If there are no credible consequences for unsafe practices, they will continue. If Boeing believes their planes will never be grounded unless they kill hundreds of Americans, sooner or later they will kill hundreds of Americans. (We already know from the Max 8 that killing hundreds of foreigners isn't enough to get the FAA to ground an American plane, at least not until it happens multiple times).
A poorly installed door plug may be a one-off mistake. Missing required documentation on the installation of that door plug is a more serious systemic issue. Failing to cooperate with a safety investigation is an even deeper rot. If that's not something that should result in aircraft grounding then what is? Genuine question - how bad does it have to get?
We clearly have all our eggs in one basket when nearly everyone is hesitant to enact common sense measures like grounding every commercial Boeing plane in service--at least on a rotation. Air traffic would grind to a halt. I wouldn't want to be responsible for that either. Especially when it's the friends of all the grey-hairs at GE, Boeing, and every major airline that have to make the call.
It was only for a few days, and it was extremely impactful. This was only the 737-MAX fleet that was grounded, which is primarily used for regional routes. The MAX is never used or configured for cargo at this moment.
More importantly, this was only the MAX generation of the 737 fleet. Only ~15% of all 737s in service.
I interpreted the poster as suggesting that we ground all Boeing commercial airplanes. If they just meant the 737 MAX fleet, I still think this would be unproductive now that the acute MCAS issue has been addressed, but it's not as ludicrous as grounding ~60% of the world's airplanes.
They don't need to ground every commercial Boeing aircraft, only the ones that are affected. Most Boeing planes still flying aren't that new. The 767s and 777s all seem fine. Just ground the 737MAX and the SC-built Dreamliners.
The MAX fleet has been grounded multiple times now. Why would this be any different? The grounding after the door flew off was way shorter than the MCAS grounding.
The consequences of continuing to fly this aircraft is likely to continue to find issues of varying severity. It's like playing Russian roulette with 2 bullets loaded.
No. It was a serious event even without casualties. If people had died, it would have been tragic, fatal, or any other adjective. If it wasn't serious, we wouldn't still be discussing it.
Yours is exactly the kind of attitude that gets people killed in workplaces.
I slip on a puddle, but I'm young and nimble so I catch myself. No harm done to me, not a serious incident right? I don't report the puddle. Then another guy comes alone, he's older, his reflexes aren't so good. He bounces his head off the concrete and dies. This is why all workplace safety policies tell you to treat near misses like the real thing. The only difference between them is circumstantial luck.
That is a completely unfair diagnosis and accusation. Respond to the thing you disagree with instead of claiming that the person you disagree with is mentally unwell.
any number > 0 when counting deaths because of a company's malfeasance, incompetence, or any other word to describe it is serious. since you seem to like superlatives, any number > 0 is the most serious thing. your product killed 1 person in a failure or 189 in a failure is no less damning. even if your product's failure nearly killed some number > 0 is a serious thing.
So now you’re saying it wasn’t serious because there was no one killed? I’m very confused here.
I thought it was serious, just less serious than those that actually killed people, because it does show system issues at Boeing related to actually doing safe changes to their planes.
Which is a scary operational problem, but at least not a major plane design problem.
Which will kill someone (or a lot of someones!) eventually.
And got called a psychopath for it, apparently? Which doesn’t seem very polite.
> So now you’re saying it wasn’t serious because there was no one killed? I’m very confused here.
Yes, you've been very confused in this entire thread. No, I did not say what you think I've said. In fact, I stated the exact opposite. You seem to have an agenda and are attempting to read that into this entire thread.
Your prior comment literally says ‘ any number > 0 when counting deaths because of a company's malfeasance, incompetence, or any other word to describe it is serious’. You say that same type of statement multiple times, using >0 every time. Instead of, perhaps, >=.
There were zero fatalities in this incident. I personally thought it was serious, but less serious than incidents which have fatalities.
Are we agreeing? Who is confused here? Am I a psychopath?
what do you mean unlike the MAX problems? do you think this is a different model aircraft. The MCAS related crashes with 300+ casualties was an earlier version of the MAX. The door flying off was still a MAX.
So at this point, we should be well past viewing incidents on a per incident basis, and now just see each one as yet another example of the failure/lack of Boeing's prowess on designing a safe airplane.
If you really want to separate them out like that, but that seems pointless. The rot within Boeing seems to have culminated with the fiasco that is the MAX. It was executive decisions and the example that showed for the middle management to follow that allowed all of the issues to happen. Whether it was the lackadaisical nature of how many bolts were installed to the cover up/conspiracy of trying to hide the flight characteristics with MCAS to avoid re-certifying pilots, it's all stems from the same rot
The model of the plane is what they are currently producing at scale. What do you want to bet if that changed (and on other models) they have similar problems with those too?
Notably, this type of ops issue (managers pushing for high velocity - paperwork and quality of work be damned) is inevitable when output numbers must go up or stay the same even in the face of other pressures increasing.
We’ve all been there for sure - too many bugs coming in, so mark them ‘can’t reproduce’ the first pass through, or if we can’t figure out what is going on in the first couple
minutes. Or put a hack into production to fix it now, with an actual real fix ‘on the backlog’ indefinitely. Or playing whack a mole with problems instead of investigating root causes.
It’s a burnout/realism problem.
Very tempting in ops/QA for the business - and then when something breaks, or a customer gets angry because they’re getting blown off, blame the engineer/tech/QA person and fire them instead of fix the actual cause, which is unrealistic workloads, or bad process, or management prioritization failures, etc.
> I genuinely wonder if you realize the consequences of this drastic a decision.
Well, among other things, an increase in the general public safety vis-à-vis commercial air travel. Plus, I suppose, some kind of material incentive for Boeing and other airliners to take quality control seriously.
It's not at all obvious that forcing more auto travel and causing chaos in domestic air travel would result in a net benefit in safety (and otherwise) for the general public. I imagine its pretty nuanced.
Only reason I see for it is a punitive incentive for Boeing. Anything else requires more of an argument, in my perspective.
It's pretty obvious to me that not allowing dangerous aircraft in the sky benefits the public safety. I can only guess at what your objections are, because you're being awfully vague, but since I have to guess I guess that you're saying something along the lines of "people will use other forms of transport like driving which is more dangerous than even flying on a 737 MAX." I find this line of reasoning flawed because while you may be on to something in the very short term, in the long term grounding the fleet permanently will increase the incentive for Boeing et al to produce safer aircraft. Thus, grounding the fleet will save lives. So, we should do it.
As to whether this "punishes" Boeing I have to confess that I absolutely, positively, do not give a shit if this counts as "punishment" and quite frankly the entire C-level of the company and any board members / stockholders that had a hand in degrading their QC to this degree, should be held criminally liable and punished as such. So that's where I stand on punitive incentives: they're a good thing.
> If you’re being serious, I genuinely wonder if you realize the consequences of this drastic a decision.
It would be best for everyone who isn't Boeing. But we all know that the second it would happen, Boeing would run crying to politicians they own how unfair this action is/how it endangers their market position/how it threatens national security.
Aviation, for a long time, administratively speaking, has been very buddy-buddy. Lots of self-attestation and self-certification. That works as long as you can trust the mfg to actually do it. Boeing has proven with the continuous series of failures of the 737 MAX program - from top to bottom - that they are not trustworthy in that regard.
From here on out they can do everything on that airplane by not just the letter of the law, but the serif. They killed hundreds of people through greed and laziness. Simply put, fuck 'em. If they go under it's because they deserve to. Too big to fail is not a situation that should be allowed to exist. The long term resiliency of the system is worth short term pain.
(Edit: And as dylan604 pointed out in a sibling comment, the 737 MAX fleet has already been grounded on mulitple occasions)
If you’re being serious, I genuinely wonder if you realize the consequences of this drastic a decision.