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walkitoutI’ve been trying to figure out what to post about this, and I had something really long and elaborate which I doubt I will ever post. The Seattle Times has now posted two really good, in-depth pieces on what is happening, with enough back story to be interesting.
This is from last weekend: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/
And this is from today / yesterday: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/air-canada-pulls-737-max-from-schedule-until-at-least-july/
Non-detailed information from a FOAF suggests that safety culture at Boeing has been deeply eroded by management; it is unclear how far down the management chain that goes. The workers and engineeers still care deeply and are highly committed to a high level of safety. The top level clearly does not even see the existential threat that eroding safety culture poses to the company. This is something I was poking at the other day while looking at Boeing’s Board. I don’t think a major maker of aircraft for commercial airlines should have a lot of telecom (AT&T, Nortel), medical (Amgen, Medtronic) and insurance executives on the board. They are not going to come at this problem with the right perspective.
Also, having some rando who is working for the Russians to undo the Magnitsky Act seems ... strange. I mean, WTF, Boeing?
My personal _feeling_ — I don’t know enough to be able to present this as any kind of detailed thesis and support it — is that Boeing is engaging in a pattern of corporate behavior that, if it were not coming from a major maker of commercial airline aircraft, we would instantly recognize. They are diverting attention, blaming other people (pilots) for their own choices (misrepresent relentlessly to ensure we don’t train pilots or even tell them about what they have just signed up to fly) and then focusing NOT on fixing the problem, but on convincing people that either there is no problem OR it is already fixed without waiting for the final, objective analysis of the scope of the problem. This is a coverup. It remains to seen what is underneath. I _feel_ very confident that Boeing’s share price will ultimately reflect the contents of this paragraph, and that Boeing may well have a Brand New Board a few years from now as it, say, settles all of the various prosecutions and lawsuits and exits receivership.
If you are poking around at my social media presence and think you have identified someone that I know who works or used to work at Boeing, I haven’t actually talked to any of those people lately. At all, much less about this.
There is some good news today. Elaine Chao has apparently involved the inspector general for USDOT in an audit process for the certification of the Maxes. That is _fantastic_ news. The IG in question seems to have been there since 2006 and is thus originally a W. appointee (like Chao once was herself, when she was at Labor). However, for all the many complaints I have had about W., and for all that his administration significantly weakened / undermined / dismantled the aircraft certification process, there is, in general, a lot of reasons to trust Inspectors General. They are nerdy, boring, and rarely beholden to the people who appointed them, because they tend to stay in their jobs for a ludicrously long time. I’m glad that investigation has started. (ETA: FBI is in on this as well and a grand jury has been started.)
The other piece of good news is that the rubber stamping of FAA certifications has probably just screeched to a halt. Over the many decades that commercial airline travel got safer and safer and safer, to the point where most people’s primary complaint about commercial airline travel is having to listen to crying babies (what a different world from the mid 20th century, when spouses strategized whether to fly together and die together or separately so that someone would remain to raise the children!), it became clear that the regulatory apparatus wasn’t actually finding any more problems. That was what made it possible for W. to move the FAA in the direction of document review and rubber stamp, and that was what made it possible for the Europeans to certify Airbus and have FAA rubber stamp and FAA to certify Boeing and have the Europeans rubber stamp. And then the rest of the world tagged along. We will tit-for-tat, of course, because that is the nature of relationships (reciprocity is All!), which currently is surely unnecessary (the Airbus board is not weird the way the Boeing board is weird, and there is no indication of erosion of safety culture there), but which might eventually have become a problem.
I continue, however, to be concerned about the Houston cargo plane crash. It, too, was a nose down related crash, and honestly, those are weird. If there is an engine failure, that can happen. And tragically, pilot suicide can manifest that way. Otherwise, nose dive related crashes are uncommon, even in the world of rare birds that is airplane crashes. I know basically nothing about how planes work, but I _do_ know how software fails, and I spent a lot of my formative years on comp.risks. I have to wonder if perhaps we have got hold of only one major failed component here, and we are about to get some really bad news about an autopilot software update that might turn out to affect a lot more planes than just the Maxes. In all likelihood, however, this particular bit of paranoia will shortly prove unjustified when NTSB releases its final report on that crash.
ETA:
Oh, I forgot to add. Check this out from politico:
https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/03/12/pilots-boeing-737-1266090
This asserts that US pilots in US airspace reported related problems with Maxes.
And yet, a couple days later, this:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/15/737-max-8-software-scrutinized-after-2-fatal-crashes-training-regulation-boeing/3166679002/
Really, Elwell? I mean, I know people were wandering around saying, oh, look there’s an airline industry lobbyist running the FAA, what could possibly go wrong? But that’s a bit ... crass, to claim, nothing in the data, nothing to see here, move along. When there is already reporting to the contrary. If you know of anyone who has tried to reconcile these two bits of reporting, I’d love to see it.
ETAYA: There are aspects to this story as it develops that make me wonder _why_ people are not more freaked out about this than they are currently acting. However, I — unlike others — remember how Gov. Grey (Gray?) [ETA: Davis] was punished for pointing out what Enron was up to before it became widely understood (much less Skilling — recently released! — and others went to prison). No One wants to be the kid saying, Boeing is nekkid.
ETA blah blah:
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/extra-pilot-saved-doomed-lion-air-jetliner-on-next-to-last-flight/
Another pilot on the plane told them how to turn “it” off. There continues to be a lot of confusion in the reporting in terms of whether or not information about how to disable various components of this system (the MCAS, the “motor” mentioned in this article) is available in the documentation or not (I’m sure _which_ documentation will turn out to be a component of answering this question) and what exactly is or is not covered in training.
This also goes to show how badly safety culture in commercial airlines has eroded (or, conceivably, has not adequately developed in some jurisdictions).
This is from last weekend: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/
And this is from today / yesterday: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/air-canada-pulls-737-max-from-schedule-until-at-least-july/
Non-detailed information from a FOAF suggests that safety culture at Boeing has been deeply eroded by management; it is unclear how far down the management chain that goes. The workers and engineeers still care deeply and are highly committed to a high level of safety. The top level clearly does not even see the existential threat that eroding safety culture poses to the company. This is something I was poking at the other day while looking at Boeing’s Board. I don’t think a major maker of aircraft for commercial airlines should have a lot of telecom (AT&T, Nortel), medical (Amgen, Medtronic) and insurance executives on the board. They are not going to come at this problem with the right perspective.
Also, having some rando who is working for the Russians to undo the Magnitsky Act seems ... strange. I mean, WTF, Boeing?
My personal _feeling_ — I don’t know enough to be able to present this as any kind of detailed thesis and support it — is that Boeing is engaging in a pattern of corporate behavior that, if it were not coming from a major maker of commercial airline aircraft, we would instantly recognize. They are diverting attention, blaming other people (pilots) for their own choices (misrepresent relentlessly to ensure we don’t train pilots or even tell them about what they have just signed up to fly) and then focusing NOT on fixing the problem, but on convincing people that either there is no problem OR it is already fixed without waiting for the final, objective analysis of the scope of the problem. This is a coverup. It remains to seen what is underneath. I _feel_ very confident that Boeing’s share price will ultimately reflect the contents of this paragraph, and that Boeing may well have a Brand New Board a few years from now as it, say, settles all of the various prosecutions and lawsuits and exits receivership.
If you are poking around at my social media presence and think you have identified someone that I know who works or used to work at Boeing, I haven’t actually talked to any of those people lately. At all, much less about this.
There is some good news today. Elaine Chao has apparently involved the inspector general for USDOT in an audit process for the certification of the Maxes. That is _fantastic_ news. The IG in question seems to have been there since 2006 and is thus originally a W. appointee (like Chao once was herself, when she was at Labor). However, for all the many complaints I have had about W., and for all that his administration significantly weakened / undermined / dismantled the aircraft certification process, there is, in general, a lot of reasons to trust Inspectors General. They are nerdy, boring, and rarely beholden to the people who appointed them, because they tend to stay in their jobs for a ludicrously long time. I’m glad that investigation has started. (ETA: FBI is in on this as well and a grand jury has been started.)
The other piece of good news is that the rubber stamping of FAA certifications has probably just screeched to a halt. Over the many decades that commercial airline travel got safer and safer and safer, to the point where most people’s primary complaint about commercial airline travel is having to listen to crying babies (what a different world from the mid 20th century, when spouses strategized whether to fly together and die together or separately so that someone would remain to raise the children!), it became clear that the regulatory apparatus wasn’t actually finding any more problems. That was what made it possible for W. to move the FAA in the direction of document review and rubber stamp, and that was what made it possible for the Europeans to certify Airbus and have FAA rubber stamp and FAA to certify Boeing and have the Europeans rubber stamp. And then the rest of the world tagged along. We will tit-for-tat, of course, because that is the nature of relationships (reciprocity is All!), which currently is surely unnecessary (the Airbus board is not weird the way the Boeing board is weird, and there is no indication of erosion of safety culture there), but which might eventually have become a problem.
I continue, however, to be concerned about the Houston cargo plane crash. It, too, was a nose down related crash, and honestly, those are weird. If there is an engine failure, that can happen. And tragically, pilot suicide can manifest that way. Otherwise, nose dive related crashes are uncommon, even in the world of rare birds that is airplane crashes. I know basically nothing about how planes work, but I _do_ know how software fails, and I spent a lot of my formative years on comp.risks. I have to wonder if perhaps we have got hold of only one major failed component here, and we are about to get some really bad news about an autopilot software update that might turn out to affect a lot more planes than just the Maxes. In all likelihood, however, this particular bit of paranoia will shortly prove unjustified when NTSB releases its final report on that crash.
ETA:
Oh, I forgot to add. Check this out from politico:
https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/03/12/pilots-boeing-737-1266090
This asserts that US pilots in US airspace reported related problems with Maxes.
And yet, a couple days later, this:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/15/737-max-8-software-scrutinized-after-2-fatal-crashes-training-regulation-boeing/3166679002/
Really, Elwell? I mean, I know people were wandering around saying, oh, look there’s an airline industry lobbyist running the FAA, what could possibly go wrong? But that’s a bit ... crass, to claim, nothing in the data, nothing to see here, move along. When there is already reporting to the contrary. If you know of anyone who has tried to reconcile these two bits of reporting, I’d love to see it.
ETAYA: There are aspects to this story as it develops that make me wonder _why_ people are not more freaked out about this than they are currently acting. However, I — unlike others — remember how Gov. Grey (Gray?) [ETA: Davis] was punished for pointing out what Enron was up to before it became widely understood (much less Skilling — recently released! — and others went to prison). No One wants to be the kid saying, Boeing is nekkid.
ETA blah blah:
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/extra-pilot-saved-doomed-lion-air-jetliner-on-next-to-last-flight/
Another pilot on the plane told them how to turn “it” off. There continues to be a lot of confusion in the reporting in terms of whether or not information about how to disable various components of this system (the MCAS, the “motor” mentioned in this article) is available in the documentation or not (I’m sure _which_ documentation will turn out to be a component of answering this question) and what exactly is or is not covered in training.
This also goes to show how badly safety culture in commercial airlines has eroded (or, conceivably, has not adequately developed in some jurisdictions).