Originally Posted by
CaptainMongo
Some on this thread point to a Boeing conspiracy to willfully put into operation an unsafe aircraft
I find it hard to believe every individual involved in the Max program, from designer to operator, would engage in a conspiracy of silence allowing and condoning Boeing to put out an unsafe aircraft.
Every Boeing design engineer, programmer, supervisor, and test pilot coupled with every FAA official conspired to purposefully put to market an unsafe aircraft? Every major airline which accepted the aircraft purposefully and ignorantly accepted the aircraft and training plan as designed by Boeing?
I am not referring to airlines which don’t have the financial wherewithal and deep historical training expertise in operating the 737, I am referring to the SWA, AA, UAL’s (apology’s to international operators which have commensurate expertise) which accepted on blind faith Boeing’s plan.
And then let’s not leave out the pilots unions. ALPA, the most powerful pilots union in the history of commercial aviation (of which I am a proud member) APA, SWAPA all have robust safety and training committees. Did they fail due diligence, were they also complicit in the Max coming to operation purposefully overlooking obvious aircraft and training flaws? Did the Standards Captains, the Line Check Airmen, and pilot instructors at those airlines also engage in a willful conspiracy of ignorance and silence?
I am not by any stretch excusing or absolving Boeing, the FAA, the airlines, the unions or the supervisory pilots (who should know better) I am merely stating to believe a few executives at Boeing could alone get away with producing and deploying an unsafe aircraft requires a willing belief in a improbable widespread conspiracy - from producer to regulator to airline to hands on (pilot) operator.
Mongo, that's the entire point. The argument against large conspiracies is that a large number can't keep their mouth shut and it will become known. How about if a the MCAS was known to a very small number? I find it hard to believe that any engineer would not see the potential failure mode with any single channel input system driving a flight control surface potentially to the full limit of travel. This raises questions of the internal processes at Boeing to get the MCAS implemented and reviewed. That is the truely astounding bit of the story, just how did this piece of software end up installed without almost anybody apparently knowing about it, and how it worked.
As far as we can tell, no pilots were aware that the MCAS existed. No airlines, trainers, nobody. The only public reference to the MCAS prior to Lion Air was the Brazilian CAA, see this article:
Flight control feature of Boeing 737 MAX under scrutiny after Lion Air accident. There is a comparison between the response from Canada and Brazil to the MCAS implementation.
It give the appearance that the FAA accepted Boeings word for it, this FAA certification was then accepted without question by every airworthiness authority except Brazil. No conspiracy necessary, more likely a global failure of due diligence. It is similar to the global issue of flammable cladding on high rise buildings. A single regulatory sign-off then gives carte blanche to accept a product without further investigation or due diligence locally. Regulators have simply given up.