Hard to disagree
The reality is that a company is on trial for the actions of individuals and if there is no follow through on that it will not change anything.
I doubt it goes to trial as I am 99% sure that the judge will rubber stamp the whole thing because the US is a corporate driven hellscape where peasants are accountable, but wealthy individuals and corporations are not.
2. Saying "1000%" like that is a bad comment, so don't assume the people that downvoted even disagree with you.
Even if I believe you, that's a bad social experiment. Stop wasting people's time.
Ignore my commentary for a second. What "responsibility" could anyone else take? The only reasonable option I see here is "don't visit HN". But if you're the person making it bad to visit HN, then the problem is you, in a way that cannot be deflected.
...unless you misunderstood really badly when I said other people were the victims (as much as bad posting can have 'victims'). That's very far from calling them the problem.
Is this projection? You've been the one saying everyone that disliked your comments is causing their own problems and needs to "take responsibility". You're blaming everyone else and I'm not.
Or is arguing in increasingly blatant bad faith your game here? Well done I guess.
Because that’s how this will go.
In fairness, he was an exec making $7M per year - so not a nobody, but he was only managing 70 people (Credit Suisse was a ~50k person company), and obviously not the only person who should've went to jail.
For (1), were other people prosecuted? Maybe there was insufficient evidence or process issues that got in the way of additional convictions.
For (2), how does that excuse a crime?
Kareem's story is fascinating for many reasons and I don't find lying about bond prices to be a crime to hate someone over. But, a crime it is, nonetheless.
If there was insufficient evidence in every other case, then that's a massive systemic problem we need to fix.
And I can't think of any "process issue" that would cause this particular outcome other than "massive corruption".
And don't give me the Yuppie Nuremberg Defense. "I was just following orders... because I've got a mortgage!" That doesn't fly when lives are on the line.
This is reality. Decisions aren’t kill/not kill.
It’s much more ambiguous and murky, especially when dealing with low probability events. That’s why it takes expertise, but it doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be accountability for those “expert” decisions. Other engineering domains already have this, there isnt anything that makes these decision inherently different.
You're talking to someone who spent years working in the aerospace industry. I'm not sure, but it seems like you have some hypothetical idea of what reality is, but it doesn't align with my actual experience. Not to sound disrespectful, but it sounds like one of us actually has experience and the other is going off a narrative they've created in their head.
I do hear people often talk about the "incompetent patsy" excuse. But I'm curious, where do you think that stops being relevant? Do you not hold medical doctors liable for decisions because a patient will just find another "incompetent patsy" to prescribe them whatever they want? Do you not expect civil engineers to be responsible for a structural design of a bridge because a company will find an "incompetent patsy" to sign off on a sub-standard design that is better for profit margins? We're used to holding all kinds of professionals liable, but there seems to be a cultural shift in the last 40-50 years where we've rationalized bad behavior as the norm rather than holding people accountable.
As I’ve said elsewhere, good organizations implement a distinct chain of command for those decisions so they can be made more impartially. Even then, it’s not without career risk, but IMO that’s part of the gig and why it takes a certain amount of professional integrity. As someone else said, if someone isn’t up to that task, maybe developing safety critical software isn’t the right gig for them.
Project documentation also not a new concept. Also acceptable.
Of course I want the entire chain of those involved criminally punished but punishing people anywhere on that chain, even those at the bottom is a start.
As engineers we are often responsible for the creation of assets more valuable than ourselves and I think it's an essential part of the job to put our lives on the line in much the same way an airplane passenger does. And as engineers we are often also airplane passengers ourselves and must trust that other engineers that they too have put our safety ahead of their personal wellbeing.
As the middle class is crushed then sure, such ethical boundaries will fade out of necessity, and I see this as part of a descent into a low trust society and why I expect more planes to fall out of the sky, both metaphorically and literally. Once a culture tolerates such flexible ethics the boundaries will continue being pushed - there isn't a lower bound. This corruption inhibits the creation of valuable assets and will result in a massive erosion of our standard of living.
An often touted solution is Universal basic income (UBI) that would create a safety-net for engineers and those with my type of disability - but having experienced constant gaslighting on ME/CFS from doctors informed by state funded research and given the expansion of Canadian MAID style solutions to people like myself I'm very fortunate that the capitalists opportunities existed such that I did not have to rely on state 'care'.
That doesn't change the fact that it comes from absolute privilege to tell someone that they should just quit their job because you don't agree with the ethics or morality of work they're doing.
If you HAVE the privilege, the savings, the good health not needing COBRA, etc, then by all means walk away. You also don't mention having children, I know a LOT of parents and they absolutely don't have the money to be able to just walk away and keep their kids lifestyles, healthcare, etc until finding something new.
But judging someone potentially desperate and on already on the edge for where they work in most cases is pretty off. You have your own story someone wouldn't be aware of without telling them that as you say may make it impossible to dig yourself out of a hole. Who knows what situation someones in?
I would rather you be homeless than have you be part of making an airplane unsafe and I will judge you for that. I don't care how hard life is for you and I don't expect others to care how life has been for me - if you are part of making other people unnecessarily unsafe I hope you burn in hell for eternity. It's not a matter of privilege and just because you have found your way of being ok with it does not mean I still will not judge such decisions as unethical, immoral, improper and unbecoming of human in general and an engineer specifically.
None of this was a competition, super strange to make it so and not just recognize not everyone can quit their job today, nod your head and agree.
Because that is a fact.
I would like to think that even without ME/CFS I would still hold such views.
I recognize that Jane with 4 starving kids, one with cancer, making $7.15/hr with an empty fridge and a broken down car potentially can't just quit her job at the factory today even though they switched from building cars to bombs.
My life is not a comparison against other peoples lives."
Thanks. Just because you have problems doesn't mean they're better or worse than others. This isn't about you. I'm sure your response is "I'd rather be jane than have CFS," or something about how you're morally superior and would be homeless before making a bomb/whatever.
Absolutely weird thought process, especially from someone who has never been homeless but would prefer to be homeless than xyz. Very im14andedgy vibe.
You can recognize that such people will make such decisions, and I agree that they will, but where I don't agree is that making such decisions is in anyway morally ok. If Jane chooses to keep her job where she is knowingly cutting corners on making lifesaving widgets I will judge her harshly for that regardless of her personal circumstances. If Janes work is unimportant then I couldn't care less.
You tried to invalidate their position by making this about personal experiences. When they counter with personal experiences, you don't get to cry foul and claim they made it a "competition".
And your first paragraph is just making shit up. Come on.
And second, I do know multiple people who made the choice of not getting employment somewhere unethical. It is not some kind of rare decision making. These people have children and parents that depends on them.
It is not some great unusual privilege to walk away from job like this you want to frame this as. It is where quite a lot of technicians are. You could make that argument about factory near some trailer park or poor area, but not really about us.
That's the entire point. We're privileged. My god. My example was literally a mom in a factory with starving children who began building bombs instead of cars.
With a no-fault system, mistakes are not covered up, but fixed.
With a fault system:
1. if a mistake is discovered, it will not be fixed because that would be an admission of criminal liability.
2. Quality will not be improved, because that is (again) an implicit admission that the previous design was faulty.
3. You won't get new airplane designs, because (again) any new design is an inherent risk.
I understand the desire for revenge, but there are heavy negative consequences for a revenge/punishment/fear based system.
P.S. I worked at Boeing on the 757 stabilizer trim system. At one point, I knew everything there was to know about it. It was a safety critical system. I did a lot of the double checking of other peoples' work on it.
I did not work in an atmosphere of fear.
The 757 in service proved an extremely reliable airplane. I've flown commercial on many 757s, and often would chat a bit with the flight crew. They were unanimous in their admiration for the airplane. Made me feel pretty good.
The NTSB does not assign fault or blame for an accident or incident; rather, as specified by NTSB regulation, “accident/incident investigations are fact-finding proceedings with no formal issues and no adverse parties … and are not conducted for the purpose of determining the rights or liabilities of any person”
But there was plenty of blaming / faulting going around outside of the NTSB. Hence the fraud we're currently talking about where Boeing tried to blame the pilots who rather conveniently for Boeing died and are no longer around to defend themselves.
I'm glad you feel personally assured though your enthusiastic personal connections but that does not work for me. That it works for you actually makes me feel less safe flying.
Feel free to ask the flight crew next time you're on a 757. The service record of the 757 speaks for itself. I fly Iceland Air because their fleet consists of 757s. I literally bet my life on my work.
> Boeing tried to blame the pilots
The pilots were partially responsible.
1. First incident - the LA crew followed emergency procedures and continued the flight safely.
2. Second incident - the LA crew restored normal trim 25 times, but never turned off the stab trim system, which is supposed to be a memory item.
3. Third incident - Boeing sent an Emergency Airworthiness Directive to all MAX pilots. The EA crew did not follow the simple 2 step procedure. A contributing factor is the crew was flying at full throttle, and ignored the overspeed warning horn you could hear on the cockpit voice recorder.
> who rather conveniently for Boeing died and are no longer around to defend themselves.
The flight voice and data recorders spoke for them. We know what they did.
If you want to know the truth, read the official government reports on the crashes. Ignore what the mass media says.
It's pretty standard to blame the pilots, as we know there is a Swiss cheese model for statistical analysis of risk and from my vantage point opening such large holes in the MCAS layer with the expectation that events are caught at the pilot layer is inadequate. That not all events are caught at the pilot layer is to be expected.
Edit: I should add that the pilots already got a death sentence for their involvement.
Though their careers are usually ended by it. That seems fair to me. An engineer at Boeing who could not be relied on will also find his career shunted to working on non-critical stuff. That's fair as well.
> That not all events are caught at the pilot layer is to be expected.
Of course.
But consider that piloting can all be automated today. Why isn't it done? Because pilots are the backup system for unexpected failures. A great deal (most?) of pilot training is training on what to do in an emergency. One aspect of that training is turning off the stab trim system if the system runs away. It's a switch on the console in easy reach, and it's there for a reason.
Remember that Boeing also sent out an Emergency Airworthiness Directive to all MAX pilots after the LA crash. The EA pilots did not follow it.
Do you want to fly with pilots who don't read/understand/remember emergency procedures? I don't. I wouldn't put them in prison, though, I'd just revoke their license to fly. Pilots undergo regular checks for their competency. No pass => no fly.
I don't trust Boeing and haven't for several decades so while I agree in theory an automated system could fly aircraft with a great deal of reliability I do not trust Boeing to be able to deliver that reliability. I like the idea that someone educated in the safety of the aircraft is up in the airplane with me sharing in the risk of flying even if all they are doing is babysitting a computerized system.
Most of my knowledge of Boeing is from engineers that used to work there and complained bitterly about the degradation of engineering safety culture. And sure, perhaps flying is safer than it has ever been, I think that's more down to improvements in technology than the culture of safety. Unfortunately while technology generally improves it's hard to say the same thing about culture. In general I'm upset that flying is less safe than it could have been.
Neither are punishments. If you stab yourself that's your own doing, not punishment. Removing someone from a position where they cannot be trusted is not a punishment.
Airbus has had problems with their automation systems, too, that the pilots were able to save. And crashes where the pilots forgot how to recover from a stall.
Nobody is saying safety cannot still be improved. Every accident gets thoroughly investigated, and all contributing causes to the accident get dealt with.
Whipping people is not going to improve matters.
This remains omitted by the mass media, which contraindicates any of the reporting on it as "good".
There is also responsibility in the production of a faulty AOA sensor, and the failure of LA to fix the known faulty sensor, or inform the crew, before authorizing the next, fatal, flight.
I've never seen it in the media. Not knowing what the stab trim cutoff switch does is a massive failure either on the part of the pilot or the training. Not reading the Emergency Airworthiness Directive is a failure of the pilot.
> It seems like you want to point to a singular cause
Au contraire. It seems that everyone but me wants to blame a singular cause - Boeing. There was a cascade of failure here:
1. A defective AOA sensor was manufactured and installed
2. After the first LA incident landed safely, LA failed to correct the problem before sending the airplane aloft again
3. Single path MCAS inputs could not detect failure
4. Pilots failed to apply known emergency procedures
> require humans to act perfectly in accordance with their training, all the time.
Of course we try to design airplanes so they do not cause emergencies. But we still need pilots to train to react to emergencies. You don't put a person in the pilot seat who is not well-trained in emergency procedures.
Making airplane travel safe means identify and correct ALL causes in the cascade of failures. Most accidents are a combination of airplane failure and pilot failure.
Sometimes pilots make deadly mistakes. That's why we have copilots, they check each other. But in the MAX crashes, both pilot and copilot failed to follow known emergency procedures. Why they didn't, I have no idea.
There is a general hierarchy when it comes to controlling hazards (remember, Boeing already identified MCAS as hazardous): remove the hazard, engineering controls, administrative controls, and PPE. We can apply a little thought experiment to see the gaps in what you're advocating when it comes to the MCAS issue. (Admittedly, this is contrived to just illustrate the point within the confines of a forum reply).
1) Remove the hazard: They could have redesigned the airframe to adjust the center-of-gravity to remove the stall issue that MCAS was developed in the first place. Why didn't Boeing do this? Because of cost and schedule pressure to have a new plane ready, after threats that American Airlines would take their business elsewhere.
2) Engineering controls: MCAS was an engineering control, but an incomplete one. Because MCAS was listed as "hazardous" in the hazard analysis it required redundant sensors. Why didn't they put on redundant sensors as the default? I can only speculate, but considering they were sold as optional, profit motive seems likely. (This also ignores the fact that MCAS should have been categorized as 'catastrophic' meaning they didn't fully understand the impacts of their system)
3) Administative controls: this was the training piece that you're hanging your hat on. This has multiple problems. For one, even though MCAS changed the handling dynamics of the airframe, Boeing pushed hard to reuse the same certification to avoid additional pilot training. Again, this was a business decision to make the airframe more competitive. Secondly, administrative controls are an inherently weak because of human factors. There's a lot that can go wrong if your plan is to have humans follow an administatrive procedure. You claim "it's not hard". Sorry, this is just a bad mindset. Usually when I hear people say things like "it's not hard" or "all you've gotta do" when they're talking about complex systems, it indicates they take an overly simplified mental model. In this case, you may be ignoring the chaos in the cockpit, the fact that the plane has handling characteristics different from what the pilots were trained on, human factors related to stab trim force at speed, conflicting or confusing information (like why the MCAS comes on at changing timeframes, time criticality, etc. Having adminstrative controls as your main mitigation is bad practice, and setting the system up for failure.
4) PPE: this isn't particularly relevant to this case, but a silly example of PPE control is giving everyone parachutes and helmets in case things went south.
You can obviously see PPE is an absurd control. But your main point is that the main control should be administrative, which is the next worst option. Boeing ignored good safety practice to pursue profit. So they probably deserve some of the heat they are getting.
1. an absolutely enormous cost, like a couple orders of magnitude more
2. several years of delay
3. pilots would have to be completely retrained
4. the airlines liked the 737 very much
5. mechanics would have to be retrained
6. the inherent risk of a new, untried airframe
There was nothing at all inherently wrong with the concept of the MCAS system, despite what ignorant journalists wrote. What was wrong with it was it was not dual path, had too much authority, and would not back off when the pilot countermanded it. These problems have been corrected.
Pilot training - there have been many, many airplane crashes because pilots trained to fly X and Y did the Y thing when flying X. The aviation industry is very well aware of this. Boeing has been working at least since 1980 (and likely much earlier) to make diverse airplane types fly the same way from the pilot's point of view. This is because it is safer. And yes, it does make pilot training cheaper. Win-win.
> You claim "it's not hard". Sorry, this is just a bad mindset.
Yet it's true. Read about the first MCAS incident, the one that didn't crash. There were 3 pilots in the cockpit, one of which was deadheading. The airplane did some porpoising while the pilot/copilot would bring the trim back to normal, then the MCAS would turn on, putting it into a dive. Then, the deadheading pilot simply reached forward and turned off the stab trim.
And the day was saved.
I've seen your points many times. They are all congruent with what journalists write about the MAX. Next time you read one of those articles, I recommend you google the author to see what their background is. I have done so, and each time the journalist has no engineering degree, no aeronautical training, no pilot training, no experience with airline operations, and no business experience.
You can also google my experience. I have a degree in mechanical engineering with a minor in aeronautics from Caltech. I worked for Boeing for 3 years on the 757 stabilizer trim design. (It is not identical to the 737 stab trim design, but is close enough for me to understand it.) At one point I knew everything there was to know about the 757 trim system. A couple dozen feet away was the cockpit design group, and we had many very interesting discussions about cockpit user interface design.
I'm not a pilot myself, but other engineers at Boeing were, and they'd take me up flying for fun. Naturally, airplanes were all we talked about. My brother and cousin are pilots, my cousin was a lifer engineer at Boeing, my dad flew for the AF for decades in all kinds of aircraft, with an engineering degree from MIT. I inherited his aviation library of about a thousand books :-/ Naturally, airplanes were a constant topic in our family.
I've talked with two working 737 pilots about the MAX crashes.
I've read the official government documents on the MAX crashes, and the Emergency Airworthiness Directive.
That's what I "hang my hat" on. So go ahead, tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. But before you do, please look up the credentials of the journalists you're getting your information from.
P.S. "Aviation Week" magazine has done some decent reporting.
P.P.S. Amazingly, the "Aviation Disasters" TV documentary is fairly decent in its analysis of various accidents, lacking the histrionics of other treatments. But it's rather shallow, considering it's a 40 minute show.
1. an absolutely enormous cost, like a couple orders of magnitude more
2. several years of delay
3. pilots would have to be completely retrained
Yes, this is the same case I was making. They took a higher (or unknown) risk for business (profit) motives. That's why they deserve a large chunk (but certainly not all) of the blame.
There was nothing at all inherently wrong with the concept of the MCAS system
My claim isn't that the concept was inherently wrong, it's that the execution was wrong. Their own process documents say so and they also belie the fact that they didn't understand their airframe. The damning part of it is that they were likely wrong for the reason of increasing profit. (Still, even if MCAS isn't inherently bad, we still have to acknowledge it's not the best solution...see the discussion above about hierarchies of controls).
>You claim "it's not hard"...Yet it's true.
This is exactly the wrong way to think about this. Just because a mitigation works some of the time doesn't mean it's the best mitigation. Can I still design a car with a coal-fired steam engine and cat-gut brake lines and drive it safely? Sure. But by modern standards, it's still a sub-par design and the likelihood of safe operation is lower because of it. That likelihood is the entire reason there is a hierarchy of controls. You are advocating against well-established best practices in safety and reliability.
>You can also google my experience. I have a degree in mechanical engineering with a minor in aeronautics from Caltech. I worked for Boeing for 3 years
Please don't do this next time and argue the points rather than appealing to (relatively weak) authority. I'm familiar with your points and can usually set a clock by the time it takes you to either bring up your experience at Boeing or some story about your daddy in these discussions. But you aren't the only one with aerospace experience. I've been an airframe mechanic. I also have an ME and additional engineering degrees to include a PhD and published aerospace-related research. I've worked in NASA for many more years than you worked for Boeing. I filled roles in aerospace, quality/safety, reliability, and software engineering related to both software and hardware design. I've worked alongside Boeing on crew-rated space systems. I've also piloted aircraft (although my ratings are no longer current). I've had dinners and discussed similar issues with pilots and astronauts with thousands and thousands of hours of flight time. But parading out your credentials doesn't make your points any stronger and tends to be the bastion of those without much else to rely upon. This isn't a pissing contest, so please make an argument based on its own merits rather than relying on credentials.
Are you still advocating designing a whole new airframe instead?
> we still have to acknowledge it's not the best solution
We don't have to agree on that at all. It's an inherently simple solution, although Boeing made mistakes in its implementation.
> Just because a mitigation works some of the time
It's turning off a switch. The purpose of that switch is supposed to be a "memory item", meaning the crew should not need to consult a checklist. The switch is for dealing with runaway stab trim. Reading the step-by-step of the crisis, it is impossible for me to believe that the pilots did not know they had a runaway trim problem. There are two wheels on the side of the console, painted black and white, that spin when the trim runs, making a loud clack-clack sound. They are physically connected to the stab trim jackscrew with a cable. If the trim motor fails, the crew can manually turn the jackscrew via those wheels.
> You are advocating against well-established best practices in safety and reliability
Turning off a system that is adversely working is well-established in aviation. It's quite effective.
> and argue the points rather than appealing to (relatively weak) authority
Appeal to authority is not a fallacy when one has some authority :-) And so it is fair to list what makes one an authority.
> This isn't a pissing contest
You might want to review the condescending and quite rude post you wrote that I replied to. Your reply here is also rather rude. I don't think I've been rude to you.
Thank you for listing your credentials.
That would be the ideal solution for that hazard. But I can’t say if it’s the best risk profile overall. I would settle for a properly implemented engineered mitigation of MCAS.
>* It’s an inherently simple solution*
The fact that the engineers who built the thing mischaracterized it would seemingly be evidence to the contrary. I have experienced this flawed thinking often, where software is treated as a quick simple solution without considering the effects on the overall system.
>Appeal to authority is not a fallacy when one has some authority
It actually is. As Carl Sagan said, “mistrust arguments from authority.” But regardless, we seem to have different ideas on what makes someone an “authority”. You may be an aerospace authority when you’re in a room of CRUD software developers, but this forum has a much wider net than that. “Technical authority” is an actual assigned title at NASA, and you probably wouldn’t get it with 3 years of experience from decades prior.
“Turning off a switch” is the easy solution when you’re dealing with the benefit of hindsight. The pilots were operating in a completely different different environment. That’s why administrative mitigations are not a favored approach. Boeing simulator results demonstrate that it was a confusing scenario to identify the correct root cause in a time-critical situation.
As to the tone of the post, I’ve witnessed you in many aero circumstances state your credentials as a “I know what what I’m talking about so that’s the end of it” puffery tone. It in itself comes across as condescending and, worse, adds little to the conversation. I generally try to be respectful on these forums until someone shows they aren’t reciprocating. Normally I just roll my eyes and move on. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don’t even realize the condescending tone some of your posts take. I debated even responding but thought it might make you realize how off-putting you’re style can be. In your case, it comes across as very arrogant rather than curious which is contrary to the HN guidelines. If it offended you, I apologize.
I'm not offended, as that's to be expected when I write things that are unpopular.
But I still accept your apology, and no worries. Perhaps we can engage again in the future!
P.S. I know about the simulator issues, but the information came filtered through a journalist and I am skeptical. What I cannot reconcile is the first incident where the deadhead pilot simply turned off the switch, compared with the simulator pilot. It didn't matter whether the runaway trim was the root cause. It did matter that runaway trim will kill you and it must be stopped. All three crews knew that, which is why they fought it.
In my work on the stab trim system, it was accepted that the first resort for trim failure was turning the thing off. Overhead in the 757 is a matrix of circuit breakers, the purpose of each is to turn off a malfunctioning system. The stab trim one, being critical, isn't located overhead but right there on the console.
I work with machinery all the time. When it fails, my first reflex is to always turn it off. For example, one day I smelled smoke. Looking around, smoke was coming out of my computer box. I could see fire through the grille. The very first thing I did was yank the plug out of the wall, the second was to take the box outside. The flames went out when the current was removed.
I simply do not understand failing to turn off a runaway trim system. Especially when it kept coming back on after normal trim was restored.
For another example, an engine fire. I don't know what the fire checklist says, but I bet right at the top it says to activate the fire extinguishers and cut off the fuel and electric power to the engine. I've done the same for an engine fire in my car :-)
They're also trained to reduce thrust when they hear the overspeed horn, rather than continue at full throttle. Overspeeding the aircraft is extremely dangerous, and also makes it almost impossible to manually turn the trim wheel.
In the EA crash, they restored normal trim at least once. They had the overspeed warning going off. I don't recall the exact sequence of events, but they turned off the stab trim with the airplane sharply nose down, and tried to restore normal trim by turning the manual wheel. At high speed, they should know that wouldn't work. They'd need to unload the stabilizer first by reducing the speed.
The overspeed warning should never be ignored, as it means parts of the airplane can be torn off. Especially in a dive.
Even so, if they had followed the directions in the Emergency Airworthiness Directive to use the electric trim thumb switches (which override MCAS) they could have restored normal trim.
It's not hard:
1. restore normal trim with the thumb switches
2. turn off the stab trim
That's it.
> Expecting the humans to act perfectly
Reading the EAD and do steps 1 and 2 is not some super complicated thing. Besides, pilots who get flustered in emergency situations should be washed out of flight school.
My dad was a military pilot for 23 years. He had many in flight emergencies, but kept a cool head and properly resolved each of them. In one, the engine on his F-86 conked out. The tower told him to bail out. But he knew exactly what the rate of descent of the F-86 was, his altitude, his speed, how far he was from the landing strip, the effect of the wind, etc., and calculated he could make the field. Which he did, saving the very expensive airplane. (However, he was reprimanded for not bailing out, as the pilots were more valuable than the jet.) But he was unrepentant, confident in his calculations.
BTW, I've talked to two different 737 pilots on different occasions. Their opinion is the pilots should have been able to recover.
Yes, and Boeing also changed the functionality of the Stab Trim cutout switches such that the Flight Computer with MCAS running on it was never able to be isolated from the electronic actuator switches on the yoke, and the use of said trim switches reset the undocumented MCAS system activation to 5s after release, which also ramped itself up far beyond the documented limits sent to the regulators, upward to a max of 2.5 degrees per activation triggered by a fubar'd, non-redundant, misclassified, intentionally non-cross checked, ultimately safety-critical sensor!
>In the EA crash, they restored normal trim at least once. They had the overspeed warning going off.
Airspeed unreliable checklist on takeoff/climbout: increase throttle. Maybe they went through a different CL?
>I don't recall the exact sequence of events, but they turned off the stab trim with the airplane sharply nose down, and tried to restore normal trim by turning the manual wheel.
Because of aforementioned screwing with the cutout switches which was not clearly communicated to pilots and only came out in retrospect.
>At high speed, they should know that wouldn't work. They'd need to unload the stabilizer first by reducing the speed.
...using a maneuver removed from documentation for several versions of 737 that only military trained pilots clued into cold on a simulator, and a civil aviation captain failed to arrive at, again, due to it's undocumented nature since about dino-737.
>Reading the EAD and do steps 1 and 2 is not some super complicated thing. Besides, pilots who get flustered in emergency situations should be washed out of flight school.
Aerospace Engineers who design airplanes and don't take into account human info processing limitations, human factors research, basic ethics, and an appreciation for the fact that "management can wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first, because I. Am. Not. Going. To. Kill. People." should likewise, also wash out. But lo and behold, we live in an inperfect world with fallible people. Which has generally meant we should be on our toes to be up front about what we're building instead of hiding implementation details from regulators for fear of all the money we might lose if we actually do our jobs to the professional standard we should.
>My dad was a military pilot for 23 years. He had many in flight emergencies,>>
>BTW, I've talked to two different 737 pilots on different occasions. Their opinion is the pilots should have been able to recover.
Walter, if it'd have been built the way it should have, and been documented as it should have been, and had the simulator training it damn well should have requirex it never would have happened.
Stop trying to justify it. This wasn't a bunch of "get 'er done" skunkworks engineers, working on mindbending, cutting edge, ill-understood designs.
This was a civil transport project, co-opted by a bunch of fiscal min-maxer's who pressured everyone, and continue to pressure everyone to cut every corner imaginable.
I genuinely feel bad for you. It'd rip at my soul to see something I worked so hard for to fall so damn hard. I'm going through a crisis of faith on that front at the moment. It ain't fun at all.
We cannot afford to be kind to these institutions once we've left them though. People like you were, and I certainly am are counterweights to people who think that all those corners we fastidiously upkeep and check are just so much waste, when they damn well aren't.
Walter, ffs, they were taking off hot & high from Adis Ababa with airspeed unreliable because of the screwed AoA sensor; a sensor unjustifiably classified too low in terms of consequence for failure, and deliberately wired non-redundantly and kept from being cross-checked in most configurations in order to avoid training burden to avoid cert work to compete with the NEO. Without that AoA sensor, overspeed had no basis; garbage in, garbage out.
Let it go. Boeing f*cked up. Period. Their (the pilot's) instruments and alarms were completely untrustworthy. You (Boeing) don't get to blame pilots for not doing memory items when your (again, Boeing's) technical design is screwed from the first. Your 757 work was fine. The MAX as it was was not. Nothing will ever make it so.
Yes
But it will be much more effective if the managers risk jail
Engineers often need the money and simply cannot quit like thar
How did you jump to engineering directly from this sentence?
We are literally the last line of defense in a lot of industries. From the first line of the ASME code of ethics:
> Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties.
If you can't do that, you should be in another field. Maybe software engineering at Meta would be a better fit.
Also the personal insult is not needed. It just makes you out to be an ass rather than someone making a point.
Consider your romantic notions might not be realistic.
It's true that most software engineers never work on safety-critical systems. The nature of the products they work on, or the nature of their contributions to those products, limits the possible impact of flaws and mistakes.
Once you work on a product with safety-critical features and/or become responsible for one, there really is a marked psychological change that takes place. I've lived through that change in my own career, and many comments (including some I've written, I'm sure) now strike me as callous and trivializing important matters to an extent that grates.
It's important to hold engineers accountable for their work in proportion to their impact, which is typically very significant. If you build machines that can kill, stakes should exist for you as well.
To a certain extent this is true. To extend the OP's example, a mechanical or civil engineer who stamps a building design takes responsibility for that design being safe enough for public use. The same could apply to the MCAS design, or the quality engineer who signs off on how the plane was put together. These are not "romatic notions"; the latter is already common practice in aerospace. Do you think if a QE stamped that the door bolts were installed should not bear responsibility for the bolts being missing?
In those cases where the engineer is supposed to be aware of the risks, there should be processes in place to account for, and mitigate, those risks. For the example of MCAS, the software was categorized as hazardous in the hazard analysis document. As such, Boeing processes required it to have redundant inputs as a default. It did not (the redundant sensor was sold an optional equipment); as such, I think the engineer who signed off on the hazard analysis may bear some responsibility. If, on the other hand, there were no business processes in place to require redundancy, that seems like a CEO responsibility.
When I worked at a retailer, we were told to push buy-now-pay-later schemes on our customers (on top of the corporate credit card, and insurance plans, and service plans). Most of my coworkers simply decided that they weren't going to - in part, because such schemes are nakedly predatory, but also because it was yet another dumb metric we knew we'd be held to if it were successful. I don't know of anyone who was fired or docked pay or denied a promotion because of it, and it's not worth luring someone into financial ruin over a TV and an entry-level sales position. Which leads me to another thought: if you're so low in the chain that you have no say in how and what you work on, is it a job that's worth sacrificing your morals for? Maybe take advantage of that increased earnings potential from job-hopping and get out of dodge.
In the building sector you can't build without your design being signed of by an engineering office and the engineer and its office take the responsability for it, both at the criminal and civil level.
If the same rule existed for the software industry, the organisation would adapt itself around it.
This is such an important part of engineering as a profession.
However a huge number of engineers critical to safety would not have one.
There has been a movement in some states to remove the manufacturing exemption, in which case the cognizant engineer would bear the responsibility. The optimistic view is that this will help balance the power between the engineer and the C-suite. The cynical view is that this will allow the C-suite to push responsibility down to the engineer.
So the Boeing trial being on plea deal would be on paar with that standard…
Because to me, the standard for such a big company, getting so many public dollars, that is responsible for the safety of a ton of Americans (and more) should obviously be more strict (for at least those reasons) compared to an individual who can't afford a good lawyer who had just a little too much weed on them.
1) Citation needed. Particularly if you're talking about federal inmates, state, or both.
2) It's disingenuous (re: primacy bias) to lead off with murder and rape, which account for a far smaller portion of "violent" crime than robbery (which I assume includes burglary, in which the victim and perpetrator don't make contact) and assault (which, again, does not require the victim and perpetrator to physically make contact (that's battery)).
All of this is aside fact that an individual who allegedly commits a heinous act against another person or small group of people is in a completely different class from a large corporation whose products put millions at risk (and the executives and managers who sign off on those company's decisions). There is quite the destructive myopia behind the increasingly punitive (rather than rehabilitative) nature of incarceration for the former, when the latter get off so easy.
I'd say the Sackler's committed premeditated violent crime, "at scale". One could even argue that they would be eligible for the death penalty and yet they keep half the winnings.
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
To summarize, 44% of current federal inmates are there for drug-charges. The second most category is weapons charges at 22%. So a good 2/3 of current federal inmates are there for non-violent crimes. Sex offense is third most common at 13% I’m sure many are there for illegal sex work or consumption rather than for sexual violence. A whopping 4.6% is in federal prison for immigrating (which isn’t even a crime; unless this category includes human trafficking, which I would call a violent crime).
EDIT: As for all US prisoners, here is the data I found (see table 16 on page 29):
62% are there for violent crimes and 12.5% for drug charges. Note that many large states—such as California—don’t imprison for drug possession any more, and this table does not include sentences shorter than 1 year. This methodology of counting current prison population is biased for more serious crimes with longer sentencing, as most crimes have shorter sentencing but serious and especially violent crimes have longer sentencing and thus are over-represented among the current prison population at any one point in time.
Federal inmates are a tiny minority of inmates in the United States, because the vast majority of crimes are prosecuted at the state level. There are about 147,000 convicted federal inmates compared to over a million held in state prisons and 103,000 convicts held in local jails.
> This methodology of counting current prison population is biased for more serious crimes with longer sentencing
This strikes me as an attempt to move the goalposts, given that we're several comments deep into a thread which started with the claim that "95% of US inmates are on plea deal".
This is HN, threads are supposed to get more interesting as they get longer. I was simply expending on my parent’s point by providing the data which was lacking, and my editorialization was to provide the necessary context.
Edit (re: move the goalpost): If you want to play fallacy bingo, then you were the one that actually placed the goalpost, and it was placed on a demonstrably biased spot. Moving the goalpost away from a biased spot is not a logical fallacy, it is a correction.
This is false.
This is the ancestor comment that set the goalpost with the statement that "95% of US inmates are on plea deal". Neither that comment nor any of its ancestors were mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40906705
And it's rather rich of you to accuse me of dishonesty when you're the one providing misleading and unrepresentative statistics by focusing on federal inmates in particular.
I'm talking about both, but here: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html
> It's disingenuous (re: primacy bias) to lead off with murder and rape, which account for a far smaller portion of "violent" crime than robbery (which I assume includes burglary, in which the victim and perpetrator don't make contact) and assault (which, again, does not require the victim and perpetrator to physically make contact (that's battery)).
From the above source, within state prisons (which is the majority of incarcerated Americans), 163,000 are serving sentences for murder, 168,000 for rape, 128,000 for robbery and 154,000 for assault. So technically I should have led off with rape instead of murder; my bad.
You are technically correct that assault doesn't require the victim and perpetrator to make contact. For instance, pointing a loaded gun at somebody (outside of self defense) is considered aggravated assault. On the other hand, many states do not actually have separate assault and battery statutes, and the two seem to be classified together under "assault".
Conversely, robbery and burglary are separated (burglary is categorized as a property crime rather than a violent crime). In addition to the 128,000 prisoners convicted of robbery, there are another 79,000 who were convicted of burglary.
> All of this is aside fact that an individual who allegedly commits a heinous act against another person or small group of people is in a completely different class from a large corporation whose products put millions at risk (and the executives and managers who sign off on those company's decisions). There is quite the destructive myopia behind the increasingly punitive (rather than rehabilitative) nature of incarceration for the former, when the latter get off so easy.
The 737 Max has caused a total of 346 fatalities in two crashes taking place in 2018 and 2019, neither of which took place inside US jurisdiction but let's set that aside for the sake of argument. Chicago alone had 592 homicides in 2018, 521 in 2019, 798 in 2020, 856 in 2021, 738 in 2022, 648 in 2023, and 312 year-to-date, (source: heyjackass.com) nearly all of which were committed by the sort of neighborhood ne'er-do-wells who sometimes end up getting mass-incarcerated. You tell me which is the bigger problem. Personally I wouldn't mind a legal system in which someone at Boeing could be held criminally liable for manslaughter (which accounts for another 20,000 state-level inmates in the United States), but I don't think Boeing's planes are a statistically significant cause of wrongful death.
>The 737 Max has caused a total of 346 fatalities in two crashes taking place in 2018 and 2019 [...]
I suppose that's one way of looking at it. Another is that a few hundred people committed murder in Chicago, usually with single-digit victims, and a good many of them are seeing prison time for their heinous actions. Meanwhile, a handful of high-powered executives and managers signed off on a small number of decisions that also lead to hundreds of death, along with multiple accidents that could have resulted in even more. Per alleged offender, these people have done far worse; dozens or hundreds dead each, depending on how you measure culpability. None of these people are so much as seeing the inside of a court room, let alone convictions or prison time. Boeing is not alone; officials from companies that have participated in much more destructive and heinous behavior stand with them in getting off scot-free.
It's a question of what we value our prison system(s) for. I would hope for efficient deterrence and rehabilitation. That is, sentences likely to dissuade people from committing crimes, and best efforts to prevent offenders from offending again. You seem to think that the street-level homicide rate is too high, and I'd agree. I would say that, as such murders are generally crimes of passion or disordered thinking - instinct or illness (psychological, social) rather than reason - harsh punishments are not necessarily useful in deterring them.
On the other hand, the deaths that Boeing has caused happened because of a purposeful decision-making process. It was hyper-rational. The failing was corruption. These types of moral (if not criminal) offenses stand to be deterred effectively with harshly punitive consequences; if the decision to put so many lives at risk is a cost-benefit analysis, simply make the costs outweigh the benefits. And, ideally, we wouldn't shield the perpetrators from indictment overseas, if the charges were similar to what we'd bring. What's happening is already a stain on our system - in fact, its lack of effectiveness calls into question its legitimacy - and you can add damage to international relations, that our carceral state is so out-of-wack and incapable of doing right by past and potential victims.
I think this entirely depends on the circumstances around the murder. Was it committed by someone without a significant criminal record because they got angry about something? Or was it committed by a gang member as part of their criminal enterprise (in which case, it was not a "crime of passion" or a result of "disordered thinking", but rather sociopathic thinking)?
For the former, I agree that harsh punishments probably aren't that useful for deterrence, though they do tend to make victims (or their families) feel better. For the latter, however, I'd argue that long prison sentences, while they may not rehabilitate these hardened criminals, at least serve to keep them out of society.
To relate back to Boeing, I think their actions are similar in a way to those of people in violent organized crime gangs. They were done without conscience, and purely for material gain, so they probably should be treated similarly.
The original context is this comment, which discusses a percentage of US inmates (not a percentage of convictions): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40906705
While it's true that people serving longer sentences represent a higher proportion of inmates than they do convictions, it also doesn't seem obvious to me which base denominator is more important. If anything, weighing convictions according to how serious they are seems more sensible than treating a small misdemeanor conviction equivalently with a murder conviction.
Furthermore, plea bargaining cuts both ways: the net effect of a plea bargain is often a conviction on a lesser charge, with less or sometimes no prison time.
> It's a question of what we value our prison system(s) for. I would hope for efficient deterrence and rehabilitation. That is, sentences likely to dissuade people from committing crimes, and best efforts to prevent offenders from offending again. You seem to think that the street-level homicide rate is too high, and I'd agree. I would say that, as such murders are generally crimes of passion or disordered thinking - instinct or illness (psychological, social) rather than reason - harsh punishments are not necessarily useful in deterring them.
I don't necessarily think the threat of incarceration deters common criminals very much, but it does separate them from the population, which is preferable to simply leaving them on the street.
With regards to Boeing, I'm not sure that's relevant, given the numerous reports of poor maintenance and outright mid-flight failures and flaws caused as a result is sufficient evidence for some kind of wrongdoing on Boeing's part. For this case, given that plea deals are used to expedite the court process and result in a less harsh penalty as an incentive, it's the most advantageous thing for Boeing to do because there was probably no hope in defending a guiltless verdict.
:(
Somewhat opinionated, but clearer explanation: https://jacobin.com/2024/06/supreme-court-corruption-thomas-...
Perhaps somebody finds a better overview.
Congress is free to fix the law.
Until then, the ancestor poster's interpretation of "Don't worry, it's now legal for the judge and everyone else involved to get a nice present from Boeing, as long as it happens afterwards!" is more or less correct AFAICT (though I'd appreciate more educated opinions).
What people like you don’t understand is that slowness is a feature, not a bug!
The first COVID relief bill was passed in less than a month. Because it had broad support and was urgent!
Laws that have broad support are passed quickly. Laws that lack broad support are passed slowly or not at all.
That how lawmaking should work!
Not really. COVID relief got passed because of incredible urgency to people’s everyday lives. Reform to stop a corporation from effectively bribing a judge would have plenty of broad support. It just wouldn’t have the urgency. There are a ton of popular ideas that get zero traction in congress.
And still none of this engages with the OP’s broader point which is that it’s sub optimal for courts to substantially change the interpretation of law and then punt to a slow moving congress to follow up. The power in congress is not directly connected to broad popularity, a representative of a tiny fraction of the population is able to halt any and all progress. That’s not efficient lawmaking.
What you meant to say is broad support amongst politicians, assuming that group represents a supermajority of votes in both chambers.
To editorialize a but, I don't believe Congress will fix this law in the near future, because enough congresscritters and their donors benefit from congresscritters being able to take "gratuities". The present state of American democracy is not healthy enough to keep them accountable for such self-serving decisions.
Until recently, rightly or wrongly, the court system was one of the few remaining checks on such corruption. The Supreme Court just decided the federal courts (at least, it might affect state courts too) will no longer care about much of it.
It's more that congress has zero incentive to fix what benefits them, regardless of support.
For instance, the COVID relief bill was a handout to the very folks that bribe them. Obviously they will pass that quickly.
You're confusing correlation (support) with causation (benefits them).
> That how lawmaking should work!
Yes, agreed!
However, there is another category of laws, those which have very broad support from The People, but don't benefit the politicians (such as, a law restricting bribes).
Such laws will never pass.
1) state laws can be unfair, slanted, and make voting difficult, meaning that voters may not be adequately able to collectively vote in their best interests
2) courts generally have continued to limit any laws on the books to counter this, saying that congress can clarify and strengthen if this is the case
So it looks to me like the ability to actually vote to hold congress accountable is being forever eroded with no accountability for anyone?
The appropriate venue for the victims is a civil jury trial (lawsuit), where recovery of losses is possible because the victims then become party to the case (plaintiff).
The reason this lawyer is requesting this is so that the government will be forced to lay its cards on the table during trial, which provide much stronger proof/evidence of Boeing's wrongdoing (which otherwise would likely be much harder to discover), and make it far more likely for a jury to award a huge award to the plaintiffs.
So this is completely rational on the part of the lawyer, but the judge doesn't have to go along with it at all, and might not.
The desires of the victim in making formal accusations (“pressing charges”) are certainly considered by the prosecutors even if the victim is not a party to the trial. I’d image the prosecutor takes it into account in other situations too, like the terms of accepting a guilty plea. Do you have a link to something that suggests otherwise?
But hard to agree too. How exactly can you prevent someone from pleading guilty?
Unlikely relevant to this case, but judges are legally required to reject guilty pleas if they conclude that the defendant is being coerced, doesn’t understand what they are pleading to and the likely consequences of their plea, lacks competence to plea (due to severe mental illness/etc), or that the plea lacks a “factual basis” (e.g. if the conduct alleged by the prosecution and admitted by the defendant fails to legally constitute the elements of the crime; or if the judge has good reason to believe that the conduct in question never actually happened despite both prosecution and defence agreeing that it did)
On the last point-the prosecution is allowed to offer the defendant a plea deal for a lesser included offense, but not an unrelated crime that doesn’t correspond with what they are accused of doing-e.g. you can plead drug charges down to lesser drug charges, but you can’t plead drug charges down to possession of stolen goods if there is no evidence anything was actually stolen-in such a scenario the judge is supposed to reject the guilty plea
Boeing isn’t pleading guilty in a vacuum - there’s a deal in place. Judge can reject that now, wait until after guilty plea and impose whatever sentence he wants (within law), or accept the deal as-is.
Practically, their career would be affected by it too.
Depending on the court, plea deals can be a horrible gamble by a defendant. Generally you have to enter your guilty plea first, and then the judge decides if they want to let you have that sweet, sweet sentence the prosecution offered.
I know someone who went to court having been offered a plea deal for probation and got 80 years instead when the judge rejected it and sentenced them.
Boeing isn't pleading guilty on its own - it's also agreed to damages.
I agree that a defendant pleading guilty on their own (and throwing themselves on the mercy of the court) would be hard to reject. That isn't what's happened here - the prosecution has, presumably, agreed to the damages, so this is a plea deal, right?
Now, criminal prosecutions take into account the thoughts and feelings of the complainant, but they're not usually bound by them.
Can I form an LLP before I rob a bank?