Boeing has an exemplary safety record and airlines that fly them. They have no interest in putting a plane in the air that is unsafe. Software and sensors caused the latest problem.
“…who said the planemaker had understated the power of the flight-control software in a System Safety Analysis submitted to the FAA.” Boeing is ultimately responsible for sending their ‘product’ into the field, which includes the software and sensors that you speak of.
Boeing exists, like any other corporation, to make a profit which includes cutting expenses (i.e. oversight) and increasing revenue (i.e. getting planes in the air)… coming from the ultra right wing capitalist that you are, let’s not pretend that a corporation prioritizes above that.
If the cause of our problems were as simple as evil business people colluding with evil politicians, we could have solved all the world’s problems by now.
Boeing knows that if they de-prioritize safety in favor of profit and schedule, it will do them far more harm than if they bit the bullet on schedule and profit in favor of safety because it will tarnish their reputation badly, and that it would tend to translate into decades of lost sales. This is where many people do not fully realize that Boeing has incentives to prioritize safety. It costs them more in the long run than any gain, and competent corporate managers know that. It is possible that management thought too much about the short term, but this would indicate a lack of competence on the part of corporate management, which is not necessarily entirely implausible in today’s environment (I still find it difficult to believe that Boeing management would be able to knowingly sell something that they felt to be dangerous). More plausible is that corporate management believed that the systems were safe, and were tragically proven wrong.
The FAA has its problems, that much is clear. However, the public has forgotten that Airbus has also been involved in many cases in which similar design flaws could have been as catastrophic as these incidents with the 737MAX, but by blind luck were not. Qantas Flight 032 is a great example.
Furthermore, early in the history of the Airbus A321, there was an accident involving a show flight. Credible accusations of a cover-up emerged. While the report blamed pilot error, it was credible claimed that the French Government did this in order to prevent the blame from going to Airbus’ product to avoid damaging Airbus’ reputation in the marketplace. Neither Airbus nor French Government has never fully answered these claims, although Airbus has rebutted at least one piece of evidence (a four second mismatch of recordings in the tower and on the aircraft was shown to be due to an error in retrieving the data; however, it appears that Airbus never could explain why the recorders presented in court, which should have been the latest in technology, were so obsolete in design).
Nevertheless, the exact conditions of that flight have never been repeated and likely never will be, so the truth will never really be known.
Recently, Airbus’ own A321neo, the direct competitor to the top of the line 737MAX, was found to exhibit dangerous pitch-up conditions by EASA under certain conditions, very similar to the 737MAX, except that instead of overreacting like the 737MAX, the A321neo would not react at all, creating different conditions that have potential to be as fatal as the 737MAX crashes. This occurred despite EASA’s supposed certification of the aircraft.
For that matter, the Qantas Flight 032 incident occurred despite EASA’s certification, as did the controversial show flight.
Overall, Boeing’s aircraft fly an average of three times as long between fatal accidents as Airbus’ aircraft, even in spite of the 737MAX crashes. Additionally, Boeing Aircraft have substantially higher dispatch reliability as compared with their Airbus counterparts.
If Boeing ultimately does not recover long-term (and I mean long-term), it is down to what is known in the aviation industry as “tombstone politics” rather than rationality. The idea is that because Boeing’s problems caused fatalities, they received undue attention as compared with Airbus’ equally dangerous and numerous problems, which through blind luck, did not cause any such fatalities. That being said, Boeing will have learnt its lesson the hardest way possible, whereas Airbus’ lessons have generally been less difficult to learn (although to what extent they have sunk in is unclear because of the near absence of press coverage).
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“…who said the planemaker had understated the power of the flight-control software in a System Safety Analysis submitted to the FAA.” Boeing is ultimately responsible for sending their ‘product’ into the field, which includes the software and sensors that you speak of.
Boeing exists, like any other corporation, to make a profit which includes cutting expenses (i.e. oversight) and increasing revenue (i.e. getting planes in the air)… coming from the ultra right wing capitalist that you are, let’s not pretend that a corporation prioritizes above that.
If the cause of our problems were as simple as evil business people colluding with evil politicians, we could have solved all the world’s problems by now.
Boeing knows that if they de-prioritize safety in favor of profit and schedule, it will do them far more harm than if they bit the bullet on schedule and profit in favor of safety because it will tarnish their reputation badly, and that it would tend to translate into decades of lost sales. This is where many people do not fully realize that Boeing has incentives to prioritize safety. It costs them more in the long run than any gain, and competent corporate managers know that. It is possible that management thought too much about the short term, but this would indicate a lack of competence on the part of corporate management, which is not necessarily entirely implausible in today’s environment (I still find it difficult to believe that Boeing management would be able to knowingly sell something that they felt to be dangerous). More plausible is that corporate management believed that the systems were safe, and were tragically proven wrong.
The FAA has its problems, that much is clear. However, the public has forgotten that Airbus has also been involved in many cases in which similar design flaws could have been as catastrophic as these incidents with the 737MAX, but by blind luck were not. Qantas Flight 032 is a great example.
Furthermore, early in the history of the Airbus A321, there was an accident involving a show flight. Credible accusations of a cover-up emerged. While the report blamed pilot error, it was credible claimed that the French Government did this in order to prevent the blame from going to Airbus’ product to avoid damaging Airbus’ reputation in the marketplace. Neither Airbus nor French Government has never fully answered these claims, although Airbus has rebutted at least one piece of evidence (a four second mismatch of recordings in the tower and on the aircraft was shown to be due to an error in retrieving the data; however, it appears that Airbus never could explain why the recorders presented in court, which should have been the latest in technology, were so obsolete in design).
Nevertheless, the exact conditions of that flight have never been repeated and likely never will be, so the truth will never really be known.
Recently, Airbus’ own A321neo, the direct competitor to the top of the line 737MAX, was found to exhibit dangerous pitch-up conditions by EASA under certain conditions, very similar to the 737MAX, except that instead of overreacting like the 737MAX, the A321neo would not react at all, creating different conditions that have potential to be as fatal as the 737MAX crashes. This occurred despite EASA’s supposed certification of the aircraft.
For that matter, the Qantas Flight 032 incident occurred despite EASA’s certification, as did the controversial show flight.
Overall, Boeing’s aircraft fly an average of three times as long between fatal accidents as Airbus’ aircraft, even in spite of the 737MAX crashes. Additionally, Boeing Aircraft have substantially higher dispatch reliability as compared with their Airbus counterparts.
If Boeing ultimately does not recover long-term (and I mean long-term), it is down to what is known in the aviation industry as “tombstone politics” rather than rationality. The idea is that because Boeing’s problems caused fatalities, they received undue attention as compared with Airbus’ equally dangerous and numerous problems, which through blind luck, did not cause any such fatalities. That being said, Boeing will have learnt its lesson the hardest way possible, whereas Airbus’ lessons have generally been less difficult to learn (although to what extent they have sunk in is unclear because of the near absence of press coverage).