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Old 1st May 2019, 06:11
  #4667 (permalink)  
MemberBerry
 
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Originally Posted by Organfreak
Speaking as an informed passenger, try to see my POV: If there is something wrong with the airplane you're riding, wouldn't you want the very best piloting skills possible sitting up there in the pointy end??? I sure would! I am shocked that there's so much sentiment against "Just fly the damned plane!"
I know what you really mean but, as another informed passenger, if there is actually something wrong with the airplane, the pilots should NOT fly the damned plane. The plane should not leave the ground with passengers on board if the pilots are not confident that the aircraft is safe to fly.

In fact that's what I heard commercial pilots say when asked about the things they do to keep us, the passengers, safe: If they feel that there is anything wrong with the aircraft that could affect the safety of the flight, they will not take off until the issue is taken care of. Period. No ifs and buts.

But in this case, after the Lion Air accident, the pilots trusted Boeing, the FAA and the airlines when they claimed that the MAX is not unsafe, and just continued flying the damned plane. In my opinion that trust has been misplaced.

Anticipating accusations of being hysterical, I feel I need to recap some of the unbelievable things I have read in the last months about how Boeing failed at making safety their primary concern, while the FAA was a watchdog that didn't have teeth sharp enough to prevent it, and also some of the stuff the airlines did that contributed:

- the latest blunder about the AOA disagree warning being disabled "by accident" on the MAX
- recent whistleblower reports about damage to the wiring of the AOA sensors
- the redesign of the cutout switches that prevents disabling automatic trim independently from the manual electric trim
- relying on a single AOA sensor for the MCAS function
- increasing the amount of trim MCAS can apply in one run from 0.6 to 2.5 without re-evaluating its safety
- hiding the existence of the MCAS function and its behavior from the pilots
- a pilot that demanded more training for the MAX being ignored and then punished by his airline when he insisted: https://qz.com/1584233/boeing-737-ma...more-training/
- a pilot that said he didn't feel prepared and had significant issues on his first flight on the MAX: https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/20...37-max/584791/
- making the manual trim wheels smaller to fit the larger displays starting with the NG, and also making them harder to use
- Boeing accepting sub-standard hardware components from its suppliers, then literally hammering them in place or drilling additional holes in the components when they didn't fit properly, see "Problems with Boeing 737 next generation with structural dangers reported SBS​ dateline Australia":
- foreign objects found on aircraft delivered by Boeing
- airlines refusing to accept aircraft assembled in one of Boeing's factories due to quality issues
- Boeing ignoring employees that reported quality issues in its factories or the factories of their suppliers
- FAA mostly ignoring whistleblowers that did the same.
- Boeing firing the whistleblowers and the people reporting quality issues.
- The battery issues on the Dreamliner (the Al Jazeera investigation):

But with all that going on somehow some people are still extremely surprised about the criticism towards Boeing and the FAA.

The problem goes deep, and just fixing MCAS is not enough. The factors that allowed the issues with MCAS to slip through the cracks, assuming they were not hidden intentionally, also need to be fixed. And based on what I learned so far I think those factors are the under-funding and maybe even corruption within the FAA, and having some unethical people in key positions at Boeing and some of the airlines, that prioritized short term profit over safety.
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