Former Boeing 737 MAX Chief Technical Pilot Indicted For Fraud (justice.gov) 146
Mark Forkner, Boeing's 737 Max chief technical pilot during the aircraft's development, has been charged with misleading aviation regulators about safety issues blamed for two fatal crashes of the 737 Max. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, "he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on each count of wire fraud and 10 years in prison on each count of fraud involving aircraft parts in interstate commerce." Slashdot reader McGruber shares an excerpt from the press release: A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas returned an indictment charging Mark A. Forkner, former Chief Technical Pilot for The Boeing Company (Boeing), with deceiving the Federal Aviation Administration's Aircraft Evaluation Group (FAA AEG) in connection with the FAA AEG's evaluation of Boeing's 737 MAX airplane, and scheming to defraud Boeing's U.S.based airline customers to obtain tens of millions of dollars for Boeing.
As alleged in the indictment, Forkner provided the agency with materially false, inaccurate, and incomplete information about a new part of the flight controls for the Boeing 737 MAX called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). Because of his alleged deception, a key document published by the FAA AEG lacked any reference to MCAS. In turn, airplane manuals and pilot-training materials for U.S.-based airlines lacked any reference to MCAS -- and Boeing's U.S.-based airline customers were deprived of important information when making and finalizing their decisions to pay Boeing tens of millions of dollars for 737 MAX airplanes.
On or about Oct. 29, 2018, after the FAA AEG learned that Lion Air Flight 610 -- a 737 MAX -- had crashed near Jakarta, Indonesia, shortly after takeoff and that MCAS was operating in the moments before the crash, the FAA AEG discovered the information about the important change to MCAS that Forkner had withheld. Having discovered this information, the FAA AEG began reviewing and evaluating MCAS. On or about March 10, 2019, while the FAA AEG was still reviewing MCAS, the FAA AEG learned that Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 -- a 737 MAX -- had crashed near Ejere, Ethiopia, shortly after takeoff and that MCAS was operating in the moments before the crash. Shortly after that crash, all 737 MAX airplanes were grounded in the United States.
As alleged in the indictment, Forkner provided the agency with materially false, inaccurate, and incomplete information about a new part of the flight controls for the Boeing 737 MAX called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). Because of his alleged deception, a key document published by the FAA AEG lacked any reference to MCAS. In turn, airplane manuals and pilot-training materials for U.S.-based airlines lacked any reference to MCAS -- and Boeing's U.S.-based airline customers were deprived of important information when making and finalizing their decisions to pay Boeing tens of millions of dollars for 737 MAX airplanes.
On or about Oct. 29, 2018, after the FAA AEG learned that Lion Air Flight 610 -- a 737 MAX -- had crashed near Jakarta, Indonesia, shortly after takeoff and that MCAS was operating in the moments before the crash, the FAA AEG discovered the information about the important change to MCAS that Forkner had withheld. Having discovered this information, the FAA AEG began reviewing and evaluating MCAS. On or about March 10, 2019, while the FAA AEG was still reviewing MCAS, the FAA AEG learned that Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 -- a 737 MAX -- had crashed near Ejere, Ethiopia, shortly after takeoff and that MCAS was operating in the moments before the crash. Shortly after that crash, all 737 MAX airplanes were grounded in the United States.
A Pilot? (Score:5, Insightful)
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They're capitalist royalty, and we mustn't spill the blood of kings!
Re:A Pilot? (Score:5, Informative)
Technically speaking, that big mahogany table got moved to Chicago back in 2001 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) as an result of Boeing being taken over from within by parasitic management from McDonnell Douglas. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ).
"Sorscher had spent the early aughts campaigning to preserve the company's estimable engineering legacy. He had mountains of evidence to support his position, mostly acquired via Boeing's 1997 acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, a dysfunctional firm with a dilapidated aircraft plant in Long Beach and a CEO who liked to use what he called the "Hollywood model" for dealing with engineers: Hire them for a few months when project deadlines are nigh, fire them when you need to make numbers. In 2000, Boeingâ(TM)s engineers staged a 40-day strike over the McDonnell dealâ(TM)s fallout; while they won major material concessions from management, they lost the culture war. They also inherited a notoriously dysfunctional product line from the corner-cutting market gurus at McDonnell."
https://newrepublic.com/articl... [newrepublic.com]
Re:A Pilot? (Score:5, Informative)
Another article detailing how Boeing got hijacked by non-engineers:
https://www.theatlantic.com/id... [theatlantic.com]
"...The shift had started three years earlier, with Boeingâ(TM)s âoereverse takeoverâ of McDonnell Douglasâ"so-called because it was McDonnell executives who perversely ended up in charge of the combined entity, and it was McDonnellâ(TM)s culture that became ascendant. âoeMcDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeingâ(TM)s money,â went the joke around Seattle..."
Re:A Pilot? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's still a chance to fix things. GM underwent similar problems, where MBAs and accountants got hold of the company. The result, as detailed by Bob Lutz in his book Car Guys, was a steady reduction in the quality of GM vehicles. The book, while a bit self-aggrandizing, lays out examples where corner cutting that amounted to literally a few dollars per vehicle led to rapidly diminished overall quality. Simple things like close fit of body panels lost out because they slowed the line by a fraction of a percent, but resulted in cars that appeared to have less quality because the gaps between panels was a couple of millimeters greater than Toyota or other imports.
Mary Barra took over in 2013, the first engineer to run GM in decades. Her first job, before she even started college, was checking body panel installation at age 18. The culture at GM has changed dramatically since then, with greater empowerment of workers and a very different direction for the company overall. Quality and customer satisfaction is much higher, and GM is arguably leading the major car companies in electric vehicle transitions.
Boeing could do the same thing by putting an engineer or two on mahogany row, including the CEO, ideally one who came up from the trenches. The company needs a major cultural adjustment. Its momentum can continue for another few years, but if the KC-47 keeps showing up with mini-bottles of alcohol aboard, the Air Force might not see an Airbus solution as so problematic. Since Lockheed seems to be getting the lion's share of new combat aircraft, that puts Boeing's long-term future at risk.
Re: A Pilot? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: A Pilot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the worst management are engineers who cosplay MBAs. It's not that they make management into some kind of engineering discipline with complex processes, but that they act like a caricature of an MBA, indulging in that field's worst excesses while promoting none of their strengths, because they don't really know them or have them.
There's a lot of low effort MBAs out there whose principal mission just seems to be parasitic and self-aggrandizing, but it's not like the field of management and its expertise is a total sham and that there aren't good MBAs.
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"Hijacked by non-engineers" ... I'm sure I've heard this before ... DEC ... HP?
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DEC was actually destroyed by engineers, and needed a few more MBAs. They did not pay sales staff commission for one thing, and sales staff live for commission.
Re: A Pilot? (Score:2)
Aren't MD the company that built horribly unreliable planes?
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Aren't MD the company that built horribly unreliable planes?
Only if you call engines falling off a reliablity issue
Re: A Pilot? (Score:5, Funny)
Do they reliably fall off, or only sometimes?
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Humor aside, PBS "Nova" did a great episode about airplane safety. They talked about the DC10 engine mount problem. It was a maintenance mistake- a shortcut / hack was done that ended up fatiguing and likely cracking critical metal engine mount points. Pre-crack or no, the fatigued / damaged metal let go under the high stress of takeoff and many people died.
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The DC10 regularly lost other parts which in one instance caused the crash of another plane, the Concorde.
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Boeingâ(TM)s âoereverse takeoverâ of McDonnell Douglasâ
That's quite some advanced technology you paid $1000 for.
Too bad it doesn't let you choose your keyboard app.
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Stop beating a dead horse. That has happened two decades ago. No manager from that time is still employed at Boeing. Muilenburg, on the other hand - the CEO who had to resign in the aftermath of the 737 MAX crashes - is an actual aerospace engineer, not a bean counter.
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Sounds about right.
There was also the 737 NG Ducommun fuselage structural parts scandal that Al Jazeera covered in a long-form investigative documentary. Boeing management covered it up and the public doesn't generally know about it. The net result is there are structural parts of variable/unknown quality in many NG's that are possibly of lower strength than designed because they were so poorly manufactured, which is a recipe for more fuselage structural failure on hard landings.
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Probably can argue that Forkner lied to them too. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nope. But the people giving the orders are *also* guilty. And unless you remove them from power nothing will change.
Re:A Pilot? (Score:4, Insightful)
He's more likely facing 3-5 years. But that's enough to flip for many people. That may be the goal here.
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Scenario 1: The prosecutor(s) need(s) a sacrificial lamb to slaughter, and someone chose this guy. "Justice has been served, the guilty party punished", end of story.
Scenario 2: The prosecutor is out to put people's heads on pikes, and is starting with the person whose fingerprints are on the paperwork as being the guilty-party-of-record. That supplies sufficient pressure for this guy to become a witness and spill the beans on anyone and everyone who so much as chose toilet paper brands for the bathrooms.
Un
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I don't see how they can blame it all on just one guy. There will have to be more blood, figuratively speaking, otherwise Boeing will have a hard time regaining customers' trust.
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I'm troubled that 1 person could cause this. There should have been several, at least, cross-checking, design reviews, etc. It just doesn't make sense that a single human could have this much power and influence alone, unchecked / unsupervised.
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I'm troubled that 1 person could cause this.
He didn't cause this. However, he could have stopped this and it was explicitly his job to do so. If he made a deliberate choice to lie to the FAA then he broke the law and in doing that broke the system that was meant to protect passengers.
Re:A Pilot? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, we all know what happens when critical systems are built without redundancy... Human or otherwise. Somehow this guy seems to be a metaphor of the MCAS system.
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Well, we all know what happens when critical systems are built without redundancy... Human or otherwise. Somehow this guy seems to be a metaphor of the MCAS system.
Kind of even worse than that. There is supposed redundancy - the layer with the FAA and this guy is just supposed to be a verification layer whilst the actual engineers doing the design are supposed to build safe planes in the first case. This is a situation where the redundant systems both failed due to the same cause - corruption and incompetence in Boeing management - which shows that you don't just need redundancy, you need fully independent redundancy. In other words self-certification needs to be eli
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What about the fat cats that sit around that big mahogany table in Seattle that didn't have any problem with any of this?
I'm guessing none have flown in a 737 MAX since they all are still alive.
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They are no longer in Seattle and arguably, that's part of the problem. They are in Chicago now.
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Loud or quiet makes the difference (Score:2)
I wonder whose fraud killed more people -- this one, or Dieselgate? The latter just does it slowly and insidiously while planes crash in a very obvious way.
Re:Loud or quiet makes the difference (Score:4, Informative)
But it does at the local level, before the particulates get into the greater air flow of the planet.
Diesel engine emissions are believed to be responsible for about 70% of California's estimated known cancer risk attributable to toxic air contaminants. Also, diesel PM comprises about 8% of outdoor fine particulate matter (PM2.5), which is a known health hazard. As a significant fraction of PM2.5, diesel PM contributes to numerous health impacts that have been attributed to particulate matter exposure, including increased hospital admissions, particularly for heart disease, but also for respiratory illnesses, and even premature death. ARB estimates that diesel PM contributes to approximately 1,400 (95% confidence interval: 1,100-1,800) premature deaths from cardiovascular disease annually in California. Additionally, exposure to diesel exhaust may contribute to the onset of new allergies; a clinical study of human subjects has shown that diesel exhaust particles, in combination with potential allergens, may actually be able to produce new allergies that did not exist previously. [ca.gov]
Complete and utter bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
So let me get this straight. Boeing's chief technical pilot, a man with presumably no executive or even management role within the company, decided on his own to concoct a scheme to defraud US regulators and risk his own career and reputation for the simple motive of saving Boeing money? Does that make sense to anyone? That he acted alone in this endeavor with no prompting or discussion with management? What was in it for him?
Re:Complete and utter bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
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It does sound like scapegoat. BUT he most definitely IS management, he runs a team as a the chief technical pilot that is responsible for providing that accurate information.
When I read the summary, I had two immediate thoughts to explain this fraud:
1) The guy made a cock-up, and was trying to avoid losing his job, or worse, if found out.
2) He expected to gain financially, i.e. he was paid off by higher management, who were covering their arses.
What I could not comprehend, from psychological or financial motives, is why anybody would take such a risk as committing fraud, for the sake of their employer. Speaking for myself, I have some loyalty to my employer, but that just means
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What I could not comprehend, from psychological or financial motives, is why anybody would take such a risk as committing fraud, for the sake of their employer.
That's what you get hung up on?
How about the fact that this is a fucking aerospace company where fraud might very well directly correlate with deaths?
In most of our jobs, fraud won't kill people. When fraud in your job can, holy shit does that crank up the rationale not to do it, I would hope.
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In most of our jobs, fraud won't kill people. When fraud in your job can, holy shit does that crank up the rationale not to do it, I would hope.
That was my point. There must have been one hell of a motivation to commit a fraud that would lead to lethal consequences. So we need to look at what drove this guy to do what he did. An obvious assumption is that he was pressured into it by higher management. I do not suppose he did it out of pure malice. That's just my assumptions. More investigation is needed.
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Re: Complete and utter bullshit (Score:3)
It's called a scapegoat
Only when the goat is truly innocent, which isn't the case here.
That's not to say that upper management should also stand trial. See, that's the thing with guilt: it isn't a zero sum game. Just because one person goes 20 years to prison doesn't mean others shouldn't, too.
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That's not to say that upper management should also stand trial. See, that's the thing with guilt: it isn't a zero sum game. Just because one person goes 20 years to prison doesn't mean others shouldn't, too.
And this is called ac.. accou.. accountability? I’ve never seen this before, it’s so strange.
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Re: Complete and utter bullshit (Score:2)
ac.. accou.. accountability?
That's when money is the most important, right? Comes from "accounting", right? :-p
Joke aside, I think kicking the engineer is definitely a good idea (being one myself I hate the "I just work here" attitude some of my peers have), but it absolutely mustn't stop there. Which unfortunately it probably will.
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I think it's called a fall guy.
Yes, but, "to save his career", not risk it. (Score:2)
Some smaller company might have appreciated his record of honesty and taken him on - but his career at any profit-lead corporation would be over.
Re: Yes, but, "to save his career", not risk it. (Score:3)
Since he'll be a convicted felon, it is anyway.
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What was in it for him?
Keeping his job. Boeing was in a bad spot, as I recall, with Airbus eating their lunch with a similar aircraft that had more efficient engines. For Boeing to stay in business they needed to be able to get the 737 MAX flying soon. No Boeing means no job for their pilots.
I believe this will be a hard case to make given the stakes. This could easily be a difference of opinion that is being argued over, and we don't put people in prison over that. Hindsight is 20/20 so it is easy to see now that something
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> Engineering is hard.
Bullshit. Redundant sensors and plausibility checking is absolutely not hard. It is very well understood and used just about everywhere except, apparently, this ridiculously idiotic MCAS system that shouldn't have been needed in the first place. More sensors do, of course, make the system more expensive though.
Again, criminal negligence. I hope to God you never design a control system.
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There were already more sensors. In one of the worst engineering decisions I have seen in my life, the engineers decided to only use one at the time for the two systems instead of hooking both to both systems. If they had done that, it would have saved lives.
Instead they messed up, made a trivial design mistake, and killed people.
Jail is too good for this guy.
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There were already more sensors. In one of the worst engineering decisions I have seen in my life, the engineers decided to only use one at the time for the two systems instead of hooking both to both systems. If they had done that, it would have saved lives.
Instead they messed up, made a trivial design mistake, and killed people.
Jail is too good for this guy.
Did they make this decision on their own, or was their someone influencing them in this direction. Given that your average aerospace engineer would have been trained in the notion of redundancy and fail safes, I am going speculate there an external influence to the team.
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More sensors do, of course, make the system more expensive though.
That's the really crazy part, the plane has 2 AoA sensors but for some stupid reason, MCAS only checks one of them.
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Does that make sense to anyone?
It makes perfect sense. People who are personally greedy and hate clipboards, and believe that rules are all made by hippies who need to die, behave this way all the time.
I've met entry-level-pay workers who had been with a company for 30 years who acted this same way in response to visits by regulators.
Executives actually plotting and scheming would have come up with a plot, a scheme, a coverup. This guy just lied and lied.
I guarantee you 100% he grouses and complains about "pencilnecks with clipboards." E
Re:Complete and utter bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
No idea whether this is genuine or not, but it's been floating around the net for years:
https://graphics.reuters.com/B... [reuters.com]
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"In an attempt to save Boeing money, Forkner allegedly withheld critical information from regulators", said Acting U.S. Attorney Chad E. Meacham for the Northern District of Texas. "His callous choice to mislead the FAA hampered the agencyâ(TM)s ability to protect the flying public and left pilots in the lurch, lacking information about certain 737 MAX flight controls. The Department of Justice will not tolerate fraud - especially in industries where the stakes are so high."
So let me get this straight. Boeing's chief technical pilot, a man with presumably no executive or even management role within the company, decided on his own to concoct a scheme to defraud US regulators and risk his own career and reputation for the simple motive of saving Boeing money? Does that make sense to anyone? That he acted alone in this endeavor with no prompting or discussion with management? What was in it for him?
The Chief Technical Pilot is definitely a management role. Also, they have evidence of him knowing the issues and ignoring it [theverge.com]. You would not find something like that for the CEO.
Cynically, you will only ever go after those who do something wrong - not those responsible for the culture which causes the problems. E.g. if management often fire people who call out mistakes like this - which leads to delays, incurs extra cost or both - you'll be eventually be left with only people cutting corners. Those who di
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a. Senior Boeing executives who made the decision to use the bigger engines on the 737 MAX. Their size requiring them to be mounted higher and forward of the wing. Causing a pronounced nose-up attitude, at high thrust, such as at take off.
b. Senior executives colluding with the FAA to have the 737 MAX certified as being the same as the old 737.
c. Installing the MCAS anti-stall system, without informing the pilots or with t
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Looks like the senior executive fanbois have mod points today! Those executives need you to escape consequences for their actions! Profit at all costs!
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Stop whining about downmods.
Your comment was stupid; you can only imagine the existence of one type of misconduct! In reality, there are a wide variety of things that different people do that harm other people, because of money. And yes, often it is not even money for themselves, but money for people who hold the positions they dream of holding! Sniveling minions will happily engage in whatever misconduct they imagine themselves ordering if they were their boss!
I hope they see your mod-whine and mod you dow
Boeing's Fatal Flaw - Frontline (Score:4, Informative)
Just watched this the other day. Has this buy's name with emails plastered throughout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Just watched this the other day. Has this buy's name with emails plastered throughout.
Yep, and he was far from the only person involved. I can see how the defense for Forkner would go. A summary of the defense would be something like the following. There's one engineer that set the parameters for when MCAS would function. Forkner tested this and found it okay, telling the FAA it was safe to not mention MCAS in training. A different pilot flies the plane and suggests changes to MCAS and a different engineer than the first makes the changes. The FAA agrees to not mention MCAS in training
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> Through a series of further testing and discussion everyone agrees that this is similar enough to auto-trim runaway that MCAS still does not need mention in training.
You skipped the part where nobody notices *there is a single sensor feeding a control system* with no plausibility checks or redundant sensors?
How often are you going to continue ignoring that? Do you not get how control systems work?
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You skipped the part where nobody notices *there is a single sensor feeding a control system* with no plausibility checks or redundant sensors?
It's a "summary", I left a great many things out.
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> It's a "summary", I left a great many things out.
Not just a great many things. The single most obvious design error literally nobody makes when putting together a control system.
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It's a "summary", I left a great many things out.
In "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", there's a chapter on scientific truth called "Cargo Cult Science" that I'd like you to read. In a technical forum like Slashdot occasionally still is, that's the standard you are expected to conform to and it would really help make debating with you more interesting. It seems this is even available online [fsu.edu]. It's a good read. In that chapter he explains "scientific integrity" and it's that which is missing here. In avoiding the topic you come across as similar to how
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So you turn it off again and leave it off. If you have enough sky to nosedive through you can have this argument several times.
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If you have a runaway auto-trim you turn it off and leave it off. Then, a few seconds later, the auto-trim turns itself back on and puts you back into a nosedive.
That's impossible.
The system cannot turn itself back on. I recall someone pointing out that the standard procedure does not actually turn off MCAS but turns off power to the stabilizer trim motors. The auto-trim can close those contacts for the trim motors all it likes and it cannot put "you back into a nosedive". These are physical toggle switches on the center panel, once off the only way to come back on is with those toggle switches.
seems about right (Score:2)
Cause a global economic meltdown? Nobody goes to jail. Cause two planes to crash? Multiple 20 year sentences, but only for the guy who personally hands documents to the FAA.
Re: seems about right (Score:3)
Well, to be fair, this is the second multi-aircraft disaster Boeing concealed from a compliant FAA (the first one involved hydraulics contamination), so revenge was inevitable.
It can't be against bosses because of US attitudes towards collective responsibility and corporations as persons.
Finally, the guy lied to their faces to protect his job, which never sits well.
Wake me up when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Boeing executives and managers who ran this entire operation with great deliberation and planning get perp-walked. It's not likely to happen any time soon, since they were certainly in contact with FAA people and politicians as they did this, and THAT would bring up other ugly questions like "what were the FAA people doing with their time while they were supposed to be overseeing the nation's only commercial airline builder?", and "were government people so lax in overseeing Boeing because Boeing was lubricating so many politicians with bribes, errr, "campaign contributions"?"
When the government allowed the nation's last two airliner builders (Boeing and McDonnell Douglas) to merge it simultaneously eliminated all domestic competition AND created a vital national resource that would permannetly be "too big/vital to fail" (or at least too big/vital to be ALLOWED to fail). This was a planned "error" that almost certainly made a lot of politicians rich (congress long ago exempted itself from insider trading laws, and members in key positions frequently are mysteriously invited to participate in IPOs) but it's cost the taxpayers enormous sums in cost-plus defense contracts and now it's costing lots of innocent lives.
What happened with the 737Max was ABSOLUTELY NOT something a test pilot cooked-up in his motel room between test flights, and as long as the execs are not being charged, we're living under extreme corruption.
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as long as the execs are not being charged, we're living under extreme corruption.
There are many other stories that make me think that. Politicians being lobbied (i.e. bribed), regulators being told to back off, government policy being owned by big money party donors.
There is a tradition, not always honoured, that the person in charge resigns when something really bad happens on their watch. If they knew about the problem, and covered it up, they are guilty of dishonesty. If they did not know about the problem, they are guilty of incompetent management.
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hmm... [businessinsider.com] You sure about that?
Yup. I'm sure about that (Score:2, Insightful)
NEVER take at face value what members of congress say or do. They often write big fancy new laws to "reform" something and get their pals in the media to cover that activity, then later quietly undo it, safe in the knowledge their friends in the press will not tell the boring story of the latter changes. I'm NOT being a partisan hack here, the top levels of BOTH parties have done this for years. People who go to Washington DC get comfortable there among the wealthy and powerful, and soon begin to think THE
Congratulations Boeing (Score:2)
...for identifying your scapegoat?
The notion that this could boil down to a single technical pilot in a multi billion dollar organization as large as Boeing is ridiculous?
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Boeing and the FAA. The US federal government is equally culpable.
I think I know how this goes. (Score:2)
Deal and a cushy FAA job "regulating" Boeing in 3... 2....
Re:Devil's advocate, Boeing screwed up (Score:4, Insightful)
A single sensor that can override pilot controls with absolutely no backup/plausibility checks?
Criminal. Yes. Someone belongs in jail.
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Every single *automobile* has plausibility checks, even for non-critical sensors.
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A single sensor that can override pilot controls with absolutely no backup/plausibility checks?
The pilots can disable MCAS (or on older aircraft the near equivalent auto-trim) at any time. The side effect of this is losing access to the trim motors and the thumb toggle switch on the yoke to operate the trim motors. This can mean a laborious process of cranking the trim by hand. If not caught soon enough then the trim can get so far from level flight that even with two strong men at the controls there may be no recovery. That would mean the pilots sat and watched as the auto-trim or MCAS put the a
Re:Devil's advocate, Boeing screwed up (Score:5, Interesting)
They would have to know about its existence first, which these pilots did not, because Boeing decided that pilots did not need to know about it.
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I noticed you completely ignored the fact that every other sensor in just about every other kind of control system generally has plausibility checks *and* usually has at least one redundant sensors in designs in which it is this sensor set that informs a critical control system.
You can let the courts "decide" all you want. In fact, that is exactly what is going to happen (since no doubt there will be years if not decades of litigation and appeals around this issue).
It is my opinion that knowingly being ok w
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I noticed you completely ignored the fact that every other sensor in just about every other kind of control system generally has plausibility checks *and* usually has at least one redundant sensors in designs in which it is this sensor set that informs a critical control system.
MCAS is not a critical control system.
It is my opinion that knowingly being ok with such a design is criminal negligence. The fact that you are unable to have a opinion on that says all I need to hear.
I can't have an opinion until I hear Boeing defend itself. Boeing is being real quiet though, which is expected when there are employees being charged with felonies. I'm getting only bits and pieces on how Boeing is defending itself, as are you. There could be some very important piece of information that is not being made public.
Re:Devil's advocate, Boeing screwed up (Score:4, Insightful)
> MCAS is not a critical control system.
Anything that can assert authority over control surfaces is most certainly critical.
Again, even *automobiles* have plausibility checking in just about every sensor there is, including ones that aren't even remotely related to car control.
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MCAS is not a critical control system.
If it was not a critical control system, then it was a critical fault. In either case it was deliberately added.
I can't have an opinion until I hear Boeing defend itself. Boeing is being real quiet though, which is expected when there are employees being charged with felonies. I'm getting only bits and pieces on how Boeing is defending itself, as are you. There could be some very important piece of information that is not being made public.
If Boeing is still in possession of important information, then it needs to be made public for further evaluation before further flights take place.
Re:Devil's advocate, Boeing screwed up (Score:5, Insightful)
MCAS is most definitely a critical control system; as presented originally it could move the horizontal stabiliser (the most powerful flying control on the aircraft) faster than the pilots, who were themselves unaware of its existence.
For such a system to rely on one sensor with no range/plausibility checking is totally negligent. It is appalling (non-) engineering practice and runs counter to the most basic principles. You would not expect this in a school project, let alone a critical safety application. How any professional could let such an abortion take to the skies is beyond me to understand...
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MCAS is not a critical control system.
I know people who work on safety critical systems for aircraft. I'd bet $100 they'd say counted as a safety critical system, except since criminal proceedings might still eventuate, I doubt they'd be prepared to comment.
Re: (Score:2)
If it can cause the plane to dive into the ground, then it most certainly *IS* a critical control system.
The switch that turns on the no smoking lights is not a critical control system.
Re: (Score:3)
You didn't read the news properly I guess. You can cancel the MCAS, but it can also automatically reassert itself afterwards back again, and it can change trim MUCH faster than what is possible with manual input.
Re: (Score:2)
Once power is removed from the trim motors MCAS will not "reassert itself". Boeing argued that pilots did not need training on MCAS because training on previous auto-trim failures covers MCAS. This is at least plausible. This is a criminal case and "beyond reasonable doubt" applies. It is plausible to argue that a pair of average pilots with an average level of training could recover from MCAS failures with near certainty. Auto-trim failures are not common so it's plausible the crashes were the result
Re: (Score:3)
And yet again you omit the criminal negligence of a single sensor, with no plausibility checking or redundant sensors, feeding a control system that can assert control surface authority.
Re: (Score:3)
And yet again you omit the criminal negligence of a single sensor, with no plausibility checking or redundant sensors, feeding a control system that can assert control surface authority.
WTF is your problem? You posted comments like this a dozen times now. Did I not already concede Boeing screwed up? I did. I'll type that out again for you, Boeing screwed up. As far as I'm concerned the lack of a redundant sensor for MCAS could be considered a minor infraction. There were many changes made to the MAX that caused a problem and the use of a single sensor was but one. Repeating this over and over is not going to convince me this is "criminal negligence". There was a process in place to
Re: (Score:2)
Spoken like a true defense lawyer for Boeing. Yes of course Boeing had wildly overstretched the lifetime of the 737 model , which caused their adaptations and patches on top of patches to become more and more compromized, of course they wanted to cut corners by skipping retraining for their crappy patches on top of crappy patches, of course the FAA had become too cozy with Boeing and was all too eager to comply , but hey they were trying to make money at the expense of everything else and since when is that
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Spoken like a true defense lawyer for Boeing.
Um, thanks? I take it that's not intended to be kudos.
Yes of course Boeing had wildly overstretched the lifetime of the 737 model , which caused their adaptations and patches on top of patches to become more and more compromized, of course they wanted to cut corners by skipping retraining for their crappy patches on top of crappy patches, of course the FAA had become too cozy with Boeing and was all too eager to comply , but hey they were trying to make money at the expense of everything else and since when is that a crime beyond all doubt? And that is why it is soooo unfair that Boeing is being criticized!
Did you even read the title of my post? Boeing screwed up. They deserve more than criticism. Proving this is criminal would seem to me to be difficult. Saying this is making money at the cost of lives makes no sense, aircraft makers lose money if an airplane crashes. A systemic problem on the design means a lot of airplanes can crash and that means losing a lot more money. Boeing is going to defend itself and, after watching a PBS show on the 737
Re:Devil's advocate, Boeing screwed up (Score:4, Interesting)
> Boeing is going to defend itself and, after watching a PBS show on the 737 MAX issues that someone else linked to in the commentary here, I expect them to make a very plausible case that the crashes were in large part due to the failure of foreign airlines to provide adequate training and maintenance
The fact that they (like you) are going to make their case by not even mentioning their inexcusable negligence in having a single sensor inform a system which has control authority without any plausibility or redundancy tells me everything I need to know about you and Boeing.
You (and Boeing) are doing your very best to continue to deliberately ignore an infinitely more fundamental smoking gun of incompetence and negligence.
Boeing had my contempt before. I'm starting to want to include you into that group.
Re: (Score:2)
Negligence can rise to the level of a crime.
Re: (Score:2)
You act as if it takes MCAS an hour to mis-trim the plane beyond recovery. It happens quite quickly and generally at a point where the pilots already have a high workload.
Please stay out of any work that calls for consideration of human factors or critical safety.
A properly designed system would have had MCAS compare the inputs from the two AoA sensors (the second one is already present, MCAS just ignored it). It would have a cut-off that disconnected MCAS but left the electric trim functional. Also the man
Re: Devil's advocate, Boeing screwed up (Score:2)
Make that "a single sensor AFTER the Air France disaster, amongst others, was caused by single sensor failure".
Re: Devil's advocate, Boeing screwed up (Score:5, Insightful)
AF447 wasnt caused by a single sensor failure, and there was no single sensor in play in that situation - on Airbus aircraft there are two pitot-static sensor sets, one on the pilots side, one on the co-pilots side.
And in the case of AF447, the issue wasnt about a sensor issue overriding the pilots, it was exactly the opposite - the autopilot recognising there was an issue and handing control back to the crew.
The issue was that when the two sets of sensors disagreed (one icing up, the other behaving normally), the autopilot could not trust its inputs so it did what it always should have done and hand control to the crew. Ultimately the crew didnt follow established normal procedure and instead stalled the aircraft.
But there were most definitely two redundant sensors on AF447. And the automation worked as it should have in that situation.
Re: (Score:3)
I guess you did not read the messages he shared with his co-workers that were plastered all over the news.
He clearly knew he was hiding information to save a buck and directly made the order to remove info on MCAS from the documentation sent to the FAA for approval.
Re: (Score:2)
I expect many people to be quite willing to pile on accusations of people at Boeing being callous money grubbers that would trade lives to make a buck.
That's how it usually is in cases like this. They never EXPECT disaster. They decide that the rules and regulations are just people being over-cautious. They THINK cutting the corners will just save them some money. Or more properly, they talk themselves into thinking that.
That is the cornerstone of negligence and eventually negligent homicide.
That's also why it's better that companies that produce things that can be dangerous or harmful be run by the engineers. The more you actually know about it, the hard
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. Given the ubiquity of walls of "plausible deniability" protecting the executive class we should really implement a presumption of responsibility for executives and the board in the face of any crime that benefits the company. The Captain is responsible for the actions of his men and all that.
At a minimum it was their job to maintain a corporate culture and sufficient oversight to ensure such things didn't happen. And lets be honest, probably 95% of the time they were the ones who set things in motion.