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by BorRagnarok 2543 days ago
> FAA and Boeing (and Airbus as well) are all going to learn a lot from this process which will make air travel safer in the future

Yeah, right. Until they start cutting corners again for economic reasons. There's absolutely no change in any of those organizations driven by this incident or by an increase in standards or by safety, there are no new regulations, it's all a dog and pony show driven by money and saving their asses.

"if you look at the history of aviation improvements this isn't the first and it won't be the last time"

And that's a great argument for just letting the next horrible accident happen in a few years. Until people start demanding that at least the goal of those organizations should be Total and Complete Flight Safety, the FAA and Boeing will cut corners because "accidents will always happen, this isn't the first and it won't be the last, so who cares". Accidents will stay a calculated risk for them, in stead of something that just should never ever happen.

1 comments

>There's absolutely no change in any of those organizations driven by this incident or by an increase in standards or by safety, there are no new regulations

How fast do you think this stuff can happen?

>And that's a great argument for just letting the next horrible accident happen in a few years.

The next horrible accident is going to happen in a few years, sorry to tell you.

>Accidents will stay a calculated risk for them, in stead of something that just should never ever happen.

I'm going to assume you're no engineer.

>I'm going to assume you're no engineer.

I'm pretty sure what you're trying to get across is that Engineering is the business of enabling the taking of calculated risks, but you're doing it in a needlessly inflammatory way.

And the poster you're responding to isn't necessarily wrong either. Just because engineering allows us to identify, analyze, and calculate the impact of risks does not free us of an obligation to always favor the most conservative approach in living up to the obligation to comport ourselves in a manner consistent with serving the Public interest.

Remember the Iron Ring in all things.

> How fast do you think this stuff can happen?

Above I posted a seven year old documentary about the 787 Dreamliner, and there were the same problems of Boeing doing the FAA's work. So to answer your question: I don't really know, but it seems to be decades at least before anything changes, if at all. And that's really appalling.

>I'm going to assume you're no engineer.

I am, actually.

As an engineer you can calculate a risk like: this part under this type of load will fail at x, and then design so that x is never reached (or in a million years or so) to make a design safe.

A manager can calculate risk like: if we sell 5k planes, and we can make them $1000 cheaper by using a part that will increase the likelihood of a crash by only 2%, since the chance of a crash is already very very low, we might as well use the inferior part and make $5m extra. That way I can buy that third mansion I want.

Both are calculating risk. The engineer calculates for safety, the manager for his stock options. Which do you think is better?

My point is, the goal should always be complete safety. Even though engineers know that that is impossible, and even though lots of managers don't care at all about safety. We should still strive for it. Total flight safety should be the goal, not a byproduct of good engineering.

That's why we have the FAA in the first place, because we don't trust those managers at Boeing to make the right decisions, because experience learned us we shouldn't.

We trusted on the FAA and Boeing to hold that goal of passenger safety to the highest standards, but they betrayed that trust completely by letting Boeing do the FAA's work! Isn't that completely bonkers? Perhaps we just should scrap the FAA as well and let the Europeans certify all planes. I don't know. But right now there's nothing but ass-saving going on, and that doesn't restore trust in either of those organizations.

Lot's of people should be going to jail for this, but they wont, because they're rich and can buy their way out. Everybody knows this. That's the way the United States works. Justice is only for the rich and powerful. That's how Boeing can kill 300+ people and get away with it. As an engineer, this worries me greatly.