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Originally Posted by Sunamer
(Post 10504880)
who else would have the intimate knowledge of the systems tho? If the aircraft crashes and it is proven it was manufacturer's fault, who pays in court? The manufacturer. So, it is an incentive for them to try to be as thorough as possible, while still pushing the envelop to stay competitive. On the other hand the people in the govt does not care if the govt gets sued for incorrectly done certification, because the govt uses YOUR money to pay for any lawsuit and any compensatory damages will come from the taxes. |
Originally Posted by epc
(Post 10505148)
The purpose of regulations is to make sure the product (food, drugs, airplanes, etc) is safe for public. It is never about the profit / loss of a manufacturer. If you think the payout from a liability is an incentive for a manufacturer to adhere to regulations, then what will a manufacturer do, if the accountant calculates the cost of regulatory compliance (in dollars terms, because that's all you are considering) is higher than the payout?
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DOJ probe expands beyond Boeing 737 MAX, includes 787 Dreamliner Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed records from Boeing relating to the production of the 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina, where there have been allegations of shoddy work, according to two sources familiar with the investigation. The subpoena was issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the sources said. DOJ is also conducting a criminal investigation into the certification and design of the 737 MAX after two deadly crashes of that jetliner. The 787 subpoena significantly widens the scope of the DOJ’s scrutiny of safety issues at Boeing. The two sources who revealed the subpoena spoke on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the inquiries. A third source said a handful of subpoenas were issued in early June to individual employees at Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner production plant in North Charleston, South Carolina. DOJ spokesman Peter Carr, in Washington, D.C., declined to comment Friday. A Boeing spokesman said, “We don’t comment on legal matters.” It wasn’t clear if the subpoena served on the company was issued by the same prosecutors overseeing the 737 MAX investigation. But the third source, also speaking on condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the inquiries, said the subpoenas to employees at the South Carolina plant came from the “same group” of prosecutors involved in the 737 MAX investigation, including DOJ trial attorneys Cory Jacobs and Carol Sipperly in the Fraud Section. Boeing divides its Dreamliner production between the South Carolina assembly plant, which rolled out its first plane in 2012, and the sprawling Everett facility where it has built jets for decades. The 737 MAX is built in Renton. Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., have been looking into the development of the 737 MAX, including a new flight-safety control system known as MCAS, after one crash on Oct. 29 off Indonesia and another in Ethiopia on March 10. Those disasters killed 346 people and led to worldwide grounding of the plane. The grand-jury investigation into the MAX has been cloaked in secrecy, but some of the Justice Department’s activities have become known as prosecutors issued subpoenas for documents. The Department of Transportation’s Inspector General and the FBI are working with the DOJ. A Seattle Times story in March detailed how Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers pushed its engineers to delegate more of the certification process for the 737 MAX to Boeing itself. The Times story also detailed flaws in an original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA. Allegations relating to the 787 Dreamliner have centered on shoddy work and cutting corners at the company’s South Carolina plant. While there are differences in the 737 and 787 matters, prosecutors are likely looking into whether broad cultural problems run throughout the company, according to the third source and a person in South Carolina, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter. That could include pressure to sign off on faulty work to avoid delays in delivering planes to customers, the source said. The New York Times reported in April that the North Charleston plant has been plagued by production issues and weak oversight that threatened to compromise safety. Production ran years behind schedule, due to manufacturing and supplier problems, before the plane entered service in 2011. The newspaper, citing a review of hundreds of pages of internal emails, corporate documents and federal records, as well as interviews with current and former employees, described a culture that often valued production speed over quality. Confronting manufacturing delays at the plant, Boeing pushed its workforce to quickly turn out Dreamliners, at times ignoring issues raised by employees, the newspaper reported. The Dreamliner, introduced in 2007 and billed as Boeing’s most important new plane in a generation, featured lightweight carbon-fiber fuselage and advanced technology. Initially assembled just in Everett, it was popular with airlines, prompting Boeing to break ground on a second Dreamliner plant in 2009 in South Carolina, which has the lowest percentage of union members of any state in the country. Last year the Everett plant produced 55% of the 145 Dreamliners that Boeing delivered, while the South Carolina factory delivered the rest. The biggest 787, the -10 model, is assembled only in South Carolina. The entire fleet was grounded in January 2013 after two battery-overheating incidents: a battery fire on an empty 787 parked at the gate at Boston airport, then a smoldering battery on a flight in Japan that forced an emergency landing. The FAA lifted the grounding in April 2013 after Boeing modified the jets with beefed-up batteries, containment boxes and venting tubes. In the 737 MAX investigation, prosecutors appear to be getting information from someone with inside knowledge of the plane’s development based on the questions they are asking, the third source said. |
Originally Posted by Speed of Sound
(Post 10504908)
That makes as much (or as little) sense as saying that banks and financial institutions should regulate themselves as they have the most intimate knowledge of their systems. In the same way proper oversight of self-certification can occur with rigorous auditing of the self-certification procedures and documentation, combined with technical testing. It is feasible if it is properly overseen. One very effective way is to require full time auditors to work inside Boeing but are independent of Boeing. Shipping has been doing that for a long long time and bank in the US are doing it. Just because self-certification may have failed in this instance it doesn't mean that self-certification is a failure. It's just been poorly implemented. External certification can be just as fallible. |
Originally Posted by Speed of Sound
(Post 10504932)
That is a fair point. Someone not completing a job and a supervisor signing it off as having been done, is something that could happen in any workplace. It is only really a Boeing thing if Boeing either encouraged it or knew about it and took no action. There is plenty to criticise Boeing for at the moment without going after spurious claims. I think one can deduce that this might not have been a “spurious claims” Whatever was at the root of the issue reported may not be made public but the word “falsified” is perhaps the only word which is contentious. |
Originally Posted by Gove N.T.
(Post 10505282)
I think one can deduce that this might not have been a “spurious claims” |
Originally Posted by Speed of Sound
(Post 10505408)
there is no evidence for it.
Although there has been circumstantial evidence that it may have happened on the accident flights, other people were very vocal contesting that claim, along the lines of: "there is no evidence that those switches can fail to work properly, the MAX issues have been under thorough investigation for months, if there was anything to suggest that those switches could fail to work we would have heard about it by now". Ironically, just a couple of days after those claims of "lack of evidence", evidence came out that it may have indeed been possible, since such a condition was discovered in a simulator test performed by FAA pilots. Reality seems to have a particular habit of soon proving wrong people that claim large amounts of smoke is not evidence of a fire. And there has been a lot of smoke in the last decade about Boeing trying to deliver aircraft as fast as possible, and disregarding quality issues because of that. Now that there is concrete evidence about a bit of fire, it's not unreasonable to assume that most of the smoke may have been caused by fire as well. |
Originally Posted by MemberBerry
(Post 10505710)
I kept hearing that that too on MAX thread, when people suggested the stabilizer trim thumb switches might not work under some circumstances.
Although there has been circumstantial evidence that it may have happened on the accident flights, other people were very vocal contesting that claim, along the lines of: "there is no evidence that those switches can fail to work properly, the MAX issues have been under thorough investigation for months, if there was anything to suggest that those switches could fail to work we would have heard about it by now". Ironically, just a couple of days after those claims of "lack of evidence", evidence came out that it may have indeed been possible, since such a condition was discovered in a simulator test performed by FAA pilots. Reality seems to have a particular habit of soon proving wrong people that claim large amounts of smoke is not evidence of a fire. And there has been a lot of smoke in the last decade about Boeing trying to deliver aircraft as fast as possible, and disregarding quality issues because of that. Now that there is concrete evidence about a bit of fire, it's not unreasonable to assume that most of the smoke may have been caused by fire as well. Cheers, Grog |
Originally Posted by MemberBerry
(Post 10505710)
I
Ironically, just a couple of days after those claims of "lack of evidence", evidence came out that it may have indeed been possible, since such a condition was discovered in a simulator test performed by FAA pilots. |
Originally Posted by capngrog
(Post 10505757)
On the other hand, the fact that the electric trim SYSTEM will not work in alleviating severe out of trim conditions under high aerodynamic loads has been well documented.
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Originally Posted by capngrog
(Post 10505757)
On the other hand, the fact that the electric trim SYSTEM will not work in alleviating severe out of trim conditions under high aerodynamic loads has been well documented.
I don't recall any evidence that (assuming it's enabled) it won't get you back into trim from extreme AND configuration - only that it may be impossible to apply manual (wheel) trim under certain circumstances. |
yoko and Dave;
I may have been mistaken in that above statement, but somewhere in the deep recesses of the remnants of my memory, I thought I had read that under extreme circumstances, the electric trim jackscrew motor could stall due to high aerodynamic forces. As I age, I've noticed a tendency to remember things that didn't occur and forget things that did. Cheers, Grog |
Originally Posted by Longtimer
(Post 10505155)
DOJ probe expands beyond Boeing 737 MAX, includes 787 Dreamliner
I remember Mary Schiavo's interview where she openly said: "If you want to be a whistleblower in the aviation industry, make sure you have another profession, because you will never work in aviation again". And that coming from no less than Inspector General of DOT. She then published a book "Flying blind, flying safe", an amazing expose that should have been taken into consideration with immediate action but it wasn't. Moreover, some Robert Pool, Jr. from CBS criticized her saying "her fundamental mistake is to argue that the FAA should pursue safety literally at all cost." Look what came to bite them in the APU exhaust 20 years later. |
Originally Posted by capngrog
(Post 10505757)
I must have missed something in the latest FAA findings regarding the Boeing 737MAX. The reports of these findings seem to be unclear on the precise cause of a recently discovered problem with the MAX, but reports range from the trim switches not moving the stabilizer fast enough to the FAA test Pilots finding that the Boeing procedures did no allow sufficiently rapid recovery from the runaway trim condition. In none of these reports have I found any reference to the trim switches themselves failing to operate. On the other hand, the fact that the electric trim SYSTEM will not work in alleviating severe out of trim conditions under high aerodynamic loads has been well documented.
Cheers, Grog |
Watch this and you hear all the stuff you don't wanna hear....https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/boeing787/
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Originally Posted by Aso
(Post 10506217)
Watch this and you hear all the stuff you don't wanna hear....https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/boeing787/
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Originally Posted by UltraFan
(Post 10505811)
I remember Mary Schiavo's interview where she openly said: "If you want to be a whistleblower in the aviation industry, make sure you have another profession, because you will never work in aviation again". And that coming from no less than Inspector General of DOT. She then published a book "Flying blind, flying safe", an amazing expose that should have been taken into consideration with immediate action but it wasn't. Moreover, some Robert Pool, Jr. from CBS criticized her saying "her fundamental mistake is to argue that the FAA should pursue safety literally at all cost." Since her departure from the Department of Transportation, she has used hyperbole and exaggeration to keep her face in front of cameras and sell books, while doing very little to make meaningful change. |
I am well aware of the corporate ethos that allows: "Ship it, and let the customers identify the problems after operations begin. We can do a fix when we have a better idea of the impact." The ship date of units are driven mostly by sales and marketing types who are watching the competition and their "window of opportunity", Since it takes a long time to bring a product to market, the delivery slots are virtually cast in concrete. It was extremely unlikely in my profession that this slot driven ethos was going to result in loss of life, but may cost a shed load of money or the demise of the program.
I hope I am wrong but knowing something of work force ethos, I am sceptical. IG |
Originally Posted by ThreeThreeMike
(Post 10506522)
Considering Mary Schiavo as a competent and knowledgeable source is something very few in the aircraft manufacturing and airline world engage in. It's not just because of her adversarial positions.
Since her departure from the Department of Transportation, she has used hyperbole and exaggeration to keep her face in front of cameras and sell books, while doing very little to make meaningful change. |
Originally Posted by aterpster
(Post 10504779)
Who else would certify their complex aircraft?
well, if the americans don't want to fund their FAA there is always the CAAC, which is happy to act to protect consumers. see max grounding. point being: step up right or someone else will do it. |
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