[antpls]

Other quote from the reuters article (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-737max/designed-by...) :

“I want to stress the importance of holding firm that there will not be any type of simulator training required to transition from NG to MAX,” Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot said in a March 2017 email.

“Boeing will not allow that to happen. We’ll go face to face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement.”

[markdown]

> Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot

He's one who really needs to go to jail. Why didn't they name him?

[adwww]

The further down the PDF I go, the more I agree with you.

Here's another one of his quotes:

> There is absolutely no reason to require your pilots to require a Max simulator to begin flying the Max. Once the engines are started, there is only one difference between NG and Max procedurally, and that is that there is no OFF position of the gear handle. Boeing does not understand what is to be gained by a 3h simulator session, when the procedures are essentially the same.

[phire]

This makes me angry.

Not that 3 hours of simulator training would have helped in either crash. The problem wasn't that the ipad course was inadequate training for the new procedures (as he said there were no major procedural differences), but that any mention of MCAS had been removed from the manual to avoid needing new or modified procedures.

Even worse, MCAS was designed to be near-impossible to override, using data from only one sensor, to avoid the need for procedural changes.

[jeffnappi]

Not to defend Boeing or the folks in these messages in any way, but as I understand it MCAS initially was making use of multiple sensors. It was changed at one point to only use 1[1]. It would be important to know the timing of these messages relative to the development.

Another _unverified_ thing I heard was that initially MCAS would only be able to issue a single nose down command, and was later modified to be able to issue multiple.

1. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the...

[wayoutthere]

From what I understand, the decision to change it from using 2 sensors to 1 sensor was specifically because if the system used 2 sensors it was considered a safety system requiring simulator training for the failure scenarios.

IMO Boeing should be required to separate the military and civilian parts of the company and allow the military side to build civilian aircraft based on existing civilian models. I honestly think it's the only way to save the company, because right now airlines, regulators, pilots and passengers do not trust the current incarnation of Boeing. With their shady culture, we don't know what else is hiding in the airplane. Culture issues aren't solved overnight.

I fly a lot of miles and am the type of person who keeps the airlines in business, and I will not fly on a 737 MAX for the foreseeable future. My coworkers are in the same boat. I don't see the American carriers being able to return these planes to service before 2022. This is absolutely an existential threat to the US aviation industry, and I think the only solution is to split Boeing up.

[silvestrov]

What’s worse is that we will lose trust in FAA as they still allow for a single non-redundant sensor.

At this point FAA should require minimum 2 sensors for something like MCAS which can crash they plane. This should be without regard to any prior certification of the planes.

[kingraoul3]

Restructuring is a prudent proposal, but jail time is needed.

[phire]

> Another _unverified_ thing I heard was that initially MCAS would only be able to issue a single nose down command, and was later modified to be able to issue multiple.

My understanding is that it was never limited to one command.

Instead, all their failure analysis was based on the assumption the pilot would correctly identify the problem immediately after the first activation and follow the runaway stabilizer checklist (disabling all electric trim) before the second activation could occur.

[adwww]

Also in the emails, a discussion about renaming MCAS to make it seem like it was just a tweak to existing control software, rather than a new feature needing documentation and training....

[makomk]

Oh yeah, that was interesting. They were renaming it to be part of the Speed Trim System, with the MCAS name used only internally. After doing some looking, apparently the STS is a system on all 737s that adjusts the stabilizer in order to increase the stick force. This is necessary to ensure the plane meets the FAR speed stability requirement for the minimum increase in stick force as the plane moves away from the current speed. It does this by moving the stabilizer in a way that opposes the flight stick input, and is active 5 seconds after the last manual trim input when autopilot is off. If you've been following the discussion of MCAS, all of those details are probably feeling awfully familiar...

[ChuckNorris89]

Because Boeing is a company of national importance and also a monopoly on home turf, vital to the US security and economy so they're untouchable in the US.

Just like how no VW employee went to jail in Germany for emissions cheating.

[Entalpi]

Lets not forget that some actually got to go to prison[0].

[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-execut...

[close04]

That happened in a US court but VW's CEO and a few other top execs were also criminally indicted in Germany. I think it's still ongoing so no outcome yet.

[sveme]

Not true. Several actually went to jail, including the former boss of Audi, Rupert Stadler. However, their trials are yet to come, so no final decision on jail time yet.

[dawnerd]

Also a good way to turn an employee willing to do terrible things into a whistle blower.

[cedivad]

VW wasn't nearly as bad. People need to go to jail over those deaths and their legacy used as a reminder for those that come next.

Here is another damning Boeing message, follow the source for more:

https://twitter.com/cedivad/status/1215558552229683200

[ChuckNorris89]

Define bad. As a cyclist in Europe I breathe in fumes from VWs diesel engines on a daily basis.

I'm wondering how shorter the lifespan for me and others like me will be in the long run.

I'd say that's pretty bad but as the deaths are not instantaneous, the long term damage is difficult to quantify.

[xiphias2]

My suggestion is to just stop doing it, especially if you start sleeping worse (the first symptom if you're affected). My life was ruined by not caring about living near a highway even though I easily had the money to get into a better apartment.

Now for the past 5 years (I'm 38 now) my life is about trying to find places with clean enough air, which is much harder and more expensive in winter time.

I'm always looking at experiments that reverse methylation damage, and hoping that those experiments succeed before I get cancer, but there's only 1 successful experiment so far, and I have no idea if it would help me.

[ChuckNorris89]

Thanks for the tips. Where do you live now?

[s1artibartfast]

Do you have any information you can share regarding the highway? I live next to one

[FooHentai]

As bad by what metric? VWs emissions overshoot has been projected to cause 1200 deaths: http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deat...

[close04]

For most people actual deaths are more immediately apparent than estimated deaths. By driving a car, riding a bus, or taking a plane any regular person also contributes to some of those estimated deaths. But this is very different from causing direct deaths by knowingly disabling a safety feature on a car, plane, or bus for example.

[cedivad]

Company values. On one end of the spectrum you have a relatively small group of people cheating and no idea where the bucket stopped.

For Boeing you have multiple lines (not only the 737 MAX but the 777 too) going as far as handing over bribes to the FAA, with upper management investing the budget savings on some yacht time.

[perl4ever]

How do we know that something caused 1200 deaths, instead of, say for example, 1% of a death of each of 120,000 individuals?

[WBrad]

When the defeat device was turned off during normal engine use its emissions went up by 40x the legal limit. VW's scandal was unprecedented in my opinion. The NOx emitted by those filthy cars are awful for anyone with respiratory issues.

[P_I_Staker]

While still substantially less than the 737 Max, plenty of people died because of that. We're not even really talking orders of magnitude, but around 10-20% @~59 premature deaths estimated (vs ~300 w/the max). That's not accounting for other health issues, and stress on the environment

source: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/1...