From applied control theory I intuitively knew that a cascade of issues resulting in a system instability had overwhelmed the pilots. I now see this arrogance of data science based software engineering being inserted into business, industry and social systems. As an abstract example Facebook's attempt to stabilize the politics on its platform through algorithms. More concretely in the hydro dam control systems in the Pacific Northwest. Specifically in this damned Boeing 737 Max control system. Control systems need rigorous testing through simulation not accidents.
Boeing's design process was a shady mess for sure, but safety goes all the way down and up the stack. Every failure mode should have some level of redundancy and double checking.<p>So, yeah, a manufacturer tried to game the certification process to save a few bucks (and months) on a new aircraft design. That's a failure. But it's <i>not</i> an unforseen one!<p>The safety value for manufacturer shenannigans is supposed to have been the certification process itself. And I gotta say the worst failings here are with the FAA. At any point someone could have looked at the process and seen:<p>1. They changed the engine<p>2. They had to move it because it was too close to the ground, but they couldn't stretch the landing gear and keep the type certification.<p>3. So they moved the engines forward and up<p>4. But now the aircraft was less stable, and they couldn't change the tail design and keep the type certification.<p>5. So they did software-managed stability augmentation instead<p>6. But (that's right) they couldn't change the autopilot and keep the type certification.<p>7. So they did it with the trim, which had never operated under autonomous control before.<p>I'm sure I have a few of those details wrong, but the point is that any bureaucrat familiar with the aircraft could have seen that this was a ridiculous house of cards they were playing with the type certificate. I mean, one change with one workaround, sure. But a cascade like this is just <i>obviously</i> a perversion of the process.<p>Yet no one said something. Or if they did they were overruled.<p>The way the built-in incentives work, it's not feasible to rely on 100% forthright and honorable manufacturers. So we have a regulatory body to catch those failures for us, and it failed.
Boeing’s culture needs to change. They have a history of shady behavior.<p>The espionage against Lockheed Space that lead to the ULA formation<p>The rudder denials with 737 before this current crisis.<p>The 767 lease debacle.<p>I’m sure I’ve forgotten more.<p>They keep getting away with it and it needs to stop.
The NTSB does and has done a fantastic job keeping flight safe, they are the sorts of people we should be looking to for what went wrong and how to fix it. Not politicians, Ralph Nader, or armchair engineers on forums.<p>Flying is complex and exposing the correct instrumentation, controls, and training to pilots is a hard problem. There will be mistakes and the important thing is to learn from them. The industry and regulators are very good at this.
Nader may be right about some of this, but just claiming that evil "reckless" Boeing executives caused this is pretty silly. Boeing execs are probably the least reckless execs in any field, because even tiny failure rates can have massive consequences.<p>What's scariest about this is that it highlights the fact that many pilots are just regular schmoes. Average intelligence, adequate training. That's fine 99.9% of the time, when equipment failure isn't catastrophic. But it's crazy how many, when they're actually faced with catastrophic failure, forget how to fly the damn plane.<p>The runaway trim problem has been happening for 50 years. This isn't new, or unique to the MAX (same thing can happen on the small jets I fly). Anytime something like this (or any other autopilot failure) happens, every pilot is trained to disengage the system and fly the goddamn plane. Apparently the pilots on these flights didn't know how to do that. It's tragic.<p>For some more reading on the other end of the spectrum, see: <a href="https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2019/march/20/congressman-concerned-about-foreign-pilot-training" rel="nofollow">https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2019/march/20/c...</a> (this is probably equally as bombastic as Nader's article, but offers some good perspective from that side)<p>edit: Apparently Nader's niece died in one the crashes, which would certainly explain his outrage: <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/03/22/ralph-naders-niece-died-in-one-of-the-boeing-crashes-now-hes-calling-for-the-737-max-8-to-be-grounded.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/03/22/ralph-naders-niece-die...</a>
Does the FAA require civilian commercial airliners to have some sort of catch-all (e.g. positive stability if you kill all power and lower a ram-air turbine and assuming your flaps aren't jammed)? I don't know if that would have saved lives on those flights, because it was high enough to crash and low enough to not turn around to the airport or get to safety, but I would think a gliding plane and some base assumptions about the inherent flight characteristics of their plane would give the pilots a few precious seconds to think (like the miracle on the Hudson). Physics-based problems should have physics-based solutions.<p>If the engine placement and weight distribution caused an inherent problem with the stability of the aircraft, a rule like that might have given Boeing pause, no?
Should the airlines share some of the blame for not paying for the $80K disagree light for the two sensors on their $100M plane?<p>If I don't pay for the $3K automated emergency braking upgrade for my car, is it Honda's fault if I rear-end someone and die? It doesn't cost them $3K for what's mostly software and a couple hundred dollars of sensors, should they have bundled that obvious safety feature into the price of the car and not made it an optional upgrade?
'm a bleeding-heart socialist, actually an anarchist, far to the left of Ralph Nader and I /still/ find his rhetorical style obnoxious and not useful.<p>We can have a discussion about how de-regulations and profit motives may have contributed to this disaster, we have even throw in ideas about regulations and corporate responsibility, but we have to recognize that software at this scale and or these purposes is hard, and there's no reason why the govt may be better at it than Boeing, and the discussion about what the risk/reward ratio should be for society as a whole is super complicated and we don't nec have a way to have it.<p>TLDR: I'm an anarcho-socialist programmer. Boeing may or may not be evil and de-regulation and the profit motive probably eff things up in the current socio-economic sphere, but Ralph Nader doesn't lend much to the conversation here.
> Most notoriously, the airlines, after the hijacks to Cuba in the late Sixties and early Seventies, made sure that Congress and the FAA did not require hardened cockpit doors and stronger latches on all aircraft, costing a modest $3000 per plane. Then the 9/11 massacre happened, a grisly consequence of non-regulation, pushed by right wing corporatist advocacy centers.<p>This is a curious and very sad bit of history I was unaware of.
As for a flyer's bill of rights it would be nice to have more widebody flights or at least something small but comfortable like the Embraer 195.<p>What's been lost in this discussion is that the 737 is based on the 1958-era 707 in it's major configuration -- with its circular fuselage it is not built with compatibility with the human body in mind so of course you are going to feel like flying is hell after a transcontinental trip on what was originally intended as a regional jet.<p>Even if you survive the flight on a 737 you are going feel like you're dead. Since the 737 and A330 represent the vast bulk of planes built, anyone concerned about the environmental impacts of air travel (e.g. climate change, noise) would want to see the 737 get a clean sheet design like the 787.