Boeing Pilot Complained of 'Egregious' Issue With 737 Max in 2016 (nytimes.com) 58
A Boeing pilot working on the 737 Max said in messages from 2016 that a new automated system was making the plane difficult to control in flight simulators, more than two years before it was grounded following two deadly crashes. From a report: The pilot, Mark Forkner, complained that the system, known as MCAS, was causing him trouble. "It's running rampant in the sim," he said in a message to a colleague, referring to the simulator. "Granted, I suck at flying, but even this was egregious," he went on to say, according to a transcript of the exchange reviewed by The New York Times. The 737 Max was grounded earlier this year after crashing twice in five months, killing 346 people. In both cases, MCAS malfunctioned based on erroneous data, sending the planes into unrecoverable nose dives. Mr. Forkner, the chief technical pilot for the plane, went on to say that he had lied to the Federal Aviation Administration. "I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)," Mr. Forkner says in the messages. The messages are from November 2016. Eight months earlier, Mr. Forkner had asked the F.A.A. if it would be O.K. to remove mention of MCAS from the pilot's manual. The F.A.A., which at the time believed the system would only activate in rare cases and wasn't particularly dangerous, approved Mr. Forkner's request.
Not just omit, but remove? (Score:1)
eh, corruption... say no more
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This article, from the IEEE journal, goes into how this catastrophe came about.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aero... [ieee.org]
TLDR; Penny pinching Boeing management, more interested in short-term stock price than customers, who didn't listen to actual engineers, lied to the FAA, which because of budget cuts are unable to independently verify anything manufacturers say.
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If you graph the Pentagon budget and the Deficit in the years since Ronnie Raygun you'll notice that they parallel each other very closely most years. The reason was explicitly laid out by Grover Norquist, leader of the conservative brain trust, who openly declared that they intended to run the deficit up so high that the only funds available would be for the military and debt repayment. He said, on his web page, that they intended to shrink the US government down to the size where, "I can drag it into th
A Neckbeard's take on the apocalypse (Score:1)
This relies on an idiotic variation of the Y2K spook-stories from 20 years ago. A massive EMP would not result in a 90% casualty rate, would not result in mass-cannibalism (lol), and would not mean that you, rally2xs, would command a harem of rapt, willing virgins eager to trim your neck-beard in exchange for the safety only you could bring them. (just continuing into the unspoken part of your fantasy there.)
Also, there is no 'tin-pot' dictator that would be able to procure a weapon + delivery system capa
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.. aircraft carriers == aircraft carrier groups (meaning ACs and the supporting cast of destroyer/cruisers/support vessels in each carrier group)
Obvious Propaganda (Score:2, Funny)
The invisible hand of capitalism would never let anything like this happen.
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Re: Obvious Propaganda (Score:1)
Re:Obvious Propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
It has already happened. Unless that invisible hand has a tardis, it's too late.
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You're right. One of the big drawbacks of capitalism is it can't time travel or prevent human error or greed. Socialism, on the other hand - that's the time traveling system! And communism is so great it literally fixes all human defects before they can manifest themselves.
As I said, it's a strawman. Of course capitalism (or anything) can't prevent all human failures, the idea is absurd. The key is that there is a consequence which hopefully prevents a repeat of the mistake.
Granted, you could just take peop
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Did you even read the story... Boeing knew about the problem BEFORE anyone died! What's a strawman is that it's either this or we become the Soviet Union... sure.
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It was the government that took the 737 Max out of the skies. Generally (though failing in this case) government regulators prevent many of the egregious cases where greed could lead to human suffering or death.
It's not that capitalism doesn't work, but it works best with proper regulation.
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It's called regulatory oversight. Believe it or not, some bad things are entirely foreseeable as long as the goal is to do it right rather than gamble with other people's lives to maximize profit (at least until you can deploy the golden parachute).
OTOH, the invisible hand can only react to yesterday's news.
The funny thing is that I was really only commenting that the invisible hand isn't the fix for this problem. YOU assumed that I was advocating for a different economic system.
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It hasn't. Boeing has paid and will continue to pay a hefty price for this, including possible criminal charges if there was fraud or criminal negligence.
Unfortunately, that won't raise the dead.
So yeah, it has happened, past tense.
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I don't get your (or the other poster's point). Are you convinced that under systems other than capitalism people don't die due to human error, ineptitude, greed?The point is that there is a consequence (monetary, criminal where applicable) that dissuades them from doing the same thing next time.
It doesn't make any sense. Of course it happened. The original post tried to cutely blame this on capitalism somehow, which is trendy but it's a complete non sequitur. I will listen to people who propose sensible re
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I don't get your (or the other poster's point). Are you convinced that under systems other than capitalism people don't die due to human error, ineptitude, greed?The point is that there is a consequence (monetary, criminal where applicable) that dissuades them from doing the same thing next time.
It doesn't make any sense. Of course it happened. The original post tried to cutely blame this on capitalism somehow, which is trendy but it's a complete non sequitur. I will listen to people who propose sensible regulations, but the minute someone starts railing against nebulous "capitalism" I know they are an imbecile not to be taken seriously.
If only we didn't have capitalism, and instead (insert magic system here which you never quite specify for obvious reasons) was the rule this never would have happened, by gum!
I think their point is that all too often capitalist ideology drives profit above ALL else. Does shit happen in other systems of government? Sure, why not. But capitalism almost demands it. When you are willing to trade anything , ANYTHING for a dollar, eventually human lives get traded. Don't pretend like you don't understand how it works.
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My kingdom for a mod point . . .
Once upon a time executives would have panicked and halted deployment of MCAS well before the 737 MAX took off, although expensive in the short term it executives were interested in the long-term survival of the company. Of course that changed in the 1970s, and now as long as they can cash out their stock options before actual consequences cause them to tank then short-term thinking rules. When E-suite offices change occupants every couple of years in the game of Executive
if you don't like it (Score:1)
then stop calling all regulation "communism".
and for your information, I've been saying the same thing for 35 years so... trendy I'm not... In Old Soviet Union trend catches up to me!
I'm sure the dead people will be happy... (Score:1)
... to learn the system is working as designed. However, I am a real capitalist, I use my wealth in my business.
You mean like Sweden and Norway? (Score:1)
so unfree... your meme is old.
The chief technical pilot sucks at flying?! (Score:3)
Re:The chief technical pilot sucks at flying?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue that this is actually a good thing. You probably don't want a crackerjack pilot doing that job, because that person is likely to do the right things to fix any failures, and it will look like things are going fine even in situations where a more average pilot would exhibit CFIT. You're better off if you have a tester whose skills are only one step above those of a garden slug, because if anything goes wrong, that tester will be befuddled, and the testing session will be a failure. :-)
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If I read the summary correctly, their "chief technical pilot" commented that he sucked at flying, which if true, implies that it wasn't crack test pilots. Whether the person actually does suck at flying or was just being ironic, I couldn't say. :-)
Re:The chief technical pilot sucks at flying?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Their chief technical pilot is probably both a pretty damn good pilot *and* surrounded by people who are even more awesome test pilots. Compared to his peers he may "suck at flying" and he may be half-ironically mentioning that ;).
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Yeah, people who've never specialized and then spent time around even more specialized peers don't understand how many levels there are to things.
At my current job we were talking about strengths and weaknesses, and I pointed out how awesome/shitty I am at math. Awesome because most people I work with have no idea what differential equations are, and I was doing some high level fluid dynamics in grad school. Shitty because I was about the worst in the class at it, and I've forgotten most of it already.
Q: Ho
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I think the EU authorities had an issue with this (among other things). Planes need to be flyable and tested with pilots of minimal skills and experience.
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This was the simulator that he was talking about, they did put their top test pilots in the new planes. Crashing a simulator is just a little bit cheaper than crashing an actual airliner . . .
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I'm sure Boeing has more than one pilot.
Re:The chief technical pilot sucks at flying?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this just the /. editors being sloppy? Or was that really his job title? If so, I think that Boeing might have a much bigger problem. Like their chief technical pilots sucks at flying!
I think he was just trying to head-off the"bean counters" who would say it was all because he made a "pilot error".
Like, "Maybe I'm a bad pilot but it was a lot worse than that!"
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That's normal pilot humor. They don't need sarcasm tags to get it across.
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This person is an engineer, not really a pilot.
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This person is an engineer, not really a pilot.
He is described as "the chief technical pilot for the plane".
Try reading for a change.
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This person is an engineer, not really a pilot.
He is described as "the chief technical pilot for the plane".
Try reading for a change.
He is a Pilot and an Engineer and possibly other things. People at this level often have multiple degrees and experience.
(And I'm disagreeing with both of you!) 8-)
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The chief technical pilot sucks at flying?
I took that as sarcasm.
He was saying, in effect:
"So the system is impossible to control?
Well, I guess that is to expected, since I am only the chief test pilot for this aircraft!"
What the Hell do I know? (Score:2)
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If it can't simulate a perfectly plausible single failure, it's not much of a simulator.
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Simulators definitely should allow simulations with faulty/missing sensors - and probably do. It's much better testing those things on the ground before testing them in the air.
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In this case, they should have been able to artificially 'fail' a sensor
'Egregious' (Score:2)
You keep using that word and for once I think it means exactly what you think it means.
Doesn’t make sense... (Score:2)
MCAS wasn’t part of the simulator, so how could this be true?
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This is very likely about a test simulator that is used to try out potential design changes. Regular simulators mirror the actually delivered planes (or should do so).
Looks like they exceed criminally negligent now (Score:4, Insightful)
If they knew this and did nothing to fix it, then they seem to exceed criminally negligent manslaughter now. It may be time to look into who needs to go to prison here for a long, long time.