Originally Posted by
GlobalNav
Won’t argue with your points but I might suggest one more. Engineers, even those with no supervisory authority, have a profound responsibility, one that properly exercised can cost their employment. It is a moral responsibility to do their work thoroughly, carefully and honestly. Passivity in the face of improper demands of management, makes them enablers, sharing the blame with the bean counters and demanding managers. Everyone is responsible for their actions and inactions.
I think this is unfair. Some of them might be very junior and new to the world of work. These would reasonably expect to be shown good working practices and perhaps thought they were, or didn't realise the shortcomings of what they were being trained to do. Those with a little more experience might well have raised concerns with their supervisors and been rebuffed. Then what?
What do you expect the junior engineers to do, all resign en mass?
......Not least, the problems of the 737 MAX appear closely linked up to the growing role of automated systems in the control of transport category airplanes. The proliferation of systems which can control flight with limited or no pilot input can create new problems, or so the MAX crashes would suggest: things were happening too quickly and in too complicated a manner for the knowledge and abilities acquired in training to be sufficient.
Not automated systems per se, there are some very good ones out there; The Boeing 737's problem is that it is now a technological basket case, with extra bits being bolted on here and there as they became desirable, e.g. MCAS. But there was no proper integration of the extra systems with what existed and MCAS was only needed because there wasn't enough room under the wing with the short undercarriage to fit bigger engines, so they had to go further forward. There has never been a proper cockpit, avionics and flying control system redesign.
The A320 family is an order of magnitude better than the B737 in almost every respect you can think of, especially automation, which is very well designed, developed and integrated.
The only reason the B737 is so popular with airlines is that it is cheap and just about does the job.
(Do the cabin crew still have to lift the girt bars in and out of the 737 floor brackets every time the main doors are armed or disarmed?)