I don't know nothing about the current flap about the Boeing 737 MAX grounding, but I am a pilot, and so I think I know a thing or two about flying and airplanes, such as:
One More For the Gipper. As I understand it, it is much cheaper for Boeing to modify an existing airplane model than to develop and entirely new one. From the regulatory standpoint. In other words, it makes much more financial sense for Boeing to tell the FAA that its 737 MAX model is merely a development of the 737 model line than to call it a new model. So there is a big temptation to squeeze one more modification out of an existing model rather than to break new ground on a new model.
And I've read that the problem with the 737 MAX is that the engines are much bigger/heavier/powerful than the previous non-MAX and this has created problems on the center-of-gravity of the airplane.
Regulatory Capture. The Federal Aviation Administration is responsible for the airworthiness of US-built airplanes. But the settled science of "regulatory capture" says that a government regulator eventually becomes captured by the corporations it is supposed to regulate. Could that be a problem here?
Why can't Boeing's insurance company be in charge of airworthiness? It would have, after all, "Skin in the Game" as Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues in his latest book.
Pilots and Emergencies. When a pilot experiences an emergency situation in flight his response is to follow his training. But there is a problem. If an emergency has not been covered in training the pilot will not have any training to follow. And he will probably not have time to figure out what went wrong, consult his flight manuals, and then decide what to do. When I was a glider pilot I had been trained in what do do if my altitude was too low to glide back to the airport. On the two occasions when this happened to me it was remarkable how I dutifully followed my training.
Now it seems that in the 737 MAX accidents it may well be that the problem was a failed angle-of-attack indicator that prompted an AI system to assume the plane was in a stall when it wasn't. No problem if pilots are trained for such an event; big problem if they are not.
Corporate bureaucracy. I was talking to a guy the other day that spent most of his working life in small print shops. But he ended his career doing printing for a big corporation. He found the big corporation to be crazy-making with all their rules. Life was much simpler when he just worked for the owner. For me, living in Seattle, it has always been impressive to me how Boeing has a huge depth of knowledge and experience in plane-making. No doubt part of this is all the rules that keep people from doing stupid stuff. But then there is the situation where all the rules don't protect you. And maybe that stems from the fact that the bottom line of flight-testing is a process of getting sign-offs from the FAA rather than the deep thought of "what could go wrong?" I am not saying here that the Boeing flight-test guys don't care about safety; I am just saying that their job is to follow the rules and get the signoff and not to think deep thoughts. And even if some guy half way up the food-chain wanted to do a bunch of testing around the angle-of-attack indicator and the AI systems, he would still have to get his superiors to sign off on a budget. And the problem with all corporate bureaucrats is that, over time, the bureaucrats end up taking care of themselves, not the mission of the corporation, because that's how bureaucracies work.
Don't forget the lawyers. I'll bet that Boeing and the FAA have known for months that they have a problem. But being humans they would not want to admit to it until they had a solution -- proposed, implemented and tested. Why? Probably because of the lawyers, that would extract damages for all the folks killed in the two crashes thus far. Oh, and of course to save the airlines money, because there is nothing more expensive than an expensive airplane being grounded for months while the wheels of bureaucracy and regulation grind away on a corporate and regulatory solution.
Don't Panic! If we have a pretty good idea what the problem is, and we can, in ten minutes, train all the 737 MAX pilots what to do when the plane gets a false stall warning, then problem solved, right? Alas, no. Because our faith in bureaucracy and regulation means that we can't return the 737 MAX to service until all the bureaucratic and regulatory hoops have been jumped through. Because everything in this world has to pass the "Is it safe, Mr. President?" test.
In a better world, we would trust airplane manufacturers and airlines to be responsible, and let them get on with it.
But we do not live in that world. I doubt if we ever will.
One More For the Gipper. As I understand it, it is much cheaper for Boeing to modify an existing airplane model than to develop and entirely new one. From the regulatory standpoint. In other words, it makes much more financial sense for Boeing to tell the FAA that its 737 MAX model is merely a development of the 737 model line than to call it a new model. So there is a big temptation to squeeze one more modification out of an existing model rather than to break new ground on a new model.
And I've read that the problem with the 737 MAX is that the engines are much bigger/heavier/powerful than the previous non-MAX and this has created problems on the center-of-gravity of the airplane.
Regulatory Capture. The Federal Aviation Administration is responsible for the airworthiness of US-built airplanes. But the settled science of "regulatory capture" says that a government regulator eventually becomes captured by the corporations it is supposed to regulate. Could that be a problem here?
Why can't Boeing's insurance company be in charge of airworthiness? It would have, after all, "Skin in the Game" as Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues in his latest book.
Pilots and Emergencies. When a pilot experiences an emergency situation in flight his response is to follow his training. But there is a problem. If an emergency has not been covered in training the pilot will not have any training to follow. And he will probably not have time to figure out what went wrong, consult his flight manuals, and then decide what to do. When I was a glider pilot I had been trained in what do do if my altitude was too low to glide back to the airport. On the two occasions when this happened to me it was remarkable how I dutifully followed my training.
Now it seems that in the 737 MAX accidents it may well be that the problem was a failed angle-of-attack indicator that prompted an AI system to assume the plane was in a stall when it wasn't. No problem if pilots are trained for such an event; big problem if they are not.
Corporate bureaucracy. I was talking to a guy the other day that spent most of his working life in small print shops. But he ended his career doing printing for a big corporation. He found the big corporation to be crazy-making with all their rules. Life was much simpler when he just worked for the owner. For me, living in Seattle, it has always been impressive to me how Boeing has a huge depth of knowledge and experience in plane-making. No doubt part of this is all the rules that keep people from doing stupid stuff. But then there is the situation where all the rules don't protect you. And maybe that stems from the fact that the bottom line of flight-testing is a process of getting sign-offs from the FAA rather than the deep thought of "what could go wrong?" I am not saying here that the Boeing flight-test guys don't care about safety; I am just saying that their job is to follow the rules and get the signoff and not to think deep thoughts. And even if some guy half way up the food-chain wanted to do a bunch of testing around the angle-of-attack indicator and the AI systems, he would still have to get his superiors to sign off on a budget. And the problem with all corporate bureaucrats is that, over time, the bureaucrats end up taking care of themselves, not the mission of the corporation, because that's how bureaucracies work.
Don't forget the lawyers. I'll bet that Boeing and the FAA have known for months that they have a problem. But being humans they would not want to admit to it until they had a solution -- proposed, implemented and tested. Why? Probably because of the lawyers, that would extract damages for all the folks killed in the two crashes thus far. Oh, and of course to save the airlines money, because there is nothing more expensive than an expensive airplane being grounded for months while the wheels of bureaucracy and regulation grind away on a corporate and regulatory solution.
Don't Panic! If we have a pretty good idea what the problem is, and we can, in ten minutes, train all the 737 MAX pilots what to do when the plane gets a false stall warning, then problem solved, right? Alas, no. Because our faith in bureaucracy and regulation means that we can't return the 737 MAX to service until all the bureaucratic and regulatory hoops have been jumped through. Because everything in this world has to pass the "Is it safe, Mr. President?" test.
In a better world, we would trust airplane manufacturers and airlines to be responsible, and let them get on with it.
But we do not live in that world. I doubt if we ever will.
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