Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-boeing-exclusive/exclusive-boeing-2016-internal-messages-suggest-employees-may-have-misled-faa-on-737-max-sources-idUSKBN1WX25G

by HugoHobling • 7 years ago

154 70 7 years ago

reuters.com

situational87• 7 years ago

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.

People need to go to prison over this.

Judson• 7 years ago

I'm not sure if the link originally pointed to NYT, but the currently linked reuters report adds a bit more context to the messages.

Forkner said in one text message, “I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly).” The other employee responded that “it wasn’t a lie, no one told us that was the case” of an issue with MCAS.
Forkner responded soon after: “Granted I suck at flying, but even this was egregious.”

jonplackett2• 7 years ago

I don’t really understand the context of these messages.

The one about MCAS running rampant is clear enough but what does he mean saying that he sucks at flying? What is egregious?

privateSFacct9• 7 years ago

Boeing has designed planes that have an INCREDIBLE safety record, particularly when flying in US regulated airspace.

Interesting that prison time is demanded here when a much more simple explanation is that this was an oversight by the pilots in the sim who didn't fully understand the issue was MCAS related.

Millions killed from opioid epidemics, thousands killed from violence and various preventable diseases, huge number of road fatalities do not result in prison time.

The safety record of aviation in the US should be applauded.

atonse2• 7 years ago

So you want to use their historical record as some kind of justification for their dismal record with the 737 MAX, as if one is related to the other?

Cold comfort to the 300+ lives, and families destroyed.

Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2tuKiiznsY

This isn't just some "oops, these were badly trained pilots" – the whole premise of MCAS is seriously screwed up and smacks of non-engineers running the place.

bobobooey• 7 years ago

MCAS is a terrible software solution to an engineering problem. On top of that, no sufficient training for the pilots to cover up there awful solution.

There's deaths caused by Boeing's greed and lack of competition against Airbus' new planes.

anigbrowl• 7 years ago

Impressive spin but not enough to overcome the documentary evidence of deception. Lots of people go to prison for violence and I am heartily in favor of people like pharmaceutical executives joining them.

willvarfar• 7 years ago

A lot of insiders say the safe, old Boeing went out the window with the McDonnell Douglas merger in '97.

It kinda turned into a reverse-merger, where MD bosses took over Boeing and heavily influenced the management style and practices thereafter.

Some of the commentary https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-invest...

philjohn• 7 years ago

They also denied there was a problem with thrust reversers until Niki Lauda forced the issue and they were found to have obfuscated.

There are serious questions to be answered about the corporate governance.

atonse2• 7 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree. These are crimes that have resulted in hundreds of deaths.

nostromo• 7 years ago

Prison: our solution to every problem.

davidw• 7 years ago

IDK, it's overused in the US, but a lot of people died too and that's... pretty bad?

jacquesm6• 7 years ago

I'm normally against prison as a deterrent because it is used against people where it wouldn't work as a deterrent. In cases such as these it might actually work if the execs of such companies were simply jailed for a very long time as though they were about equally responsible as a regular bus driver would be if they were negligent at their job and killed a bunch of people. It just might have a positive effect the next time someone thinks they might get away with cutting some corners.

markus_zhang• 7 years ago

I'd LOL if it's just the pilot who gets the boot (to prison).

notadoc• 7 years ago

The repetitional damage to Boeing on this has to be considerable.

jonplackett2• 7 years ago

What’s the implication here? That it’s these pilot’s fault? Surely their job is just to report what they experience during a flight sim and it’s someone else who would have decided to hide that.

mattlondon3• 7 years ago

The implication is that people at Boeing knew there were problems with MCAS before the crashes happened. I am not saying these particular guys are at fault.

The transcript (https://tmsnrt.rs/2OZl4Ic) shows them specifically talking about MCAS doing weird stuff in simulators and they they didn't know what was going on, or what the expected behaviour was. Interesting that it happened in a simulator where I presume that sensors don't sporadically break or deliberately give duff readings in what is probably a lot of highly controlled tests... perhaps a pure software error?

Did this problem just get lost somewhere in the noise of development? Was it "unreproducible" (in the bug sense)? Was it willfully ignored by "the management"? Who knows - but we now do know that some people at Boeing involved in development were aware of problems before the crashes.

Pretty sad really.

MFLoon• 7 years ago

Simulators can "break" in the sense that support simulating various failure modes, including presumably sensor malfunctions. It's very possible that they stumbled on the exact conditions that led to the real world crashes, which would be even more damning.

7952• 7 years ago

I guess the response would depend on if you think the flaw is in the existing type or not.

You could suggest that the trim system is defective regardless of MCAS. That the pilot should always be able to counteract automatic trim in any flight mode.

Or the problem is solely in the max modifications and you can safely ignore issues with the original design.

tpmx• 7 years ago

The implication is that Boeing needs to broken up into managable pieces. Right now it's a giant behemoth that's doing both passenger planes and also all kinds of hardware that is critical to the US DoD.

This sorta worked as long as Boing built consumer aircraft that worked exceedingly well. But alas...

stupidcar• 7 years ago

Quelle surprise

dang• 7 years ago

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tspike• 7 years ago

The actual transcript is illuminating. This feels like corporate throwing the test pilots under the bus.

https://graphics.reuters.com/BOEING-737/0100B2J51TY/Boeing%2...

Obi_Juan_Kenobi• 7 years ago

Why are journalists still calling this an 'anti-stall' system. It's not, and it's so deceptive about what it actually does. The crashes had nothing to do with stalls, the system does nothing to prevent stalls, and the safety regulations that brought it about are only indirectly related to stalls.

The system affects how the flight stick feels and that's really it. The more you pull up (higher AoA), the more force is needed on the stick. That's supposed to be linear within some margin of error. The big fat new engines took it out of the linear envelope, making it a bit lighter than it 'should' be at high AoA as the engines caught the wind. They either fixed this, or else needed a new type rating (pilots can't hold more than one, so it's a huge issue for existing operators of 737s).

The solution was MCAS which, as originally designed, wasn't powerful enough to cause problems. But test pilots said that the stick was still a bit light, so they reworked it and made it way too strong, while still being invisible to pilots and lacking the reliability of a critical system. Then several hundred people died.

anticensor• 7 years ago

pilots can't hold more than one, so it's a huge issue for existing operators of 737s

You can hold more than one but you need to maintain each separately.

ckcheng• 7 years ago

system affects how the flight stick feels and that's really it

I kept hearing this too, so I wondered why they didn't just directly change how the stick feels, like with a force feedback system?

And I looked it up[1]: Turns out MCAS was also there to push the nose down at high AoA, to imitate what the 737 NG does even in the absence of control input, so it's not just a stick feel thing.

"The added nose down trim has the side effect of requiring more elevator input at high angles of attack", so simultaneously fixing the stick feel issue.

It seems to me like MCAS solved two related problems at the same time... and sadly thus created an even larger unintended problem.

[1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/62067

Boeing 2016 internal messages suggest employees may have misled FAA on 737 MAX

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