Sincerely, .. there is something deeply worrying .. and if it continues (and I am afraid it will, as such things have a momentum of their own), will become deeply disturbing. The following may sound a bit abstract, but it has real, deeply, and widely ranging consequences.
Simplified and compressed, this worry is based on when you rank the growth level of an organization on a scale of: failing - bad - normal - good(objectively factbased&datadriven) - best(culture).
What sets the aerospace industry apart from all others is that over a period of many years it has established a safety culture. And it should be very clear that “culture” is on a level above “factbased and datadriven”. Some subordinate examples: In compliance ‘cultural compliance’ standing above ‘tick-box compliance’. In legal the ‘intent of the law’ standing above ‘the letter of the law’. Etc, etc,..
So when a person uses ‘factbased and datadriven’ in a conversation on aviation safety, I read that as driving a level down from where we are. When he or she repeats that a number of times, then it suggests systemic issues. And the higher ranked a person is, the more serious it gets and the more persistent it will be.
Take the March 27th, 2019, Senate Appropriations Hearing on the 2020 Budget for the Transportation Department. The Secretary of Transportation using the words (when discussing the 737 MAX events and developments): .. “the FAA is professional and fact based” .. “they [FAA] are very fact based” .. and .. “on Wednesday March 13th .. [flight data on] the first 3 minutes of flight [became available] that showed similarity [with the Lion Air crash data] .. physical evidence .. [together this] was the first factual evidence”..
Take the March 27th, 2019, Senate Subcomittee Hearing on Airline Safety. The (Acting) Administrator of the FAA (in this hearing triggered by 737 MAX events) using the words: ... “[FAA’s] fact based data driven approach” .. “data driven” .. “data based” ..
You could use the sketched ranking approach yourself, to reflect on a number of issues that still await an answer.
The FAA administrator was asked on the grounding of the 737 MAX why the FAA was “lagging and not leading”, as most other authorities, countries and airlines had grounded the MAX [days] before, and the administrator holding the FAA as the ‘Golden Standard of safety in aviation’. He answered that the FAA operates “fact based” and that the facts only obtained on the 13th were required before ‘ordering’ a grounding. So the question here is, and we need more information to answer that clearly, is if these other international parties were basing their decisions on cultural grounds or on factbased & datadriven grounds.
The FAA administrator pointed to the 57,000 flights of the 737 MAX in the USA till now. These flights did not provide [any] data that gave them [the FAA, but as he stated also Boeing and three US major airline pilot associations] [any] worries on the 737 MAX. [This implies that AoA vane, or AoA data, or outputs based on AoA data, gave them no worries . A question in quite a few Pprune posts. It does not answer the Pprune questions if there was any activation of MCAS. And writing this I wonder if MCAS activation would be FDR/QAR recorded at all or would be a derived parameter]. Interesting of course is, considering the global effect of FAA decisions, if FAA decisions should be based on US data alone !! This might turn into a fundamental question. It puts my own question on (non-US) ‘launch airline’ capabilities in a new perspective.
The FAA administrator pointed out, when asked about ‘non-positive’ pilot and engineers statements quoted in newspapers on issues and problems, that there were no reports in [any] ‘ASRS’ or ‘whistleblower reporting system’ that pointed to something. He could not answer the question if Boeing had an ODA whistleblower reporting system and if and how that functioned. So a question to be answered is, if the FAA data capture has been wide enough (nationally and internationally).