? I mean, we had that with the 737 MAX, so I wouldn't rule it out, but it sounds suspiciously like the pilot messed up and is trying to blame the airplane. However I'm no specialist, so it's probably best to wait until further details emerge...

Well, something of that sort happened with the A330 also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

Airbus had a problem like this on an A330 due to corrupted AOA data in the flight computers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

Cosmic rays*

The cause of the corrupted data is not known but it did happen multiple times in a short period and only on an A330s.

Once Airbus knew what the problem was, they were able to detect and mitigate it with a software update. They didn’t fix the hardware.

The most that the ATSB was able to determine was that the data corruption was basically akin to a C++ reinterpret_cast of "altitude" as "angle of attack", causing the 37,000ft or so altitude to sporadically be read as a 50 degree AoA.

The issue was not definitively traced to cosmic rays or another root cause.

Thanks for the link, it made me move to the article about "Mayday Mayday Mayday" callsign, then listen to a recording of one and read about a ship that hit a bridge in Florida. They rebuild the bridge.

Wikipedia is such a fascinating website

But what control input could a pilot make that abruptly produces significant negative gees for just a couple of seconds? Other than the bland references to "technical issue" it sounds like clear air turbulence. (Although one possible mistake could be that the weather radar did warn of it and the pilot didn't react?)

Weather radar cannot see clear air turbulence. Essentially you are relying on forecasts and pilot reports.

An autopilot disconnect (caused by a failure of the flight control computer) in an out of trim condition can cause it. I'm not sure how a 787s trim system is built but on our, much older, plane with a mechanical trim system there's a motor that will slowly move the trim tabs to bring the autopilot inputs to 0.

That is if the autopilot is producing a constant nose up control signal the auto-trim will move the elevator tabs towards nose up until the AP pitch signal is null.

It's to prevent fun excursions like this should the autopilot become disconnected without the pilots hands on the controls.

From reports of passengers in the rear of the plane suffering the most injuries, it sounds like a descent followed by an abrupt pitch up (elevators push tail down).

The problem with engineering defense in depth is that systems naturally evolve to "spend" that defense in depth. Constant, active vigilance is required to maintain a culture that honors and preserves defense in depth rather than exploiting it. It isn't that hard to believe that Boeing has failed to preserve that culture. A company like Boeing would be constantly fighting against multiple forces pushing them to exploit the defense in depth rather than maintain it. Some of them, like the Harvard MBA mindset, are very difficult for large companies to resist. Short term costs that result in long term benefits are a hard sell to almost anyone, but current American business culture is definitely not strong against that.

Yea I have the same question. Objectively it appears that Boeing is having some really serious safety issues. Things that absolutely do not jive with what we’ve been taught our entire lives about how safe airline travel is. But I’m open to the idea that 5-10 “major” incidents a year is maybe within the normal range and we just don’t ever hear about them.

appears to be the newer manufactured aircraft (737 Max series and 787's) that are having these issues... the 777 has one of the best safety records for airliners out there for example

If you are curious just how common minor incidents are, https://avherald.com does a good job of listing most of them.

This isn’t a “hype cycle”, Boeing has very publicly abandoned their engineering culture in favor of stock buybacks ever since the McDonnell-Douglas merger. It’s not hidden at all, and we have countless whistleblower employees, undercover investigations, and the obvious fiscal facts (eg they planned to spend half as much on the MAX as they originally thought it would take).

Plus this isn’t exactly a huge industry, and I don’t recall airbus having these problems. Probably because “spend the normal amount of money on engineering” is about the easiest decision a company could ever make - the most obvious, no-shit-Sherlock board room decision possible for building the long-term value of a company.

IMO sometimes things are simple, and sometimes the rich and powerful are blinded by short-term greed.

How do you suppose a half a trillion dollar market is not a "huge industry"? I am definitely aware of the cultural issues at Boeing, but boiling it down to "sometimes things are simple" is just a lot of ignorance on your part.

I just meant that there are only two companies in the industry at all - the industry being “commercial passenger flight”, or what they seem to call “airliners” (?):

  Still, in the large commercial aircraft market, there are just two major players: the U.S.-based Boeing (BA) and the Airbus Group (EADSY), formerly known as the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS).

I totally understand your pushback against some kid on HN thinking he knows better than the Boeing board, but I stick by the simplicity comment. I know little about airplanes but I know a lot about engineering and common sense. My point is this: R&D is vital to the long term success of an aerospace company, and suddenly slashing R&D budgets while expecting a similar amount of output is an obvious cause of safety incidents.

That depends on how you define the market. Boeing and Airbus are the only two manufacturers of large civil airliners on the worldwide market. But there is a second tier including Bombardier, Embraer, Comac, Mitsubishi, and UAC which either manufacture smaller (regional) airliners or have more limited sales options.

> Bombardier

Protectionism bullshit by Boeing forced them to sell to Airbus, they only do business jets now.

> Embraer

Regional jets only. They saw what happened with Bombardier and they're highly unlikely to move upmarket in short haul jets.

> Mitsubishi

Cancelled their regional jet, so nothing.

> UAC

Severely hampered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting supply chain collapse and sanctions. The MC-21 and SSJ-100 were decent planes on paper, but cannot be manufactured because critical components are European or American (like the engines). The Tu-214 is back in production but it's a pretty obsolete plane by modern standards.

> Comac

By most accounts, roughly a decade behind equivalent Airbus planes in terms of efficiency, but realistically the only real alternative to Boeing/Airbus in the medium term.

I don't think defining the size of a market based on how many companies are in it is a very useful metric. If you kept reading your investopedia snippet, you would see that "The airplane manufacturing market is part of the overall airline industry". So saying that "there are only two companies in the industry" is incredibly disingenuous, there are thousands of companies involved in commercial passenger flight.

Btw, people bragging about having lots of common sense are usually the ones that have the least of it.

Ok cmon be nice it’s hacker news we all hate Boeing here - that’s why we’re Hackers :)

Yeah it’s relative and the line between “large airliners” and “all passenger aircraft” is somewhat arbitrary, I agree. But I stand by the distinction. The market for large airliners is by far the most important market in aerospace, and it has two companies in it, and the one that’s been doing a decade of record cost cutting has way more safety issues than the company that didn’t. I’d love a higher sample size ofc, but as far as clarity goes that’s pretty damning.

Plus what are we fighting about? Whether it’s fair to describe Boeing as being in “not a huge industry”? I mean I’ll just give that one to you lol, I care little about the exact phrasing of that comment. Honestly if it bothers you just drop the whole paragraph!

Big industry or small, I have been informed by trustworthy journalists that this is not usual behavior for an aerospace company. Much less normal for an aerospace company that used to be prestigious for its engineering excellence…

My point is more that: the engines are built by a different company, the tickets are sold by different companies, the airports are run by different companies. I am not making a distinction between large aircraft and medium aircraft, I am saying that Boeing is cog in a much larger wheel, and market dynamics dictate much more than meets the eye. As I mentioned, I am not on Boeing's side and the cost cutting is obviously having impacts. We are arguing about the idea that you think it is a simple fix and common sense fix, and I promise you it isn't. But if I am wrong, I guess I hope to see you in the boardroom soon!

Fair enough, thanks for the tit-for-that :). I keep emailing Biden telling him to nationalize the company and put me in charge, but so far no luck…

I would lean towards an anti-Boeing hype cycle with some confluence of a series of unfortunate events. This is not to say that the QA issues aren't leading to something catastrophic, but on the whole I don't think people quite comprehend the number of flights that take off and land in a day, and how few fatalities and injuries result as of these trips relative to the passenger load.

Yet competition can and does better, much better re safety currently. Any issue of Airbus would get at least same press coverage, in US even more since media are usually not impartial.

Are we already into some boeing whitewashing cycle too?

A lot of safety related improvements(at least in the US) are also due to the FAA and generally the open process of anonymously reporting issues on flights. Each crash has also been meticulously investigated and vast improvements were put in place. The reality is that the most dangerous times on a flight are take off and landing, which is also where human judgement and process plays a large part.

As far as breaking out of a duopoly, I don't know the path for that, as the barrier to entry to building commercial planes is sky high, but I do think one more player would be a net benefit.

> As far as breaking out of a duopoly, I don't know the path for that

I'm sure China does. Right now they're the only bloc of sufficient size, economy, and most importantly motivation, to pull it off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919

Do note that some systems in that aircraft are still manufactured by European and American companies or are jointly made.

>Yet competition can and does better, much better re safety currently.

Oh wow I had no idea. Can you compare hull losses / fatalities of the 787 to the A350?

It's not a fair comparison since the A350 is newer, has less planes in operation and less flight cycles. It does have 1 hull loss with 0 fatalities due to human error either in the ATC or another plane that resulted in a crash - nothing to do with the A350 or its crew in any way outside of its and their good management of the crash (the plane composite materials delayed the fire long enough for the crew to be able to perform a perfect evacuation and save everyone).

They're too young for that, I think?

The problem isn't that "accidents happen", the problem is that airplane safety culture isn't meeting people's expectations anymore. Two planes crashing for the exact same preventable reason mere months apart just does not compute. A single crash would've been quickly forgotten. But two crashes and a long chain of incidents all while the planes were allowed to stay in the air is going to change people's perceptions.

The fuckups being directly attributable to inept leadership, bad policy, and a focus shift away from building planes does not help, especially since the same incompetent clowns are still in charge at Boeing. One of the first remedies should've been getting rid of the businesses school types that have crept in and making sure decision making is again done by engineers. Instead, they blamed the 737 MAX's issues on engineers in the corporate ladder, such as then CEO Dennis Muilenburg, replacing them with lesser-qualified people. Even though the plane was developed during his predecessor's term, who definitely wasn't an engineer and brought most of the relevant organizational issues about! Now you can blame him for not substantially reversing the course set by his predecessor, but the answer definitely isn't to have Boeing be run by yet another non-engineer.

Boeing's current leadership does not have the trust of the public or that of the engineers working under them. After all of this, they won't ever.

Totally agree, but the truth is that it is hard to say that the public has lost trust in Boeing when more people than ever are in the air. The peanut gallery is on to something, and Boeing is losing orders, but it doesn't seem to be enough to actually change anything.

"Lost trust" is a complicated matter. I think I have list a great deal of trust in Boeing, and try to avoid 737 max and 787 planes when I fly, but if flights with those planesc are the only reasonable choices, I'll still go. The probability of injury or death is still fantastically low. Maybe my views on that will change over time. We'll see.

The bottom line is that I have places to go, and if my risk tolerance was zero, that would be a very difficult way to live my life.

> it is hard to say that the public has lost trust in Boeing

I've temporarily lost trust in them until they get their shit together. Airplanes are only safe because manufacturing and maintainence has been done diligently over the past couple decades and with sufficient attention to prevention of known hazards. As soon as that diligence disappears, airplanes can become unsafe, very quickly. If an accident could have been prevented by diligence, I lose trust.

I've been flying but avoiding Boeing aircraft in the past few months, until we get to the bottom of this. Many of my friends are doing the same.

I've also had multiple pilots explicitly announce that "this is not a 737 Max" or something to that effect.

> inept leadership

Their leadership are worse than "inept" or "incompetent". Actively evil psychopaths running the show.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boe...

Did you really not hear about one of their door plugs falling off mid air? Or how TWO of their passenger planes crashed into the ocean killing all passengers due to gross negligence in implementing their computer assisted control for their new plane?

They are having HUGE quality issues for the exact reason you would expect: finance bros took over the company and they now blow tons of money on stock buybacks and not unnecessary things like QA.

Businesses doing Big Things cannot just blow all of their money on stock buybacks and expect to do great things. It is all profits without prosperity. It used to be illegal for a reason.

It is not just hype. They have screwed the pooch.

Given the stories reported about the safety culture at Boeing I expect there are other quality issues. The instances where those quality issues are so apparent that customers experience them, like the door blowout, are unlikely to be unique.

John Oliver did a report on Boeing recently that is pretty damning.

More plausible than hearsay from Boeing or LATAM

Fair, but - for the sake of the argument - who's to say that Brian Jokat doesn't have a major short position on Boeing?

I agree that both of the airlines have incentives to cover it up, but it's strange this is being "reported" as verified.

Carry that skepticism forward when reading anti-Israel headlines.

In the sense that there's evidence of a problem with planes right now, and the question is if that problem was already there, whereas there's evidence of IDF war crimes right now, and the question is if they've always been doing them?

I think they meant in the sense of bad things happen to airplanes often enough that you could find what looks like a pattern for any given manufacturer if you looked for it, and bad things happen in armed conflict often enough that you could find what looks like a pattern for any given side in an armed conflict if you looked for it.

Which isn't even to say that Israel and its armed forces are necessarily not behaving poorly in Gaza, rather that it's worth questioning whether we have enough evidence to conclude that they are behaving unusually poorly in Gaza, or if for a number of reasons other than an excess of sympathy for Gazans we are experiencing an unbelievably high level of scrutiny and criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza.

Suppose there's a dragon that comes out of its cave and eats a villager every seven years. A knight passes through the village, sees the dragon carry off someone's wife, and calls the villagers to arms: only for calm reason to prevail, as the village elder points out that the incidence of dragon attacks in that locale has not, when adjusted for the expanding population, and increasingly frequent human-dragon contacts, and the inherent unreliability of wooden house door-plugs, risen above historically expected levels.

proisreal, antiisarael, skepticism is always useful.

" hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable."

Maybe, but also the alternative is that pilots may be pressued not to report these things due to career or crony capitalist concerns like pressure from their employer or are told this crash is 'normal'. Airlines and Boeing are not "nice guys" and are historically toxic and vindictive companies against the working class.

So that leaves us whistleblowers of lower professional value than pilots. The same way Snowden was a lowly sysadmin contractor and not a high ranking NSA general or CISO or whatever. Or Reality Winner or Chelsea Manning had relatively low level positions.

At a certain point, in a corrupt system, we have to accept the quality of whistleblower is never going to be that gold standard we want. Maybe this is fake, but its worth taking on face value considering what we know about Boeing culture and the capitalism dynamics and government corruption they've helped create that keeps them away from proper regulation and disclosure.

Not to mention we still know next to nothing about Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which was a Boeing too. The narrative of "nothing to see here, its just a pilot suicide or freak swamp gas accident" is now a lot more questionable as we've seen Boeing quality decline lately.

"Hey this isnt good enough" is wrong thinking here. In a system of corruption and secrecy its rare to have "good enough" but instead we have to deal with the cards we're dealt by witnesses and whistleblowers.

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