[AmericanChopper]

I feel that particular quote is taken out of context a bit. The line immediately preceding it is:

> Another damning exchange calls into question the safety of the 737 Max long before the plane was approved to fly passengers.

It’s the quality of the finished product I care about, not the quality of the product at some unspecified point during R&D.

[admax88q]

Presumably internal employees are familiar with the design process of planes. Or do you suspect they make statements like this for every plane during th early stages?

[AmericanChopper]

I have no idea. I doubt anybody commenting in this thread does either, given the complete lack of context.

Given Boeing’s proven track record, you could potentially speculate that the comments are actually in reference to some serious failure. But the quote as it’s presented doesn’t provide any meaningful information.

[fooker]

The 'proven track record' is pretty much non existent at this point.

[AmericanChopper]

> Given Boeing’s proven track record, you could potentially speculate that the comments are actually in reference to some serious failure

Read the whole sentence. Boeing does have a proven track record of serious failures, negligence, coverups... If you were inclined to speculate, you could speculate that this comment is in reference to some sort of serious issue that eventually made it into the production model. However the article doesn’t substantiate that implication (and it is only an implication).

The author of the article clearly wants you to come away from reading it with a diminished impression of Boeing. They have a clear profit incentive to make the article as outrageous as possible. A lot of people (myself included) already have a pretty poor opinion of Boeing, and I’d bet a lot of people who clicked on the article would be inclined to believe any negative claims made against them. The dangers of Fake News are often discussed on HN, and this is exactly the sort of situation where it is most important to exercise critical thinking.

That quote, without context, doesn’t reveal any meaningful information at all. I presume I’m getting downvoted because people think I’m defending Boeing, which I haven’t done once. I’m simply pointing out the danger of getting sucked in by outrage journalism, especially when it plays into your preconceived notions (no matter how well founded they are).

[jcranmer]

The greatest irony of all is that this quote doesn't impugn the quality of the 737 MAX in the slightest. It's entirely about the simulator--which isn't implicated in the MAX disaster since the pilots were not being retrained for it (i.e., using the simulator).

[jdc]

Well yeah, they were a very prudent organization before August '97.

[rsynnott]

> Given Boeing’s proven track record

The proven track record (this decade; what they did in the past is largely irrelevant) of releasing a deeply defective product?

[_ea1k]

Bluntly, this is why companies have email "retention"[1] policies. Lots of products have internal emails about all the scary things that can (and will) go wrong. Its hard to put them into context, but if things do go wrong they will be all over the press.

[1] Really deletion policies

[robbiep]

I don’t see that extra bit of context changing the quote

[AmericanChopper]

Vague remarks about the design of the plane being unsound at any point in time prior to it being approved to fly passengers, doesn’t reveal any information at all about the soundness of the design of the plane that was eventually approved to fly passengers.

[netsharc]

Your statements broke my brain... "The plane got approved, it must have been good enough, however grueling it got during the design process".

But all evidence shows it wasn't good enough (the design killed some 300 people!), but it got rubber stamp approval.

[AmericanChopper]

> But all evidence shows it wasn't good enough

Sure, but without additional context we can’t know what they were talking about, or whether those remarks were relevant to the final product.

[robbiep]

Except, the quote you’re referring to was dated 2018.

The 737 MAX started operations in May 2017.

So the comment was after the plane was regularly flying, and people on the inside were STILL joking about its safety.

(0) https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/09/boeing-737-...

[AmericanChopper]

In that case the NPR article (which doesn’t mention a date) is just factually incorrect.

> Another damning exchange calls into question the safety of the 737 Max long before the plane was approved to fly passengers.

> "Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn't," says one employee to another, who responds, "No."

If that quote was from 2018, then it’s from a year after FAA approval, not “long before” it.

I was criticising the reporting, not defending Boeing, and as you’ve kindly pointed out, the reporting is even more dubious than I had first thought.

[tasty_freeze]

The Washington Post article says that quote was from 2018, contrary to your speculation that it was some long-ago comment that is no longer relevant.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/int...